Fire Emblem Engage is the most recent addition to the Fire Emblem mainline roster as it was released for the Nintendo Switch exclusively on Jan 20, 2023. Its predecessor, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a game that was released on July 26, 2019, is one of the most beloved games in the franchise’s history, even getting its own spin-off game, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, in 2022.
While both games were well received, a lot say that there is a lot to be desired concerning Engage’s story and characters, compared to what Three Houses had to offer. While that may be true for most, there are some things that Fire Emblem Engage might’ve done better than its forerunner Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
5 Weapon Triangle
The weapon triangle is an old mechanic present in almost every single Fire Emblem title, having started in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. This mechanic is, however, lacking in Fire Emblem: Three Houses where only reminiscents of it can be found in some skills like Axe, Sword, and Lance Breaker.
The weapon triangle mechanic elsewhere is essential to gameplay as it defines advantages and disadvantages when it comes to weapon types– sword over ax, ax over lance, and lance over sword. The concept may change a bit from game to game, such as the inclusion of other weapon types like archery and magic, but overall, it stays consistent. Fire Emblem Engage brings this mechanic back.
4 More diverse exploration areas
In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the only area the player can run around is Garreg Mach’s Monastery, unless the DLC is purchased, where the Abyss becomes available too. While there are a lot of activities to do around the Monastery, the environment might become very repetitive as it doesn’t change throughout the gameplay year. Meanwhile, Fire Emblem Engage’s Somniel has almost as many diverse activities as the monastery and also changes depending on the time of the day.
The player also has the option to go look around on the maps they clear after a battle, all of which look very different. From the Firene maps to Solm’s ones, the environments look very different from each other.
3 Almost No Gender Locked Classes
Fire Emblem locking away certain classes depending on a unit’s gender had never been a bigger issue than in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The game allowed the player to freely switch classes and offered a great number of classes to promote into one after the other, however, the gender lock meant some units could never be used as the player intended. The Pegasus Knight class has almost always been locked to female units, but Three Houses take it to another level, locking Gremory and the Brawler promotion line, among other classes, to a certain gender.
The only gender-locked class in Engage is the Pegasus Knight, which has relevant lore in the Fire Emblem world - however, this doesn’t stop the player from allowing male units from accessing the Griffin Knight class, which is the promotion class from Pegasus Knight.
2 Alear’s Gender Doesn’t Affect Who They Can Romance
One major complaint many players had with Fire Emblem games’ romance option that isn’t unique to Three Houses is the lack of same-sex romance available. Some games like Three Houses and Fates made some same-sex romance options available, but it was only a select few characters that the player might have had no interest in. These included only two options in Fates, one male and one female, which are not even available in all three routes, with one being easily missable. Three Houses had more, offering 3 options for male Byleth after DLC, and 5 for female Byleth.
Fire Emblem Engage defaults to making every single romanceable character an option for same-sex romance, which gives the player plenty of freedom when it comes to who they want to romance.
1 One Focused Route
One thing a lot of older Fire Emblem players did not like about Three Houses was its diverging routes. Diverging routes had a bad reputation among players as a mechanic ever since Fates, which many considered to be bad writing. With Three Houses, a lot of the players did like the split routes and the option to pick one leader to stand within the story, however, it’s hard to argue that the diversity in each route is not lacking.
Verdant Wind and Silver Snow were pretty much identical with almost no difference besides the final map and the involvement of Claude in the story, making the existence of these 2 separate routes questionable. Engage goes back to a single route and while the story is not as engaging as Three Houses, it offers a wider array of maps to fight in and, focuses on a single, more refined, plot progression.