(before anyone asks, i went into the game not expecting to take the story seriously whatsoever, hence the silly name i gave to my alear)
felt like jolting down random thoughts on engage after finishing it recently. didn't go too heavy into spoilers but i did share an image that shows up at the end of the game so... don't look any further in unless you've finished the game!
initially i didn't plan on picking up engage, mainly because there was nothing screaming out to me that it was a "must buy", that is until i got exposed to some of the gameplay through friends' streams.
... then saw how gorgeous the critical attack animations were.
... and saw some of the cheesiness of the cutscenes and supports.
... and discovered i knew the person who sang the opening song.
... so then i figured ok, i've been convinced to get the game now rather than later.
i decided to go with hard difficulty thinking i would be able to manage it, and i'm glad i did cause it definitely gave a challenge without being too overly stressful to play through (by that i mean not having to restart the same map multiple times). so going into the gameplay itself, i had a lot of fun with the break mechanic and engage rings they brought in. at the start i was worried the rings could be overpowering to use, but you learn that you need to be strategic on when to use them. also i feel there was a lot of variety with the maps and objectives, which was nice! on the minor downside, the skirmishes felt very difficult for maps that should have been there to level up low units, plus it also felt hard to come by money and raising supports? there's also the somniel where you can do various activities and while they're alright for the most part, i did find myself getting sick of them and did them less and less as i continued with the game.
i'd be lying if i said i didn't enjoy the nostalgia from seeing all the emblems from past games, and it's part of the reason i feel compelled to finally go out of my way to play the fe games i haven't touched yet (tellius and jugdral saga). and i gotta say the remixes/medleys for all the emblem paralogues were insanely good, i love them so much.
(not gonna lie, seeing this image in-game was really cute)
also the art style in this game grew on me after a while, it's all so... vibrant to look at. and despite how very "anime" it looks, i feel like i actually prefer it over say, 3 houses. the cutscenes were also really nice to look at as well.
ok so thinking about the story and characters they're... so-so. there were moments where i went "huh?? this is kinda silly but ok??", and i didn't find myself too emotional over any of the character deaths in the game (and i'm usually weak to such scenes, though shoutout to a certain character death that gets mentioned during the unit summary at the end of the game if they're not paired off, that one took me off-guard and made me sad). and while i do have some characters i like, overall i'm not too attached to any of them? admittedly i didn't get the chance to deep dive into all the characters + supports (since i didn't want to bother with grinding).
so yeah, i guess overall i enjoyed the game but i'm also don't feel too attached either?? maybe i'll do another playthrough in the future with different characters or check out the dlc at some point? but i don't feel like i'm in the rush to get to it.
........ lastly i will never get over the line "but i wanted to be... a good dragon"
