Kicking off today's Nintendo Direct in style is the Fire Emblem series! Nintendo and Intelligent Systems announced a brand new Fire Emblem mainline game, Fire Emblem Engage.
This new game seems to bring old favourites together with some new characters, and a protagonist with curiously-coloured hair. Plus, the game is out pretty darn soon — 20th January 2023.
As your Pepsi-coloured protagonist (we won't stop talking about the hair), you are the Divine Dragon, collecting legendary heroes from across the Continent of Elyos. Yes, you're really collecting Emblems that represent classic characters.
Check out what Nintendo had to say after the Direct from its press release:
"In a war against the Fell Dragon, four kingdoms worked together with heroes from other worlds to seal away this great evil. One thousand years later, this seal has weakened and the Fell Dragon is about to reawaken. As a Divine Dragon, use rich strategies and robust customization to meet your destiny – to collect Emblem Rings scattered across the world and bring peace back to the Continent of Elyos. Summon and fight alongside legendary heroes from past Fire Emblem games, like Marth and Celica, and add their power to yours in this new story. The turn-based, tactical battle system the Fire Emblem series is known for returns with a fresh cast of characters you can customize and Engage with to carefully craft your strategy."
You'll also be able to pre-order a Divine Edition, which features a steelbook and an art book, ahead of the game's 20th January launch.
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Are you excited to line up for battle in Fire Emblem Engage? Line up in the comments!
Comments 77
Always wanted Joy-Cons as a protagonist
I didn’t anticipate a new Fire Emblem game so soon 😭 excellent stuff.
The nostalgia pandering is the most hooking aspect to me so far. I'm not crazy about anything else I saw, but Nintendo still has time to hype me up.
Ok I didn't buy the leak but this looks way more polished and I'm ready. (still gotta finish the 3houses games ). As long as I can play a woman and summon Lyn I'm in.
Edit: Rewatched the direct. Looks like Lyn is in and female avatar...I'm super hyped now.
Absolutely loved this. Day one.
Wanted genealogy of holy war remake to be honest.
Absolutely love it! And only a few months away too!
This was already leaked months ago.
I'd gotten attached to Toothpaste-chan so glad to see this is legit.
Godawful main character design. This series has really lost its identity since Awakening.
@KirbysAdventure ironic that if it kept it so called pre Awakwning “identity” the series would have died lol
I don't know why they got rid of yusuke kozaki, his art is gorgeous and worked extremely well with fire emblem. Since then the art just keeps getting worse
The best announcement! I love how they worked in characters like Marth and Celica. I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this one.
I like the January date as there's usually not a ton of new stuff to play around then.
Would had been more exciting if it was a remake of Geneology of the Holy Wars. They go as far as bringing Sigurd back but not for a remake?
This announcement absolutely made my day! I'm excited, the game looks like it goes back a little to old skool mechanics
The Emblem mechanic feels like cheap fanservice that will detract from the worldbuilding. Hopefully it focuses 99% on the new characters, but I may have to wait for the proverbial genealogy of holy war remake for a proper grounded world.
Please have proper gay marriage this time, Nintendo. Don't bait us like you did with Claude and Dimitri
Don’t know how I feel about this.
Really not feeling it. Art direction is solid at least, PC character design notwithstanding (hopefully they'll be customizable like in the 3DS games) but everything about the premise/story looks awful. At first I thought it was gonna be a new mobile game or musou (somehow). But... it's a new mainline entry? Really?
Well, maybe they'll surprise me. Fates looked awesome in the trailers, and turned out to be pretty crap, so surely the inverse can happen, too.
I thought this was gonna be a sequel to FE awakening when they mentioned the fell dragon.
I am glad this is a january slot. I have enough games to get this year lol.
Not the greatest direct, but this and zelda looks great, so at least something and pikmin we saw nothing. So no opinion on that yet.
I thought it was a fire emblem heroes console game signifying the end of the mobile app. My imagination went wild in the first 20 seconds they showed.
The most fanservice fanservice I've ever fanserviced.
Still looks cool though.
Also man: I get the stigma around Fire Emblem protags with anime hair but this is just ridiculous bro like look at this dude.
(insert 'look at the top of his head' meme here)
Bit early to judge perhaps from the trailer, but I don't have as high hopes for the story in this one compared to Three Houses, especially since they are relying on this "Emblem" mechanic. Still, something to think about.
Hopefully since it's got older characters it'll be more like the old games and we won't have to wait 30 odd hours to have a battle
Very interesting. FE Heroes has been a big success for N so its nice to see the whole "hero from another plane" summoning thing. The potential for new DLC characters would be huge.
@RareFan what point are you making?
Why do they always try to imprison these awfully dangerous enemies ^^' ... Just set the lumberjack on him
Probably the 1st game I buy in 2023.
@GhostDaddy
A photo of the game was leaked months ago.
And just like that. The Direct was a success!
I figured those leaked screens were rough and not representative of the final game. Looks great!
Is it me or this game looks kinda cheap compared to three houses, I thought it was gonna be a spin off or an echoes entry.
So glad I steered clear of the leaks. Absolutely nothing was spoiled for me prior to the direct. It was nice to be surprised for a change!
@RareFan right,Okay?, nvm thought you were trying to make a point
Ugh the character design and the UI are not great. Sure the cutscenes look nice and polished as always, but the gameplay footage looked rough. I'm a huge fire emblem fan but this made me more worried than excited.
FE:3H was basically my first full-playthrough of an SRPG/RTS game (Team Claude) as I'm more of a traditional JRPG fan. Game was excellent however it took some adjustment & learning for me as well as a lot of time lol.
Could be wrong, but I'm not getting the same level of polish and feel from this entry though so far. Gonna wait and see about this one and maybe pick it up down the line... still have much in my backlog to work through.
... Wun can only hope.
THIS LOOKS SO CLEAN AND CRISP LITERALLY POLISHED TO PERFECTION
So many people complained about Three Houses when it was first revealed but it ended up being a success. This looks like a cool homage to the series without being a F2P or Warriors game. Having smaller games like this that call back to the classics mixed in with the true revolutions of the series to me is a cool idea as long as the quality stays high.
Not feeling the character designs at all, damn shame.
Please don't have gacha please don't have gacha please don't have gacha please don't have gacha
For some reason, I'm not feeling this and I'm not overly sure why. I was excited when it started but the further into the trailer the more "meh" I grew. Maybe when a demo launches it'll convince me otherwise.
@Ade117
It's the opposite for me.
It finally looks like it has some budget behind it. That was one of my biggest problems with TH, everything seemed cheap, as if they didn't trust it to be a success. This looks much better, at least in the trailer.
The nostalgia part is what makes me worried, first of we already had plenty of that in the past, also this can easily hurt the story if not implemented well.
Pump it into my veins. I can be two type of edgy and also the standard switch joycons?!
Something looks...off? IDK some of its gameplay cutscenes reminded me of a Genshin/Xenoblade 2 style design going on. I'll wait for future gameplay vids for better judgement but other than that the full cinematic stuff looks fine.
I'm both excisted and nervous since that protagonist design is a crime against humanity.
Looks pretty good! Luckily I will be finished just in time with Three houses (playing it at the moment, I am at chapter 21, dlc will be played later).
The protagonist looks stupid and the logo is so... plain.
But this looks like more of a traditional Fire Emblem experience, which may be a good thing, though I’m still itching for that inevitable Genealogy remake.
Announcement of the Direct for me
This is the only announcement I was hoping for! Nice!
The game honestly looks amazing, and there's something about the combat and turn-based gameplay itself that feels more like vintage FE than Three Houses ever did.
The protagonist obviously has that ridiculous anime hair, and the hair alone screams C R O S S O V E R as loudly as possible.
Besides the protag however, I actually really dig the character designs a lot more than Three Houses, which honestly felt a little bit off to me, a sore point made especially apparent in Three Hopes. Somehow the characters in Engage already appear a lot more, ahem, engaging to me, which was a huge barrier for me to finally make the purchase.
No multi edition stuff this time? Might buy it then.
If you ever wanted TMS but with a Fire Emblem setting and gameplay instead... looks like the closest we'll ever get.😄 What? With "tap here to load 56 comments" above, I reckon the "console Heroes game" joke has already been made before me.
On a serious note, older entry remakes (especially Tellius stuff which is less wieldy to emulate, but at least my phone seems to stomach it on Dolphin for now) would speed up my franchise binge towards the new games but that doesn't mean I don't welcome the latter coming on in the meantime either. Another seemingly manakete-ish protagonist? Past entry faves like Celica to summon and battle alongside? Yes, please.
Bleh... Tough to say much of anything, the premise I find dumb and the character designs are really ugly and it goes for the overtly anime super power thing which I really would prefer if it was a bit more down to earth, but more than anything I just hope there's no freaking monastery and teaching mechanics slowing down the pacing to snails pace, for what's its worth, the map design looks solid enough from the glimpse shown at the trailer.
@valharian honestly it looks so cheap, totally thought this was a mobile game not mainline
Yes baby yes! Great news! Big fan of the series so I'll be getting this for sure.
Time for a new one-character fighters pass so they can add the protagonist to SSBU.
2 questions: (1) Can one choose to play as the girl in the thumbnail art with the blue and red hair and the sword instead of the guy? She looks way better than his design. (2) Any info on pre-orders for the divine edition?
Looking forward to this. I’m interested, but I wouldn’t say I’m hyped. I ADORED Three Houses, so this game has a lot to live up to in my eyes
@AlexSwitch10
I would imagine you get to pick your gender for your main character like previous recent games. I agree I didn't get a good look at first but upon repeat viewing the female version looks much better. The dude just looks like a clown!
Three Houses is my favorite Switch game. Gotta say this looks really intriguing and not gonna be like the previous game very much. Wonder if we’ll see Byleth? No matter how well it does I’ll get the premium edition regardless.
Also think it looks really cheap and barebones, but its Fire Emblem so it will no doubt be good. If it was called something else than Fire Emblem i doubt i would be interested though.
Despite what people are saying, I really like the protagonist's design
This is looking interesting, but the timeline placement is a mystery though. The graphics also look pretty, or at least have the potential to look amazing. Hopefully more info soon!
I just found out why I the character looks the way he does...a V-Tuber helped designed him. Now I can't stop seeing V-Tuber Emblem.
@RareFan Only thing that leaked months ago was that a new mainline FE was due to be announced soon, but that was all. We knew nothing about the release date or anything else until today's Direct.
I'm not really a fan of the franchise, however, I'm happy for the people that enjoy the series, as far as getting a new game goes.
@GenXGamer
A very poor photo of the game was also leaked, where we could see, that the new main character had re-blue-hair like a Pepsi can.
Now I have to decide whether to buy this or Three Houses
So....This is a new mainline entry? I thought it looked like another spinoff with all the fan service. I want a new FE entry, but...I'm gonna need more information on this one before I get too excited.
I wonder how accessible this game will be to someone who's only played (and didn't even get to finish) the GBA FE games. It looks great and I do love a good turn-based tactics game.
Never cared for how fire emblem literally tells you the outcome of a battle before you attack. Can't even with the series. Talk about taking the suprise out of life.
I was legit about to die my hair blue and red....maybe not anymore lol.
@calbeau The latest entries tend to be a lot more accessible because they're no longer as unforgiving for player mistakes.
The latest games let you optionally turn off permadeath and a limited number of times roll-back to re-do a turn.
@Dr_Lugae The permadeath didn't bother me so much back then, but options are always welcome.
More on my mind would be whether this game can be enjoyed knowing only the GBA games cast, since it seems to be marketed to long-time players.
Limited edition sold in uk and Europe I saw it pop up at 1pm was already gone and yet no one has said go be quick and grab it so kinda put off because wanted to round out my fire emblem collector’s edition set
This looks much better than all the lame academy stuff in "Three Houses."
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