YMMV / Fire Emblem Engage

YMMVs with their own pages:

• Awesome Music
• Game Breaker
• Ho Yay
• Memetic Mutation
• Narm
• Narm Charm
• Nightmare Fuel
• Scrappy Mechanic

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A-M

• Abandon Shipping:
  • There were several fans who started shipping Alear with Veyle during the game's pre-release, believing Veyle was going to be pushed by the narrative as Alear's love interest (not unlike Azura or any one of the house leaders before her). When the game finally came out it was soon revealed that Veyle is Alear's younger sister. Unsurprisingly, people started to jump ship not long after.
  • Some fans started shipping Citrinne with Alcryst or Diamant after their C supports, only to ditch the ships after finding out they're cousins in their B supports.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • A prerelease screenshot◊ of an arena battle has Alcryst shooting his arrows at a very unfortunate location on Ike's body. The gameplay footage isn't any better.
  • The Ring/Bracelet polishing minigame can unintentionally come off as a porn game due to the fact that the Emblem rings/bracelets are all sentient. Despite being Tamer and Chaster than the infamous Japan-exclusive face rubbing minigame, polishing the rings/bracelets could come off as more like the chosen character is... erm... pleasuring themselves with literal spirit beings, rather than actually cleaning them. It doesn't help that the Emblems start moaning whenever you heavily polish the right spot in the original Japanese dub.
  • Timerra's A Support with Alear beings with the line: "Hey, Divine One, it’s meat o’clock! You in?"
  • At the start of the Academy Bond link attack, Byleth lets out a moan, as if he's enjoying it a bit too much.
  • Every time you collect nuts while exploring, you get this as a message: "Nuts obtained."
• Adorkable:
  • Amber is incredibly goofy, from his childish obsession with heroics, to his adorable love of alpacas, to his penchant for falling over himself at the worst times. But he's also genuinely sweet, and all his faults just serve to make him feel that much more relatable.
  • Ivy is an elegant, classy lady...on the surface. Beneath her dignified demeanor lies an adorably shy and awkward goofball who's terrified of ghosts, greatly endearing her to fans who were wary of her being an Expy of Camilla.
  • Merrin is a cool and suave Bifauxnen who is quite obsessed with looking cool at all times with almost everything she does, but she completely drops her coolness and turns into a squeeing dork when she's faced with the prospect of rare and exotic creatures.
  • Zelestia is a very motherly but dorky lady. In her supports, she's shown to be quite clumsy and forgetful, with her admitting to not eating anything but snacks for days at a time due to how much she works. That's not even mentioning how her supports with Nel show how prone to tears she is.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The people of Alternate Elyos in general. They have the exact opposite personalities as the characters from the main timeline, but since they're actually Corrupted, it's hard to tell how accurate the Royals we see in the Xenologue are to how they were when they were alive. The Four Hounds, or more accurately, Four Winds, are clearly not Corrupted, yet (save Mauvier) they are the exact opposite of what they're like in the main timeline. Alternate Fogado especially muddies this up, since he knows that he's a Corrupted and embraces it. Are the Royals that we see in the Xenologue inaccurate to how they were when they were alive, and were they lying about what the alternate retainers were like, or are the Corrupted perfectly accurate to how the Royals were when they were alive? Or are they accurate but in an exaggerated manner? Emblem Hector notably says to the main Céline that she is much gentler than the Céline he knew from his world with a slight pause before saying "gentler" as if he nearly said something less flattering like "belligerent", and since he is one of the few alternate Emblems to actually say something about their previous owner and that the only way he could describe alternate Céline, this indicates that alternate Céline was indeed a warmongering individual—give or take some aggression in life or death; Rafal himself said that alternate Ivy was very eager in wishing to please the wishes of a Fell Dragon and volunteered to become Rafal's first corrupted experiment which lines up with her corrupted state's zealous devotion to Fell Dragons. These both further point to the alternate royals being similar in their corrupted states as they were when they were still alive if not exactly how we see them. It's your pick as to whether it's worse for the alternate Royals to be the way they are because of their post-mortem corruption or because of their pre-mortem personalities.
  • During the final battle with Griss, Veyle says she's going to kill him, but she won't make it painful enough to be a "reward." Is this because she still has some degree of compassion for him even after everything he did, or is this a form of Cruel Mercy to the masochistic Griss?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Ivy's hat been called by many as a weird and bizarre piece of clothing that's often compared to a waffle or a grill. It's far from rare these claims happen because people are unaware her hat is an actual existing type of headwear called a fascinator, which is used for fashion purposes and can be often seen in a formal context like social gatherings.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Ivy is noticeably easier in her second and final battle due to lacking any Emblem rings, since she lost Emblem Leif in the previous battle and her father refused to provide her with another.
  • For all his role in the story, Griss is a pushover when he's fought in Chapter 20, as the sole boss of the chapter with it being the last time he uses Emblem Celica against you. He's presented as one of the most dangerous opponents next to Zephia and Sombron himself. However, he's a mage, and has the least HP and weakest defenses out of the Four Hounds and delivers the worst performance out of any of them. The threat to his encounters often amounts to the swarms of enemies getting to him. Once, he's actually gotten to however, it takes little effort to eat through all of his health bars in a single phase. As long as he doesn't strike a unit he's effective against, his damage output can't threaten even most of the weaker units any better than generic enemy mages. Even when empowered by Celica's ring, all it amounts to is harassing units for two turns and running away, then stops doing it. Once you clear a path to him, he's helpless. What's more, if one of his health bars drops to zero, he'll stop teleporting prematurely and just warp back to the end of the map. Meaning that with enough planning you can potentially take out a third of the boss's health on the first turn without taking significant damage. Though given that he uses Alear's revival of Emblem Celica to confirm that they are a Fell Dragon once he is defeated, it could very well be a case of Gameplay and Story Integration.
  • Veyle in Chapter 21 is your final encounter with this enemy, and the last battle before Veyle's good side kills this personality for good. They get an even more dramatic Evil Costume Switch than usual (complete with horned crown), Badass Boasts in their dialogue... and they're still a Squishy Wizard with few health bars and limited defense against Chain Attacks. Their Marth Engage makes them even less of a threat, as Lodestar Rush coming off their Strength isn't likely to do much damage, and yet they love to charge forward with it and put themselves in danger. The game starts a Zerg Rush of reinforcements once they're attacked, which only encourages the player to beat them faster. The real challenge is keeping this boss alive long enough to get the S-rank Dagger from the Thief beside them.
  • The final battle with Griss and Zephia in Chapter 23. While their bombarding the map with meteors can pose problems and the two have legendary weapons, they no longer have their Emblem Rings and aren't nearly as much of a threat as before, especially since you've already beaten them multiple times to get to this point.
  • Despite being one of the most powerful Emblems in the game, Sigurd really isn't all that difficult to deal with in his paralogue. His high movement means that once he approaches, you can pretty much ignore all the enemies surrounding him and just take him out. It's rather telling that the two mages in the bottom-left corner of the map pose more of a threat than he does.
  • The Final Boss is relatively easy for a game as challenging as Engage. The Dark Emblems would be more threatening if they were not range 1 stationary units. Sombron himself is easy to avoid until the barrier protecting him has been removed and it's possible to defeat him before all the Emblems have been summoned, skipping many of the reinforcements that can actually present a challenge; even with 400 HP divided into four HP bars, a double Bond Blast with his barrier down will likely chew through half of it in one go.
• Awesome Art: Although the way in which the character designs were rendered in-game caused some division among fans, the actual art made by character designer Mika Pikazo in preparation for the game is widely agreed to be beautiful.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Alear became highly divisive in the pre-release for their design alone, and debates continued once the game released. Detractors feel their ridiculous design makes them impossible to take seriously, that their nature as the Divine Dragon, a literal subject of worship in-universe, only exacerbates the "Avatar-worship" issues in modern Fire Emblem, and that they don't have nearly as much personality or development as non-Avatar Lords, with what little personality they do have amounting to little more than an Informed Flaw. Supporters claim that Alear is a surprisingly endearing and relatable character, is given actual character flaws that are relevant to the story, insists on being treated as an equal, and has an excellent vocal performance and isn't a Heroic Mime, all of which makes a lot of otherwise-silly moments work better than they should.
  • Veyle is a major subject of debate among those who played the game. Depending on who you ask, she is either a likeable and nuanced character living in the shadow of her father's abuse and her evil Split Personality, or said Split Personality cheaply removes agency from the real Veyle so she can be entirely sympathetic, and is a boring Generic Doomsday Villain who hurts a potentially much better character.
  • Goldmary is one of the game's most polarizing characters. Her supporters love her for her Ms. Fanservice design, having some of the funniest Emblem conversations in the game, Hidden Depths in supports and decent gameplay potential. Her detractors dislike her for her Ms. Fanservice design and selfish personality, and feel her Freudian Excuse is Unintentionally Unsympathetic (see below).
  • The Four Hounds. Their supporters see them as a well fleshed-out evil family with depth all across the board, sympathetic backstories and serve as great callbacks to the recurring "four generals" archtype. However, their detractors view them as incredibly shallow villains who the story thinks are far more sympathetic than they actually are whose attempts at fleshing out come out of nowhere (in Griss and Marni's cases, in the same chapter as when they die) and completely fall flat. They're also a major point of contention in gameplay, while they're considered a Best Boss Ever in several maps, many take issue with how they're almost the only bosses you fight between Chapters 14 and 23, feeling they overstay their welcome.
  • Camilla is by far the most divisive Emblem in the game, even putting aside her character's reputation in Fire Emblem Fates. She has fans for being the one dedicated flying Emblem, strong Engage Weapons and her characterization focusing on her more positive qualities over her more contentious ones. To detractors, her inclusion over the more plot-relevant Azura boils down to Pandering to the Base, her abilities aren't that useful or are otherwise "lazy" (such as re-using Corrin's Dragon Vein gimmick with minor changes), and she's not worth enduring one of the more tedious and difficult Divine Paralogues.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Chapter 10 is a fitting climax to the game's first act, featuring five unique opponents- Goldmary, Rosado, Hortensia, Corrupted Morion and Hyacinth- two of whom are Emblem users. To say nothing of the music which sounds like endgame music.
  • Chapter 11 is widely considered to be one of the best in the game. Not only does it provide a tough but fair challenge, but it serves as a great example of Gameplay and Story Integration where the Emblems you had relied on throughout the entire game are used against you.
  • Chapter 17 is a huge map set in a burning town, that has you facing six bosses, all with Emblems. It's a map that forces the player to pull out all the stops: their own Emblems, Chain Guard, Chain Attacks, effective weapons, status and Obstruct staves, and more, because the enemy won't hold back, either. It also helps that the ending of the chapter is a satisfying reward for enduring this chapter, as it is where you can finally begin the process of reclaiming the Emblems that you lost back in Chapter 10, starting with the Jugdral heroes Sigurd and Leif.
  • Chapter 24 has a gimmick in which Past Alear pushes you back with avalanches. Not only that, but just about every enemy has a Break weapon to knock you back further. It's a race against time - and on higher difficulties, the fight proves to be quite frantic as well.
  • Chapter 25 has a rather epic battle against Corrupted Lumera, especially the back half. First off, the music is utterly epic. As you approach the boss' chambers, the boss fires laser beams at you which you can easily dodge by hiding behind cover. However, once you get to the final corridor before their chamber, an absolute horde of Corrupted starts to attack, and it becomes a mad scramble to get to the boss and finish them before you get overrun. Oh, and the boss can use their laser attack down the corridor you're trying to hold with no cover. It's a very memorable last line of defense before the Fell Dragon himself. The story is also rather tragic, with Corrupted Lumera providing twisted echoes of the mock battle she had with Alear and their retainers way back in Chapter 2.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Premonition chapter has been thought of as this. Unlike previous games featuring similar introductory missions (Fates features the part where the routes split, while Awakening features Chapter 23), Engage's Premonition ultimately never comes to pass in any form later into the story, seemingly existing only to tease Elyos' four main royals before they join and spoil Ivy's Heel–Face Turn. However, beyond showing whom would be Alear’s allies, the Premonition Chapter seems to be a dream, based on the actual event of past Alear striking down Sombron as depicted in a late flashback, but shown in a more positive light.
• Breather Level:
  • Jean's Paralogue is one of the few maps regarded as easy even on Maddening and comes right after Chapter 5 hammers in how tough Maddening is going to be. Unlike most "protect villagers from bandits" missions, the NPCs are easy to save thanks to Sean and Jean's Artificial Brilliance. (They'll prioritize healing and Chain Guarding the villagers, instead of charging suicidally towards enemies) Some regard it as free training for units you're attached to.
  • Chapter 12 comes after the dark Wham Episode that is Chapter 11, and not only is a bright and colorful map that introduces three fun new characters, it's also not particularly hard. It's a Rout map where you start close to the enemies, the quicksand gimmick isn't a problem for the recently recruited Ivy, and one of the new recruits comes with the ever-broken Warp Staff and even encourages you to use it in dialogue. It's not uncommon for this map to be beaten in less than 5 turns.
  • Chapter 18 comes right after one of the most hectic and challenging maps in the game and is a pretty straightforward "beat the boss" chapter. There's only two optional objectives: recruiting Lindon and getting the loot from the other ship. Neither of these are particularly difficult to pull off, especially since the thief robbing the chest will actually move closer to you since his escape tile is on the opposite end of the ship.
  • Micaiah's Paralogue unlocks after the difficult Chapter 19 and unlike Leif's, the map is significantly toned-down from its original incarnation. 3-13's side reinforcement points are cut off, so you only need to chokepoint the lower end of the map. Micaiah herself is a Squishy Wizard whose health bars are easy to take down in one round, and unlike Mauvier in Chapter 19 actually using her game-breaking Warp and Rescue combos, she doesn't carry any staves here.
  • Celica's Paralogue, which unlocks after Chapter 20, may be one of the most unintentionally toned-down maps in the series with how fast it can be completed. Unlike Micaiah, Celica still can and will use her Engage Skill to warp towards the nearest unit she can attack, which isn't any far from the starting point, however, given how late in the game this is, the player's units must be leveled high enough to tank it, leaving Celica close to the player's whole party right after. This, along Celica also being a Squishy Wizard, makes the Paralogue quite easy to complete.
• Broken Base: The game has proven to be the most controversial Fire Emblem game since Fates:
  • The story's overall quality. Detractors tend to bring it up as the game's chief weakness, calling it a cliched, predictable mess that is impossible to take seriously, even when the story expects you to. Fans argue that the story doesn't matter when the gameplay has been improved, that it's cheesy but entertaining and/or that it's surprisingly good, or at least better than the detractors give it credit for.
  • The fact the international release heavily Bowdlerised the romance options and S-Supports that were available in the original Japanese translation. While there will most likely be few arguments about this being a necessary change for the two child characters in the game (Lady Anna and Jean, who are both written with a Jail Bait Wait in mind with the Japanese script), the fact that the game went well above that and made almost every single S-Support in the game platonic has led to considerable frustration and division. Those in favor of it point out that the series was never built around the romance elements introduced in Awakening and that this was a return to form for the series, while many others pointed out the shipping elements was why they came to the series to begin with, nevermind the ethics of censorship and the fact that the romantic endings that were in past Fire Emblem games also had these romantic elements. There was also the fact that Alear themself was 17 according to data mining and the only romance options in the game that were left untouched were entirely adults like Chloe; while some were fine with this as that meant the player couldn't project into romancing another minor, others found this hypocritical and ultimately bending so far over backwards to avoid pedophilia that they accidentally make Alear — a minor themselves — be in a romantic relationship with an adult anyways. Although others will counter that Alear being 17 is dubious at best (see below).
  • Whether the datamined ages for the characters should be accepted as canon. While it is unanimously agreed that Vander and Saphir's Younger Than They Look designs clash badly with their claimed ages, one side argues there are no contradictions within the game for the datamined ages beyond the character designs (which might have been a result of miscommunications behind-the-scenes), point out some game mechanics play into them^note For example, the S-Support portraits of characters the datamining claims are 17 or younger all consistently have the Pact Ring on their left hand while all of the characters claimed to be older have it on their right hand, and accuse those who reject them of just wanting an excuse to sexualize the minors or ship them with adults (not helped by how some were indeed guilty of this). Others invoke Gameplay and Story Segregation and Death of the Author, arguing some supports provide information or interactions that make the stated ages questionable (i.e Citrinne and Diamant were childhood playmates despite being eight years apart^note Citrinne's age is especially tricky even if one tries to estimate it solely by supports as hers with Zelkov imply she is not yet an adult, some might chalk this up to the writers miscalculating, disagreeing, or miscommunicating on her age, etc.) which are sometimes responded to with claims that these are just examples Culture Clash or Values Dissonance the fans are misunderstanding. Finally, others say the ages are good as a baseline but should not be treated as gospel and can be disregarded if character designs or supports give reason for doubt.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Alear is Veyle's sibling and Sombron's child. It's meant to be the main plot twist, but not only is Veyle rather close to Alear while talking about a sibling who just so happens to be Alear's gender, but Sombron and Zephia go out of their way to avoid referring to the spoilered individual's gender when talking about them, similar to the way the Player Character is referred to^note Compare in Three Houses, when the Flame Emperor was referred to with male pronouns prior to being revealed as female. It's also far from the first time the protagonist is the child of a major villain- Alm is Emperor Rudolf's son, Robin is Validar's child, Corrin is thought to be Garon's child but is actually Anankos' child- so it's easy to see the writers reusing that twist. Somewhat less predictable, is the curveball of Lumera being their adoptive mother (through a Supernatural Adoption that’s been changing their draconic nature) and how it came about; although the series has invoked Family of Choice before, it’s rarely been in such an unusual manner.
  • Mauvier, the Token Good Teammate of the Four Hounds, joins the player's army. There's four major reasons as to why people were able to figure it out, only one of which was outside the game's control: The character possessing a personal skill while Zephia, Marni and Griss lacked one^note To make matters worse, it activates every time the character passes a turn without acting, making it especially noticeable, the character's status as an Anti-Villain, the broader franchise's propensity to give one of the enemy generals to the player, and the fact that it was leaked that the character would be playable before the game was even revealed. To a lesser extent, it's possible for the character to yell "I atone for my past." or "This is my redemption!" when getting a critical hit as an enemy, before doing a Heel–Face Turn and becoming The Atoner. It got to the point where players were less invested in Mauvier as a character and were more concerned about when they'd be able to recruit him.
• Catharsis Factor: The final battle can be one for long-time fans of the series, as you're not only fighting Sombron, but Emblem versions of every past Final Boss in the franchise, meaning you're facing multiple Big Bad-level threats in one fight. Cutting down each world's biggest threat one by one is incredibly satisfying, especially with the massive damage numbers you'll see if you use the effective Emblems. And for anyone you found especially hateable in their home games, you get to watch their respective nemesis kill them again.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Ike's appearances and mentions in Super Smash Bros., Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem Heroes played up his World's Strongest Man reputation above all his other traits. While it's still a factor here, his Emblem self also plays him as The Everyman, a Humble Hero and Deadpan Snarker, aspects of his character that haven't been seen much since his original games.
  • Despite being a child, Engage's version of Anna is dialed-back compared to her other modern incarnations. While still a shrewd businesswoman for her age, it's not exaggerated to the point of a Money Fetish like the Awakening and especially Heroes Annas(although the latter only indulged in that quirk in the Paralogues, and was all business in the main story).
• Cliché Storm: You play as a ridiculous-looking main protagonist, who is a 1,000-year-old divine dragon who participated in a Great Offscreen War, who had just woken up in the present day and is now trying to stop an antagonistic nation and the evil dragon some of them worship from threatening the world once again, together with the magical representations of various past Fire Emblem characters. The plot also has a number of Fire Emblem-specific cliches, from the main character's sole remaining parent dying early on in the game to the main character being related by blood to the Big Bad like in Awakening and Fates, making it arguably come off as very derivative with very few unique ideas and new takes on old Fire Emblem tropes.
• Common Knowledge: Contrary to popular belief, Alear and Veyle's supports and ending are still platonic in the original Japanese script. The misconception of the Japanese version of said supports and ending falling into Brother–Sister Incest was largely caused by people seeing the term "partner" in a romantic context, while ignoring the fact that it can also be used platonically, therefore confirming that Alear and Veyle's relationship in the Japanese version is intended to be platonic. There was also mention of a "descendant of dragons" at the orphanage in Veyle's epilogue, which through missed context cues was assumed to mean Alear and Veyle's biological descendant. It was then discovered this line is identical if Alear is female, so it's very unlikely that it implies they had children together. "Partner" was removed in localized versions of the game mainly to avoid seeing the supports/endings as romantic.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • The Farmyard's purpose is to gather items for usage throughout the game, usually ingredients for cooking after every skirmish. Most players will stick to having five dogs in the farmyard even above the rare kingdom animals. Why dogs? Because they give out ingots with a great chance for Silver ingots. Silver ingots are incredibly helpful during gameplay in using the forge as there are Silver Corrupted skirmishes to show the worth of Silver ingots. This is useful even during the late-game chapters so there isn't too much variety among players' farmyards despite its original purpose. Man's Best Friend indeed.
  • Creating Bond Rings is meant to work like a gacha, randomized Bond Rings with the occasional S rank as a rare bonus. Except due to a programming oversight, players figure out it is possible to systematically obtain any ring. You first enter any uncompleted story level or paralogue (this doesn't work on skirmishes), next exit that level and save, then enter the Ring Chamber, and finally draw ten Bond Rings. If you don't see any ring that you want or find, restart the game and repeat the last sentence. If you do see the ring you want, remember the character and position where that ring is, restart the game and load it at the created save point, then draw one to that point using the Ring Emblem you want to draw. You can get any S-rank Bond Ring while limiting the Random Number God.
  • Some of the S-Rank Rings with skills are considered just better than others. Most prefer Olwen's Dire Thunder (a guaranteed double-attack with Thunder if you initiate combat) over Mae's Great Thunder (+20% damage with Thunder and its upgraded versions), or over any of the other Bond Rings at that matter. None of them are considered worth using over any of the Emblem Rings, though(with the possible exception of Leif), which gets awkward for them once you have just as many Emblem Rings as deployment slots.
  • Engage, by design, is a game that encourages experimentation by trying out different character-and-ring combinations, as units will perform significantly differently depending on which rings the player chooses to give them. However, one that players almost universally stick with is Hortensia and Micaiah, as Hortensia's personal skill and personal class (Both because Sleipnir Rider lets Hortensia fly and because its class skill allows the player to use expensive staffs more frequently) make her the best staff user in the game.
  • Ephraim is part of the Emblem of the Sacred, but because players need to go out of their way to switch to him, and that it's rare for his flat +3 damage to do more than Eirika ignoring 20% of the enemy's Defense, and you gain the benefits of both their skills while Engaged anyway, most players stick with Eirika on whoever has their ring equipped.
  • On another note, it is frequent that players (especially on higher difficulty) will make use of any of the stronger units, most of which are pre-promotes, due to a significant power increase of both later recruits and enemies. It is frequent that players will make use of Ivy, Kagetsu, Merrin, Pandreo, Panette, and Hortensia.
• Contested Sequel:
  • To the previous mainline entry in the series, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, due to the games falling on opposite ends of the Story to Gameplay Ratio. Three Houses is an experimental Fire Emblem game that is much Darker and Edgier than the series' standard and puts a premium on characterization and narrative through multiple routes and social sim elements, in addition to other unorthodox approaches to classic Fire Emblem gameplay staples (like removing the weapon triangle's innate bonuses for having a weapon advantage in favor of equippable skills that grant a small bonus for the weapon advantage). Engage, by contrast, is essentially a "back-to-basics" approach, focusing on tight level design and engaging core combat mechanics while sticking to a linear good-versus-evil plot, a Lighter and Softer story, generally broader characterization, and more traditional takes on those same gameplay staples (like the weapon triangle returning as a core gameplay feature with extra focus from the new Break mechanic). Supporters of Engage tend to Play the Game, Skip the Story, decrying Three Houses for being the tipping point of the franchise's strategy gameplay with its unfun level design and tedious social sim elements exacerbating a poorly handled class system, and a story that was overly ambitious, didn't need Story Branching, and was far too bleak to get invested in. Supporters of Three Houses tend to Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game, declaring Engage to have among the worst stories in the franchise with a Cliché Storm plot and a cast of mostly one-note characters, miss some of the Three Houses-exclusive mechanics such as the monastery, and argue the game lacks replay value in spite of the strong combat (or even that it is too difficult for its own good). Some fans of Three Houses also have a grudge with Engage for releasing not long after Three Hopes and accuse the former of being the reason the latter received no DLC when fans felt it really needed it.
  • It's also one to Fire Emblem Fates. Both games are a case regarded by the fandom of Play the Game, Skip the Story, but many Fates fans who enjoy it and the characters feel singled out by virtue of their game's Hype Backlash that Engage gets a free pass on, sometimes going on to claim it's a worse story than Fates. Part of the divide is over the Fates concept compared to Engage, as Fates fans may argue that it actually tried to do something different unlike Engage, while Engage fans may argue that it owned its cheesiness and clichés, unlike Fates.
• Continuity Lockout: The Emblems will talk about their original's pasts during their paralogues. If you've never played any of their games, or are a newcomer to the series, then you won't really know what they're talking about. Sigurd, Roy, and Leif get hit with this especially hard, as their games were never officially released outside of Japan. A good example is the final level, where the Dark Emblems are all supposed to be the final bosses of the games they represent, but newcomers would not really understand why these enemies are special (it doesn't help that they are identified by a title rather than their name), and potentially miss the unique dialogue Emblem users would have with their designated archenemies.
• Critical Backlash:
  • While many fans criticized its story and characters for being one-note, cheesy, or too simple, along with other issues with the writing (for example, underutilized characters such as Queen Lumera) there's also those that are more positive about it, to the point that they argue the writing isn't as bad as is popularly claimed. As a result, the reactions border on So Okay, It's Average to actually pretty good for a simple story, and some even liked the Hidden Depths of some characters only ever explored in support/bond conversations. (A popular example being Alfred working out mainly to improve his health due to a childhood chronic illness).
  • The gameplay of the Fell Xenologue DLC has been bashed online so frequently some fans wonder what all the fuss is about when they actually play it. Some feel the online complaints mainly come from knee-jerk reactions to Maddening mode (which many streamers and other experienced players tried first), and that the maps are fairly well-designed and fun if you take the time to learn them on the lower difficulties first.
• Critical Dissonance: The game has a decent 8.0 rating on Metacritic, since most critics liked it but others gave it middling reviews for its story and other issues. However, user ratings were much more divided, leading to a 6.5 rating average. Many users were even harsher than the critics, while those who enjoyed the game accused detractors of review bombing the game. Furthering matters is that the vast majority of these low user scores come from those of the Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game mindset when it comes to Fire Emblem, creating a divide with those enjoy the gameplay improvements in Engage.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • A few of the Emblem Bond One Liners are hilariously unfitting on certain characters, but special mention goes to the DLC Soren, whose stone-cold "An obstacle in need of removing" sounds completely hysterical coming from Anna or especially Veyle.
  • Put a bunch of Backup units (or just use Lucina's Engage power with a bunch of people around) and you'll hear them giving Bond One-Liner after Bond One-Liner as they give their target a Death of a Thousand Cuts.
  • Diamant & Alcryst and Ivy & Hortensia having to fight their zombified fathers? Quite sad since they're giving them a Mercy Kill. But since these characters have health stones (meaning they have to be ganged up on), it becomes almost funny since you can, in theory, make them fight their zombified fathers over and over again.
  • In the first phase of the final battle, having Alear attack the Final Boss will have them be called out on committing patricide. Given how (oddly) common this is, it instead comes off as almost like the game is parodying its own series by this point.
• Death of the Author: More than a few fans reject the characters' official ages revealed by internal data due to finding some of them implausible. Notable examples include Clanne and Framme being 16, the grey-haired Vander and Saphir being 45 and 35 respectively, and Citrinne being 17 since this would make her eight years younger than Diamant (which does not make much sense given that one of their support conversations has her mention the two played together as children in a way that suggests they are close in age).
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Armored units, as if getting their revenge for decades of being benched in the fanbase outside of Heroes and Fates. Not only are they immune to Break, and have barely less movement that other infantry, but even those encountered in the extreme earlygame have so much physical defense they're only practically killable by mages or with effective weaponry. If Clanne or Céline isn't nearby, or Marth's Engage isn't ready, you'll have no choice but to take their hits.
  • Backup units serve as a direct answer to the One-Man Army builds of past games. Their Chain Attacks will always deal 10% of your unit's max HP rounded down and are surprisingly accurate at 80%, adding up very quickly if that unit survives. Luckily, Corrin's Level 13 skill, Pair Up, nullifies Chain Attacks entirely. However, this requires you to either equip her to the unit in question (hampering their offensive potential since she's a Support Party Member with exception to Yunaka) or spend a whopping 2,000 SP to inherit Pair Up (taking up one of their two available skill slots in the process) — not the worst requirements to fulfill, but it's something you must plan far in advance.
  • Martial Masters. If they're not using Chain Guard to protect their allies from you (making said allies harder to take down), they're using all kinds of staffs to dissuade you from enemy phase tanking with Fracture or Freeze, or bringing your units to them with Entrap often leading to your unit getting ganged up on. On any map they're around, you're gonna want to take 'em out or Silence 'em as soon as you're able.
  • Corrupted Wyrms on the higher difficulties. Their breath ignores defense, so they'll be doing high damage to most units (usually over 35). One of their breaths has 1-3 range while the other has 4, meaning they'll nearly always have a way to deny your counterattacks if you go after them on the enemy phase. Player phase? Their massive defenses on both sides of the spectrum make them difficult to bring down without suffering heavy damage. What's especially annoying about them is they don't count as having the "Dragon" unit type, only "Fell Dragon" and "Corrupted". Effective weapons are sorely needed to deal with them, but Corrupted-effective weapons are only available on a few Emblems until late in the game, and Fell Dragon effectiveness requires Emblem Alear, who you don't have until Chapter 22. If you thought a regular Wyrmslayer could help, you're out of luck.
  • Wolf Knights are only slightly slower than Swordmasters, but have a disproportionate amount of Def and Res, making them a huge pain in the rear to get rid of quickly. And you do want to get rid of them quickly, as they have access to Knives that both let them strike from afar and inflict poison to soften up your units, which can quickly snowball into a kill if they're allowed to follow up with their Sword/Lance/Axe sidearm. Worse yet, like actual wolves, they almost always appear in packs. It's not unheard of for players to blow an Engage just to delete them on sight.
• Designated Hero: King Morion is presented as a good man despite his stubbornness, but a lot of his actions really screw things up for the protagonists. His constant invasions of Elusia tend to kill a lot of civilians, spurring characters like Ivy to rally against him. Despite his claims that his invasions keep them in check, they're met with near universal disapproval, with even his elder son Diamant showing disdain for Brodia's warlike history and Alcryst apologizing to Ivy for those invasions in their supports. Then he practically walks into a trap set by the enemy, completely ignoring his son's advice. This not only leads to his death as a human sacrifice to restore Sombron's power, but it allows the Fell Dragon's followers to steal the Emblem rings when his sons and Alear try to save him. All this gives the impression that Morion could have easily been an enemy in a different game, but thanks to Firene's diplomacy, they were able to have him as an ally instead.
• Disappointing Last Level:
  • In addition to Sombron being a fairly easy Final Boss, some players find the final map to be overly simple, being basically a large square of terrain without many obstacles or special mechanics to make the final battle much more challenging or interesting.
  • Fell Xenologue 6 sometimes gets this reaction, due to how incredibly long it is when tackled the intended way. The gimmick is the boss spends a few turns at each sigil on the map before warping to the next and destroying the area around it. The sigils grant -50 to damage taken, so the boss is not practically killable until they go through all of them, and there are 6 in total on a really big map, where you also have to deal with reinforcements and the Alternate Royals again. Once the boss reaches the final location, they're fairly easy, but it's not uncommon for this to take hours.
• Discredited Meme: Céline's fan depiction as a Memetic Psychopath who will commit any atrocity for Firene ended up getting shut down due to her furious tongue-lashing at her Evil Counterpart in the Fell Xenologue DLC, who is as bloodthirsty as said memes described her as.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The Fell Xenologue DLC gets this reaction, at least in contrast to the original game. Many consider the gameplay rather difficult and frustrating, but find the alternate Elyos and its story fascinating.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Yunaka quickly became quite popular despite her limited role in the story. Part of her popularity stems from how useful she is, and part is due to her bubbly personality that she uses as a facade while hiding her Dark and Troubled Past as an assassin, making her both entertaining and somewhat more complex than most characters who join in the early game. The fact that she shares a voice actor with (and has a similar appearance to) Kasumi Yoshizawa also helps.
  • Lapis' only role in the plot is as Alcryst's retainer, but she's one of the more popular secondary characters due to her cute design and sweet personality.
  • Rosado is rather popular for just being one of Hortensia's retainers. His status as a Wholesome Crossdresser earned him many fans who appreciated how that trait was not played for laughs.
  • Fogado is only important during the Solm arc with temporary Plot Armor, unlike his sister Timerra who appears in cutscenes for the rest of the game after her recruitment. However, he is still very popular due to his fun and interesting personality and for being a fleshed-out dark-skinned character from a country not primarily inspired by medieval Europe (in his case, Solm draws most of its inspiration Brazil and the Middle East).
  • Panette and Pandreo—retainers to Timerra and Fogado respectively—are both rather popular for being very fun, likeable characters with interesting backstories and good supports. The fact that they're both excellent units certainly helps too^note Pandreo is considered the best spellcaster on Maddening (With the debatable exception of Ivy as she can fly and the DLC's SP-boosting items easily patch up her speed) because he can double with high-level tomes at base after being reclassed to a Sage or Mage Knight. Panette, likewise, is considered second to only Kagetsu as the best physical unit in the game, as she can very easily reach a 100 percent critical hit rate with the right build.
  • Sommie contributes nothing to the game's main plot beyond its introduction after Chapter 4. However, when it was first revealed prior to the game's release, Sommie quickly became a fan favorite amongst Fire Emblem fans for its adorable cartoonish design that makes it look right at home with either Pokémon or Kirby, its tendency to follow Alear around the Somniel with its tiny legs, the fact that it's the only creature in the game that can be pet, and having a really depressing dislike for seeing people it knew dying as time went on due to its immortality. Because of this, it also became a major source of fanart and memes surrounding the adorable little creature.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Lucina is shown alongside Alfred in the intro cutscene, and has boss dialogue with him in her Paralogue like the other Emblems and their initial users, but when she's actually obtained in the story her initial user is Alear and she never interacts with Alfred outside of Bond Conversations. This has led some fans to speculate that her ring was originally obtained much earlier, and was assigned to Firene(as opposed to being one of the rings the villains stole from Lythos Castle), but was switched with Celica and/or Micaiah later in development to add more variety to the early Emblem Rings.
  • The identity of the Emblem of Foundations who Sombron wanted to reunite with is left a Riddle for the Ages, and thus led to rampant speculation over their identity, with the most popular, if tongue-in-cheek theory being that the Emblem of Foundations is series creator Shouzou Kaga.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Alear has gotten a variety of nicknames thanks to their red and blue hair. The most common ones are Toothpaste-chan and Colgate-chan for female Alear, since her hair looks like several kinds of toothpaste, and Pepsiman for male Alear, since his hair has the same color scheme as the Pepsi logo and the reference to Pepsi's memetic mascot was too good to pass up. For their alternate design with a red and black color scheme, Evil Alear (due to their disturbing facial expressions) and/or Coke Alear (reflecting Pepsi's main rival Coca-Cola) are regularly used.
  • Fans would often call Jean a "British child" thanks to him having a British accent in the English dub despite his voice actress being American as well as his design not looking too out of place in an old British setting.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Due to complaints about Alear's general haphazard color scheme, some fans regarded, from trailers alone, depictions of Alear with a black outfit and fully red hair as an improvement. This is despite the fact that in-game Alear only sees themselves with said design in literal nightmares, which are actually their memories of worse times, and is visibly horrified to find themselves wearing it in a Nonstandard Game Over.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Griss is a member of the Four Hounds who greatly enjoys being hurt by his enemies. Therefore, it became common to pair him with Alear or any of the other heroes.
• Fountain of Memes: Alear immediately became a source of memes, due to many people finding their design absurd (whether in a good way and/or otherwise). In fact, the majority of memes to come out are solely connected to them.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Engage's art direction was criticized by fans for relying too much on typical quirks from modern anime and straying too far from the more grounded art styles of previous games. The irony of these criticisms is that the art direction for Fire Emblem has always been inspired by anime, and generally reflects the aesthetics of anime that were popular when given installments were first produced. Alear's outlandish hair simply represents the point at which the character design has become a bit over-the-top even by anime standards, and even then, within the cast as a whole they're a bit of an outlier.
  • Some critics disapproved of the number of callbacks to past games, but this has been present since Awakening. However, in those games, the call-backs were relatively subtle, so new players didn't feel as though they were missing much. Awakening took place on Archanea and Valentia, and had weapons wielded by past heroes, but most of them weren't all that obvious. Similarly, Three Houses included several reforgable weapons from past games, such as the Gradvius, and had the items in the Chain of Deals quest for Shamir or Catherine be references to previous games (e.g. the Tome of Crestological Mysteries is a reference to Mystery of the Emblem). Engage, on the other hand, has the Emblem heroes reminisce about specific events in their Paralogues and bond conversations, which are more obvious and harder to fully appreciate if you haven't played their games.
  • Some players disliked how many player units are royals or their retainers, but this dynamic has been common throughout the franchise, with the royal and two retainer format often used in Fates. Engage, however, has a whopping 24 playable characters (roughly two thirds of the playable cast) be royals or retainers, and of the remaining characters, Vander and the twins are stewards to the Divine Dragon, Saphir and Lindon serve their respective royal families, and Mauvier is Veyle's knight. This leaves Jean, Yunaka, Anna, Seadall and Veyle as the only exceptions, and leads to many players being disappointed that most of the units join because they're serving someone in your army, rather than having more diverse reasons for joining up like in other titles.
  • Engage's plot garnered a bit of flak by some players for being too similar to Awakening and Fates, but a game having identical plots to an older game is nothing new to the franchise. For example, The Binding Blade, which predated it by nearly 21 years, also had similar flak for recycling numerous plot elements from Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem, though it did shake up things to not make it a complete copy of the Marth saga, including the final boss of The Binding Blade being an Anti-Villain who was being used by the human antagonist rather than the one using him(though that element has become a case of It Was His Sled at this point) and the lord's father surviving the events of the game, especially if it's a single onscreen appearance. While Engage also does things a bit differently to stick out a little more, including the protagonist and the Mysterious Waif being siblings instead of cousins, some did feel that these differences just weren't enough for the plot to not completely rehash the aforementioned 3DS titles.
  • Previous DLC campaigns- Hidden Truths, Heirs of Fate, Rise of the Deliverance and Cindered Shadows - also had fixed inventories and class progression, but those mechanics were better received because they were separate from the main game and used characters unrelated to main story progress. The Fell Xenologue, however, must be played during the main campaign, which causes balance-related issues with the units you bring in, not to mention that the DLC can be much more difficult depending on when you do it. Additionally, with Cindered Shadows, you only needed to do it once to unlock the bonuses on every playthrough, but you have to do the Fell Xenologue in each playthrough if you want the new characters and classes.
• Friendly Fandoms: A character example. Fans and fan-artists of Yunaka tend to also be fans of Yoshizawa, due to their similar appearances and sharing an English voice actress.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Panette, Fogado and Merrin all ranked low in the Japanese Nintendo Dream poll (Merrin not even making the top 25), while they're among the most popular characters with western fans.
• Goddamned Bats: Any enemies that wield thunder magic. You can only counter attack them on Enemy Phase if you go out of your way to use a Longbow or thunder magic of your own and it's often easy to not even notice they can attack from 3 range without closely looking at them.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Marni's focus on inaccurate Smash weapons makes her among the least threatening of the Four Hounds, but she makes up for it by being an armored unit and thus immune to Break, along with having skills to reduce the impact of effectiveness weapons (or outright nullify it on Maddening), multiple health bars, and later packing Roy for a Last Chance Hit Point on each health bar. Since she often fights alongside another Hound, it's easy for her to bog down your units while the other finishes them off.
  • While Mauvier as a boss is largely support and has relatively weaker offensive capabilities, he makes up for this by being an absolute glacier of an enemy. This is especially bad in later chapters at higher difficulties due to his multiple health bars.
  • Ivy in the 4th Fell Xenologue isn't a major threat, but she makes up for that by making you work very hard to even attack her: she likes to hover over mountains only traversable by other fliers, rarely flies in range of bow-users, is surrounded by an "escort" of Wyvern Knights that make getting into melee with her difficult, her weapons mean she'll rarely take counterattacks, and she has the Stalwart skill to mitigate Astra Storm damage, one of the few reliable ways to hit her. And on Turn 5, four Corrupted Wyverns spawn in the same mountains. As the map is essentially a race to defeat her and Timerra before both sides' reinforcements get out of hand, Ivy's stalling tactics make it much more difficult.
• Good Bad Bugs: If Céline dies in chapter 12, the game mistakenly plays the voice clip of a (male) Solmite NPC thanking Fogado for saving them in place of her proper final words. Players joke that Céline's voice actress is showing off her range, or that Céline is snarking at Fogado for bringing her into a battle that resulted in her death.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Alfred's obsession with his physical health, and more specifically muscles, despite his slim build immediately stops being funny once it's revealed that he has a terminal illness.
  • Simiarly, Céline's tea obsession and her love of drinking it in many of her supports becomes a lot less amusing when it's heavily implied to be a coping mechanism to keep her mind off of Alfred's inevitable death due to his terminal illness.
  • Alear's fear of the Corrupted doesn't seem too out of place, but late in the game, it's revealed that Past Alear remembers their siblings being killed by the Corrupted, and the fear and trauma remain even after they lose their memories.
  • Sombron's words toward Alear in the Bad Ending take on a whole new meaning in the Fell Xenologue DLC story when, in Xenologue 4, you learn that virtually the entire Alternate Elyos is little more than a continent of the dead. Everyone Alear's met up to that point, barring the Four Winds and the Fell Dragon twins, have been Corrupted, including the royal siblings.
    Sombron: Everyone you care about...they are all dead.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: Inverse and GamesRadar+'s reviews caught some flack from long-time fans for giving the game a 6 and 5^note Specifically, two and a half stars out of five out of 10 respectively because its story, characters and social mechanics were of lower quality than Fire Emblem: Three Houses, despite both admitting the gameplay is among the best in the series. Even those who agree with the story criticisms tend not to think it justifies scoring the game that low, especially since both reviews drag the game's overall Metacritic score down.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • The DLC gets this reaction from some. While the Bracelets are undoubtedly very powerful, many feel that they're too good, which undermines a number of chapters which are designed around the player having access to specific emblems (the most obvious examples being Chapters 11 and 22). Furthermore, some feel that the DLC giving you access to SP boosting items invalidates much of the game's balancing, as it gives the player immediate access to some of the more powerful skills right off the bat. The latter complaint especially was exacerbated by the DLC's third wave, which gives the player access to an insane amount of potential SP at any point.
  • Kagetsu gets some dislike for having such incredible base stats and growth rates that he's effectively an objectively better version of some early joining characters like Lapis, which frustrates their fans. He also joins with an internal level of 15/1, meaning he has no trouble leveling up despite being pre-promoted.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The last battle with Griss isn't the first Boss Fight to have the gimmick of the boss teleporting around regularly. The ROM Hack The Last Promise actually did this years ago with one of its boss characters, Sage Galagar.
  • In Amber and Seadall's C support, Seadall calls Amber "gregarious", to which Amber misunderstands and says, "If only my name was Greg!" Come the Fell Xenologue, one of the new characters added is named Gregory.
  • The early misconception that Alear's supports with Veyle were romantic in the Japanese version ended up being prophetic when the DLC added Nel and Rafal, characters who are technically Alear's half-siblings but are definitely romantic options in both languages.
  • Engage having a rare instance of "Fire Emblem" being Title Dropped word-for-word quickly gained meme status for its cheesiness, and then mere months later did Final Fantasy XVI, which was otherwise the tonal opposite of Engage, follow in its footsteps by doing a Title Drop of Final Fantasy at the end of the Final Boss fight.
• Hype Backlash:
  • Unit-wise, Alcryst has gotten this to an extent. Many players praise him as one of the most useful units in the game and even its best archer, especially when promoted to the Tireur d'élite class and engaged with Lyn, dubbing him "All-Crits". This has lead to pushback with some claiming his status as a Game-Breaker is exaggerated by fans and that the game's other archers (such as Etie) can be just as good if not better than him when put in the right class and/or engaged with Lyn. Some go as far as to argue he'd be an average unit if not for his exclusive access to Luna, which itself is not helped by how Luna's reliability to activate ranges from inconsistent to luck-based.
  • Another unit example is the combination of Yunaka and Corrin. On release, this combo was lauded all over the fandom as a Game-Breaker to near Memetic Badass levels, but as time went on more and more issues were discovered with it. Enemies on Maddening will ignore units they have no chance to hit, preventing Yunaka from being an Enemy Phase crit machine, or use Mystic units or Engage attacks to pierce through her evasion. Yunaka's personal base stats are rather low and most of her power comes from early Knife forges, leading to her seeing more use as a temporary Crutch Character than a long-term contributor. And the value of Corrin's other Dragon Vein effects, especially Flames from a Mystical or Dragon unit, was discovered, and these can't be used while Yunaka has her. All this, combined with Panette and Ike taking the stage as a far more potent Game-Breaker combo, have led to this being viewed as merely decent at best and a waste of Corrin at worst.
  • On a somewhat related gameplay topic, armored units' improved viability in this game. While Armored Knights' immunity to Break and equal movement to infantry units have been praised as making them more useful, armored units are way more vulnerable to magic than they usually are, their usual vulnerability to follow up attacks, immunity to break losing usefulness once the classes start getting access to more than weapon type at tier 2, Generals being locked to one weapon and Generals still having lower movement than other infantry even though Great Knight has normal movement. ^note In other games, whilst they suffer from being follow up attacked by magic users, the actual resistance stat of Knight/General is average to good. In Engage, Armor resistance in worse than even traditionally much lower resistance classes like Warriors, Wyvern and Great Knights, this means even low level magic users can tear through high level Knights/Generals given their terrible resistance combined with their traditionally low speed. As a result, while reception to how Engage treated armored units was overwhelmingly positive after the game went out, as time went on and people took a closer look at the game, discussions of how to make armored units more useful resumed, including what Engage had done right, what it did wrong and what more it could do.
• I Knew It!: After early footage implied a slot for a 13th Emblem, many fans correctly guessed this Emblem would be Alear themselves.
• Improved Second Attempt: The manga has been praised for improving on the game's story in some regards, such as giving Alear and the supporting cast more chances to show personality outside of supports, as well as adding more detail and explanation to the culture and society of Lythos (in contrast, in the game you see and hear next to nothing about Lythos beyond interactions with Lumera, to the point that one could be forgiven for thinking she is the only person who currently lives in the region).
• Incest Yay Shipping: Due to the game’s focus on found family, some fans took to shipping these pairs in a more romantic way. Alcryst/Diamant and Alear and any of the other dragons except Zephia and Zelestia are popular choices.
• Iron Woobie: Hooh boy Alear has gone through so much. They not only lost their adoptive mother, but also got through so much hell, ranging from losing all of the rings they had owned by Chapter 10, to the reveal that they were never a divine dragon to begin with, to even their backstory, where they didn't want to risk their father Sombron killing them as a defect and had to act emotionless just to avoid said risk, but they ended up being wounded badly by him once they defeated him, putting them to slumber for 1000 years. That being said, none of this would stop Alear from being a compassionate individual.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Some players criticized Normal mode for giving unlimited uses of the Draconic Time Crystal, unlike the previous games with time reset mechanics' Normal modes, claiming that this makes the game too easy.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The Fell Xenologue DLC gets some of this criticism, especially on Maddening. Not only is it significantly harder than the base game, but some parts feel like a Luck-Based Mission.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • Some players criticize the plot for being too similar to previous entries, from having the same general story as Fire Emblem: Awakening minus the time travel, to multiple characters being almost exactly the same as characters from Fire Emblem Fates, not just the standard archetypes (for example, Lumera plays almost the same role as Mikoto, as a benevolent queen who's the protagonist's mother, dies very early on and is resurrected by the villain as a late-game Climax Boss).
  • Whilst Armored Knights having normal infantry movement was praised, their promoted form, Generals still having low movement has been criticized given this still means the class line falls victim to Can't Catch Up in addition to the game making them hyper sensitive to magic damage.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Many fans tired of the discourse surrounding the Lords and routes of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, or tired of split storylines since Fire Emblem Fates, were interested in the game solely because of the game returning to the singular storyline with multiple endings format that was last seen in Fire Emblem: Awakening (barring remakes and spinoff material).
  • There are fans who admit they only decided to play the game after learning their favorite characters from previous installments were included among the Emblems.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • LGBT Fire Emblem fans (and non-fans) immediately took to Rosado due to speculation surrounding whether he was nonbinary or transgender because of his feminine appearance combined with a male voice actor as well as the curious avoidance of pronouns in his JP introductory tweet. When it came out that Rosado is just a guy that likes feminine things, while some were disappointed or outright angry on account of supposedly being "misled" about his character, others continued to welcome him into the LGBT fold because he serves as representation for gender-nonconforming men.
  • Both genders of Alear are able to S-support just about everyone regardless of their gender, and while several of them are either platonic or simply have undertones, Male Alear has just as many same-sex romances as Female Alear, in a huge contrast to Three Houses where Female Byleth had more options than the male. This was greatly welcomed by the LGBT fanbase, especially for gay male fans who now have an equal opportunity for romantic options like the lesbian fans.
  • Merrin is a massive hit among lesbian fans. Her Bifauxnen design, her excellent voice courtesy of Nanako Mori and Cristina Valenzuela, her tendency to flirt with the ladies in a gentlemanly manner, along with her personal skill benefiting female allies greatly endeared her to them, and her S-support with Alear is quite romantic in nature regardless of Alear's gender. Being a very good unit gameplay-wise certainly helps too.
• Like You Would Really Do It: In Chapter 21, Alear, the protagonist, is seemingly killed off, but hardly anyone expected the death to stick, considering that there are still several chapters left in the game.
• Love to Hate: As far as the alternate counterparts of the Royals seen in the Fell Xenologue DLC go, Alternate Fogado earned the fascination of many players thanks to how Faux Affably Evil he is, owed to his voice acting and reveling in his status as a Corrupted and intentions to kill the mainline counterparts of his retainers, his sister and even himself. And compared to even his universe's Alcyst or Ivy, who are implied to have had their status as Corrupted to blame for their villainy, Fogado instead is implied to have always been as vile as he is.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Engage has several units who are bad (e.g. Framme, Boucheron, Jade, etc.), but the plethora of resources the games provide, customizability of everyone's kits and accessibility to grinding means that any one of them can become a Game-Breaker with enough time and effort. These units, however, lack any kind of potential or staying power that makes using them worthwhile:
  • Nil is infamously useless in the Fell Xenologue, due to his poor stats resulting in him doing little damage and dying in one or two hits (which will result in a game over due to his survival being necessary). It's a different story in the main game, but many players have ended up getting frustrated with having to keep him alive during the Xenologue. He can, however, still use Emblem Rings, so most players just make him a Support Party Member with Micaiah, Corrin, or Byleth for its duration. The In-Universe justification for this, being that Rafal was merely faking his weakness all along, only served to make already frustrated players more pissed.
  • Almost all of the Emblem Rings and Bracelets range in viability between a bit Difficult, but Awesome to use or easy to use on anyone you give them to, with one exception: Emblem Leif, who is notorious for his Adaptable sync skill (when a foe initiates combat, the ability automatically equips the weapon in the user's inventory that is "best" for countering) getting his bearer killed by switching to weapons that result in them getting weighed down, sometimes in spite of his Build boosts (such as his sync weapon, the Master Lance) and doubled when the weapon they already had equipped didn't. Adaptable can also sometimes botch your Enemy Phase kills, where the skill can sometimes cause you to switch to a weapon that failed to kill the enemy when the one you had equipped earlier could have secured you a guaranteed kill; it's especially bad with Leif's Light Brand, a magic sword that is very strong in the hands of magic users (who likely shouldn't be wielding Leif's Ring), but mediocre in the hands of physically-oriented units. Even ignoring Adaptable however, he is generally lacking in useful abilities outside Vantage, which can be inherited and combined with Emblems who use them better, like Ike or Roy. While it's not impossible to create a workable build tailored towards Leif's kit, it gave him a reputation as the hardest Emblem to use properly and it's not uncommon for him to be used solely as fodder for Vantage, Build boosts, or weapon proficiencies as a result.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Lindon, a recruitable enemy in chapter 18, has fallen into this as a result of Guide Dang It!: many players have reported that they didn't know he's recruitable if you talk to him with Alear, Ivy or Hortensia, and accidentally killed him as a result^note Fire Emblem has done this before with enemies (e.g. Gaius and Tharja in Awakening), but he's the only example of recruiting an enemy by talking to them in this game, and other enemies you fight just join your party later with no fear of killing them.. It also doesn't help while not a bad unit or character, he comes into the game so late most people who do recruit him just bench him for the rest of the game.
  • Etie instantly became one once it was discovered that she has the second-worst growth total in the game, beaten by only Vander. Much joking ensued that a Fitness Nut is only barely stronger than an old man.
  • Jean became infamous for posing as a punching bag for most units in various gameplay footage of the arena, especially if he's undertrained. The poor child has become victim of various clips of him getting burnt by Bolganone or stabbed by pretty much most characters wielding a sword/lance. Adding to this is that one of his reactions to being struck in-game is to cry out "why me?!"
  • After the reveal of the rest of the Bracelet Emblems, Alm, Seliph, and Eliwood were given the dubious honor of being the only mainline game lords to not make proper appearances in this game beyond their cameos as bond rings. This especially hit the latter two quite hard, as they are currently stuck with not having a proper 3D model, as Awakening only has them appear as customized Robins. Fans of these characters send their condolences to the trio as a result of this.
  • Azura, while not a main lord, received similar reactions for being upstaged by Camilla, despite Azura being the Deuteragonist on all three routes. The fact that she is known as the Emblem of Revelation (at least outside of Japan), named after a path as neutral as Azura is, does not help.
  • Even outside his Low-Tier Letdown status as listed above, Leif has developed this reputation. Not only is it not uncommon to see jokes about how Olwen is the true Emblem ring of Thracia, of the pre-chapter 10 Emblems obtained, he's the only one who starts off as a Dark Emblem who needs to be saved and cleansed of the Fell Dragon energy tainting him, only to become corrupted and have his free will stripped away again, alongside his Emblem compatriots, two chapters after recruiting him. When you include one lategame chapter where all twelve of the Emblem rings become tainted by the Fell Dragon magic, this meant that Leif got corrupted a total of three times, whereas the others only had it happen at most once or twice.
  • From the moment he was revealed, Gregory became the immediate butt of jokes for how different he is from Griss. From the removal of his tattoos and piercings, his personality changing from a blood thirsty masochist into a timid pushover terrified of getting hurt, and the fact his name was changed to something as mundane as Gregory, the fanbase have taken these characteristics and blown them into hilarious proportions. This toned down a bit once he was released and players got to know him better through his supports, revealing him to be a very friendly and endearing guy.
  • Citrinne sometimes gets mocked (albeit often jokingly) for some of her more airheaded moments, as well as how she uses her extreme wealth for relatively frivolous things rather than funding the army. Some of the players doing this may overlook some of her more insightful moments, such as how she's one of the few who realizes that Yunaka is a former assassin without Yunaka herself admitting it. Not to mention that the limited funds is a gameplay element rather than a story element, as in the story itself Alear's army is never stated to be lacking in money.
  • King Morion is a big source of mockery due to how he makes very stupid decisions that ultimately cost his life and worsen things for the protagonists, from walking straight into Hyacinth's obvious trap despite Diamant's protests, refusing to use Emblem Roy's Ring to aid his battle out of a desire for a "fair fight", and doing nothing when Hyacinth monologues in front of him when he could have easily dealt a killing blow there. It did not escape notice that his name is one letter off from "moron", which is considered fitting.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Louis and Chloé have developed a reputation for this after their supports revealed how much they enjoyed observing other people. Their support chain even involves them spying on a random couple on a date in the fields. The fact Louis' personal skill, Admiration, has him take 2 less points of damage if two female units are adjacent within 2 spaces has also lead to jokes about him fetishizing lesbians, something that was toned down in the English localization.
  • Emblem Micaiah gets this sometimes, due to her tone of voice towards the younger characters in bond conversations, combined with the Wife Husbandry implications of her romance with Sothe in her original game.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Alear immediately became this for several fans once their red and black design was officially revealed in pre-release trailers, with several jokes being made about them committing war crimes.
  • Céline's willingness to shed blood for the good of Firene is sometimes exaggerated into a willingness to shed blood for the sake of it. Her alternate counterpart in the Fell Xenologue almost literally has this personality.
  • In their paralogues, the Emblems are willing to outright kill your units in Classic/Alear either way despite the trials being treated as training and a way for the army to grow closer with the Emblems, something that came as a shock to many fans, expecting their units to be fine in what appeared to be a not-so-serious battle with friendly faces. And this is the Emblems when they’re not corrupted by the Fell Dragon. It also doesn't help that Leif and Eirika's Paralogues are That One Level.
• Moe:
  • Alcryst's low self-esteem and constant shyness have earned him many fans for how cute he is.
  • Lapis is a Rose-Haired Sweetie with a soft voice and an endearing lack of self-confidence.
  • Jean is an adorable little boy who is earnest in everything he does in his goal to become a useful doctor.
  • Boucheron's adorable Gentle Giant demeanor and his soft-hearted tendency to cry easily can be quite endearing to several fans.
  • The real Veyle is a kindhearted girl with an adorable voice who calls her father her ‘papa’.
  • Gregory, unlike his deranged counterpart Griss, is a total sweetheart who loves stuffed animals, and is quite the dorky wuss in battle.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Zephia fitting Veyle with a helmet that will permanently suppress her good personality in favor of her evil personality, effectively killing the real Veyle. This, combined with killing her fellow Hound Marni for trying to break the helmet causes Mauvier to decide she's gone too far and join the Divine Dragon's forces. It also results in some players considering her Alas, Poor Villain sendoff to be unearned.
  • Griss crosses it by not only going along with Zephia's above actions, but even making a cruel comment about the recently deceased Marni, his fellow Hound. Because of this, Mauvier holds him equally responsible for Zephia's misdeeds.
  • Sombron crosses it in his backstory when he destroys an entire village that had sheltered him in anger over being separated from the Emblem of Foundations.
  • Veyle's evil personality crosses it by leading an army to burn the Firenese port of Florra to the ground and raising Hyacinth as a Corrupted to spite Ivy for stealing two Emblem rings.

N-Z

• Nightmare Retardant: Veyle's evil form, along with its Evil Costume Switch, isn't all so intimidating when it appears. Partially due to Veyle still looking physically the same, so while the costume is intended to come off as menacing, it's still Veyle wearing it. It looks like less like a terrifying Fell Dragon Princess and much more like a little girl playing pretend.
• No Yay:
  • Anna and Jean, who are 11 and 10 years old respectively according to the game's files (and are clearly considered children even if these ages aren't canon), are S-Support options for Alear, and Anna's event in the Japanese version implies a Jailbait Wait romance.
  • Alear is 17 in mind and body according to the game files, having stopped aging while they were asleep. Their possible love interests include adults all the way up into their 40s, and unlike the cases of Anna and Jean, their romances were not rewritten to be platonic in the English version. That said, as the ages are only in the game files and nowhere to be found in actual gameplay, their canonicity should be considered dubious at absolute best, or even having been retconned before the official release to make the character ages more ambiguous.
  • Some feel this way about Alear being able to S-Support Nel and Nil from the Fell Xenologue, since they're the offspring of an alternate Sombron, and Alear is Sombron's biological child in the main universe, making them essentially half-siblings.
• Older Than They Think:
  • A common criticism on some of Mika Pikazo's character designs for this game, especially Alear themselves, is that they are either too similar to the ones used for Virtual Youtubers or characters from various Gacha games. Not many people are aware that Pikazo has actually designed Vtuber in the past, and even provided work for a few gacha games, with the most notable example being Fate/Grand Order, where she did art for two servants. She's also hardly the first Fire Emblem artist to have also done work for Gacha games and Vtubers, for example, Senri Kita and Chinatsu Kurahana.
  • Many fans freaked out on the reveal of Byleth's Goddess Dance, which can refresh up to four allies, and claimed it would be a total Game-Breaker. While it did indeed result in Emblem Byleth being considered one of the best Emblems in the game, four-person dancing is not a new addition on the part of Engage: dancing worked like this by default in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, and Reyson (while transformed) and Rafiel could do this in the Tellius games. Byleth's version is actually more restricted than either, as it's limited to one use per Engagement. The only difference this time is that Byleth's Emblem can function as a second Dancer for its use, allowing up to five actions for one character in one turn when Veronica is factored in as well.
  • The protagonist being the only character who can have paired endings was previously done in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, although in that case, Roy only had a handful of possible partners- Lilina, Shanna, Sue, Cecilia and Sophia- whereas Alear can be paired with any playable character who had achieved an A support with them.
• One-Scene Wonder: For many, Evil Veyle is this in the Non-Standard Game Over, as her older and mature design appears only in this brief and potentially missable scene.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • Wave 3 of Engage's DLC content will bring Chrom and male Robin together as one Emblem, titled the "Emblem of Bonds", continuing the ongoing trend of male Robin and Chrom being treated as a set across official Fire Emblem media in response to the pairing's popularity.
  • Related to the above, the Emblems that are past avatars are forced into the more "popular" (with the possible exception of Byleth) versions of each of them rather than being able to choose, with the fans of the opposite gendered forms only having the Enganging outfits as compensation.
  • To some critics, having a story that heavily features heroes from past Fire Emblem titles is this, since they argue that the focus on past games takes away from the development new characters could have received. For example, the Paralogues, with the exception of those for Jean, Anna and Alear, all focus on the Emblem heroes and do little to develop Elyos or those native to the world.
  • Despite Word of God claiming otherwise, fans still feel some of the DLC Emblems seem to have been chosen more out of their popularity than how much sense they made, most notably Camilla being picked over Azura despite the latter having more plot relevance to Fates than her and Veronica being the Heroes rep over the actual protagonists of the game.
• Periphery Demographic: According to interviews, Engage was supposed to be targeted to new and younger players, serving as a introduction to the entire Fire Emblem franchise. However, despite being a success, the game instead became pretty popular with veterans mostly for its callbacks to past games. The game also has a case of Continuity Lockout that is more notable in the case of any Fire Emblem game not on the Switch and Japan-exclusive titles, which meant that it didn't do that well to attract its intended audience.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: A general consensus is that while the story and characters are nothing particular to write home about at best, particularly compared to Three Houses, and poorly done at worst, the gameplay has been greatly improved and is the star of the show, with some calling it the best gameplay the series had seen.
• Popular with Furries: Merrin's very vocal love of dragons, plus her being a Wolf Knight by default and their class outfit sporting a tail, has led to some furry and scaly fans treating her as an Audience Surrogate.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Jean is widely considered a major step forward for "Aptitude" trainee units. Those in past games suffered from various issues that prevented them from being worth the investment ^NoteDonnel had no Lance-wielding promotion options and suffered from terrible cap modifiers, ironically making him worse that others when fully trained. Mozu had a nerfed Aptitude and required an early Second Seal to be useful. Cyril's a genuinely strong unit, but Aptitude is the weakest part of his kit and was, for a long time, the source of a lot of mockery due to it merely giving him average growths thanks to his poor personal growths. Not helping is that Cyril is essentially forced towards a certain role - whereas Donnel and Mozu at least could be given Second Seals to make them more useful, while Jean's Expertise doubles class growths, letting him Min-Max in a variety of classes, and he also starts in a healing Qi-Adept class, giving him immediate utility even while his stats are low.
  • After being suboptimal in most other games (besides Radiant Dawn, Fates and to a lesser extent Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem), armored knights are genuinely great here. They no longer lose movement compared to other base foot classes, have incredible base Defense that lets them shrug off anything short of magic or effective weapons and, most importantly, are immune to Break. This makes them one of the few classes that can reliably contribute to offense on the Enemy Phase, which is a huge niche. Since Great Knight loses the Break immunity, General gets a unique skill. However Generals still have low movement and unlike other games, have the worst resistance stats in the game, meaning even weak enemy mages can tear them apart.
  • Micaiah's Sacrifice skill (a small Cast from Hit Points heal) was typically considered a worthless gimmick in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn that only existed for limited Gameplay and Story Integration, and Micaiah gaining actual healing staves on promotion rendered it even more useless. Her Emblem counterpart in Engage turns it into the far more useful Great Sacrifice, giving the entire party a full heal at the cost of setting the user's HP to One (not a drawback as long as they're out of enemy range) while granting an incredible amount of experience.
  • Hortensia was initially mocked for her weird design, grating voice, and initial perception as another evil little girl. However, once the game released and players got to know her better, she began gaining more fans for having several hilarious and heartfelt supports, and more depth than just being another annoying teen with a surprising amount of emotional baggage. It helps that she has one of the more tragic character arcs in the story as despite being among the youngest of the cast, she goes through some of the most traumatizing moments in the game yet still tries to stay strong for her kingdom and friends. By the end of it, most just wanted to give the poor girl a hug. Her being an amazing Support Party Member and healer also helped.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: Engage manages to salvage boss battles, something Fire Emblem has traditionally struggled with. Bosses in earlier games were often glorified Mooks with very slightly higher stats, and were often the least interesting part of a map. Engage gives human bosses multiple health bars, similar to the monsters in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This not only means they require a lot more effort to take down, but also prevents chapters being cheesed with Warp staves. Bosses are also far more active and involved in their maps rather than sitting on their gates/thrones, either moving to attack, using support abilities from their class or Emblem, or fighting alongside another boss.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • Smash weapons have the drawback of preventing follow-ups and always striking last (even after the foe's follow-up), but some are situationally useful for their high Might on the enemy phase and being one of the few ways to Break Armored foes. A few, however, don't have enough strengths to outweigh these drawbacks.
    • The Hurricane Axe is a magic axe which sounds good at first, but unlike the Levin Sword/Flame Lance it is a Smash weapon and locked to 1 range. Most axe users don't have enough magic to make it worthwhile, and those who do, Anna or anyone who is classed as an axe-wielding Mage Knight, really doesn't want to be attacking last. Unless they have somehow developed the Spd and Bld to become a supreme dodge-tank while equipping a Hurricane Axe, you will never use this. If one has DLC, the Bolt Axe that comes with Camilla is far better simply because it behaves like a proper Axe-based analogue to the Levin Sword/Flame Lance, even when it's locked to her Engage transformation. At the very least, the Hurricane Axe is effective against fliers while Camilla's Bolt Axe is not, so it avoids being completely worthless.
    • Carnwenhan is an S Rank Knife that is also a Smash weapon. While it's incredibly strong for a Knife at 28 Mt (considerably higher than most other S Rank weapons), it is also the heaviest of the Knives, cutting into the unit's Speed along with the other Smash weapon restrictions. Losing Hit/Avoid, striking last, and preventing follow-ups are the last things Knife classes want. And like the Hurricane Axe, it only has 1 range, when striking at a distance is the main draw of Knife weapons. About the only use case for Carnwenhan is if you need to punch through an Armored class to inflict poison, and there are better ways to do so (one of which (Veyle) is even your reward for clearing the chapter Carnwenhan is found in).
  • The Wyrmslayer is in an odd position in Engage. Because Corrupted Wyrms don't have the "Dragon" unit type, only "Fell Dragon" and "Corrupted", it's only useful against enemy Wyvern Knights, which are typically more practical to fight with bows. The 13th Emblem allows Dragon effective weapons to also affect Fell Dragons, but its might is too low to deal meaningful damage even then.
  • The Flame Lance is lackluster as far as magic weapons go, and it being Mauvier's go-to weapon as a boss feels like a mercy. It's weaker than the Levin Sword by 3 Might despite being heavier, less accurate and less accessible, and it doesn't even have Smash and Merciless utility going for it like the Hurricane Axe.
  • Leif's Master Lance quickly gained infamy for its very high weight of 16, which will slow down most units even with Leif's Build bonuses. This would've not have been so bad if Leif's Adaptable Engage Skill didn't force it on you if you have no other ranged weapons or you get attacked by a sword unit and have no other lance in hand, and this has been known to get characters doubled and killed, being one of the two major reasons for Leif's Low-Tier Letdown status. It's so bad that some prefer to intentionally leave Leif's Bond Level at 9 on anyone using him for combat that doesn't have a Javelin, to ensure they never unlock it.
  • Both of Micaiah's S rank Bond Rings, Sothe and Elincia, are considered two of the worst ones the game, largely because they inherit the terrible gameplay skills both had from their home game; Bane for Sothe, and Mercy for Elincia. Bane has a low Dexterity chance of reducing an enemy's HP to 1, which is something you'll almost never see use for unless you're really struggling against Armors, and even then a magic user will solve the problem much more reliably. Meanwhile, Mercy will ensure the unit cannot kill enemies and will instead leave them at 1 HP, which is great for feeding kills to other units but otherwise makes the wearer completely useless.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Engage is significantly more challenging than the previous game, Three Houses, in several ways. The maps are overall tougher, often featuring mechanics (like more environmetal effects and re-positioning your units) that can hinder or put pressure on the player, while enemies generally forgo the Mook Chivalry seen in Three Houses to swarm you and have their advantages (likes bows against fliers) amplified. The hit calculation has been changed^note Going back to the "hybrid" method seen in earlier installments rather than the "2RN" used in Three Houses, meaning enemies are more accurate overall. Certain classes have seen some of their Three Houses advantages Nerfed, including cavalry and fliers. Unlike in Three Houses, in which Byleth and the house leaders were powerful units, Alear is an unexceptional unit whose primary strength is the ability to increase adjacent units' offense and defense. The existence of the Break mechanic and Chain Attacks (which, admittedly, the player can use) make defeating enemies in Enemy Phase harder. Finally, money is scarcer in the game and it is harder to gain experience through skirmishes.
• Signature Scene:
  • The end of Chapter 10 and all of Chapter 11 are the most widely talked-about part of the game, for the gut-rending gameplay shake-up of losing all the non-DLC Emblems you've acquired so far and having to face them used by the enemy for the next 10 chapters.
  • The end of Chapter 22, in which Alear, despite having been revived as a Corrupted, reaches their limit, but then the gathered Emblems revive Alear as an Emblem, specifically, the Fire Emblem. It's one of the most talked-about parts of the game, for better or for worse.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: Although still a Cliché Storm by the series’ overall standards, the narrative begins to improve once the characters enter Brodia. The plot no longer rushes from place to place purely for the Emblem Rings, the supporting cast begins to expand, and after Sombron’s revival and the rings are all taken the overall story takes shape and its stakes begin to feel more tangible rather than theoretical. Many also feel this is true of the characters, with the Firene cast having mostly one-note supports with each other, while those joining at Brodia and onwards have far more interesting supports and enable better ones for the Firene cast. Unfortunately, this is also the point at which the playable roster rapidly expands, making it difficult to see many supports except for the units you're particularly invested in.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The character models are very prone to clipping. Some of the worst offenders are Female Alear's ponytail clipping through the floor while doing sit-ups, Mauvier's cape clipping through his horse, fishing rods clipping through the Spirit Mask every time Alear throws a line when fishing (as long as they're wearing it, of course), and characters frequently having parts of their hair clip through their clothing.
  • Much like Three Houses, cutscenes in Engage feature the characters' 3D models standing in front of a 2D panoramic backdrop. If flames or running water are shown in the background, they can be seen as static. One particular goofup shown in these kinds of cutscenes is in the fourth chapter of the Fell Xenologue, where Mauvier looks as if he's running in midair due to the camera angle and backdrop.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • As it involves summoning heroes from past Fire Emblem games in Fighting Spirit form, and merging with them as major game mechanics, this may be the closest we get to a Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE follow-up, but as a proper Strategy RPG this time.
  • Engage as a whole is highly reminiscent of the Game Boy Advance entries in the series, in both art-style and gameplay. (Something noted by the developers in interviews) Lyrical theme aside, the opening movie is practically a modernized take on the opening of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. Furthermore, both Engage and Sacred Stones hit many of the same story beats.
  • Wyvern Ride can be seen as a simplified version of Panzer Dragoon. It's also very reminiscent of the Saucer of Peril minigame from Banjo-Tooie.
  • Due to sharing a similar quirky tone in terms of story and characters, some people get the feeling that this is what Puyo Puyo would be like as a Tactical RPG.
• Squick:
  • While Evil Veyle might be ticking off a number of people's boxes, the Fan Disservice comes in from the fact that, similar to the empty-husk witches from Fire Emblem Gaiden, this is someone who is brainwashed with her fake evil side suppressing her real good side. It gets worse in the Non-Standard Game Over where she even puts on noticeable eye shadow and lipstick to go with her evil switch, but by that point, the real Veyle is effectively dead/not going to be freed from it anytime soon.
  • For some fans, being able to S-support a child Anna and this option being explicitly romantic in the Japanese version of the game is garnered this reaction and drew up some controversy.
  • Some fans are uncomfortable with being forced to see under Eirika's short skirt during combat. The black thing underneath the skirt is supposed to be Modesty Shorts, but it can be easily confused for black panties, resulting in further awkwardness to the point that people opt to use night and day to switch to her twin brother Ephraim just to avoid the unnecessary supposed panty shots. It's especially odd, since most official art outside The Sacred Stones and Engage lengthened Eirika's skirt to be a bit longer.
  • Nel's relationship with Alear becoming this in the Fell Xenologue garnered quite a lot of backlash due to the implication that while the Alear of the alternate Elyos isn't related, the main Alear is related to Sombron, and on a technical level, this also means that they are half-siblings to Nel and Nil/Rafal. In turn, this results in Nel's implied crush on the main Alear to border too much on Brother–Sister Incest. It doesn't help that this also contradicts Alear and Veyle's supports, as well as the fact that Alear can also marry Nel and Rafal
• Superlative Dubbing: The English voice acting has been seen as some of the best in the series, helping to elevate an otherwise Cliché Storm script. Some noted standouts are Megan Taylor Harvey, who uses a contralto for Veyle's evil personality so different from her typical Token Mini-Moe roles that it's hard to tell they're the same person before the reveal, Jamison Boaz, a relative newcomer to videogame voice acting who gives a memorably hammy performance as the sadomasochistic Griss while playing his complete opposite with the DLC's Gregory, and Yunaka allowing Laura Post to show massive range in a single character, as she not only has both a fake peppy and true serious personality, but is also a talented impressionist in-universe. (Laura Post's impressions of Ivy and Micaiah are almost spot-on)
• Surprise Difficulty: The Xenologues, especially on the higher difficulties, are significantly harder than the base game, especially if one chooses to do it early on in their playthrough.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Bloom in the Breeze", the Firene map theme, has a main melody that sounds a lot like the folk ballad "Scarborough Fair".
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • Within hours of its reveal, Engage received flack for its odd character design choices and for having summoning characters from past games as a core mechanic, with some deriding it as being "Heroes on a console".
  • When the second trailer dropped, it was revealed that the rings summon the same person regardless of being good or evil, and instead simply corrupt the Emblem, which some felt was a waste of a chance for the rings to at least summon past antagonists, who could have matched the corresponding rings belonging to their respective heroes (with Arvis and the Black Knight being prime examples). However, the final battle against Sombron introduces "Dark Emblems", who are in fact the villains from each Emblem's respective games, meaning this speculation paid off in the end.
  • As Emblems were being revealed, fans of Male Corrin, Female Byleth, and (with Chrom in the DLC) Female Robin showed displeasure at the according Emblems only representing the opposite gendered avatar. While there is the argument of wanting a Gender-Equal Ensemble for the twelve story rings, those fans questioned what was preventing them from being included within the Emblem as well, after both Byleth and Shez had gender options in Three Hopes and Dimitri, Edelgard, and Claude were revealed to be a single DLC Emblem.
  • The DLC choices were generally well liked, but the decision to include Camilla and Veronica was very quickly viewed negatively by players due to the two characters Spotlight-Stealing Squad nature compared to other characters from said game that many felt made more sense (Azura and Alfonse/Sharena). While both bring good gameplay elements, the choice to use both soured some players on purchasing the DLC as a result.
• That One Attack:
  • Chain Attacks are a great weapon but if your foes are Backup Units, you can be sure it will be used against you to the point even One-Man Army build units aren't safe.
  • Warp Ragnarok, when it's used against you by Celica in her Paralogue, multiple foes throughout Chapter 11 and Griss when you fight him with the Emblem Ring. The ability allows the user to teleport and attack a unit that would otherwise be out of range, similar to the Witches from Fire Emblem Gaiden, which can easily result in a seemingly safe unit ending up as a casualty. Griss, in Chapter 20, can also use the skill Ragnarok Warp, which reverses the order of the teleport and attack, allowing the user to attack first then teleport to safety.
  • The Ballistae in Leif's Paralogue give a ridiculous Might and Hit bonus over a regular ballista, to the point at which they're a threat even to armored units. And they're positioned all across the map, often with overlapping ranges.
• That One Boss:
  • Zephia in previous chapters is already annoying due to being a powerful flying mage with multiple Revival Crystals, but Zephia in Chapter 17 armed with Emblem Sigurd is several magnitudes worse. If you've been leery of giving Sigurd's ring to mages or fliers, Zephia's performance here might change your mind: with 8 movement she almost gets the full boost from Momentum without even needing to Engage, Magic-damage Override with Momentum will rip through your army if you lined your units up, she primarily attacks from a distance, and she has Canter to hit-and-run. And as a flier, she will often Canter over tiles inaccessible to land-based units, meaning blitzing her down in one turn probably won't be an option. It doesn't help that she's at the end of a Boss Bonanza, supplanting Veyle as the real boss of the map unlike what you'd expect.
  • Chapter 24's boss, Past Alear. Ignoring how difficult they are to get to with avalanches blasting you back every few turns, simply hitting them is a huge pain in the neck. Not only is the ground littered with avoid-increasing fog, but they also have Marth's Emblem Ring, granting them the crippling Lodestar Strike, on top of boosting their avoid even further. What's worse is that they have access to weapons that cover almost every single unit weakness. If they get anywhere near Alear, expect a one-way ticket to the Time Crystal/Game Over screen.
  • The boss of Chapter 25, Corrupted Queen Lumera. A strong attacker with three life bars, surrounded by two Corrupted Sages using Meteor and two Corrupted Martial Masters Chain Guard-ing all of the above, or using Entrap to bring you closer to the boss. There are also two Wyrms guarding the boss, so even just approaching them, much less defeating them, is no small task.
  • Fell Xenologue Chapter 3 has a monster of a boss in the form of Alternate Diamant, who is equipped with Emblem Veronica. Once Alt. Diamant aggroes (either by an Astra Storm shot, or by taking out Alt. Alcryst), he responds with Summon Hero — and he pulls Emblems, specifically Sigurd, Celica and Marth, fully loaded with everything but their Engage Attacks/Skills. Sigurd is a 13 MOV juggernaut that needs no introduction, Celica can still put the hurt with Warp Ragnarok, but Marth is even worse because he has Falchion, and all of your mission-critical units are Dragons (who can't reclass in Fell Xenologue), so letting him reach any of them is a shortcut to the Time Crystal/Game Over screen. Alt. Diamant himself isn't a slouch either, having strong stats across the board and access to Hliðskjálf, able to attack without being countered and having enough Spd/Mag to shred anyone with a low Res stat. His assault is also aided by reinforcements spawning directly behind you on a narrow bridge map, pushing you into him. And worst of all, he and his Emblem buddies come back for the final chapter!
  • Speaking of the final chapter, while Final Bosses are usually exempt from this trope, Fell Nil deserves a fair mention due to the mechanics of the fight. In addition to to the tiles they sit on negating 50 damage until the last one, the game doesn't tell you that the boss also gets Damage Reduction for each Alternate Royal alive, and unlike Sombron's Dark Emblems, the Alternate Royals actually use their Engage Attacks. Worse yet, the boss destroys parts of the map as they move along, instantly killing every unit caught in the attack and permanently boosting their stats for each victim — and if this kills one of your units or an Alternate Royal, they steal their Class Skill. This turns the fight into a mad dash to kill the Alternate Royals while chasing the boss, and there's not a lot of time to get through their Revival Crystals. While it's a fitting final challenge for the Fell Xenologue, it's a challenge you'd prefer to bring your main game builds for, but since the Fell Xenologue doesn't allow that, the map feels dramatically overtuned.
• That One Level:
  • To some, Chapter 11. You lose the Emblems (unless you have the DLC Emblem Bracelets, which remain with you throughout the game) and have to deal with the Corrupted using them against you, the Emblems being switched around on the enemies throughout the battle: Celica closing in and hitting you from a far range, Micaiah freezing you from a distance, Leif lessening the damage on whoever has him as well as equipping whichever weapon your units would have a disadvantage against so you can’t Break them, Roy making sure you can’t one-round an enemy, Marth dealing an extra hit and Sigurd ensuring an enemy will catch up to you. All of that and you also lose the ability to rewind time, preventing you from undoing the loss of a unit on Classic and forcing you to restart if Alear is defeated. Avoiding losing units can be difficult on Classic, especially if the Corrupted with Emblem Micaiah uses a Freeze staff on one of your units in the rear, enabling the Corrupted to catch up while they’re a sitting duck. There’s also the fact that you’re stuck with the same units you used in the last battle, which can be quite problematic if you don’t have a suitable team for this Chapter. You do get the Draconic Time Crystal back, as well as Emblem Lyn and Emblem Lucina after Ivy's Heel–Face Turn, but they won't allow you to rewind past the turn where you get them, on top of her and her retainers appearing at the last leg of the stage when you’ve likely dealt with much of the Corrupted already. To make matters worse, the Four Hounds then start closing in on you, only giving you a few turns to escape. And lastly, the enemy is wise to place Roy and Leif on the two Corrupted blocking the Escape panel to ensure you won’t get away too easily.
  • Chapter 13 is only the game's second Fog of War map and is a huge step up from the first. It's a very big area with fliers harrying you from the northeast lake (dousing its torches on the way), cluttered debris to break through to reach villages quickly, and cleverly hidden Snipers and Mages that can easily kill units if you don't properly scout for them. You also face two multi-health bar bosses at the same time, and both will rush you down once you get in range of either. It doesn't help that you're introduced to Emblem Ike here, who teaches you that you can use him to break obstacles, causing some players to waste their first Engage to do so due to thinking it's necessary for Demolish to work (it's a Sync Skill, meaning it's active even when not Engaged).
  • Chapter 15 is an escape map that introduces miasma, which subtracts a whopping 20 from your units' Defense and Resistance if they stand in it and grants that same bonus to any enemies who stand in it. The map is a winding indoor maze, with you being unable to see into rooms until you open the doors, which, combined with the enemy having the terrain advantage, makes proceeding to the exit rather difficult. Not helping is this map introducing Corrin, but locking her to Seadall, potentially the worst character to have her for this particular situation. (The tutorial advises you to clear miasma using her Dragon Vein, but the Qi Adept Dragon Vein will replace the miasma with ice pillars that'll block you just as much as the enemy, and Seadall has to forgo dancing to use it)
  • Chapter 16. The rising tides make the map a slog to traverse if the player doesn't have a lot of fliers or Rescue Staves, and frequent reinforcements from the forts encourages rapid movement. Receding tides can end up trapping units with reinforcements or even the two bosses if you're not careful. It's also the first map with Corrupted Wyrms and their massive defenses and long ranged fixed-damage attacks.
  • Chapter 17. Six bosses, all with Emblems. It's not uncommon for players to think This Is Gonna Suck as soon as they get to the preparations screen.
  • Chapter 19. Much of the map is covered in miasma. You can clear out the miasma with the cannons, but their range is limited, so you'll inevitably have to lure out Marni and Mauvier while hoping they don't bring too many of their allies along. This doesn't get any better during skirmishes on the same map as you start smack dab in the middle of the most miasma-dense portion of the map meaning high avoid units and units with on-map effects like Ike's Great Aether or Roy's Blazing Lion are outright required. Skirmishes, especially on higher difficulties, are immensely enemy-dense too, meaning you will have to gamble putting one of your own units on a miasma square or target an enemy being buffed by one.
  • Chapter 20. While Griss is surprisingly easy once you get to him, the problem is getting to him. Not only is the level dark, but an enemy staff user has Entrap, which allows him to pull your units to his location, which will likely result in that unit's death when the enemies attack. Griss can also do hit and run attacks with Ragnarok Warp until he gets tired of it and teleports to the throne, where he's guarded by many strong enemies.
  • Chapter 21. Evil Veyle is one of the easier bosses in the game, but the sheer amount of enemies make this chapter a brutal one to get through. You'll first need to get through several generals, snipers, paladins, and bow knights, with two corrupted wyrms near your starting location and one blocking the path forward. Once Zephia and her wyvern knights start moving, a bunch of wyvern knights will spawn right behind you, and when combined with the reinforcements on the left and right sides of the map, they can easily close in on your units. There's also a high priest with an Entrap staff near the boss to beware of. After you enter combat with the boss or one of the enemy units on the big protection tile, every enemy that spawned as a reinforcement will respawn simultaneously. At that point, rushing down the boss is a must before you’re overwhelmed.
  • Chapter 24. The map is divided into three paths, running west to east, with the boss in the middle of the east one. The boss can trigger avalanches, knocking units in the lanes backwards, and while that would seem like a mere annoyance, you only have 15 or 20 turns to defeat the boss. It definitely doesn't help that there are many reinforcements, and at the end of each lane, there's a ballista manned by a Corrupted.
  • Leif's paralogue, in true fashion like the map its inspired by (minus a Saias and Reinhardt stand-in^*There is a Saias stand-in, but he's a monk with only slightly higher stats than everyone else and a couple lives; no 10 leadership stars. You're also not likely to fight him because the Reinhardt stand-in is Leif himself.), is downright nasty to get through without any casualties. The enemies aren't especially difficult, but the map is covered with ballistae to carpet nearly every tile on the way through the bridge and low defense units going down to a cheap shot is a very real risk. There's no way across other than either using the bridge or throwing a flying unit through a nearly a suicidal charge to cross the river and almost get shot down immediately. They'll also pick off any mages and healers that you might use for the armored knights. This is all in time with a thief at the bottom of the map from where you start who will attempt to cross the bridge and escape, if you're not willing to rush in. A small saving grace is that the ballistae are map objects instead of actual units, and of the three ballistae closest to your starting position, only one of them is manned by a Sniper, so as long as you kill any enemy Snipers near ballistae, they are no longer a threat to your team. As for the boss, Leif himself still possesses his Engage attack that can easily destroy any weakened unit that fights him or put a healthy unit in range of dying to more ballista fire and like in Thracia, the first bridge will get destroyed once most of your army has crossed it.
  • Eirika's Paralogue's main gimmick is large groups of Heroes who will gang up and wear even your tankiest units down with Chain Attacks, and thinning their numbers is harder than it looks since they're deceptively durable. There's also plenty of mages spread around to zone out armored units, a lot of Freeze staves in Eirika's group, flier reinforcements from the sides, time pressure in the form of two Thieves, and two Wyrms you have to deal with at the very start. Speaking of deceptively durable, Eirika herself is tough to take down as she has 3 health bars, balanced defensive stats, and the Blue Skies skill lowering damage taken. Her Twin Strike is also a serious threat.
  • Marth's paralogue seems pretty straightforward despite being among the last Paralogues to be unlocked, but if you dare to raise the difficulty level to even Hard mode, it gets really frustrating. While taking out the thieves are one thing and they just give out consumables, the chest area is surrounded with heroes who will gang up on you if you ever try to Warp someone alone just to secure the chests. One of them is also equipped with a Brave Sword that you cannot obtain. Once you've taken care of that, comes the next gimmick after one armor knight smashes the door to Marth open: After a few reinforcements, there will be an endless supply of Wyvern Knight reinforcements from near Marth's side, and they don't give out EXP on being killed (so no grinding for you). The most jarring problem is that Marth really positions his army well enough: You have to contend with multiple units possessing revival stones (one Armor Knight, one Sniper, one Sage) and they all execute the strategy of marching together once Marth gets moving. What does this mean? The army can and will gang up and snipe any stragglers getting within their range with a mix of physical and magical damage that even buying the DLC and getting Soren's Bracelet for 'Assign Decoy' to tank them might not help much. All while the infinite Wyvern Knight reinforcements keep coming and coming and may even take out one stray member of your army. Bottom line, if you're trying to face Marth head-on at higher difficulties, you're in for a nasty surprise at how well Marth aced his army management.
  • Alear's Paralogue seems like a standard "defeat the boss before he escapes" map, and a relatively easy one at that. However, once the boss dies, a wave of reinforcements immediately appears, which can be a nasty surprise to first-time players, especially if they neglected to kill the other starting enemies and/or defeated the boss near the end of the Player Phase. To make matters worse, you must complete this map if you want the Pact Ring so Alear can have a paired ending.
  • Out of the DLC Paralogues, Camilla's tends to be the most aggravating to beat no matter when in the game you do it. The map has very cramped and winding pathways to ferry non-fliers around the map to even reach Camilla herself, with enough flying enemies around to make the game suffer from noticable slowdown. Camilla's ability to destroy terrain as you go makes the map more irritating as it opens up paths for enemies (usually flying) to corner your units and force players to spend more time protecting exposed frail units.
  • Fell Xenologue Chapter 5. You start with Alear, your Player Character trapped in the center and being bombarded by ranged attackers, while Nel is under attack from her brother Nil, and you lose if either one dies. Naturally, that puts a lot of pressure on you to try to save them as quickly as possible, but if you try to cheese the map in order to do so, the game will punish you with, among other things, enemy reinforcements. As a result, the difficulty of this map caused many people to Rage Quit, or at least turn the difficulty down from Maddening.
• That One Sidequest: While Sigurd's paralogue is fairly straightforward despite who you're dealing with, there is an optional objective within it that will present a greater challenge; in the bottom-left corner of the map, there are two mages with 1000 gold each, one with a Thoron and one with a Bolganone, and as opposed to being Squishy Wizards, they're both certified Lightning Bruisers; they have high defence and resistance that means even your strongest units will deal low damage, high enough speed to avoid most attacks and double your units, enough magic attack to possibly kill even your most high resistance units, and both possess multiple health bars, the Thoron user having two while the Bolganone user has three. Needless to say, if you're really that desperate for 2000 gold(which on higher difficulties, you probably will be), you'll need to be plan out your strategy against them out in advance and try and conserve your Emblems until you reach them. ^{justified by...}To be fair to those two, they're a fun little Mythology Gag; Sigurd's paralogue is based on chapter 10 of Genealogy of the Holy War, which saw the player faced with Julius and Ishtar, who would leave after either one of them were defeated, or they defeated one of your units. All of this happens before moving on to Chalphy to take down Arvis once and for all. The Thunder Sage is representing Ishtar, and the fire sage, Julius.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The removal of paired endings, save for whoever Alear choses to get with, has been criticized by players for being an unnecessary change that results in every characters supports becoming wasted plotlines, since the characters end up ignoring whatever potential development they received during it, and instead have the same ending regardless of who they interacted with. It sticks out heavily since not only was there no reason given for the removal of paired endings, but Engage is the first non-remake mainline title since The Binding Blade to not have paired endings of any kind outside of the protagonist, making it strange that they were removed completely outside of only Alear.
  • Generals having a terrible resistance stat instead of an average or above average resistance, to the point that even the traditionally lower resistance classes like Wyvern Knight, Great Knight and Warrior, have much higher resistance stats has been criticized as bad for balance. The General class already did terribly against magic users in other games, where they had normal to above average resistance, due to their low speed meaning that even lower level magic enemies could usually launch a follow up attack against them, but in Engage, Generals are both Weak to Magic and slow enough to be doubled by magic enemies, essentially making encountering a magic foe a death sentence to any General classed unit..
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Ephraim being part of the Emblem of the Sacred, but only appearing in gameplay, felt to some like a waste, considering he gets no Bond Conversations or role in the story while Eirika does, even though there is in-universe justification that Ephraim refuses to show up during peacetime. While Eirika mentions him in her Paralogue, he doesn't appear, much less fight alongside her. While his appearance is appreciated, some feel that the game could have removed him and nothing would have changed. This was exacerbated with the DLC release of Chrom and Robin as the Emblem of Bonds, because Robin does have a role in supports and actually fights alongside Chrom in their Divine Paralogue, and Ephraim himself has additional voice clips that didn't make it to the final game, making his lack of presence all the more jarring.
  • While it was no surprise that Queen Lumera was going to die, some fans feel that the game could have explored her character a bit more. She is introduced in the story at the end of the first chapter and killed by the end of the third chapter, with the rest of her involvement revealed posthumously.
  • Queen Ève initially seems like an important figure in the story, having been friends with Queen Lumera, as well as one of the four rulers of Elyos. However, she only plays a major role in one chapter, when the heroes save her from the Elusian army, and is barely even mentioned afterward.
  • Corrupted Hyacinth could have easily had an entire chapter to himself, like Lumera later. Unfortunately, he's part of Chapter 17, which means he has to share spotlight with five other bosses, including your first real fight with Veyle. This is his only chapter before dying again, so the emotional drama with his children gets lost in the rest of the map. It doesn't help that he's arguably the weakest of the map's bosses.
  • More than a few fans felt underwhelmed by Past Alear and their characterization as a Noble Top Enforcer for Sombron, as their initial appearance in trailers and flashbacks cast them in a far more villainous light which led to speculation of there being an evil-aligned route and/or hard-hitting Amnesiac Dissonance that they felt would've been more interesting.
  • Fans were not happy with how the Dark Emblems Sombron summoned in the endgame were handled, as they not only share the same 3D model of a hooded figure, but they also lack voiced lines, feeling as if the Dark Emblems were wasted potential. Grima especially was hit quite hard by it, as the game only refers to him as "Despair", though this is likely due to the fact that Sombron already has "Fell Dragon" as his epithet and having two characters with that epithet in the same game would generate confusion.
  • Some feel the crown heirs' younger siblings should have played a bigger role in the story, as they all each lose their Plot Armor only a few chapters after their recruitments and resultantly get Demoted to Extra.
  • For some, the Emblems themselves are this. Only two of them- Marth and Sigurd, as Alear and Lumera's personal Emblem rings- have more than an incidental role in the plot apart from being MacGuffins, and their characters are not explored in much depth. As such, those hoping for a crossover reminiscent of Heroes will likely be disappointed.
  • Some fans are disappointed that the Fell Xenologue only covered the alternate counterparts of the royals and Four Hounds (though some unique battle dialogues with the former do give insight into what the alternate retainers, as well as Saphir and Lindon, who serve their countries' royal families, were like), with the rest of the cast never appearing.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Céline's battle quotes and some of her supports imply that, despite disliking violence, she's becoming more ruthless on the battlefield for the sake of her nation. This has the makings of a good character arc but unfortunately, she's one of the royals with only temporary Plot Armor, and makes no appearances after Chapter 5, giving her less screentime than the other second children of the royal families.
  • Lindon, a retainer of the royal family, is incredibly loyal to Ivy and Hortensia, to the point that he can be convinced to do a Heel–Face Turn if Ivy, Hortensia or Alear tells him that Ivy is still alive. He even has special dialogue when pitted against the alternate versions of the Elusian princesses in the Fell Xenologue. Despite all this, he and Ivy cannot support with one another.
  • In an example that overlaps with They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character, Lindon and Hortensia's supports reveal that King Hyacinth had an older brother whom Lindon served as a retainer, until the brothers clashed over the throne and Hyacinth's older brother lost, leaving the country behind. How did Hyacinth win the throne? What kind of person was Hyacinth's brother, and how did he initially have Lindon's loyalty? Where did Hyacinth's brother end up going? Those questions are never answered.
  • While Yunaka's past as a former Brodian assassin is an interesting detail for the character, the game doesn't go into much detail as to who exactly the assassin and their mentor worked for, who they targeted and who their clients were. A Brodian assassination group sounds as though it would have been an important part of the setting, but it's not brought up outside of the assassin's supports.
  • It has been argued that Alcryst and Ivy's support conversations would have been more interesting if it took longer for him to forgive her for her part in his father's death, since it could have been a chance to show more of his surprisingly vengeful and aggressive side and explore how differently he acts towards his enemies in contrast to his allies. Instead, he just instantly forgives her once she apologizes early in their C-support and spends the rest of their conversations acting like his usual mopey self. Contrast how Hortensia doesn't even start to warm up to Veyle until midway through their B support and admits in their A support that it may be difficult for her to fully forgive Veyle.
  • Unlike previous games, there are no paired endings for characters besides Alear. Fans who enjoy Shipping in Fire Emblem lament Ship Tease in supports that goes nowhere and that several characters who could have been good couples can't officially be paired. Even apart from shipping, some are disappointed that surviving characters' paired endings with Alear are often not at all different from their solo endings, with some exceptions (Alfred lives much longer if he pairs with Alear), compared to how in some games, paired endings can drastically change how a character's life turns out.
  • Alear possibly having a dragon form is briefly discussed when talking to Morion, with Alear being unsure about if they can or not, hinting that Alear having a dragon form is something that will be followed-up or resolved. Despite this, and Alear having a dragonstone being revealed later into the game, Alear having a dragon form is never discussed again, and the dragonstone is used for a different plot- the fact that Alear's dragonstone was in Veyle's possession and breaks during Alear's Disney Death reveals that Alear is Veyle''s sibling- with some players wondering why the idea was mentioned only to never get a proper resolution. One possible reason is that Alear's dragon form would almost certainly be at least half Fell Dragon, spoiling the main twist, but it's still disappointing.
  • The DLC allows Veyle to support with Zelestia, Gregory, Madeline, and Nel, which make sense since the former three are alternate versions of the people she grew up with, and the latter is a fellow Fell Dragon. But oddly enough, she doesn't have any supports with Rafal, who shares similar circumstances with her. Both Veyle and Rafal were manipulated by Sombron into committing evil acts and have made efforts to redeem themselves. One would think they'd get supports where they bond over their shared experiences or offer their differing perspectives on what it was like being Sombron's child and pawn, their relationships with their respective Divine Dragons, or even them growing closer as half-siblings, the latter of which happens in her supports with Nel. However, Rafal and Veyle cannot support with one another.
  • Aside from Timerra and Soren, there are barely any unique interactions between canon Emblem wielders and Emblem Bracelets originating from the same world as their rings (e.g., Alear with Tiki, Hortensia with the three rivals, or Seadall with Camilla).
  • The Emblem Bracelets also don't have any interaction with their own Dark Emblems. While it's understandable for Veronica, this actually has some potential with Robin and Chrom against Despair / Grima, Hector against Nergal, and Soren and Ashnard - who is actually his true father.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Ever since he was revealed, fans have had many debates as to what Rosado's gender identity really is. He is a crossdresser who prefers feminine things, and always tries to look as feminine as possible. Even though it's very possible that Rosado is just a gender non-conforming guy, with official sources even claiming that that's the case, more than a few fans have theorized that it may go a bit further, with him possibly being non-binary or even a closeted transgender woman.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • There is only one case of an enemy who can be converted to an ally by talking to them- namely Lindon. Because the mechanic doesn't show up elsewhere, some players ended up killing Lindon by mistake rather than recruiting him.
  • There is only one timed map, which is the only map where your characters can be moved by enemy terrain manipulation.
  • Like in Three Houses, units can have unique dialogue if paired with other units for mealtime (as opposed to their generic lines for dishes they like or dislike), but in Engage, it happens randomly, and is so rare that players may only see those unique exchanges a handful of times.
  • Many of the DLC Paralogues feature this, coming from other games:
    • Veronica's Paralogue has switches that move terrain with your allies as well as the single Mage Cannon enemy outside the Fell Xenologue.
    • Hector's Paralogue has the poison jets that hit both sides at once.
    • Soren's Paralogue features the encroaching smoke and lava along with having the only Enchanter enemies (who can't even take advantage of their class skill to access the convoy) outside of the Fell Xenologue.
    • Chrom and Robin's Paralogue has the barrier requiring three crystals broken on the same turn.
    • Fell Xenologue 4 is the only map where yellow-team enemies appear.
    • Fell Xenologue 5 provides the only map where Alear is an auto-deployed uncontrollable immobile character who needs protecting, like Tiki in her join map in Awakening.
    • Finally, Fell Xenologue 6 has half the boss's moveset being instant kills and map destruction resulting in its powering up and potentially learning some Personal Skills from characters it defeats mid-battle.
• Unexpected Character:
  • While most of the DLC Emblems weren't particularly unexpected, Soren and Veronica of all characters joining as DLC was quite surprising to a number of fans.
  • Within the game itself, few players expected Abyme, the boss of Chapter 3, to return as Chapter 18's boss. Given her limited dialogue and the large gap between her appearances, some players may not realize Chapter 18's boss is the same character.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Some characters that are supposed to look older look more like young people trying to pass as middle-aged, which can throw some people off.
  • Some of the Emblems' heights are off compared to their normal counterparts. For instance, Male Robin is normally the same height as Chrom, yet in this game is as short as Female Robin. Camilla has it the hardest though: in Fates and beyond she's a Statuesque Stunner who's around six to six and a half feet tall, but here she's as short as Edelgard and Tiki. Ike and Soren, meanwhile, are both significantly taller than normal (preserving their height difference, while making relatively average-height Ike extremely tall and short Soren average height), which combined have the side-effect of making Soren much taller than Camilla.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The Four Hounds, save Mauvier, can come off as this. Even though they're responsible for pretty much everything bad that happens in the game or actively assisted in doing it, actively gloat to some degree about how much they enjoy what they do, perform many Kick the Dog moments with blatant cruelty which always top the last thing they've done, and treat Veyle very much horribly, they're given very sympathetic send-offs in their last moments, which don't quite land with everyone.
    • While Marni sacrificing herself to save Veyle is meant to be heartbreaking, most of the player's interactions before that moment had her threatening to kill the party and mocking them for trying to stop her. She's given a brief backstory revealing abandonment issues and obsessive need for approval, but many players find it as a weak explanation for her actions. The narrative presents her as a tragic person whom ended up working for bad people, but many have noted that this not only fails to excuse her kill-happy attitude, but also that her decision to try to save Veyle at the last minute stems less from a genuine change of heart, and more from her no longer supporting Zephia's treatment of her after getting to know Veyle's Dark and Troubled Past.
    • Griss spends the entire game acting as a Ax-Crazy psychopath, even threatening, in his own words, to rip somebody's guts out in what is definitely not a bluff. His main interactions with the player have him trying to kill or mock them and even before the final battle with him, he openly states how he'll never switch sides. And while it's revealed he never knew his mother, was indoctrinated by Fell Dragon cultists, and was more or less raised by Zephia (and loyal to her over everything else), this is not only mentioned exactly once, but also during a surprisingly prolonged scene where him and Zephia have a heart-to-heart in their last moments, which incidentally rubs many the wrong way for reasons described below. It also doesn't help that he not only did nothing to stop Zephia from killing Marni, but mocked Marni after her death, resulting in Mauvier considering him as culpable in Marni's death as Zephia was.
    • Zephia claims many times that the Hounds are like a family to her, which comes across as extremely hollow when it's shown how severely she's willing to punish them for defying her, even killing Marni and almost doing the same to Mauvier, all while claiming these to be acts of love. This is made even worse by a flashback sequence where her past self speaks to Sombron expanding on her motivations behind wanting a family. For one, it's easy to interpret her wish for family to be not so much about love, but rather, because she's interested in having loyal and obedient subordinates (being, as Sombron explains, why he had children at all to begin with), given this appears to raise her interest. And second, her comments of hating Sombron for not allowing her to bear a child of his can come off as a case of Insane Troll Logic when the flashback shows Sombron did consider giving her one after winning the war, refusing only to act as a father. And then, there's her heart-to-heart with Griss where Zephia's thinking of the Hounds as her true family despite everything, which can be laughable given how she mistreated them. Muddying the waters however, is that she eventually admits to Alear she doesn't really understand what they regard as love, and that she may have never truly experienced due to killing her parents young for lacking control of her powers, and her battle conversations with Mauvier in Chapter 23, as well her final scene with Griss, supports more the interpretation she truly desired to have a family, but never realized she had already formed one up until her last moments where it's already way too late to salvage it.
  • Goldmary can easily fall into this. With her narcissism and condescending attitude, she can already be difficult to put up with. It's not helped by her recruitment being mandatory, so players who didn't want her have to take her along. While she has some friendly moments, a lot of her better moments are only implied. Her Jerkass moments are more frequent and has very few supports where she apologizes, if at all. The culmination comes with Alear's support chain where she reveals her backstory. That she was always popular, until she was sent to the Academy and discovered other people were more popular than her which upset her. While it's intended to reveal her being insecure, her narcissism is shown to be completely genuine, even in private. This all comes with the fact she has no character growth from this and Alear even encourages it as a good thing.
• Unnecessary Makeover: Though a subtle change, some fans were disappointed with Celica's appearance in Engage, pointing out that she looked more moe and was missing the blunt bangs sported in Echoes, considering it a downgrade.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Rosado's feminine appearance and mannerisms, alongside his initial reveal avoiding using gendered pronouns (outside Japanese, at least) led to mass speculation about his gender identity, before early gameplay footage from review outlets confirmed that he's male. To a lesser extent, a number of players thought that Kagetsu was a woman at first, but he is later shown to simply be a rather pretty man.
• Viewer Species Confusion: Despite being explicitly referred to as spirits and Ivy never showing any fear of them ingame, Emblems are very often confused as ghosts largely due to lacking a physical body and their inability to eat, not help by the fact that they also naturally glow in the dark, which is common with ghosts in other media. Even in-universe, Emblem Celica doubts she's a ghost, though she isn't sure of it either.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: After years of fans missing the over-the-top and stylish critical animations in the GBA games, several players have gleefully declared that Engage finally meant a 3D Fire Emblem game fully matched their energy, thanks to the fantastic choreography and camera work of the various critical animations and Engage Attacks.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • Alear's dual-colored hair seems outlandish even for a Fire Emblem game. The choice to do bright red and blue makes it stick out as over the top and hard to think would make sense for natural hair color, which isn't helped by how random the coloring is in places (such as one side red, the other blue). This isn't helped by both genders having very bright white clothing, which causes the hair color to stick out even more. Even worse for fans, they're the only character in the initial trailer with designs like this, as everyone else shown on the game's cover and trailer has looked relatively normal by Fire Emblem standards. Furthermore, the fact that Male Alear's suspenders are attached to both his vest and boots raised many people's eyebrows, with several even wondering how he could walk like this.
  • Céline's design quickly gained confusion and raised eyebrows for how overly "poofy" her dress is. It looks like if you took Lissa from Fire Emblem: Awakening, removed the metal frame from her dress, and replaced it with more layers. Her chest being barely covered except for dark straps doesn't help either, since she looks like a child.
  • Ivy's design was mostly well received. However, the large and elaborate fascinator on her head was seen as a weird choice by some. Not only does it arguably look silly, but the particular perspective angle some art of her depicts made some question how she could even see properly (and post-promotion, there are more roses to block vision), due to how the fascinator seems to block her eyes to a degree in those shots. The most egregious part of her outfit, however, are the spikes present on her gloves and boots. While it's clear the design is going for a rose motif, one can't help but wonder about the practicality of the accessories.
  • When she was first unveiled, a lot of people reacted with confusion regarding Hortensia's design due to how much she stood out from most of the other characters. Her outfit's pompoms that come out from under her dress, her dyed ringlet-pigtail hairdo, and her heart tattoo give her a clownlike/wonderland/victorian fusion aesthetic over the typical medieval designs, which some fans found to be too much.
  • Some fans found the fake wolf tails worn by the Wolf Knight class to be really tacky and out of place, due to the fact that the tails themselves are massive.
  • The Warrior and Sage outfits expose an awful lot of the chest. While this Fanservice isn't bad in and of itself, it becomes a problem when applied to characters who aren't old enough to flaunt (or have) their sex appeal, and Jean and Anna are not exempt.
  • Many of the characters' outfits in the Somniel are way too modern for a medieval setting, which can feel very jarring and disconnected.
  • Some are disappointed that the alternate counterparts of the royals in the Fell Xenologue dress the same as they do in the original Elyos. It is especially unfitting for the alternate versions of Hortensia and Timerra, whose outgoing outfits and hairstyles clash with the more somber and serious personalities they are shown to have in that world. Some also dislike that the only real clothing difference between the Four Hounds and the Four Winds are palette-swaps, although Gregory, who dislikes pain, does not have the masochistic Griss's tattoos or piercings.
• The Woobie:
  • Veyle has quite possibly the most tragic backstory in the game. She was born as the daughter of Sombron, a Fell Dragon who was willing to kill any of his children who displeased him. Her mother was persecuted by humans and ended up dying, leaving Veyle alone. Sombron gave Veyle an evil Split Personality that was loyal to him, while Zephia, leader of the Four Hounds, alternated between manipulating and abusing the real Veyle. As a result of Veyle's evil personality's misdeeds, her long-lost sibling Alear and their friends despised Veyle for some time before learning the truth.
  • Hortensia has also been through a lot. She loses her mother, who was one of King Hyacinth's mistresses, at the tender age of seven, and has to make allies in order to protect herself in the Deadly Decadent Court. She watches her father turn cruel under Sombron's influence, believes that her older sister Ivy died fighting the heroes, then watches Sombron eat Hyacinth alive in front of her. She goes to Solm in a desperate attempt to revive her father by getting the other Emblem rings, but then ends up being brainwashed by Zephia and forced to fight Ivy and the others. One especially poignant moment in her supports with Rosado has him observe that Hortensia no longer smiles as genuinely as she did at the academy.
  • Alternate Hortensia is perhaps the most tragic of the alternate royals. She grew up in a Deadly Decadent Court of Elusia, but had to survive by keeping a low profile, and had terrible self-esteem. Unlike the main universe Hortensia, who had a loving relationship with Ivy, Alternate Ivy was verbally abusive to Hortensia and had their half-siblings killed. At some point, Alternate Hortensia was killed and revived as a Corrupted, and desperately seeks the Emblem Bracelets to revive Alternate Hyacinth. While most of the alternate royals invite disapproval if not outright hatred from their main universe counterparts, Alternate Hortensia inspires sorrow and pity from those close to the main universe Hortensia.
  • Alfred may seem like an ordinary Nice Guy who always wants to get buff, but, in reality, he is a Stepford Smiler who is hiding a very dark secret. He was born with a terminal illness, so he spent most of his childhood bedridden. Alfred was eventually able to keep his illness under control by constantly working out, but even then, it never truly went away, and his health is deteriorating even in the present day. Alfred forces himself to act tough, since being the future king of Firene comes with a lot of pressure, and he doesn't want to burden his people with his health issues. It's even the reason why Céline is so obsessed with tea, since she knows that her brother is not long for the world, and she uses tea as a coping mechanism. The worst part of it all? If Alfred is not S-Supported, then the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue reveals that his illness did indeed catch up to him, and he died shortly after becoming king.

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