Neal Sprissler

Decent Fire Emblem gameplay with new flare that is severely hindered by terrible characters, story, and mindless tasks that offer no real benefit for gameplay. Story is basic, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but is made terrible by OK voice acting and terrible dialogue. Additional, characters are so generically bland that they are actively making things worse (earlier characters are the worst, some later characters are ok). Some dialogues are literally 1 sentence long and provide no world building, no interesting insight into characters, and are so surface level it would be better to not even do anything. Gameplay - Quality Fire Emblem content and is the reason for 3/5 stars. Made better by the Engage System which pairs a character with a past Fire Emblem hero and gain abilities to augment your own. Overall, it is the best part of this game. Additionally, weapons no longer have durability and instead need to be upgraded, which I find to be a nice change. Other - the Social/Home base of the game is the 2nd major issue. The homebase contains merchants and other activities to pass the time in-between fights. You are also able to gain temporary benefits doing exercise, cook meals, gather some resources, or spend resources upgrading equipment, your Emblem partners, or cosmetics. The Social system is similar to past games, but the dialogue, since they are all fully voiced are slow, stilly, and provide no interesting insight into the characters like the previous game did so well. I don't really end up caring about any of the characters and they are barely more than the surface level representation. The mini-games are childish and seem to be more distractions than key systems to engage to build your party. Overall the game is a standard Fire Emblem game that has a lot of baggage. In-between fights drag and laughable dialogue makes the moment to moment interactions with characters not worth the time really paying attention to it. Fun to play, but not something that will hold your attention beyond a single playthrough.