The Entertainment Software Association of Canada, the lobbying group for the Canadian gaming industry, has teamed up with market research firm NPD Group on a new monthly list of the best-selling games in Canada.
The inaugural list covers January and includes the following 10 titles:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X and S/PC)
Fire Emblem Engage (Nintendo Switch)
Dead Space (PS5/Xbox Series X and S/PC)
NHL 23 (PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X and S/PC)
FIFA 23 (PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X and S/Nintendo Switch/PC)
Elden Ring (PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X and S/PC)
It’s also worth mentioning that a few of these games are Canadian. While the original Dead Space was developed by the now-defunct American studio Visceral, the 2023 remake was handled by Montreal’s EA Motive. Meanwhile, NHL 23 and FIFA 23 were developed by EA Vancouver. Finally, while Modern Warfare II was primarily developed by California’s Infinity Ward, Quebec City-based Beenox handled the PC port.
This list is especially noteworthy considering NPD has historically only provided sales data for the U.S. In general, it’s rare to get Canada-specific data, but it trickles out over time, like Nintendo recently confirming that the Switch was Canada’s best-selling console for the fifth consecutive year.
After an hour of meticulously making my way through the shimmering desert palace, I find myself in its illustrious throne room. But I have to be careful. Hovering above the throne is a winged sorcerer with debilitating long-range spells, while her equally powerful allies lie at the entrance. Since the room is relatively small room and Permadeath is enabled, any wrong move could quickly send one of my party members to an untimely demise.
These nail-bitingly tense moments are at the heart of any Fire Emblem, and they’re arguably at their best in the long-running Nintendo series’ latest entry, developer Intelligent Systems’ Fire Emblem Engage. With an emphasis on expanding Fire Emblem‘s classic turn-based strategymechanics and returning to a more traditional structure, Engage ultimately proves to be a winning experience beyond its narrative shortcomings.
A lack of Engage-ment
But first, let’s get the bad out of the way: yes, Engage‘s story and characters are a complete letdown. The last mainline Fire Emblem, 2019’s Three Houses, has become one of the most beloved Switch games, in no small part, due to its gripping narrative filled with three-dimensional characters grappling with issues like classism, PTSD and social anxiety. Other Fire Emblem modern entries, like Awakening and Fates, also had their own narrative hooks. What we get in Engage, though, is extremely thin. That starts with the protagonist, Alear (male or female based on your choice), who checks off two tired tropes: the “amnesiac lead” and “chosen one hero.” In this case, Alear is the Divine Dragon, a legendary hero who awakens from a 1,000-year slumber with no memories and a single goal: to stop the resurrection of the dreaded Fell Dragon. To do that, they’ll need to collect 12 ‘Emblem Rings,’ magical trinkets containing the spirits of classic Fire Emblem characters like Marth (Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light).
As far as premises go, it’s pretty generic fantasy — the kind of thing you’d expect from an early Fire Emblem game, not one in 2023. That in itself wouldn’t be much of an issue if the characters themselves were strong, but unfortunately, they’re also lacking. It’s common for a Fire Emblem game to take an archetypal character and flesh them out through optional ‘Support’ conversations, but even those are woefully bland in Engage. Most of the time, they’re dull, surface-level exchanges that touch on characters’ shared love of exercise or food without digging deeper into who they are. Later-game plot twists make some characters more interesting, but overall, I was disappointed to find myself so disengaged on a narrative level.
Fire Emblem Engage’s characters just aren’t interesting at all.
This also makes Engage‘s home base, the Somniel, feel less compelling. Here, you can carry out stat-boosting workout minigames, train units in an arena, go fishing and more. To be sure, the admittedly simplistic nature of these activities offers a nice reprieve from the challenges of combat, and I appreciated how it’s smaller and more manageable than Three Houses’ sprawling and often unwieldy Garreg Mach Monastery. But without caring about the characters, I found myself spending as little time here as possible. This extends to the post-battle sections in which you can explore the maps in full 3D. It’s worth doing to appreciate Engage‘s remarkably sharp visuals and collect some loot, but the actual banter with characters here is, once again, just exasperatingly trite.
The saving grace for the narrative? It focuses on a single storyline. While Three Houses is one of my favourite games of all time, it definitely felt bloated due to a three-campaign structure that ostensibly required at least two 50-ish-hour playthroughs to truly grasp the bigger picture. The mainline Fire Emblem before that, 2016’s Fates, was even worse; you had to buythreegames to get the full story. Engage, thankfully, does away all of that, giving you the complete experience within a single playthrough — one that graciously takes around 30 hours, no less.
Those battles, though!
Engage’s real stories are the ones you make for yourself on the battlefield.
Despite all of this, I couldn’t stop playing Engage. Indeed, it’s a testament to the strength of the gameplay that the lack of an emotional investment in the story and characters didn’t kill my interest. That’s all thanks to the slew of smart refinements that tighten up the entire experience and deliver Fire Emblem‘s best gameplay to date.
Chief among these: the grand return of Fire Emblem‘s classic ‘Weapon Triangle,’ a rock-paper-scissors-style mechanic in which swords beat axes, axes trump lances and lances top swords. This was absent in Three Houses but is most welcome here; I’ve always appreciated how it requires you to apply a more chess-like thoughtfulness in how you deploy units. Sure, your sword-wielding Knight could easily take out that axe-equipped brute over there, but doing so would put him on the other end of a more mobile mounted unit’s lance. Adding another layer to the Weapon Triangle is the new Break status, which leaves the defending unit incapable of counterattacking for the duration of the turn. Both you and your opponent can take advantage of this, so you have to ensure you’re not sending out a unit to die. Conversely, it’s absolutely thrilling to have a small group Break and take down a tougher enemy without getting a scratch.
Exploiting the Break system without falling victim to it yourself is absolutely essential, especially in later fights like that aforementioned palace skirmish. In fact, Engage is quite challenging throughout, further adding to the game’s throwback feel. That said, the level of difficulty always feels well-balanced; appropriately tough without being punishing. One of Three Houses‘ additions, the limited-use ability to rewind turns to undo fatal errors, also makes a most welcome return here. Of course, you can still play on the lowest difficulty (Normal) and turn off Permadeath, but I kept that on and went with Hard (the middle option) and it was the perfect challenge.
Marth is the first of 12 Emblem Rings that you’ll get.
But it’s the central Emblem Rings that really spice things up. Mercifully, Engage isn’t the Genshin Impact-style gacha game it may appear to be; you unlock all 12 Emblem Rings naturally over the course of the story. With them, you can pair a classic Fire Emblem hero with one of your party members to give them a variety of buffs, special moves and powerful weapons. For example, Sigurd (Genealogy of the Holy War) is a mounted jouster, so you might want to give him to your lumbering, lance-wielding General for added mobility. On the other hand, you might want to play against type and have Lyn (The Blazing Blade) give your sword unit some longer-range bow abilities. You’ll also gain SP through the use of Emblems that can go towards permanently acquiring skills should you give the ring to someone else. This adds another level of thought to character progression; perhaps you want to have Lucina (Fire Emblem Awakening) paired with your low-defence healer to unlock agility-boosting skills to help them dodge otherwise fatal blows. It’s a cleverly intricate system that had me constantly mixing-and-matching characters and Rings when possible.
On top of that, you can ‘Engage’ with each Ring in battle to merge your Emblem and hero together in a gloriously over-the-top anime fashion. For three turns, you’ll unlock new skills, your Emblem’s signature weapon and, most notably, a special Engage Attack. The latter is a supermove that can only be used once per Engagement, so you have to think carefully about when to let one rip. As I acquired more Rings, I was impressed at just how varied these supermoves would be. Besides your standard flurry attacks (Marth’s Lodestar Rush), there’s the ability to teleport to another part of the map and fire off a powerful spell (Gaiden‘s Celica’s Warp Ragnarok), extremely long-range bow sniping (Lyn’s Astra Storm) and multi-weapon combo to maximize Break potential (Thracia: 776‘s Leif’s Quadruple Hit). My personal favourite? Great Sacrifice, a life-saving move from Radiant Dawn‘s Micaiah that drops the caster’s HP to 1 in exchange for fully healing the rest of the party. Once depleted, your Engage metre slowly replenishes through battle or by finding ‘Emblem Energy’ sprinkled throughout the map, which means you have to Engage more sparingly.
Engaging with a character is extremely anime in the best way possible.
I absolutely adored what these Rings bring to Fire Emblem‘s tried-and-true battles. The ways in which they can help you develop characters are staggering, which encourages a great deal of thought to go into how you build out each one. Further, the Engage mechanic feels like a genuine revolution of the character-pairing options of older Fire Emblem games, maximizing the potential of both unit and Emblem to give you an ace in the hole when needed. Balancing out these systems, however, is the fact that enemies will occasionally have Emblem Rings. While they don’t get the special abilities, they can execute Engage Attacks, adding a surprising, almost horror game-level of tension whenever I saw one appear.
With all of that said, focusing such a central gameplay mechanic on characters from the Fire Emblem games of old is a… strange choice. In particular, it highlights how many have never made it outside of Japan (i.e. Thracia: 776) or, worse, how Nintendo has failed to preserve those that did release overseas (like Path of Radiance) through a Virtual Console-like platform. This means that Engage‘s crossover appeal is frustratingly limited, as a significant percentage of players will have no attachment to the majority of these characters. Further, Engage‘s writing does little to flesh them out beyond some hackneyed dialogue; even Fire Emblem‘s classic Support conversations are reduced to extremely bland two-sentence exchanges with the Emblems. Look no further than Alear’s first conversation with Marth in which they ask how he’s so strong, to which Marth basically says “because the power of friendship.” (I kid you not.)
Put a ring on it
12 Rings to rule them all.
In the end, Fire Emblem Engage is in a rather tricky spot. Those who are coming in after Three Houses might find it difficult to adjust to the weak and unemotional writing. On the flip side, Fire Emblem veterans who prefer the focus on battles, character building and challenge will likely be happy to see less of an emphasis on story and social elements. As someone who holds Three Houses to be among his favourite games ever, this was certainly a challenge for me. But over time, I came to appreciate Engage for what it is: a brilliant strategy game with a deep and rewarding gameplay loop. In other words, it’s easily a must-play if you’re a fan of the genre, regardless of prior Fire Emblem experience.
Fire Emblem Engage will launch exclusively on the Nintendo Switch on January 20th.
The Switch exclusive offers a near-perfect mix of deep strategic combat, layered character progression and social simulation mechanics that just clicks with me.
Having said that, I was initially uninterested in the spin-off game, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. Taking cues from 2017’s otherwise unconnected Fire Emblem Warriors, Three Hopes is actually a ‘Musou’ action game in the vein of Dynasty Warriors. That wasn’t exactly appealing to me, especially considering there have been a lot of Musou games, and that hack-and-slash style of gameplay can wear thin.
But then I played Three Hopes, and quickly found myself won over. Impressively, Three Hopes soon reveals itself to be a much more faithful recreation of Three Houses‘ signature tactics and character building than you’d expect. As such, I’ll fully admit — I was wrong about this game.
Same world, different paths
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Three Hopes is that it’s secretly a remake, of sorts, of Three Houses. That is to say, it features the same Fódlan setting and general conflict and characters, but in a reimagined fashion — not unlike, say, Final Fantasy VII Remake. In this alternate take on Three Hopes, you play as a mercenary named Shez, who allies with Garreg Mach Monastery and can join one of its three houses.
Like Three Houses, you can choose the protagonist’s gender and which house — Edelgard’s Black Eagles, Dimitri’s Blue Lions or Claude’s Golden Deer — to join. The big twist? Byleth, the hero of Three Houses, is actually the villain of Three Hopes. This creates a lot of intrigue throughout the course of the solid, if sometimes sluggishly paced, 30-odd-hour campaign, although I can’t speak to how much of that will be maintained in the other two house paths.
It should be noted, though, that Three Hopes also assumes you’ve played Three Houses, which makes it admittedly less approachable for newcomers. Even as someone who’s cleared two of Three Houses‘ main story paths, I found myself having to brush up on some of that game’s more specific narrative points. Some sort of recap video wouldn’t have gone amiss. On the flip side, prior knowledge of Three Houses makes for a refreshingly unique play experience; given my prior understanding of complex characters like Edelgard, I found myself making decisions more thoughtfully than I would for many games with similar branching narratives. (It’s also just a much better approach than the awkward story-lite Fire Emblem crossover of the first Warriors.)
And on a base level, it just feels good to be back in Fódlan. The lore of Three Houses — rich with themes of classism, religion vs. government and the consequences of war — has always been compelling, and that remains true in Three Hopes. On top of that, it’s lovely to see so many familiar faces. In the original game, I was most endeared to Dimitri, a young prince who initially seems like a boring boy scout but is revealed to be a deeply nuanced and tragic figure.
For that reason, I went with Blue Lions in Three Hopes, making it feel especially rewarding to get to spend more time with Dimitri and his allies. As in Three Houses, the writing and performances here are sharp throughout, reminding me why I fell in love with this cast in the first place. (The return of Three Houses‘ stellar voice cast feels even more poignant as it features another wonderful performance from the late Billy Kametz as the young nobleman Ferdinand.) In the end, Three Hopes‘ blend of recognizable lore and characters with unpredictable story beats proves to be a winning combination.
Deeper than it looks
If you’re even remotely familiar with Musou games, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Three Hopes‘ combat. In other words, it’s a button-mashy hack-and-slash game in which you rack up big combos against swaths of enemies. It’s definitely more of a style over substance sort of thing; you won’t find particularly deep action mechanics here. Instead, the depth comes from everything you do leading up to and during battle. To start, developer Omega Force has done a bang-up job in making each character feel unique. Take Shez, who dual wields swords for effective at crowd control, compared to, say, the archer Ashe, who trades strength for handy ranged and area of effect moves. There’s a surprising amount of variety in how each character looks and feels, which helps offset some of the repetition that can set in with the core combat.
But of course, the key to any Fire Emblem game is levelling up your character, customizing their skills and upgrading their classes, and all of that carries over in Three Hopes. Being able to upgrade my lance user Ingrid into a Pegasus Knight granted me a solid aerial edge to combat. And because this is a Fire Emblem game, the classic ‘rock-paper-scissors’ tenet of class advantages is prominent here. This means that I can’t just clear the entire battlefield with Ingrid, as her winged mount is extremely vulnerable to archers; I have to be more careful.
While you can freely switch between your party at will, you only control one person at a time, which adds another tactical wrinkle. To that end, Three Hopes allows you to direct and micro-manage your allotted units on the fly. Looking at the mini-map, you’ll see which enemy types are in each zone, so you can order your CPU-controlled units to avoid certain areas, back each other up or launch an all-out attack on a point of interest. It’s a brilliant way of retaining the strategic spirit of Fire Emblem while still allowing for the flashy, fast-paced action of a Musou title.
And just like Three Houses, further thought must be given to what you do with characters outside of battle. As in that game, Three Hopes allows you to explore a large 3D space in between skirmishes, only this time it’s a campsite instead of the monastery. While it’s admittedly less visually impressive accordingly, the more generic setting does feature the same plethora of relationship-building side activities.
With your allies, you can share meals, tend to equipment, care for the horses and more — all of which strengthen the bond between whoever takes part in them. This will give you special Support conversations — like in Three Houses, charming cutscenes that reveal more about each character — while also making them more efficient when paired as ‘Adjutants’ in battle. The latter point is especially crucial, as you can use one unit to help counter another’s inherent weakness, like the aforementioned Ingrid’s arrow vulnerability.
A winning combination
If you’re someone like me who was initially put off by Fire Emblem Warriors:Three Hopes being “yet another Musou game,” I’d recommend giving it a chance, especially since there’s a meaty free downloadable demo. Much of what’s so good about Three Houses — the strong characterization and tactics-driven progression — are present, with some tried-and-true satisfying hack and slash combat. It may be repetitive and bloated at times, but on the whole, Three Hopes is a welcome return to a beloved world, and I’m so glad I gave it chance.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is now available on the Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo has launched a free downloadable demo for Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes on the Switch’s eShop.
The demo was revealed alongside a new trailer for the hack-and-slash action game.
For those unfamiliar, Three Hopes is both a new game set in the world of the 2019 strategy game Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and a successor to 2017’s Fire Emblem Warriors. What this means is that it blends the story, characters, and progression and social interaction mechanics of Three Houses with the fast-paced action of Fire Emblem Warriors, which is itself an offshoot of the Dynasty Warriors series.
Interestingly, Three Hopes is neither a sequel nor prequel to Three Houses, but rather, a separate story featuring those characters. This includes the original Three Houses protagonist Byleth; house leaders Edelgard, Dmitri and Claude; and, as confirmed in the latest trailer, the Ashen Wolves characters who were introduced in Three Houses‘ Cindered Shadows DLC. However, Byleth is actually the villain of Three Hopes, with players instead controlling a new character, Shez, on top of the other teachers and students.
Like Three Houses, Three Hopes features three campaigns for each school house — Scarlet Blaze (Black Eagles), Azure Gleam (Blue Lions), and Golden Wildfire (Golden Deer). Notably, the new eShop demo lets you play the intro for each of these paths (up to Chapter 4), and your progress will carry over to the final game. As well, those who download the demo before August 1st will receive 100 Nintendo Platinum Points.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes launches exclusively on the Nintendo Switch on June 24th, 2022.
If you’re even remotely familiar with Musou games, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Three Hopes‘ combat. In other words, it’s a button-mashy hack-and-slash game in which you rack up big combos against swaths of enemies. It’s definitely more of a style over substance sort of thing; you won’t find particularly deep action mechanics here. Instead, the depth comes from everything you do leading up to and during battle. To start, developer Omega Force has done a bang-up job in making each character feel unique. Take Shez, who dual wields swords for effective at crowd control, compared to, say, the archer Ashe, who trades strength for handy ranged and area of effect moves. There’s a surprising amount of variety in how each character looks and feels, which helps offset some of the repetition that can set in with the core combat.
And just like Three Houses, further thought must be given to what you do with characters outside of battle. As in that game, Three Hopes allows you to explore a large 3D space in between skirmishes, only this time it’s a campsite instead of the monastery. While it’s admittedly less visually impressive accordingly, the more generic setting does feature the same plethora of relationship-building side activities.