Fire Emblem Engage is the latest in the long-running Fire Emblem series, and it's a title that wears its three-decade and fourteen-game-spanning legacy on its sleeve. Alongside its brand new main cast, Fire Emblem Engage lets players summon the aid of previous Fire Emblem heroes, like Ike, Roy, and Lucina.
Of course, a series that has run as long as Fire Emblem will inevitably go through some major changes along its lifespan, with features picked up and dropped between titles, such as the inclusion of the non-permadeath casual mode. One of the fan favorites is the marriage and child unit system, a feature popularized by 2010's Fire Emblem Awakening.
Fire Emblem Three Houses maintained the series' recent focus on romance options but downplayed their mechanical significance, saving marriage for the end of the story and removing child units. Now, romantically inclined players wonder how Fire Emblem Engage treats this feature.
Does Fire Emblem Engage Feature Romance and Marriage?
Yes and No.
Once again, Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates' specific implementation of the marriage and child unit system isn't coming back. Instead, Intelligent Systems chose to recreate the mechanical depth of child units with Emblem Rings, letting players mix and match their soldiers' skills with less investment.
That being said, the game is still heavily character-focused, giving everyone their own arcs, and the support storylines between the protagonist and their followers tend toward the romantic. The game even features a marriage in all but name with the pact ring system.
Once the player has units at A-rank, they're given a pact ring, which they can use to push a unit to S rank. They can only do this once, and the accompanying cutscene, for most characters, paints it as an engagement: a lifelong commitment of mutual devotion.
Fire Emblem Engage also ensures not to limit pact ring options with the player character's gender. All characters are available, and they react the same to the proposal, whether the player chooses to be a man or a woman.
In the end, it depends on what the player is looking for. They won't get the same mechanics from marriage, but they'll still get the character connections and chances for shipping.
Fire Emblem Engage is available now for Nintendo Switch.