There’s something a little weird going on with Fire Emblem Engage, which is set to land on the Nintendo Switch on January 20, 2023. People have been wondering since the game was announced if this is a new “mainline” Fire Emblem game or not. While there’s no official “yes/no” declaration, as far as we can tell the answer is that yes, Fire Emblem Engage is a mainline game. Here’s what we know.
First of all, it’s important to talk about why this is even a question. For the most part, Fire Emblem games are all “mainline,” with only a few exceptions. The spinoffs have mostly been the Warriors titles, the “Musou” games co-developed by Omega Force and Team Ninja. These are pretty obvious spinoffs considering the genre variance, despite how much effort is put in to making them authentically Fire Emblem.
The reason Engage has caused some confusion is its premise, which involves characters from past Fire Emblem titles being summoned by the main characters. The main characters who, by the way, look more stereotypically “anime” than most previous protagonists in the series. Those two elements seem to be causing the confusion.
But if you look closer, first of all at gameplay, this is about as purely Fire Emblem as it gets. You’re looking at a turn-based, tactics-style strategy RPG with all the same stuff you’ll see in every other game. Plus, Intelligent Systems is the main developer behind the game, and currently the only one officially credited. There have been rumblings for a while that Gust (Atelier) has been involved, but even if that turns out to be true Koei Tecmo was brought in to co-develop Three Houses. Videogame development just gets weird like that sometimes.
Otherwise, there’s no indication Fire Emblem Engage is not a mainline entry in the series. So if there was any question in your mind about whether or not you can skip this one, you may as well get that preorder in if you were considering it. Although there isn’t much in the way of bonus offerings, so either way you can relax.
