On January 25th at 3pm ET/12pm PT, Xbox is introducing a new showcase format: the Xbox & Bethesda ‘Developer_Direct.’
Unlike traditional E3-style keynotes featuring dozens of games, Developer_Direct will focus on deep dives into a handful of titles. For the inaugural show, this includes:
The Elder Scrolls Online (ZeniMax Online Studios) — an unveiling of the 2023 Chapter Update (an ‘ESO Chapter Reveal Event’ will also take place immediately after Developer_Direct)
Forza Motorsport (Turn 10) — we’ll learn more about the next Forza game built from the ground up for Xbox Series X/S
Minecraft Legends (Mojang and Vancouver’s Blackbird Interactive) — an “insider’s look” into the PvP experience
Redfall (Arkane) — “several minutes” of gameplay from this vampire FPS will be shown
It should be noted that Xbox confirmed that Starfield will not be at this Developer_Direct and will instead get its own standalone show at a later date.
What are you looking forward to seeing? Let us know in the comments.
The streamer played the game entirely hands-free thanks to 14 black sensors attached to her scalp through an electroencephalogram (EEG) device.
Perri says she linked brain activity to specific key binds, allowing her to control the ultra-difficult title with only her mind.
She is playing Elden Ring… with her brain. Twitch streamer @perrikaryal has hooked up an EEG to her brain, where different brain activity is key bound to different abilities in game
She even says words like “heal” and “attack” to perform certain moves. As shared by Jake Lucky, an esports reporter, Perri says different actions to help her think the correct thought, pushing brain activity to the EEG bound to different abilities.
This isn’t something anyone can do, however.
According to Kotaku, which spoke to Ph.D. candidate Cody Cao, EEG technology isn’t 100 percent accurate. Instead, you’re only getting about 60 to 70 percent accuracy compared to the 90 to 100 percent you receive when playing a game with a controller.
“It takes algorithms a lot of training to get to acceptable performance. They likely need to experience a lot of different examples of the same thing (like Perri saying ‘attack’ before attacking) to be able to account for a vast majority of attacks,” Cao said to Kotaku in an interview. “It’s like FaceID on your iPhone — it gets better with the more examples it sees.”
Perri points out that they’re trying to bring EEG usage to the general public’s attention, given it has a variety of applications, including helping those with disabilities.
A man has accused U.S. Customs and Border Protection of breaking a rare copy of Pokémon Yellow.
On Twitter, Night Dive Studio CEO Stephen Kick said his friend, who goes by the online handle of The_Master_Of_Unlocking, had an original sealed, near-mint copy of the classic Game Boy title estimated to be worth around $10,000 USD (about $13,300 CAD).
Friend of mine received this sealed and graded original copy of Pokemon Yellow…
US Customs: Broke the acrylic case Ripped and discarded the seal SLICED the front of the box off
“Friend of mine received this sealed and graded original copy of Pokémon Yellow,” Kick tweeted. “U.S. Customs: Broke the acrylic case, ripped and discarded the seal, [and] sliced the front of the box off. Maybe they weren’t fans of Wata Games?” Wata is a company that grades and certifies games for collectors.
Interestingly, The_Master_Of_Unlocking told Kotakuthat he bought the game from a seller in Canada for $3,800 USD (about $5,080 CAD). It was en route to him when the incident is said to have occurred. He added that he wasn’t sure why U.S. Customs agents were so rough with the product, noting there were less damaging ways of opening it up for screening.
Based on the images shared by Kick, it sadly doesn’t look like there’ll be anyway to Full Restore the game.
Toronto-based dbrand is back at it again, and this time it’s nearly literally asking Nintendo to send an army of lawyers after it.
Valve’s impressive Steam Deck is undeniably very similar to Nintendo’s Switch in several ways, but mainly in its portability and ability to dock and be played on a television. It’s also, in some ways at least, the more powerful “Switch Pro” many people have been asking for.
While there are many things to like about the Steam Deck, it’s also kind of boring looking.
In an effort to spice up the Steam Deck’s design (and troll Nintendo in the process), dbrand has revealed a new ‘SwitchDeck‘ skin package that looks strikingly similar to the Switch’s iconic blue and red Joy-Con controller design. There are even rear cutouts for the Steam Deck’s back buttons and what looks like a censored Switch logo. (Is it blurred out on the actual skin? Who knows!) The Switch Deck starts at $49.95 USD (roughly $66.90 CAD).
Along with the trolly new skin, dbrand has also launched a new ‘Killswitch Case‘ that includes a heavy-duty case, skin and detachable Kickstand. Other Steam Deck protection products include a glass screen protector (I actually own one, and it’s great) and ‘Stick Grips’ thumbstick covers. dbrand’s SwitchDeck Case starts at $45 USD ( roughly $60.27 CAD).
While the Killswitch Case looks great, it’s also kind of bulky, which means the already massive Steam Deck will feel even bigger. I also find it hilarious dbrand seems to have sawed the Steam Deck’s sides off to make it look like a Switch in several promotional images, as seen below.
Of course, dbrand recommends that people “don’t try this at home.” If you’re interested in buying this skin, it’s wise to act fast. Likely, it won’t be around for very long once it’s on Nintendo’s radar.
Back when the Steam Deck first released, I described it as the handheld of my dreams but cited several glitches, lack of game support and the difficulty I experienced getting emulators up and running on it. After picking the Steam Deck back up again this past weekend to dive back into Red Dead Redemption II, I’m happy to report that most of those problems have been solved. The handheld has come a long way in a brief period of time.
It’s developed by Luminous Productions, the Japanese team comprised of many former Final Fantasy XV creators. But the actual story of the game hails from Todd Stashwick (12 Monkeys) and Allison Rymer (Shadowhunters), based on concepts by Gary Whitta (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) and Amy Hennig (Uncharted series). While this mixture of East and West doesn’t always mesh well, the end result is a uniquely compelling experience with exceptional gameplay and some decent narrative moments.
A diamond in the rough
In Forspoken, you play as Frey Holland (Ella Balinska), a 21-year-old New Yorker who’s struggling to get by. Upon discovering a magical vambrace she calls “Cuff” (Jonathan Cake), she’s whisked away to the mysterious world of Athia, where she must survive the threat of the tyrannical rulers known as the Tantas. Now, much has been made about this Alice in Wonderland-style premise and its awkward juxtaposition of Frey’s quippy ‘Whedonesque’ dialogue and this fantastical setting. It’s at the centre of why this game has basically been the internet’s punching bag.
But I think that’s largely undeserved. Beneath some admittedly clunky and edgy dialogue lies a game with more heart than you’d expect, and that all starts with Frey. Previously hidden from marketing and media previews, the entire first chapter of the game takes some time to explore Frey at rock bottom, revealing her to be a sympathetic character whose abrasiveness in the trailers feels a lot more justified in context. This sets the reluctant hero up on a compelling — and, at times, even emotional — journey to discover her own self-worth. Meanwhile, Cuff’s dulcet English tones and dry humour make for an engaging foil to the rambunctious and insolent Frey, all brought to life through solid performances from Balinska and Cake. Admittedly, some have found this banter grating, so Luminous has thankfully added an option to turn down the frequency of it. I actually mostly enjoyed these snarky exchanges, as they were reminiscent of an early 2000s buddy cop movie and a fun departure from the endearing “road trip between bros” vibes of Final Fantasy XV. My issues instead was that they simply lack variety; after just a few hours, I grew tired of hearing the same lines ad nauseum.
Frey’s attitude makes a lot more sense once you learn more about her tragic backstory.
What only grew on me more over time, however, was Athia itself. When Frey arrives, she finds it in a state of disarray due to a mystical corruption known as the Break. It’s decimated most of the world’s population, turned the wildlife into zombified beasts and forced humanity’s sole survivors to shack up in the bustling city of Cipal. Finding out the cause of the Break and what corrupted the once benevolent Tanta matriarchs proved to be a real highlight, especially towards the latter hours of the game when several revelations are made. I didn’t much care for the supporting cast beyond Frey and Cuff (the game even repeatedly tries and fails to make the death of a girl that Frey meets early on feel impactful), but the actual lore behind everything is rather interesting. You’d be hard-pressed to say any of this is great writing, but it’s definitely a lot better than people might have thought.
Enough spells to make Dr. Strange jealous
But even if the story and characters don’t grab you, Forspoken is absolutely worth playing for its gameplay. At its core, Forspoken is basically a superhero game, and a really engaging one, at that. Through a constantly growing set of powers, controlling Frey becomes a genuine power fantasy.
First, there’s her magical parkour, known as ‘Flow.’ Simply holding down the circle button will cause her to quickly zip forward, maintaining momentum with confident, rhythmic strides as she vaults over low-reaching obstacles like ledges and tree stumps. Over the course of the story, you’ll automatically develop powers that expand her mobility, including the ability to kick off walls for extra verticality, a zipline to quickly reach ledges or launch yourself upward and an ephemeral surfboard to glide across water. There’s also a handful of unlockable movesthat further enhance your parkour — my favourite being Shimmy,which lets you stylishly spring off the ground with a well-timed tap of the jump button to maintain momentum.
Running and jumping around Athia makes for some stylish entertainment.
All of these abilities work in tandem to create a remarkably fluid traversal system. It’s downright euphoric to bound towards the side of a canyon using Shimmy, parkour up the side of it, swing around a branch with my zipline to launch forward and land and glide over a body of water — all quite seamlessly, no less. The layout of the world is open enough to give you the freedom to reach pretty much anywhere once you have the necessary abilities, but also curated in places — such as through carefully placed floating platforms — to require you to be a bit precise so as to not overshoot your jumps. Through and through, it’s some of the most enjoyment I’ve had on a mechanical level of navigating an open-world since Insomniac’s two Marvel’s Spider-Man games.
The other half of the gameplay equation, combat, is equally rousing. In the lead-up to the game, Luminous has (for)spoken about there being 100 spells for Frey to use. I’ll confess that a part of me was skeptical; surely this is just marketing speak and many of these are palette swaps of one another. But much to my pleasant surprise is the fact that Frey’s magical arsenal is staggeringly diverse. On a base level, she has four different magic types — Purple (rock), Red (fire), Blue (water) and Green (electricity). But the utility of each can vary drastically when you get into all of the underlying abilities.
Frey’s powers offer quite the spectacle.
To start, each power has a few different base Attack Magic spells that can be charged into even more moves. Purple Magic’s standard Burst Shot has her blasting enemies with clump of dirt as you mash the shoot button, but you can unlock alternative firing methods that unleash a steady stream of pebbles (Scatter Shot) or a sturdy rock shield to protect you then explode to push enemies back (Shield Shot). Charging Burst Shot, meanwhile, will conjure up a large boulder that can be hurled at enemies to send them flying. Naturally, the use case for each can vary drastically, like carefully aiming your giant rocks to get around enemy shields. That’s to say nothing of the other powers’ base attacks, like Red Magic’s fiery sword for speedy melee attacks, Blue’s exploding balls of aquatic energy or Green’s jolts or electricity.
But it’s her Support abilities that really liven up combat by deviating from being purely elemental-based attacks. For instance, Purple’s powerset includes a Piranha Plant-esque sprout that fires projectiles at an enemy while Green’s Compulsion and Displacement summon floating exploding mines and create an illusory decoy of Frey to distract enemies, respectively. There are also moves that provide Frey with direct buffs, such as Blue’s Inundation to increase the critical hit rate of spells. Each Support ability has its own cooldown timer that can be sped up by using Attack Magic, an effective way to push you to alternate between offensive and defensive magic. To that point, using a mixture of both will charge your a devastating power-specific supermove called Surge Magic. My favourite of these was the Genesis Purple Magic, which calls forth barbed branches to come piercing through the earth to slam crowds of enemies.
Genesis never gets old.
What I most appreciated, though, is that using Mana (acquired by levelling up or finding collectibles on the map) to upgrade Surge Magic doesn’t simply improve their usefulness; you actually see the scope expand. Take Genesis; Level 1 only summons a moderately sized coil of branches, but Level 2’s range dramatically increases and Level 3 is so big that it’s like a giant Poison Ivy-esque outgrowth, venomous bulbs and all. In this way, Frey’s progression actually feels tangible and satisfying besides simply raising behind-the-scenes damage calculators. Upgrading Attack and Support Magic, meanwhile, is handled a bit differently. Here, you’re required to actually use the abilities to increase their usefulness, which I appreciated as a means to get me to experiment more and even play a little differently, like leaping over enemies to attack them from behind to upgrade my flaming sword. A particularly joyful move to discover was Green Magic’s Pulse Dart, which has you puncturing enemies with electric needles in quick succession that effectively paints targets for far more damaging piercing lightning bolts.
In other words, Forspoken‘s combat often has a satisfying brutality to it, enhanced by the spell-specific haptic feedback and adaptive triggers on the PS5’s DualSense controller. What’s more, each spell type is rendered with a dazzling display of particle effects that really sell the raw intensity of Frey’s powers. While the visual splendour definitely takes a hit in Performance Mode, it’s worth the resolution hit to get that consistent 60fps smoothness. An engrossing score from composers Bear McCreary (God of War Ragnarök) and Garry Schyman (BioShock) only further enhances the vibe.
Athia looks pretty, but it’s unfortunately pretty empty.
What holds Forspoken‘s gameplay back from true greatness, though, is its open-world. My biggest concern even after playing a three-hour preview in December was that it would be too empty, and that remains true even now. Unfortunately, there just isn’t much to do in Athia’s largely barren outdoor environments beyond the exhilarating parkour. Sure, there’s a bunch of activities littered throughout, but they’re mostly just variations on “defeat these enemies” to unlock rewards. There’s even a spin on the tired map-revealing ‘Ubisoft Towers,’ known here as Belfries, which only further makes Athia’s open-world design feel painfully dated.
Oddly, you’ll exclusively get actual sidequests — referred to as ‘Detours’ — from NPCs in Cipal, and the bulk of these take place within the city. These are at least more interesting and character-driven than the almost purely combat-focused fare in the open-world, but Forspoken still would have benefited from not relegating them all to a single setting. As it stands, though, Forspoken has a lot content for content’s sake, and little of it feels legitimately rewarding to complete. Thankfully, the game only includes two types of gear (cloaks and nail paintings) and you can unlock new equipment and craftable upgrades through these sidequests. With so many games featuring convoluted gear systems nowadays, I appreciated that it was streamlined so you can focus your time on magical parkour and combat — the real highlight of the game — instead of navigating through menus.
A mostly magical experience
Burn baby burn.
Forspoken is a prime example of why it’s important to go into a game with an open mind. Regardless of how you felt based on admittedly spotty marketing material, there is much to like about the actual experience as a whole. Yes, Forspoken‘s uneven writing and unfortunately lifeless open-world will be off-putting to some, but at the game’s core lies a fundamentally joyful and even euphoric gameplay experience that mixes thrilling traversal with fulfilling, empowering combat. Ultimately, a game should be enjoyable to play, and on that level, Forspoken is certainly worth your time.
Forspoken will launch exclusively on PlayStation 5 and PC on January 24th, 2023.
Anyone hoping Nintendo would announce a successor to the Nintendo Switch in 2023 will be disappointed to learn the Japanese gaming giant plans to ramp up Switch production in the coming year — and with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom scheduled for a May release, this isn’t entirely surprising.
Sources familiar with Nintendo’s production plans told Bloomberg that Nintendo had informed its parts suppliers and assembly partners that it would increase Switch production during the company’s 2023/2024 financial year.
According to the publication’s sources, now that the component shortage is mostly over, Nintendo can finally produce the number of consoles the market wants. And with Tears of the Kingdom aiming to replicate the critical and sales success of Breath of the Wild, the anticipated game will likely again push Switch sales, just like its predecessor.
While Nintendo’s Switch remains popular, the console is headed into its 6th year and was released back in March 2017. Given Nintendo’s console release history, at this point, the company is usually ramping up to release a new system, or at the very least, its current console is entering its twilight years. In the case of the Switch, it appears the system is still going strong.
Rumours surrounding a Switch Pro or Switch 2 have circulated for years, but the closest thing that’s appeared so far is the Switch OLED model, a minor upgrade to the original home console-handheld hybrid system that features a larger, higher-quality display.
Following widespread reports of layoffs at Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries and Halo veteran Joseph Staten leaving the studio to rejoin Xbox’s publishing team, a former developer has criticized the studio’s leadership.
Patrick Wren, a former senior multiplayer designer on Halo Infinite who is now working on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor at Respawn, doesn’t cite specific leaders in his tweet but has harsh words for the developer’s top management.
The layoffs at 343 shouldn't have happened and Halo Infinite should be in a better state. The reason for both of those things is incompetent leadership up top during Halo Infinite development causing massive stress on those working hard to make Halo the best it can be.
Wren goes on to remind fans to be kind to the remaining developers working on 343 Industries, highlighting those who pushed “for a better Halo” were laid off for it.
The people I worked every day with were passionate about Halo and wanted to make something great for the fans. They helped push for a better Halo and got laid off for it.
Devs still there are working hard on that dream. Look at Forge. Be kind to them during this awful time.
Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier first reported that Joeseph Staten, the game’s creative lead, is leaving 343 Industries to return to Xbox Publishing. Back in 2020, Staten was brought in to solve many of Halo Infinite’s key issues, including the game’s lack of online co-op, new multiplayer content and poor communication from the studio to fans.
While Halo Infinite’s situation has improved drastically over the past few months — online co-op is finally available, Forge launched and content updates are arriving at a faster pace — the game still doesn’t offer what most would consider a “live service.”
According to Schreier, 343 Industries was “hit hard” with layoffs, though it remains unclear exactly how many employees have been cut from the studio. Starfield developer Bethesda also suffered layoffs. Microsoft announced that it will cut 10,000 jobs over the next two months, slashing roughly 5 percent of its total workforce.
It’s no secret that I’ve played Halo Infinite a lot over the past year and a bit, so this news is disappointing to me. The game suffers from undeniable issues related to a lack of new content, but the underlying multiplayer mechanics and single-player campaign are the best in the series since 2007’s Halo 3.
It’s unclear what these layoffs and Staten leaving the studio mean for the future of Halo Infinite, but the situation doesn’t look good.
PlayStation has unveiled a new mobile game called Ultimate Sackboy, a running game developed by U.K.-based Exient.
Coming to Android and iOS on February 21st, Ultimate Sackboy is a spin-off of PlayStation’s popular LittleBigPlanet series. While the game was previously in closed beta testing in select markets, including Canada, this marks both its official unveiling and confirmation of a wide release date.
In Ultimate Sackboy, you’ll control the titular burlap sack character as he runs through various stages, requiring you to move and jump to avoid obstacles. In this way, the gameplay is very reminiscent of endless runners like Temple Run and Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!, just with a LittleBigPlanet aesthetic. Along the way, you’ll collect LBP‘s signature bubbles and unlock costumes to change Sackboy’s appearance.
The game is confirmed to be free-to-play, so it remains to be seen what sort of microtransactions it may have, such as in-app purchases for more Sackboy costumes. The most recent LittleBigPlanet game, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, launched in November 2020 on PS4 and PS5. A PC port was released last October.
Ultimate Sackboy is the latest in PlayStation’s growing efforts to expand its IPs to mobile. Last September, the company acquired Germany’s Savage Game Studios as part of a newly formed PlayStation Studios Mobile Division. At the time, PlayStation said Savage was working on a “AAA mobile live service action game,” although it was “too early” to reveal more.
It remains to be seen what other PlayStation franchises besides LittleBigPlanet might make the leap to mobile.
Toronto rapper Drake showed off a used PSP in his new ‘Jumbotron Shit Poppin’ music video that’s probably unlike any other.
The plastic case usually enclosing the device is replaced with a solid gold one. Jacob & Co appears to have created the item, according to Vanity Fair, and producer Pharrell Williams previously owned the handheld.
Williams recently sold several Jacob & Co items, including the PSP Drake shows off in the video. It reportedly sold for $19,375 USD (roughly $26,000 in Canada).
Check out the PSP for yourself in the video below. Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) released back in 2005 as a direct competitor to Nintendo’s DS. The PSP ended worldwide production in 2014.
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.
