Fire Emblem Engage

Fire Emblem Engage is a tactical role-playing game. Players control the main character whose name and gender can be specified at the start of the game; by default, the main character's name is Alear. The player controls Alear and their allies through a series of battles as the plot advances; there are also optional "skirmish" battles and "Paralogue" side missions if the player wants to further strengthen their team. In-between these story battles, the player can have their characters relax and engage in social activities with each other.

New characters will regularly join Alear's team as the game progresses; these characters have their own personal starting statistics (stats), stat growth rates, and unique personal skill. Each character has a specific set of other characters they can gain "support levels" with. As their support level increases, units unlock conversations and increased bonuses when fighting nearby in battle.

Engage is set on the continent of Elyos, a land divided into five regions: Lythos, Firene, Brodia, Elusia, and Solm. Lythos is a central holy land reserved for the Divine Dragon and their attendants. The realms of Firene, Brodia, and Solm largely cooperate with each other, while the kingdoms of Brodia and Elusia are on hostile terms, fighting frequent skirmishes over their borderlands. Most citizens of Firene, Brodia, and Solm revere the Divine Dragon as their deity, while most Elusians worship the Fell Dragon. Dragons live in human form the vast majority of their long lifespans, with only a select few capable of transforming into a classic draconic form, and even then doing so only rarely, an aspect similar to other games in the Fire Emblem series.

One thousand years prior to the events of the plot, a great war was fought between Lumera, the Divine Dragon and Sombron, the Fell Dragon. Sombron was gravely wounded, and the country he had ruled, Gradlon, was sunk beneath the ocean. The most important weapons of the ancient war were the Emblem Rings, twelve magic rings that gave their wielders incredible power. To prevent any one person from easily gathering and misusing their power, the rings were spread across Elyos, with six of the rings entrusted to the human countries, and Lythos keeping the remaining six rings under the personal watch of Lumera and her stewards.

Engage was developed by Intelligent Systems, the company responsible for most of the main entries of the Fire Emblem series. Intelligent Systems (IS) has a long history of working closely with Nintendo, with the vast majority of their games exclusive for Nintendo consoles, and Engage was a collaboration between IS and Nintendo EPD Group No. 2. Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Engage started development around the same time with work proceeding in parallel; Three Houses was mostly created by a separate team from Koei Tecmo working in collaboration with IS. One of the goals behind Engage was to do something different from Three Houses, which has a more epic and adult war story, and to hearken back to Awakening as a work with appeal to a broad audience.

According to Kenta Nakanishi, director from Nintendo EPD Group No. 2, a goal was for Engage to be thought of as a traditional heroic fantasy game by the playerbase. This manifested in placing Alear very prominently in the artwork and making their personal growth and development as they grew into their heroic role a core part of the game. Tsutomu Tei, the director of Engage from Intelligent Systems, thought that the original Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light as well as the three Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem games had been such heroic quests, and were a large part of why they resonated with audiences.

Fire Emblem Engage received "generally favorable" reviews according to the review aggregator Metacritic, where it has an aggregate score of 80/100 based on 129 reviews. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received strong approval, being recommended by 84% of critics. Reviewers generally considered the gameplay of Engage excellent. PJ O'Reilly of Nintendo Life wrote that the gameplay was not merely the best in the series, but was of the finest quality of turn-based tactical RPGs in general.

Even reviewers who ultimately disliked the game tended to grant this; Hirun Cryer of GamesRadar+ called the work as a whole a missed opportunity, but still acknowledged it as one of the most absorbing turn-based games in years judged by its gameplay. Exceptions to this gameplay praise were mostly in the Somniel: the optional minigames there were considered repetitive and uninteresting, although at least skippable. The optional quasi-multiplayer modes were generally considered best skipped by reviewers; Will Greenwald of PCMag called these modes underwhelming. Reviewers generally thought that the graphics and soundtrack were outstanding, with impressive cutscenes, exciting combat animations, and fitting music for each region.