Fire Emblem Three Houses helped changed the Nintendo RPG franchise's future. So why didn't Engage replicate its best features?
Fire Emblem Engage is the newest game in Nintendo's venerable strategy fantasy series, and it joined several other games in the franchise on the Nintendo Switch. Its predecessor, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, became one of the most popular titles in the series. Sadly, Engage didn't quite have the same level of success.
Fire Emblem Engage was well-received and also sold over a million copies, but it was still seen as a disappointment by some fans. In their view, it lacked many of the best elements that Three Houses had introduced, even as it was built on nostalgia for games that many international audiences had never played. This resulted in a release that sadly affected its industry and fans a lot less than a supposedly less-developed game in the franchise.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses Featured the Series' Best Storytelling
Like the other Fire Emblem games, Fire Emblem: Three Houses was a tactical role-playing game set in a medieval fantasy world. The biggest departure was its setting, a military academy that hosts students from the three kingdoms of the nation of Fódlan. Thus, players could spend their days doing more than just fighting on the battlefield, with peripheral activities that included gardening and building relationships with other characters. This emulated the Social Links in the Persona series, and it did so to great effect.
This made Three Houses' characters stronger and more likable than ever, which only further enhanced the story itself. Of course, this made choosing allies and seeing them die when the story took a dark turn was now even harder. In many ways, it took the best parts of anime storytelling and used them to its advantage, resulting in perhaps the best and most mature story in a Fire Emblem game ever. The gameplay options, a reprieve from Fire Emblem's usual difficulty, and greater emphasis on the story all made it one of the most popular entries in the series, and fans were expecting at least some of these features in the next game. Sadly, fans were disappointed by Three Houses' successor.
Fire Emblem Engage's Story Problems
The best gameplay and narrative elements in Fire Emblem: Three Houses were nowhere to be found in Fire Emblem Engage. The two games were developed at roughly the same time, and while Three Houses was free to make innovative changes that upended the series' formula, Engage represented a more classic take on the franchise. As a result, Engage felt like a regression after a giant leap forward. The biggest issue with Fire Emblem Engage is its story, and not just because it lacks many of the elements that made Three Houses such a hit and made Fire Emblem one of Nintendo's most profitable franchises.
There were barely any real relationships in Engage. Generals and their units mostly met in cutscenes, and even this was underdeveloped, as characters drifted their scenes then vanished, making them superfluous to the storyline. The dialogue was surprisingly clunky and didn't help the barely tolerable plot. Protagonists, returning Fire Emblem characters, and especially villains came across as bland devices who existed to move the plot along. This might have worked in a stronger story but Engage left fans pining for the storytelling Three Houses had introduced to the series.
There were some attempts at creating character relationships in Engage. For example, characters could discover family members, but these revelations took place very suddenly. They didn't have a real hook that engaged the audience and they came off as cheap stunts to create drama.
When characters died, they usually didn't have a chance to develop themselves, which made the plot points feel even more hollow. Three Houses actually encouraged talking to every character because of how anyone and everyone could add to the story and the world as a whole. On the other hand, Engage's bad dialogue made conversations a chore.
Fire Emblem Engage's aesthetic also didn't help. The character designs have been criticized by many fans as being too over the top, if not downright ugly. It did little to convey the drama of commanding an army during the war and instead reinforced the feeling that Engage had sprung directly out of a bad anime. Even the maps had faulty designs, coming across as bland and uninspiring, making the battles feel more like drudgery than exciting challenges.
Fire Emblem Engage Was Based Around Nonexistent Nostalgia
The central premise of Fire Emblem Engage is the warring factions use rings to summon versions of heroes from past Fire Emblem games. This was supposed to tap into nostalgia for the series since the first game came out alongside other classic RPG franchises 30 years before. Unfortunately, it was a premise that only Japanese audiences would really be able to appreciate, as most gamers in the West had never been exposed to the majority of the Fire Emblem series. The first six games in the series weren't released outside Japan in their original forms and some have never received international releases. The only thing most American gamers would recognize most of these characters from were the Super Smash Bros. fighting games.
The entire Emblem mechanic was somewhat poorly utilized, and even when the past characters showed up, it felt like a nonevent thanks to the clunky storytelling. The idea of framing a Fire Emblem game around nostalgia in such an overt way was questionable to begin with, but the implementation was worse. Even fans who felt nostalgia for the Fire Emblem games weren't impressed since the tribute to their heroes missed its mark. The only real highlight of the game was its gameplay, which was actually quite good since it followed the series' traditional formula. This should have arguably been enough to make Engage succeed but Three Houses had raised fans expectations. The older game established a higher standard for the franchise and Engage felt like a downgrade. It's probably for the best that it didn't have the kind of impact Three Houses did since that only would have harmed the franchise's future.