Fire Emblem Engage: Release, Trailer, Gameplay and More | digital trends

Fire Emblem is a series that has taken a long and odd road to popularity in the West, with most people first encountering the characters with Marth and Roy Super Smash Bros. Melee. Since then, interest in this tactical game grew slowly until it exploded with the release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This mix of tactical combat — along with well-written characters, deep relationship systems, and tons of replay value — made this an important franchise for Western audiences.

While we’ve gotten smaller spin-off titles since then, such as Fire Emblem: Three Hopes, Most have been waiting for the next real entry in the Fire Emblem series. Nintendo shipped right with the announcement in September 2022 Engage Fire Emblem. This will be the next core entry in the series, which means there are a lot of expectations for it. If you’re ready to jump back into the world of intense combat and charming characters, here’s everything we know about Engage Fire Emblem.

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release date

What has become a welcome trend with Nintendo Directs is the reveal of Engage Fire Emblem not only came with a firm release date, but also a tight one. This title comes right at the beginning of the year on January 20, 2023.

platforms

As with all mainline games in the series, Engage Fire Emblem will be exclusive to Nintendo Switch. Unlike PlayStation or Xbox, both of which have begun allowing their exclusives to migrate to PC at least eventually if not immediately, Nintendo has yet to move on keeping its biggest franchises hardware-locked.

follower

The only trailer so far for Engage Fire Emblem was the Nintendo Direct announcement trailer.

In it we will be introduced to the environment of Elyos, which consists of four regions surrounding a sacred area in the middle. These lands survived a vicious war against the fallen dragon 1,000 years ago, but were able to overcome it by summoning heroes, aka Emblems. However, now it seems like the Fell Dragon is about to return.

We get an eye-catching, very cinematic look at the main characters unleashing their moves and abilities before the main hero, Alear, uses his ring to summon Marth.

It turns out that Alear has been sleeping for 1,000 years and is actually a divine dragon. These are members of a royal family of dragons from the past.

After more gameplay, we get a hint of the plot. Alear refers to someone asking him to bring all the rings and use them to restore peace to Elyos. We know it’s the rings that allow him to summon emblems, but that implies their power might be more than that.

It should also be noted that while Alear doesn’t appear in the trailer, he can be either male or female depending on preference.

playing style

Aside from the cinematic moments, the trailer also revealed a lot about what the actual gameplay will be like Engage Fire Emblem.

Straight off the bat, the grid-based overhead system will be immediately familiar to those who have played previous games. You and your team appear on the map with colored squares showing where to move and attack. Each unit has its own stats, weapons, and abilities to manage and plan for. The classic weapon triangle also seems to be returning.

New is the Engage mechanic, which allows units to summon emblems of heroes from previous games, such as the aforementioned Marth, Roy, Byleth, and many more. When summoned, the unit will fuse somewhat into the emblem and appear almost like a stand Jojo’s bizarre adventure granting that unit new abilities, stat buffs, weapons and more. Each character must equip a specific ring associated with an emblem in order to summon it, which can be swapped out.

We don’t know if there’s a cost or cap to summoning emblems, but there’s probably something to balance out the mechanic.

We also see some exploration of the hub area. While it doesn’t look as sturdy or deep as what we had in there three hopes So far, at least, there seems to be a large city and castle that will serve as your base. Here we get some glimpses of shops and even a section where you can customize your characters’ outfits. These seem limited to changing their top and glasses or accessories.

What isn’t shown, but is likely included in some way, is Alear’s ability to use her divine dragon ability to transform into a dragon form. This was possible when Divine Dragons was featured in previous games, so this is where you should return.

While we know you’ll be able to interact with your team and even emblem heroes in this hub, it remains to be seen if there will be an in-depth relationship system Engage Fire Emblem.

multiplayer

Engage Fire Emblem will not contain a multiplayer component. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as the series has never really featured any form of multiplayer support.

preorder

You can jump on your pre-order for Engage Fire Emblem at the moment! The game is available through Nintendo in two editions: a digital game for $60 or a Divine Edition for $100. The latter brings you not only the game but also the following physical goods:

• Steel book
• art cards
• art book
• poster

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