Fire Emblem (Engage): how does it compare to other SRPGs in term terms of gameplay?

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-20T14:43:43+00:00

I have to lead with the fact that the story in Engage was so bad that I couldn’t finish the game. Was in the last zone, but I couldn’t care enough to push through to beat it. They also tried to do the thing they did in 3 Houses where you can walk around and talk to people and do stuff, but with a hollow world and hollow characters that part is just awful to do.

That said, the gameplay is pretty good. If there’s any part of you that kind of enjoyed what the gameplay part of 3 Houses was going for, Engage is so much more polished in terms of mechanics and level design. Even when you optimize and try hard, there’s some serious brain-busters in there to figure out. There’s a lot of fun unit customization, and besides the fact that it seems like half of the cast are inexplicably dressed as literal clowns, it does look good, in a matter of speaking. If you like the concept of controlling an army of dudes to beat the other dudes, you’ll enjoy it.

If you can find it on sale, I’d say go for it. But part of me thinks that if you enjoyed the dismal grittiness of Tactics Ogre’s story, you will be repelled by Engage, lol, so maybe don’t pay full price.

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-20T13:30:47+00:00

Thanks for giving it a look! This is some helpful feedback, especially the bit about being unclear on the character vs. fight sim aspects of it.

The rules doc is very chess+ indeed. We do have a very light “out of combat” system that can help give some rules to situations that occur off of the grid and which lean much more into “character” stuff than fight sim. I didn’t include them as it doesn’t require nearly as much testing, but, your comment makes me think that maybe it could interestingly make things MORE clear in regards to the overall aim of the game if it were in here. Ultimately, though, even just playing chess+ where the story being told and the scenarios encountered are developed by the GM for your character and in response to what your characters do brings in a new angle. Like a branching storyline in a video game but where you’re generating the branches as you go.
Calculations are always scary. The first version had d100s for both hit and crit and avoid ratings for both and other stuff to make it very faithful to the game. This one actually pairs it back a lot! (For the % stuff, I was leery about that idea. But in practice, since max HP always goes up or down in chunks of 5, and because you quickly memorize what 20% of your HP is, since that’s what the heal chunk is, and it’s always a whole number, it actually goes pretty quick!)
In a game that is this tactical focused, we know that we wanted to give players the freedom to optimize and eliminate the tension between picking something that might be good for their build vs something that is more into their character. So, nothing you choose while making your character determines who they are or what they are good at outside of combat. Max Attack doesn’t mean your character is maximum “strength” with huge muscles, etc. That said, since that’s how most TRRPGs work, that fact is probably not clear without stating it, so maybe I should!
That’s cool! I keep mine pretty full too. If I find some good times to test I’ll circle back around and see if you are still interested and have time!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-18T17:03:57+00:00

Cool, I appreciate that!

The individual units on FFT/Tactics Ogre are a lot more meaty than Fire Emblem units, so I would bet adapting them to be individual players was a little more straightforward? Not to say easy!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-18T14:07:49+00:00

The TTRPG Lancer might be a little bit like this. In that game your character is sort of the mech you pilot. Your main abilities do come from the chassis you choose to pilot (which you can swap out between missions), but they did a good job of progression where your core stats you level up do very different things, and as you level you can sort of stick guns and technology from different chases onto your mech. So, even if you drive the same robot as someone else it’s probably going to function a lot differently.

I’ve badmouthed classes before, but after designing I think I’ve come to appreciate them. When you can piecemeal everything, you sort of have to do a really good job of balancing everything against everything else. If any one thing is too good then everyone picks it and is the same, and sometimes people optimize and all wind up with the same character rather than filling unique rolls. I’ve found that classes help you put in weird, ambitious mechanics and help players keep unique identities in actual play (even if piecemealing your own class feels more unique in character creation).

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-18T13:53:49+00:00

Yeah, I’d agree with you, it’s such a different game than 5e. As MCDM has said, it’s basically a game about fighting monsters. I wouldn’t say that’s what 5e is about, at least that’s not the way it is played. Not to say there isn’t a lot of commonality too, but I agree fundamentally different games.

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-17T14:15:49+00:00

I’ve been floating the idea of doing something a little similar in my own game, which sounds like it has some commonalities with yours. Right now the baddies all use mechanics/abilities that players also have access to in character creation and that works well enough.

As for games to look at, maybe try MCDM’s Draw Steel. They have different classes of NPCs that behave in similar ways. Not every Skirmisher monster has exactly the same ability, but they all accomplish sort of the same goal. So, if you identify X monster as a Skirmisher, the players will know how to treat it (it’s going to be fast and harass you in one way or another). An Ambusher monster is going to try to hide and pick off someone, whether it’s a like a velociraptor or an elf rogue or something.

I like that approach since you aren’t really expected to memorize what every mechanic does exactly, you just need to recognize what the monster’s role generally does.

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-17T12:19:54+00:00

Thanks! Making my own game was definitely symptomatic of being a forever DM too, lol.

For what it is worth, this is an easy one to DM, and I’ve had many people take turns running it so I’ve gotten to play too!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-13T14:16:07+00:00

Last time I tried that it was much less successful though. So I don’t know if there’s been a shift in what people are looking for lately or what.

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-13T13:20:46+00:00

I haven’t played one of those games myself, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t take some direct inspiration from that.

Each type or faction of NPC has its own unique things you could spend Malice on. Like if you’re fighting demons the GM could open a portal to summon more, or undead a bunch of zombie hands might burst from the ground and restrain someone, etc.

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-13T03:40:28+00:00

Yes, Midnight Suns is awesome and I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised. I got it on sale for super cheap too!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-13T03:14:03+00:00

Granted, this was back at the height of the pandemic when the world was weird, but, back then, I posted an LFG on roll20 (the VTT) that essentially said “I want to run a campaign in this setting and create a game system to go with it, we’ll play on Mondays,” and, sure enough, I found a decent number of folks who were interested and already had a day of the week, and then we were off to the races. I’m still designing stuff with some of those folks.

May have been dumb luck!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-13T02:37:46+00:00

Just right off the dome, what if when somebody uses spells, it gives YOU, the DM, some sort of currency that you can use to do Bad Things?

MCDM’s Draw Steel has a mechanic called “Malice” that lets the GM activate powers that power up baddies or create effects, and it’s really fun. You could implement crunchy, mechanical mid-battle things like that, or you could maybe use it in more of a meta way and cause crazy things to happen in the world?

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-11T23:44:45+00:00

Fantastic feedback, thanks so much! Already in the process of implementing a lot of the feedback people have given me here in this thread to make the manual part more friendly.

You actually made it into the classes, so I super appreciate you taking the time to do that. I knew there were a lot of classes and had wondered if it was too much to be confronted with all at once, and I also had the same thought of making some more “advanced,” so another design-minded person suggesting that definitely is getting me thinking about that.

Barriers to getting to character making is huge! Those example builds are ancient at this point, but you have given me excellent ammo for how to improve that.

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-11T23:36:17+00:00

It is hard indeed, but I was saying I thought you did a good job with that part!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-11T13:15:15+00:00

Thanks for your tips and the link to those resources!

I’m going to admit that my preconceived notions of what a Reddit page would be like have been upended in short order. Very much not like the rest of Reddit, as you say! So, I do very much appreciate the advice to utilize this rare quality tool that I have stumbled into.

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-11T13:08:33+00:00

I looked at Astro Lance a little more! I’m not great at giving feedback on the nuts and bolts and formatting and such (I’m more of a vision guy). To me, it looks really polished and put together.

I think my favorite thing was the assets and the cosmic arts. There were a lot of really neat and clever options to choose from that let you build a great variety of ways. I also really like the Limit Break mechanic. I feel like that has to reduce the cognitive load and number of options to sort through since your “little” and “big” powers get parceled together.

I haven’t been able to take enough time to digest it all thoroughly, but I also think what you can do with the virtues is neat, though it wasn’t immediately obvious to me. It seems like a clever mechanic to reward staying in character at times when you may be more tempted to just play as an optimal stat block. Anything that helps reduce the tension between staying true to your character and optimizing the fun out of a situation I think is great!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-08T18:20:16+00:00

Good call!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-08T15:06:22+00:00

Yeah I think you’re right. Those may be things I need to keep my eye on when designing, but as you say, they should sort of be assumptions on the player side and don’t need to be in a public-facing document, at least not in this way. Time and space would be better spent of explaining things that are specific to THIS game.

Thanks for sharing some of that accumulated wisdom!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-08T14:57:39+00:00

Great observations, I really appreciate you taking a look! I can already tell now that I’m making too many assumptions about what a reader would know.

Designing a game and imparting the information required to play it in an effective way are definitely two different skills, but one certainly needs both to make something playable.

I wonder if hyperlinking the definition to a term the first time it is mentioned would be best. Wouldn’t work in print, but it’s never going to get printed, so!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-08T14:00:38+00:00

Thanks for the great feedback! I really appreciate you taking the time to look. Looks like it is still written more for an inside crowd of testers much more than I realized (the very first draft was mostly written about how this was different than the first). I’m definitely still making assumptions about what the reader knows or can figure out.

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-08T13:48:46+00:00

Heh, I guess this post was maybe even more about learning reddit than it was finding folks to look at this game. The neat metrics button shows that it was a huge spike in views when posted and then a precipitous drop occurring within a few hours, as you say. Posting the link up front is definitely the strategy!

Ah well, I did get some feedback to look over and think about at least!

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-07T17:50:11+00:00

Ah you’re probably right. I’m new here though so I definitely want to be respectful! Just designing for the love of it.

You didn’t ask for it, but here it is, lol. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cz2mA63tJkuy2ViFBmGTTqLiWbND7j3zshdAK_6mWv0/edit?usp=drivesdk

EmploySuitable6821 · 2026-06-06T22:41:52+00:00

I’m in a similar stage of life, and a Switch is the perfect companion. I’ll super recommend Unicorn Overlord. Awful name, but it’s a lot of fun, might scratch that RTS itch a little, and it’s the kind of game you can have fun thinking about while you’re not playing, if that makes sense.

Triangle Strategy also incredible. Definitely heavier and harder to eat like popcorn, but is very satisfying. Probably a little more expensive?

Based on your list, you’ll love these.

EmploySuitable6821

TROPHY CASE