I played the game on 'Hard' difficulty the first time through, rather than 'Maddening,' because I wanted to have a good experience unlike the horribly over-hard Tactics Ogre Reborn. You see, this game has a difficulty setting, unlike Tactics Ogre, which just throws you into a lion pit and refuses to compromise on anything. That's one of many reasons Engage is better than Tactics Ogre.
Since I bought the DLC for Engage, which promises to release more content (most importantly more Emblems) over the course of 2023, I plan on replaying the game at 'Maddening' difficulty once all the DLC has come out. I can play with all-new Emblems making the battles completely different from how I solved problems this time around. With the new tools the Maddening difficulty won't be so maddening.
The difficulty was pretty high on 'Hard' during the early parts of the game where I didn't have many Emblems to work with, but by the late stage of the game I was pretty much dominating the stages with endless Engaged characters never taking a moment off from their 'powered-up' phases. The nature of the game is that you go around collecting more Emblems over time so it's only natural that you'd end up much stronger at the end than the beginning, but I wish they'd made the enemies a bit tougher to match that growth in power, otherwise I don't get to test how strong I've really become, because I don't have to use my new abilities to their fullest in order to win.
The game lasted almost 100 hours in terms of legitimate plot based content. However, if you want to max out your skills and weapons and support skits the game could take hundreds of additional hours. It almost feels like you could play it forever, grinding and grinding endlessly. I'm not sure how dedicated I am to that kind of 'after-story' play, but I'll at least give it a whirl.
The art for this game was fantastic, the character designs were phenomenal both as computer graphics models and pastel drawings. The music was pretty good qua music and great at setting the mood and delivering on emotional moments. I expect many of the songs from this soundtrack will eventually reach my music hall of fame. The plot was also great, a simple story but delivered well. It's a story you can quickly get behind and start cheering the characters on about. It isn't an epic original setting and plot like Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but then again what is?
As for the characters themselves, I like a lot of them, but many also tend to have some unlikable quirk, some comic element or flaw, which doesn't sit well with me. The only unqualifiedly good characters with only admirable traits are Alear, Veyle and Diamant. Lapis is a really good girl but she's such a minor side character I don't think she counts, you barely get to know her. Also she has a weak personal skill that lowers her crit rate, so the gameplay sort of ruins my holistic take on her.
Depending on how good the characters are from Hirogaru Sky Precure we'll see how many Fire Emblem Engage characters enter my fictional character hall of fame. The new Pretty Cure season airs later today.
Overall this game isn't about music, art, plot or characters though. It's about gameplay. And it has fantastic gameplay. The abilities you get from your Emblems are phenomenal and game changing. You feel so powerful and cool whenever you use them, and they turn the battle around when it looks completely hopeless. And yet, the battle lasts long enough that blowing all your Emblem charges at the beginning isn't enough to win. Actually that's pretty much a surefire way to lose. You have to carefully judge when a situation absolutely requires you Engage, and if it isn't necessary and you can find another way, you should use that other way. At the same time you can't be too stingy, the Emblem abilities should all be used before the end of the battle, and if you end up with unused Emblem charges that makes you a fool who made the battle more difficult for yourself than it had to be. It's a careful balance that keeps your brain in an overheated, hyper state for endless hours. (I haven't gotten much sleep all week because the game is too good at keeping your mind awake) This is a game you actually play. (Unlike Tales of Arise, where the gameplay was pretty awful, and it was mainly a game to be watched.)
Fire Emblem Engage does have some issues, like how difficult it is to get the skills you want or forge your weapons, or how boring wandering around the Somniel and playing minigames is, but they all fade into insignificance compared to how absolutely dazzling and fun the fights and cutscenes are. The only games this falls short of in the past few years is its predecessor, Fire Emblem Three Houses, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. This game is well worth the purchase price, and the DLC purchase price, and can immediately be considered a hall of fame masterpiece. Not all Fire Emblem games have struck me that way, the Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn duo were only ever 'decent,' and the other games, dating back to yet more primitive eras, don't even reach my radar. But Engage has all the new innovations, like the ability to turn back time when something goes wrong instead of having to redo the whole stage from the beginning. It has modern graphics and gameplay and voice acting and everything. It's the second Fire Emblem that relies on modern technology and innovation and it's a worthy peer to the first.
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