Don't bother with Fire Emblem Engage 6/10

2023 is the year of mini-reviews. This is the first entry and it’s a bit of a doozy.

So - Fire Emblem. Turned-based strategy RPGs have been a main stay of mine and Fire Emblem has certainly been a deep well to quench my thirst over the years. I spent many days in 2019 playing through all the houses in Three Houses. It probably would have been my number one game if RE:Make 2 didn’t come out that year. Any way - safe to say that I like me some Fire Emblem.

Unfortunately Fire Emblem Engage is not a good game. That fact that it was priced £10 cheaper than Three Houses should be a clue right off the bat. It feels like Intelligent Systems wanted to try and push the engine from Three Houses and create a tech demo for all the different things it could do and then wrapped it in a completely forgettable narrative with dull characters and called it a day.

For those unfamiliar with Fire Emblem in general. They are broadly linear games which flip between visual novels and the skirmishes which result. In the skirmishes you use your various characters who are typically different classes of unit and engage enemies using a rock paper scissors style of combat e.g. sword beats axe, axe beats sword, etc. New to Engage are Emblem rings which all characters to take on the characteristics of units from other games - there is a no sufficient story reason for this but just go with it. Engage also adds a raft of customisation options for characters which are equal parts good and bad.

That’s it in a nutshell. If that sounds interesting to you and you haven’t played Fire Emblem Three Houses then don’t waste anymore time here and go do that. Hell, if you have played Three Houses your time is probably better spent there anyway…

There’s a lot bad with this game and I could write paragraphs about the nonsense within but unlike Fire Emblem Engage I will stop short of dragging you through and excruciatingly dull and redundant process. Instead here is my top 5 list of dumb decisions in this game.

1. Narrative is generic trash with zero redeeming moments, twists or decisions.

2. Every single new character is a generic trope. Customisation lets you make them even more generic and quickly allows everyone to become a killing machine with no weaknesses.

3. Most will spend a lot of time in the hub world which is chock full of busy work that respawns every time you have an encounter. It is filled to the brim with dumb tasks like a bad scrolling 3D shooter or a under baked fishing minigame, or my favourite, sit-ups where you have to mash a button to fill up a gauge.

4. There are optional encounters to allow for opportunities to gain additional levels between missions. However, they seem to scale based on the average level of all your characters so you will find many characters get left behind on the level curve despite your best intentions to use them.

5. Multiplayer is in the game - a common request from other titles. Unfortunately the implementation is an optional tacked on mode which has next to no difficulty scaling and is almost completely pointless other than earning (one of many) unique currency which can be exclusively used to power up your Emblem rings.

I could continue, like the weird gacha game to make rings which have no purpose because they share the same slot as Emblem rings which are significantly better… but I will have the strength to leave it there.

So, in summary. This game seems to be the intersection of a many ideas and very little thought or polish. The game’s merit is that the combat in the game can be fun, challenging and rewarding. However, it can very quickly become unbalanced due to bad scaling.

Deep down there is definitely something there - I certainly had more fun with the first 10-20 hours of combat than I did with the majority of combat in Three Houses, but make no mistake this is not a good game. There is very little redeeming other than the combat which still ultimately gets stale. After 40 hours I am done with this game. No I did not finish, nor do I have plans to. It was not worth my time. I will wait for the next one where I hope they do carry some of the combat DNA sans all the other nonsense and weave it into a story and wider gameplay loop that is actually interesting.

A big swing and a miss for RPGs in 2023. Please let Octopath Traveler 2 be good.

I beat XCOM 2 again

I just beat XCOM 2 for second - or maybe third time today. I don't really know - all the botched missions, frustrated resets and long grinding victories have blended together. 

What I can say, is that it was certainly the first since the latest expansion War of the Chosen launched. An expansion which I will discuss in due course, but before we get into that I want to take a brief moment want to elaborate on my relationship with this franchise.

For those new to the franchise - XCOM has a long and storied history of games prior to the modern 'reboot' of XCOM: Enemy Unknown in 2012. I have not played a single one of them. XCOM: EU was the first of the series I fell in love with. A game which, eerily, I put almost an identical amount of time into.

Although this primarily includes the game's much superior expansion - Enemy Within which is where I would insist that anyone who has had their interested peaked with XCOM begin.

Thinking back to the beginning of my romance with the series - it was one that almost didn't happen.

I am hot and cold on preordering games. Sometimes I buy into the hype where I have been burned more times than I would admit. However, when XCOM: EU launched I decided to wait and see. Honestly, thinking back if it hadn't been for the prolific Twitch streamers of the original game it might have passed me by. When I first start watching other people play XCOM on game streaming site Twitch.tv I was immediately sucked in by the game's charm.

The way the game blended turn-based game play with base-building was intriguing, but what really sold me was the RPG elements and customisation. Spending too much time at the character creator screen is a known issue for many, but XCOM multiplies that with 20+ rookie soldiers who become valuable members of your squad, are promoted through the ranks and each have notable moments where they have saved your squad, the mission and the world.

The gameplay is satisfying, clunky, but satisfying. Even with the rosiest-tinted glasses I cannot say with a straight face that XCOM is not a game without fault. The game often feels like a house of cards built of interlocking systems which strain and groan, but work most of the time.

The most egregious issue is possible the often unintuitive controls which can make you scream in frustration as your solider runs into a position which was clearly not where you clicked and is gunned down - never to return due to permadeath.

Or when the game crashes and you need to restart a mission you had nearly completed.

These are not acceptable flaws, but to me at least, I can forgive it as part of the XCOM experience.

All this combines to create a punishing, chaotic, gruelling game which keeps you on edge and constantly paranoid about the fate of squad members which in my case included an overly cool and muscular version of yourself, your girlfriend, and of course elite specialist: Pippa "Princess Sister" Middleton - to name just a few.

Image from XCOM 2 courtesy of Firaxis Games

I could wax on forever about what makes the XCOM series great, but it's impossible to capture the experience. If you want to know more about the game as mentioned earlier I would suggest playing XCOM: Enemy Within which is essentially the 'Game of the Year' edition of the first rebooted XCOM game.

The purpose of this ultimately piece is ultimately to share my impressions of the War of the Chosen expansion (something which I should probably have gotten to 500 words ago). To compensate I will try and keep it short and sweet.

If you're already bored, let me give you the synopsis: It was good.

Was it the best thing I've ever played? No - but it was a damn good XCOM game.

Is it something that everyone should play? I hope more people do, but it's definitely not for everyone.

As I alluded to in my rambling introduction, XCOM is a series about systems. XCOM 2: War of the Chosen ramps this up a bit. While the gameplay remains relatively unchanged, base-building and turn-based combat, the new expansion ramps up the tools which feed into these encounters.

Image from XCOM 2 courtesy of Firaxis Games

Without going to much into the detail and spoiling the experience, War of the Chosen condenses previous story arches introduced in the DLC and overlays news systems revolving around 'boss characters' called The Chosen who infiltrate your missions and cause even further chaos to a game which is built around chaotic situations.

To combat these new big bads you get access to three new classes of hero characters, unique weapons, skill trees which let you create a squad of super soldiers to rival the Avengers.

However, this adds several new layer onto the already convoluted XCOM 2 system tree. It's confusing and you get a lot through at you, but eventually it all clicks and you find inner peace and tactical greatness.

Image from XCOM 2 courtesy of Firaxis Games

To make a metaphor, XCOM is an orchestra of systems, but in this orchestra the instruments all start playing at different times and some instruments are certainly better than others. After a few shaky verses the orchestra falls into relative harmony and that is where XCOM is at it's best.

To take the metaphor a step further, War of the Chosen drops an electric guitar and jazz flute in the mix and some how makes it work.

It's still clunky, it's unbalanced but there's still something magical about this game.

100+ hours later there's still a piece of me that wants to jump back in to XCOM 2 on Legendary difficulty or play the even harder Long War mod which ramps this up even further, but I think after another 100 hours in the XCOM series I can take a break now.

Despite how much I love XCOM I have to say, the game is a hard sell. The game will break and if it doesn't the oppressive gameplay mechanics will all but ensure that you will lose good soldiers unless you spend 50% of your time saving and reloading. You will most certainly proclaim 'bullshit' on numerous occasions.

But for those that intrepid commanders that are willing to invest a bit of time to battle the systems and tame this wild orchestra I can guarantee that there is fun to be had.

Good luck Commander.

Image from XCOM 2 courtesy of Firaxis Games

I like games

I have spent a significant amount, dare I say the majority, of my time playing great games.

My life has been shaped by these games and now, here in this noble blog I will seek to extrapolate my feelings about a variety of game-related topics using verbosity, buzzwords and other engaging media techniques.