Fire Emblem: Engage

The followup to the somewhat divisive Three Houses, Engage goes back to basics in many ways.  While Three Houses felt fairly overdesigned between its class system, school sim elements and just a generally massive cast, Engage goes back to a being a fairly streamlined and linear adventure.  Characters come and go at the whim of the story, the Weapon Triangle returns, and there's no longer a class system in place.  Given that it was also meant as a celebration of the franchise's 30 year anniversary, its plot also incorporates this in the form of Emblems - heroes from previous games who fight alongside this game's protagonists in spirit form.  Characters can equip rings that grant access to Emblems, and filling the meter to activate an Engage grants them new special moves and bolsters their stats for a few turns; a bit similar in premise to Persona (or Tokyo Mirage Sessions).  As characters use their Emblems more their bonds improve and they gain more passive bonuses.  The visuals have seen definite improvement too, with more expressive characters and a lot of visual flourishes on special attacks, giving it an almost tokusatsu vibe.  That said, the actual plot of the game isn't really anything to write home about - an amnesiac hero (or heroine), four countries entrusted with powerful artifacts, a dark dragon threatening to drive the world to ruin again, you've seen it all before.  Still, if you want a Fire Emblem that goes back to basics while introducing a more streamlined design, an interesting new mechanic and paying homage to games of its past, this is one you may want to peruse.

Developer: Intelligent Systems

Publisher: Nintendo

Released: 2023

Platform: Switch

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light

The humble origin of the Fire Emblem franchise, which proved unpopular with critics for its difficulty curve and relatively undetailed graphics but was a big hit with Japanese gamers, who enjoyed its challenge and surprising depth; enough to make it a cult classic that would see fan translations, tons of sequels and spinoffs and, for a limited time, an official release on the Nintendo Switch marking its worldwide debut.  This game introduced the world to many of Fire Emblem's design tropes that would be used for three decades and counting - utilizing terrain and character skills to your advantage, having your equipment degrade with use (necessitating that you find/buy replacements on a fairly frequent basis), and of course the series' mainstay of dead units being lost forever, necessitating careful planning and risk mitigation.  That said, it is a bit slow and stiff to play, particularly compared to many of the newer games' highly polished UIs and memorable character interactions.  Still, it's worth a look for series fans and RPG buffs; if you want to experience the story in full, though, I'd say play the remake (Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for Nintendo DS) instead.

Developer: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo R&D1
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: 1990, 2020
Platforms: Famicom, Switch

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

The latest in the long-running Fire Emblem franchise and the first mainline entry to make its appearance on the Switch, Three Houses also introduces several new gameplay elements to the format.  But do these changes make the sixteenth Fire Emblem game a strategy RPG to remember, or is this just a letdown to long-time fans?

Fire Emblem for a franchise has been around for a long time, with its first entry appearing on the Famicom in 1990, but it remained a relatively unknown franchise outside of Japan for a long while.  Like many in the west, my first exposure to the Fire Emblem franchise was through the Super Smash Brothers series, most notably its second entry (Melee) which featured Marth and Roy from the first and sixth Fire Emblem games, respectively.  Fan interest led Intelligent Systems to localize Fire Emblem games for the first time, and from that, the series quickly developed a following in the west.  Sales for later entries steadily declined, though, and the series faced the threat of being cancelled entirely.  However, the unexpected success of Fire Emblem: Awakening on the 3DS (selling 2.1 million copies worldwide - nearly four times as many as the previous international release) brought it back from the brink, driving Nintendo to give the franchise a new lease and allowing Intelligent Systems an opportunity to make it a staple franchise for a new generation of RPG fans.

The most recent result of that and a collaboration with Koei Tecmo (who also developed the Fire Emblem Warriors spinoff game) was Three Houses; a game which worked in some elements of a school sim (not unlike the popular Persona franchise) and allowed the player to build more personal relationships with characters in a variety of ways.  The game also surprisingly did away with a couple of the series' trademark elements - the Weapon Triangle and Magic Triangle mechanics are discarded, allowing for a wider variety of spells and weapons to be utilized.  Similarly, Magic now falls under one of two schools, with healing and supportive magic governed by the Faith stat and offensive magic being based on Reason.

While Three Houses does retain the series' trademark of having no "generic" characters, it does utilize a class system somewhat similar to games like Final Fantasy Tactics.  Each character begins as a generic class (Noble or Commoner) that can use low level magic and weapons, but as their skills with weapon types, Reason, Faith, Riding, etc. are boosted, more classes become available to them.  From Monks (spellcasters) to Fortress Knights (slow but heavily-armored and powerful fighters) to series mainstays like Paladins and Pegasus Knights, there are quite a few to see and use, each with their own skills to learn to bolster one's combat abilities.  One small roadblock, however, is that one requires a Seal item to unlock anything beyond basic classes, and they must take an exam at a specific point of the week with a significant chance of failure, though this decreases as the classes' prerequisite skills go up.

A new feature of Three Houses is the Battalion mechanic, where a character can be "equipped" with a type of Battalion; doing so bolsters their stats based on the character's Charm stat and and allows for special attacks called "Gambits" with a variety of effects - healing all allies in a small area, stunning enemies and preventing them from moving for a turn, or knocking them back a space to allow other units to move in, to name a few.  More powerful Battalions become available to units with a higher Authority skill, making it a very worthwhile investment for some characters.

As mentioned, the game works in elements of school sims to develop its characters and train their abilities.  In a twist on the norm, though, the player actually takes the role of a professor at Garreg Mach Monastery, granting them a very active role in shaping their unit's classes and abilities.  The player is at first given the choice of which of the titular Three Houses to teach for (each with their own set of students and a unique storyline twist later on), and after that they can hold lessons to train students' stats, have them enter tournaments, take promotion exams, or just invite them to mundane activities like cooking or having tea together.  The latter two are necessary in part to keep students' Motivation up, which is required to maximize the number of training sessions they will have in a given week.  One can also help them build bonds with the player character and other students via correct dialog choices, gifts or finding and returning lost items, which in turn helps them synergize better on the battlefield.  One can also recruit students from other houses into their own by boosting the protagonist's stats high enough, which gives them more available characters to use during battles.  As one engages with their students and completes optional objectives throughout the academy, they will earn experience to boost their Professor Level, which in turn will earn them extra funds at the start of each month and more free time to spend on activities.

Combat, despite losing a couple of long-time staples of its design, remains unmistakably Fire Emblem, with lengthy but engaging skirmishes against large groups of foes and just enough of a random element to keep the player focused.  Keeping one's team in a close formation and moving characters to the back of the pack after they take a hit or two is still recommended, lest enemies gang up on individual units and eliminate them (particularly problematic on the Classic setting, where character death is permanent).  Weapons still break after a set number of uses, with special attacks generally doing more damage than a standard blow but depleting Weapon HP much more quickly (and eliminating any chance of follow-up attacks).  Spells operate slightly differently than previous games, not being tied to Spellbook items but only being usable a set number of times per battle.  And of course, knowing the ins and outs of all the units is highly recommended, such as attacking armoed foes with magic or knowing to use archers against flying units.

As with many modern games, Three Houses does work in an online feature of sorts - while the game is solely a single-player experience, connecting to the Internet will cause "event squares" to appear on the field where other players' characters fell, usually granting a dropped item or some extra experience points when a character stops on them.  One can also get training or temporary assistance from other players' characters at the academy that appear after talking to a specific NPC.  While neither is ultimately a big change to the overall experience, they can be handy for getting a little bit of extra aid in a pinch.

It's not a perfect experience, though.  I greatly enjoyed the first half of the game; the story-based sidequests, character building and customization were all a lot of fun, offsetting the series' relatively shallow tactical combat that kept me from getting much into it beforehand.  However, the experience is not nearly as strong in its second half.   The story abruptly shifts ahead five years, which changes up surprisingly little - you're still doing the same school-life elements between major battles, only now there's far less to do in the way of subquests, so you just end up spinning your wheels or doing tedious grindfest skirmishes to pass the time rather than anything engaging.  Combat becomes far less balanced, with your units either becoming virtually-invincible juggernauts who kill everything in one hit or die in one hit themselves (particularly archers and mages), and frequent fights against multi-health-barred monsters just become a slog when you have to take out half a dozen of them back to back in a single battle.  The story all but hits a dead-point, with lots of overlong filler missions that serve little purpose narratively, and on one particular path the secondary protagonist just becomes insufferable, constantly brooding and spouting cringe-worth edgy lines you'd see in a thirteen-year-old's crack at death metal lyrics.  Most of the characters scarcely even acknowledge the time skip - sure, they get new designs (well, most of them), but they barely have a word to say in most cutscenes and their interpersonal interactions pick up exactly where they left off five years prior, as if that game-changing story event never even happened at all.  Even the ending is pretty weak - the cutscene barely lasts a minute and has maybe three spoken lines in it, with all the characters' subplots given resolution in dry text blurbs rather than animated cutscenes.  It's like they had a really good game premised planned out and then were forced to horribly rush-job the latter half of it.  Still a good game overall, but I wish its second half didn't feel so rushed.

All in all, Fire Emblem: Three Houses had me entranced - the Persona-esque character interactions, the customization and even the school sim elements were all pretty charming and a nice change of pace for the series, and even the combat - something that mostly turned me off to earlier entries - really wasn't too bad for the most part, if still not especially deep (and rather unbalanced in some respects).  However, the latter half of the game (felt quite weak by comparison, discarding much the wonderful character interactions and school-sim element and making the whole thing into a desolate, unpleasant and virtually plotless grinding simulator with some pretty questionable balance - you tend to either destroy things in one hit or be completely ineffective and get one-shotted yourself.  Maybe the other story routes are more satisfying - I haven't tried them yet, nor the DLC - but it's still worth a look as a reimagining of a long-running franchise, even if it's a bit uneven overall.

Developer: Intelligent Systems, Koei Tecmo Games
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Switch
Released: 2019
Recommended Version: N/A

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

A crossover game between Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem is an idea that has potential on paper (even if I'm not personally a Fire Emblem fan), but does Tokyo Mirage Sessions realize it well, or is this just another uninspired licensed cash-in?

 

When promotional trailers for the game were first released, I saw a comment along the lines of "[Tokyo Mirage Sessions] may be the first crossover game that contains elements of neither franchise".  That's not an inapt description, either; the game's storyline is centered in Japan, following the exploits of a group of teenagers working for the Fortuna Talent Agency, who find themselves in conflict with evil beings known as "Mirages".  They subsist by extracting an energy called "Performa" from people, making them lose their passion and creativity, and battle them with the aid of friendly Mirages (loosely modeled after Fire Emblem characters).  So while its storyline and overall gameplay resembles that of the Persona games, it ultimately bears little resemblance to either Shin Megami Tensei proper or Fire Emblem; there is little opportunity to customize characters, no breakable weapons and no iconic demon designs to be found.  It ultimately feels like the game was an unrelated project that had elements of two fan-favorite franchises thrown in at the last minute as a ploy to boost sales.

Also as in Persona, the game is largely narrative-driven, though with the occasional break to venture through a dungeon, fight enemies and level up your characters.  Combat is turn-based and, per Shin Megami Tensei tradition, heavily driven by exploiting elemental weaknesses.  But rather than giving the player extra turns as in Nocturne or Persona 3/4, hitting an enemy's weak point allows other characters on their team to follow up with "Sessions", throwing an attack of their own at the targeted enemy immediately after it lands.  So for example, Itsuki can throw a Zio attack, which Touma can follow up with a fire attack, which Tsubasa can follow up with a lance attack.  The longer a particular session goes, the more damage you rack up (provided an attack in the chain doesn't get blocked or reflected, of course) and the more rewards you get; doing longer sessions allows you to attain items for character upgrades or just earn extra cash.  Further upgrades throughout the game also allow characters not in the active party to join in sessions, and occasionally allows characters to perform a stronger "Improv Attack" in place of a generic attack for extra effect.  This system works in the game's favor at first by providing a lot of visual flair and some visceral thrill as you demolish your enemies one-by-one, but it doesn't take long before you realize that it also radically unbalances the game; each battle basically just comes down to whichever side manages to land a Session combo first, with just one generally being enough to devastate any target on the board whether friend or foe.  This tends to make healing items all but useless as the game quickly devolves into a war between two sides dishing out one-turn kills to each other.  The unskippable attack animations also get tiresome after a while, especially when you have 5-6 characters chaining attacks together every five seconds or so, and the very lengthy load times between each fight (a common problem for Wii U games) ultimately make combat something for the player to dread rather than anticipate.

Further compounding the game's tenuous ties to Fire Emblem are the occasional enemy type targeted attacks, such as ones that do extra damage to flying enemies or mounted (horse-riding) enemies.  However all of the ones I encountered in the time I played were classified as "weak" attacks, and I continued to gain these well past the point when my low-tier elemental spells were being upgraded to mid-tier ones.  Furthermore, they didn't seem to sync up well with any of my characters' Session skills, making them seem more like a token inclusion than a well-planned element of the game's strategy.

One of Tokyo Mirage Sessions' most grievous flaws is that the game largely lacks a smooth flow; in theory, the experience consists of each chapter opening with a story scene, then having the player enter a dungeon and fight their way through to a boss at the end.  That's all well and good, but it's drawn out to a staggering degree by a constant need to exit the dungeon, return to the Bloom Palace and use items collected from enemies to unlock new skills and weapons.  Simply pressing on ahead isn't an option either, as weapons are also the key to unlocking new spells and attacks, and by skipping out on those, you're simply making life harder for yourself later - you gain new skills by using spells in battle with a weapon equipped, and if you're not fighting enemies close to your current level of strength, you get virtually no experience for the effort (or just get curbstomped by their Sessions).  That, paired with an arbitrary mechanic in the form of characters' "Performance Levels" that exists alongside their experience meter, causes new sidequests (and thereby new skills for that character) to unlock as you play through the normal course of the game.  Both of these things ensure that the player never gets to stay in one mindset for very long; as soon as you feel up for some dungeoning, you'll get maybe a dozen battles in before you max out one of your weapons, then have to retreat back to the palace to unlock and equip a new one so you don't waste points.  Then you get a few more battles in and another characters' weapon gets maxed, or they gain a Performance Level and have a new sidequest for you to complete, and so on.  Atlus attempted to offset this with downloadable content that adds new dungeons which grant large amounts of experience or rare items in order to cut down on the constant back-and-forth, but honestly, making it paid DLC just feels like a very lazy way to fix fundamentally flawed game design and make a few bucks doing it; certainly not anything I'm going to throw my money at!

In addition to the character-based sidequests, random citizens around the city also have "Requests" that generally require the player to enter a previous dungeon in search of specific enemies to kill or placed items to find.  However, these generally prove to just be a waste of time; as enemies never cease to chase you down and attack even when vastly outleveled by your party, you end up having to sit through dozens more tedious battles that give paltry amounts of experience, and when you do actually find the items/slay the enemies and return to the quest giver, the reward is generally a low-tier item you've likely found or bought at least a dozen of by that point.  Doing just a few of these gave me flashbacks to Fallout 4's boring radiant quests, and trust me, that is no good thing!

On the plus side, Tokyo Mirage Sessions definitely gets points for its presentation.  The game features colorful environments full of neon lighting, detailed character costumes, fluidly-animated and expressive character models (Tsubasa having some quite hilarious facial animations in particular) and even has some surprisingly good lip syncing, which fits in perfectly with its pervading theme of stage performances.  The dungeon designs are equally creative, showing the flair and excess of stage life while also providing for some clever layouts that allow for multiple pathways, enemy traps and even the occasional timed objective, which is a step up from Persona's mundane, randomly-generated corridors.

This emphasis on flair also leads into another major disadvantage for the game, however.  For a game themed around music and stage performances, the soundtrack is largely low-key and forgettable, which saps a lot of the energy that should accompany the combat and dungeons.  The lack of an English voice track is also disappointing, making it difficult for non-Japanese speakers to get invested in the on-screen performances when they constantly have to look away from the gorgeous animations to read the subtitles for the songs.  Once again, Atlus tried to hand-wave away this flaw by saying that adding an English voice track would subtract from the deeply Japanese themes of the game, but I call bullshit on that; having English performers certainly didn't hamper my experience with any of the numerous Shin Megami Tensei games set in and around Japan, so why did they cop out here?  It's just one of many things about Atlus' recent excursions which makes me worry that the company is slowly going the way of Square Enix or From Software by churning out quick and dirty cash-in games, excusing legitimate criticism of their shortcomings as "artistic choice" and relying on the particularly unpleasant apologists in their fan base to bully their critics into silence...

At the end of the day, Tokyo Mirage Sessions is neither a terrible game nor an outstanding one; it's certainly playable in spite of its problems, and it provides a passable, if not especially inspired, stopgap while we wait for the long-postponed Persona 5.  But it's not a standout example of a Shin Megami Tensei title and barely incorporates any elements of the franchise it's allegedly crossing over with, so its appeal to both camps is rather limited.  It's definitely one of the Wii U's better RPGs (and many gaming sites are quick to refer to it as such), but that's some desperate praise indeed for a subpar console with a generally lackluster library.

Platform: Wii U, Switch
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: 2016, 2020
Recommended Version: The Switch version is definitely the one to play now, as it features much quicker load times than the underpowered Wii U platform, offers the option to speed up Session animations (a very big plus) and includes some extra (mostly cosmetic) content, as well as including all of the DLC from the Wii U version for free.