Scrappy Mechanic / Fire Emblem Engage

Just like other Fire Emblem games, Engage is bound to have mechanics that players generally loathe.

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In General

• Whilst Armored Knights have a normal movement of 4, Generals don't get any movement buffs whatsoever. Additionally the resistance stat of the General class has been lowered to a ridiculous amount meaning there's nothing they can do to resist enemy magic users. This has been critiqued for making General a completely unappealing class.
• Starting up an Emblem's paralogue will automatically disengage the Emblem to the person who is engaged to it. If you change your mind and go back to the world map, the Emblem doesn't automatically re-engage itself, which can be a real pain if you forget to do it before entering a battle.
• Enemies killed by Lyn's doubles don't give experience points. Seeing as the doubles use high-crit Mani Kattis, this is more common than it sounds. Although given that said doubles only have 1 HP, they usually won't last too long for this to become a big issue...unless the host unit has so much physical bulk that enemies literally can't kill the clones outside of chain attacks.
• Leif's ability Adaptable makes the user counter with the best weapon available on-hand when engaged on Enemy Phase. While this sounds like an excellent ability, the game's idea of "best weapon available" often causes more harm than good. For example, if a unit is holding a Silver Greatlance and is attacked by a lance-wielding enemy, they'll choose to counter with a Killer Axe instead, even if countering with the Greatlance would have done more damage, critical hit notwithstanding. Additionally, with the exception of the Killer Axe, Leif's other Engage weapons have their demerits that make them not synergize well with Adaptable: the Master Lance cannot activate its "brave weapon" effect on Enemy Phase to mitigate its low might, and the Light Brand is a magic sword, which can cause Adaptable to force a Magically Inept Fighter to deal middling amounts of magic damage; the latter weapon also comes with the caveat that the user needs both good strength and magic to use all three of Leif's weapons effectively, with the units that can do so feasibly (Céline, Chloé, Zelestia, etc.) being few and far between. Its few saving graces, though, are that it actively prevents the user from being broken and to keep Arms Shield active as much as possible.
• Growth rates in Engage are unusually low for a game that allows for class changing. Individual characters typically have below average growths across the board (most capping around 40 percent), and classes barely give any additional bonuses as well. The result is a lot of artificial difficulty because units struggle to get decent level-ups in classes they are seemingly meant to be in; for example, Alfred isn't very viable for some because his growths are very weak for someone the game seems to think is meant to be a strong cavalier given his importance in the game. Even Alear, the main character, has low growths, making it harder to use them. This is likely meant to encourage more careful play, and to use the Emblems more carefully, but it can make playing on harder difficulties unappealing to some due to how weak the cast can feel. Unless the player uses the DLC-walled Starsphere to boost the growths of a given character, it can take a lot to really feel like the player has a strong team. Somewhat related to this, many of the characters who join early on - not just Vander- often end up being seen as a Low-Tier Letdown and benched in favor of a later recruit who fills a similar role.
• Units are relatively slow to gain SP in this game, which can make it difficult to inherit skills. This can especially be a problem considering that you lose your first six Emblems- Marth, Sigurd, Celica, Micaiah, Roy and Leif- in Chapter 10, and only start getting them back in Chapter 17, meaning that if you don't inherit the skills you want before you lose your Emblems, you won't get another chance for a while.
• Related to growth rates, the game is relatively stingy with experience, and player units can often end up falling behind the advised level for story maps, not just on Maddening. There is the ability to level grind, but since the skirmishes have higher-level enemies than the story chapters, it's obvious that the game is discouraging you from doing so.
• The rather difficult skirmishes are also an example in and of itself. While they would be good ways of helping weaker units catch up, the fact that they're more difficult than the story missions makes them less than practical for this purpose. Maddening has another problem, since the skirmishes are much rarer on that difficulty. Even worse, the skirmishes also tend to scale every single enemy in a given skirmish to whoever is the strongest unit you have, making training your weaker units even harder to level up than necessary.
• As in previous games, gaining HP during a level-up won't increase a unit's current HP along with it. However, it's particularly annoying here because certain abilities, like Chain Guard and Claude S's Wind God, are contingent on the unit being at full HP, meaning that an HP level-up can screw over their next-turn gameplan out of nowhere despite never actually getting hit by an enemy. On the other hand, gaining a hit point during a level up can help Panette activate her Blood Fury, which requires her to not be at full HP, but that's a moot point if she's already at less than full HP.
• Support points can be difficult to gain in battle in this game, since they're only given to units that are adjacent to each other and only for actions done during the Player Phase. Other games allowed for units that were slightly farther away to get support points with the unit that was in combat, including during the Enemy Phase.
• From a cosmetic standpoint, not being able to use a character's "default outfit"^note The outfit that a unit wears in their starting class, official artwork, and during Support/Bond conversation outside of their starting class in battle can be a letdown for players who prefer the character's unique outfit over the generic class outfits, a contrast towards Three Houses and Three Hopes, which had the option to do so as a QoL feature, albeit Three Houses not having the option until Version 1.1.0, while Three Hopes has it from launch^{Which has it's own limitations} While most units who default to a mounted class line (ie. Lorenz and Ingrid) can use their default outfit while in a mounted class, they can only do so in the classes that correlate to their default class line only, and none of the mounted Master classes allow the use of default outfits regardless of default class line; for example, Sylvain can wear his default outfit as a Cavalier and Paladin (his default classes) and as an infantry class, but cannot do so as a Wyvern Rider (despite being able to ride mounts without any issues with model clipping), or as a Dark, Holy, or Bow Knight (despite those three classes being cavalry-type classes like the Paladin); even before the update, all units (excluding Byleth and the three lords) in Three Houses can keep their post-timeskip "default outfit" if classed in their default classline^note For example, Felix will keep his unique post-timeskip outfit as a Mercenary or Swordmaster, his default classline, whereas units in Engage cannot keep their original outfit even if they promote into their designated advanced class. This means that units who start in a Base class will inevitably have to abandon their default attire if the player wants to promote them to an Advanced class and make them stronger. Prepromotes and Special (Thieves, Dancers, Melusine, and Fell Child) classes avoid this problem to an extent, but that means that they cannot switch to another class if they want to keep their default outfit. Being forced to use the generic outfits (specifically those with fanservicesy designs like the Sage and Warrior) can be particularly problematic for Anna and Jean, both of whom are too young to be subjected to fanservice elements.
• One of the most commonly cited complaints about the mechanics relates to a lack of a mechanic- namely, New Game Plus. Many players would like to be able to start a new game with their donation levels for each nation, SP totals, bond levels and other things they've earned over the course of their playthrough, but unlike Three Houses, that isn't an option.
• A more meta example that's unique to Engage is somewhat shocking in hindsight: The barebones title menu. Beginning with Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, extras - namely soundtrack music and, pointedly, Support Conversations - could be viewed from the main menu at any time, and are naturally saved for future viewing once encountered in gameplay. This would also apply to Trial Maps^note For The Binding Blade, Sacred Stones, and Path of Radiance. While DLC content - starting with New Mystery of the Emblem - would usually require access in a single game file, most of their rewards would be permanently kept between playthroughs; Three Houses takes this access further with the Cindered Shadows bonus chapter.^Mainly... Not only can the campaign be played wholly divorced from any one game file, but if the player does all six chapters at once, they can immediately gain all four of the playable DLC characters in-game once Abyss opens up, with Abyss' facilities becoming available in story-based increments thereafter.. Engage not only lacks all of these offerings, but if a player wants to watch Support Conversations or cutscenes, or listen to music, they need to do it in-game on the Somniel..and nothing is saved in between each one. This essentially means that absolutely nothing is saved between runs, including S-Support conversations. This also applies to the Fell Xenologue DLC's perks, as noted below.

Fell Xenologue

• Each map has a fixed class loadout for every deployable unit. Although this allows for a tighter balance within the map, these loadouts are not balanced among each other, particularly in earlier maps where some units have an unpromoted class while others have a promoted class. Additionally, Bond Levels and inherited Skills from the main game still apply, which will dictate character selection more than the fixed loadouts, anyway, making the mechanic pointless. This also has the nasty side-effect of putting every new character at a major disadvantage since they will always be stuck at a Bond Level of 1, severely hampering their combat potential and utility.
• Nel, Nil and the Four Winds have fixed inventories and cannot be given items on the preparations menu, unlike every other unit. While this makes sense in Fell Xenologue 5 where Nel is separated from your army and must survive on her own until you arrive, it serves no purpose in all the others, where the Four Winds can still trade items and access the Convoy mid-battle. All it means is re-equipping them wastes time and turns, while no-one else has this limitation.
• The characters that join after completing the Xenologue join at an internal level of 20, irrespective of your progress in the main story. This leads to there being no good time to actually complete the Xenologue: do it too late in the main story, and the new units Can't Catch Up, do it too early in the main story and Paralogues will scale to the new units making them potentially Unintentionally Unwinnable, do it at just the right time when your party is at about lv. 20 (mid-Solm) and you'll be at a massive disadvantage for actually completing the Xenologue as you just lost most of your Emblem Rings.
• Another reward for completing the Xenologue is access to the Enchanter and Mage Cannoneer classes. These classes require a new item each for switching to them, and you get one of each for free after completing the Xenologue. Want more? You can buy the items in the shop...for tens of thousands of gold, where grinding random maps only get you a few thousand in a best-case scenario.
• To make matters worse, you have to replay the DLC to get the rewards again on a new playthrough, which is time-consuming at best and frustrating at worst. At least in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you only had to complete Cindered Shadows once to get the rewards in current and future playthroughs.