2019’s fantastic tactical RPG Three Houses offered a more down-to-earth portrayal of military life and interpersonal tragedies, setting it apart from the optimism of most Fire Emblem games. While the game has enjoyed unprecedented popularity, the latest in the series, Fire Emblem Engage, is a return to its fairy-tale roots. And upon playing the game, I quickly realized that Engage was also inspired by another source: the mobile gacha game Fire Emblem Heroes. As Nintendo’s first billion-dollar mobile game, it’s easy to see why developers chose this success story to influence their vision for the Fire Emblem Multiverse. Unfortunately, what made for a solid mobile game doesn’t ultimately translate well to this console gaming experience.

Fire Emblem Engage is a tactical RPG where you use swords and magic to fight magical zombies. You play as Areall (in human form), an amnesiac dragon who has been asleep for a thousand years. At the same time as you, an evil dragon awakens and decides to conquer the world with the help of his powerful followers. As in previous games, the Goddess of the World chooses you to save the world. Unlike previous games, this is achieved by fusing your soldiers with spirits called “Emblems”, the main characters of previous Fire Emblem games. They also wreak havoc on physical rings, called Emblem Rings, which can get lost, stolen, or hidden in inconvenient places. The main rings can be obtained throughout the story, while some optional character rings can also be obtained through an in-game gacha system.

This isn’t the developer’s first attempt to create a Fire Emblem multiverse. Intelligent Systems first experimented with inter-dimensional crossovers in 2012’s 3DS version of Awakening, which allowed players to recruit classic heroes (albeit without any interaction or dialogue). The 2017 hack-and-slash title Fire Emblem Warriors also featured characters from other worlds, but purist fans don’t consider the Warriors games to be a staple of the series. But Heroes became an integral part of the series. Three Houses was a hugely successful game by serial standards, selling 4 million copies, while the mobile game was downloaded 18 million times. This not only showed that a Fire Emblem multiverse could be successful, but that it might be the most profitable way to sustain the series.

The influence of the heroes is most clearly seen in the striking character designs, with plenty of bright, contrasting colors and unusual silhouettes. While this is tolerable for conversations between two people, cutscenes featuring three or more characters are visually jarring. The dramatic changes become even more apparent when watching new characters fight alongside classic heroes. Established characters Byleth and Marth have a consistent look despite a time gap of nearly 30 years. Meanwhile, newly added Princess Ivy and Prince Alfred wear so many mismatched accessories that I was often distracted by their outfits during emotional cutscenes. Not only did they look out of place in the medieval setting; their appearance actively ruined my attempt to take this story seriously. This is a big problem for a series that has always tried to take the theme of war seriously, with varying degrees of success.

Engage’s mobilization is also evident in the communication between characters. Unlike the lively exchanges of the previous two games in the series, the exchanges between characters seem short and disjointed. Often the conversations are just plain nonsense, not even anime nonsense. Discussions end abruptly or don’t progress organically. Conversations feel like they’re designed to be shared as screenshots on social media, which ends up hurting the overall storytelling experience. I’ve never felt the need to skip conversations in a Fire Emblem game. But in Engage, I found myself lying to myself as I fast-forwarded through some support conversations: “I’ll go back and check that later. There were dozens of conversations that were super boring. I don’t think that’s the case.” And do it again.

All of this is acceptable in a mobile game where casual players interact with dozens of characters in a short amount of time and don’t have the mental capacity for the complexity of a traditional Fire Emblem game. However, for console games where players want to immerse themselves in the world for hours, this doesn’t work at all. Engage is too shallow in its worldview and characters to be appealing to any of them. When the protagonist declares that he wants to save the world even at the cost of his own life, I asked myself: “Why?” What specifically do you think is worth saving? Awakening’s similarly amnesiac protagonist portrayed a believable redemption story because the game focused on his relationships with other important characters. In contrast, Areal appears to be a celebrity to many, but a friend to none. There is a lot of interesting stuff to explore about the distant relationship between the Messiah and his followers, but the game never expresses it. Areal repeatedly asks his followers to treat him like a friend. But the game never shows the characters relying on each other.

What little character development Engage manages is ultimately undone by a clumsy attempt to redeem its villains. One of the main characters has an evil, murderous personality due to psychological abuse. Her cult-like tormentors make an incredible U-turn at the last minute, and the victim is instantly absolved of all their crimes. I don’t like stories like this, but I can accept them if they’re portrayed convincingly. Unfortunately, voice acting alone can’t save the poor script. There was one particular scene near the end about motherhood that made me want to cringe and die. If Three Houses was two steps forward in mature war-themed video game storytelling, Engage is ten steps back. Even if the plot twists seem conceptually interesting, the poor execution ruins the seriousness.

That emptiness feels especially tragic because Engage had all the fundamentals of a great game in place. The animated cutscenes are beautiful for a game running on an older Nintendo Switch system, and the live rendering is better than Three Houses’. I wish the developers had been more consistent with the type of story they wanted to tell. There were moments of grounded realism and signs of emotional honesty. It was a moment I was waiting with bated breath for Engage to recreate the magic that had drawn me to the series for a decade. She never came. Even my favorite characters like Celica and Byleth felt more superficial than in the original titles, despite weak attempts to evoke fan nostalgia. Engage had all the elements of a compelling Fire Emblem game, but the script was devoid of glib dialogue and cliched melodrama.

Fortunately, I spent more time on the combat system than the story. Of all the modern Fire Emblem games I’ve played, Engage feels the most balanced. At first I thought the emblem rings were an annoying gimmick. I later came to appreciate that they gave me the opportunity to customize my character without child marriage or eugenics (“I’m Watching You”, “Awakening”, “Destiny”). If I decide that my thief shouldn’t moonlight as a mage, I can simply swap out her Micaiah ring for Lucina’s ring. While this system seems fair on paper, the game still forces you to choose favorites for your army. The number of deployment slots per map is very limited, and you’ll likely end up choosing royal characters with disproportionate relevance to the plot. This meant you ended up ignoring more than half of your entire lineup, something that’s rarely happened in other Fire Emblem games. But would you have wanted that experience to be spread evenly across 30 people? Probably not. In previous games, you felt you had to do this because you had to unlock dialogue. Engage didn’t have this issue, but there was nothing interesting to unlock. This is probably one way to avoid FOMO.

I like how Engage refined the traditional rock-paper-scissors nature of the weapon triangle in the series. Fire Emblem usually tries to balance by adding or removing weapon weaknesses. Spells in the classic game required different kinds of counters. In Awakening, you countered archers with abilities that attack them and make their attacks easier to avoid. Engage simplifies the system while maintaining tactical complexity. Fists are effective against bows and magic, but bows and magic still have an advantage due to their longer range. The weapon triangle of spears, swords, and axes still exists, but the disadvantages are more painful than in previous games. If an enemy attacks you with a superior weapon, your character loses the ability to counterattack for the entire round. This means you can no longer send out a heavily armored character to provoke an attack during your opponent’s turn, as in other games. Positioning is also even more important in Engage, as multiple enemies can attack at once. While other aspects of the game are trying to appeal to a wider audience, Engage’s combat remains deep and satisfying.

Like its predecessor, Three Houses, Engage brings back Persona-style mini-games that let you train other characters and spend your free time with them, and they seem even more optional than in previous games. I wasn’t able to complete Three Hopes because each chapter became a depressing resource drain traveling back and forth across the map managing upgrades and transformations, as you could only spend a limited number of activity points per chapter. There’s no similar restriction here. Engage offered me a feast of mini-games and the freedom to play them to my heart’s content. I could go fishing, arrange meals, adopt and train stray animals for each battle, and pit my soldiers against each other in gladiatorial combats. The social rewards in Engage seem so subtle or so easily obtained that I was able to complete multiple chapters in a row without returning to my home base. I know I complained about the never-ending activity, but Castle Areard feels like it goes too far in the other direction. I felt like I had a schedule and a sense of belonging as a professor in Three Houses. I’ve had a great time these last 40 hours, with all the freedom and boredom.

Social progress feels more gradual than in Three Houses or Three Hopes, where certain characters were constantly trying to maximize their relationship stats before dire consequences. But in Engage, the members of my current army barely know my brother. I decided that’s okay. I spent more time adopting stray cats in the countryside than talking to soldiers. Engagement does not mean getting close to people who will risk life and limb for you. Believers must worship, but God does not have to give them anything.