Fire Emblem Engage: The return of the series' legends

It's been almost three years since the last main instalment of the Fire Emblem series released. FE: Three Houses introduced a lot of new features and changes to a series which is known to be tremendously conservative in its 17 instalments (although in the West we only started to know it from the seventh. With such an established history in gaming, it is quite logical to think that there is little to innovate without breaking the essence of what Fire Emblem is, but in 'Engage' the developers have opted for the opposite: a celebration of the series in style, with a lot of guest stars that veterans will recognize (and instantly adore) and a story that is a priori hackneyed, but that keeps a couple of aces up its sleeve.

Engage is set on the continent of Elyos, home of the Divine Dragons, benevolent divinities and protectors of the world. We embody the last Divine Dragon, who manages to defeat the Fallen Dragon in a fine battle, only to fall into a 1,000-year slumber and awaken without memories to face a new threat. It will be thanks to the relationships with our new allies from the four nations of the continent with which we will recover our memory. Well, thanks to them, and thanks to the emblems.

As in every iteration of the series, emblems are "something" completely different this time. In Engage they are rings from which you can summon great warriors from another time and even from other worlds, such as the famous characters of the series like Marth or Sigurd. These companions provide unique bonuses to the character they are assigned to, such as improved strength or vitality. In addition, they can be summoned during battles to perform powerful attacks through the fusion with them.

But before that, let's talk about combat. Fire Emblem is synonymous with turn-based tactical role-playing and here there are no surprises of any kind, at least as far as we have been able to tell through our playtime so far. The classic rock-paper-scissors with sword-spear-axe is still present here, and all those who have already played a title in the series will instantly recognize the familiar systems, although if this is going to be your first experience, you will have no problem getting used to them, because they are really intuitive. And just in case, there's a long tutorial that accompanies you well into the game, and perhaps a little beyond.

In each battle you have to take into account both the victory conditions and the health of your characters, because if one of them is defeated (and you're playing in the classic style of the series) the character won't be available for future battles, and can even disappear permanently. You may not mind that too much if you think about strategy, but that's going to be difficult if you get involved in the other half of the game: its story and the relationships between characters.

In Fire Emblem Engage we will have a hub between missions called the Sonmiel, where we can chat with our allies, give them gifts, improve their equipment and manage some side quests and mini-games. As the story progresses and we get deeper into the political situation of the continent and its four nations living in a fragile truce, we will also meet new characters who will live in the Somniel and with whom we will be able to team up. There will be romance, laughs, tensions and much more, as usual in the series. But the spirits of the emblems will also appear in physical form there, with whom we will be able to deepen our knowledge of their stories and the saga.

Although separately none of these two parts of Fire Emblem Engage (combat and story) are anything to write home about, if fused (redundancy aside) correctly, they give rise to an absorbing title of those in which you can spend dozens of hours completely abstracted from the world. And as the release date approaches, I'll keep playing to discover more quests, more characters, more exciting battles and more surprises that I'm sure are in store for me in Elyos and Fire Emblem Engage.