With Fire Emblem Engage on the horizon, fans of the series eagerly await what kind of new experience the newest entry can bring to the table. Even with all the innovation over its thirty-year lifespan, there's always room for improvement and experimentation with the Fire Emblem franchise. From changes to the story structure to potential classes, there are many new things gamers hope to see in this upcoming title.
Three Houses brought a slew of new mechanics while expanding on existing ones. It also told a story with a fresh complexity that hadn't been seen since Genealogy of the Holy War. It seems Intelligent Systems has finally hit its stride and, with ample funds and time, can take Fire Emblem to even greater heights.
10 More Innovative Classes Would Be Nice
The Fire Emblem series is no stranger to experimentation with character classes. However, when the series has fixated on basing their worlds around medieval Europe, there's only so many things they could do. Engage may be the game that takes a step outside the franchise's comfort zone, aside from Heroes.
For a long time, fans have workshopped their own unique ideas for the future classes like shapeshifters, gunmen, and camel riders. Intelligent Systems can show that same level of creativity for their classes. This wish is likely to be granted, largely to newer fans who aren't familiar with the old classes that Engage may bring back.
9 Maps Need A Breath Of Fresh Air
Fire Emblem has always been somewhat hit or miss with its map design. More often than not, they're decent at best. Awakening and Shadows of Valentia were infamous for their vast expanses of open field that gave little tactical advantage to the player or the enemy, no thanks to the lack of terrain.
Engage could experiment more with how armies interact during combat, like using special tiles or implementing pathways and turn conditions that alter the way a level can be completed. They don't have to be grandmaster chessboards, just moderately challenging — as long as they aren't level design nightmares like the late game maps of Fire Emblem Fates: Revelations.
8 More Ethnic Diversity Among The Cast
Three Houses was actually the Fire Emblem first game to star a Middle Eastern-inspired protagonist with a pivotal story role. Said character, Claude von Riegan, had an ancestry that traced back to the country of Almyra, which also drew from Middle-Eastern inspirations.
While characters of various ethnicities have always had a presence in Fire Emblem, some ethnicities only found representation in side characters and villains. The continent of Elyos features a desert kingdom home to two notable ethnic characters, whose presence in the trailers hints at them playing a significant role.
7 More Narrative Diversity Among The Core Characters
Fire Emblem fans would love to see more characters that don't fall into the same archetypes as their predecessors. As the series was shifting more towards narrative-driven titles rather than gameplay-driven ones, Intelligent Systems needed a way to make characters somewhat familiar and engaging with each entry, prompting the creation of archetypes.
Archetypes helped the writers create characters who shared roles to past characters but with slightly different circumstances. However, many who fall into an archetype are virtually indistinguishable from those who came before. Hopefully, the new entry will give Fire Emblem fans some characters who don't rely on archaic character and story writing conventions to be interesting.
6 Every Series Entry Should Have Some Spotlight
From what is confirmed so far, the protagonist Alear is tasked by their mother, the King of Divine Dragons, to obtain all twelve Emblem rings and use them to defeat the Fell Dragon. The hope that there will be more than just twelve and that other protagonists throughout the series will have rings is unanimous among the community.
Not only does a measly twelve count out heroes that were of equal importance to the confirmed Emblems, but it also counts out heroes from spin-off titles. It would be a massive waste of potential and fan hype if characters from Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Warriors, or Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE didn't get their chance to shine.
5 Better Written, More Compelling Villains
Antagonists in Fire Emblem have always been something of a sore spot. Usually, villains boil down to "evil sorcerer trying to resurrect an evil dragon," with several deviations depending on the entry. When the most complex villains in the series are a sickly prince who trusted the Demon King, a fairy queen with a brother complex, and an angsty anti-theist war criminal, improvements are needed.
Engage seems to be going for the "evil sorcerer trying to resurrect an evil dragon" plot again, but that doesn't mean all hope is lost. Even if the final boss isn't all that impressive, perhaps the game's minions will be well-written fan favorites.
4 More Unique Weapons And Weapon Types
In recent years, Fire Emblem hasn't been shy about taking inspiration from real-world culture and folklore to influence the names and designs of weapons. Hopefully, with the new regions in Elyos, there will be more variety in the weapons, specifically their names, designs, and effects.
Fire Emblem got on the right track with the advent of the eastern-inspired Myrmidon class during the Gameboy Advance era but never went all the way until Fates, with an entire country based around Warring States Era Japan. With a desert kingdom on the way, Engage could introduce all sorts of interesting weapons and armor to the franchise.
3 Supports That Aren't Taken From A Dating Sim
Supports have become a staple mechanic in the series, but the execution has wavered over time. The joke of Support Conversations turning the games into dating simulators slowly became less of a joke as the series went on. This left much to be desired by fans who missed the old days when conversations didn't always have to end with two characters pairing off after the final boss.
Although it wouldn't be a brand-new change, it would be good to see more platonic Supports again, rather than turning unit cooperation into a shipping war. This is especially true in the case of Alear, the player-insert character, an archetype that was given exclusively romantic paired endings until Three Houses.
2 Alear Being More Than Yet Another Goodie-Two-Shoes Hero
The newest protagonist of the franchise, Alear, looks to be the run-of-the-mill "My Unit." Characters of this kind are infamous for being rather boring and generic. Known for being "kind" or "desiring peace," they're often paragons of virtue who can do no wrong.
Even when Intelligent Systems tried to write a morally gray My Unit with Corrin, they failed spectacularly. The latest trailer revealed that IntSys might actually deliver this time and allow Alear to fall to the dark side. Even if it doesn't last the whole game after the event, it will make Alear and his story stand out among other My Units.
1 A Truly Distinctive Story
Engage celebrates the legacy of the Fire Emblem series. Unfortunately, this means that the plot might be recycled from past games as well, whose stories were sometimes subpar, to begin with.
The most recent titles delivered a more unique and engrossing story than their predecessors, but the discourse over who was "right" and who was "wrong" drowned out whatever plot the game wanted to present to the community. Above all else, fans want Engage's story to take the series back to its roots while also presenting an engrossing and unique narrative.