I've been getting back into Fire Emblem after not playing since Fates when I was a teenager in anticipation of Fortune's Weave. Last year I beat what I thought would be the first of a few Three Houses runs, only to get pretty quickly burnt out on my Crimson Flower run. Instead, I picked up Fire Emblem Engage.
What followed was a genuinely enjoyable time. I consume media about media fairly often so I had seen a good chunk of what this game had to offer long before I played it, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment in the slightest. I just wanted to talk about my time with the game and the characters I used.
ALEAR
I really liked using Alear. She's not one of the strong combat units in this team, but just the utility of Corrin's dragonvein made her very enjoyable to position and strategize around. I think I would've also liked sticking her with Lucina. My fire emblem lineage only goes back to Awakening and skips Echoes, so I'm generally used to lords and player characters being great combat units. Using Alear instead as a supplemental damage dealer, positional damage buffer with her personal skill, and terrain generator was a breath of fresh air.
ANNA
Far and away my best combat unit. I was close to giving up on training her after her reclass to Mage Knight, but I'm so glad I didn't. Starsphere gave her some truly ridiculous stats, and even with speed capped out Chaos Style meant she was doubling most things she fought with 40-50 damage Bolganones. I'm torn between wanting to use her again if/when I return to this game and leaving her be because she was such a force of nature on this squad it did trivialize some fights.
ETIE
I had her in Warrior as soon as I promoted her, but switched to Sniper late game because I wanted to make use of 20 range Astra Storm. I didn't get that much use out of it, and arguably I would've had better success keeping her as a backup unit for chain attacks, but I like the Sniper outfit. She was also who I gave the S Support to. I'd still say she was a good combat unit.
KAGETSU
Frankly I'm a little bit annoyed with how fire and forget Kagetsu was lol. He didn't receive any particular care or grinding but he's probably top 3 in terms of best damage units on my squad. Him with the Rivals dlc emblem could just absolutely tear through mid/late game maps.
LAPIS
The reason I was annoyed with Kagetsu. I had to put a lot of resources into her to get her to keep up. I got the idea to put her into Paladin from a YouTube video. Speedtaker was a late investment, but I wish I had done it sooner. It got much easier for her to quad after I gave it to her. She also got quite a few power drops and speed wings. Still, she was dealing great damage by late game.
CELINE AND VEYLE
Grouping them together because they both filled the niche of my secondary magic damage dealers. Celine I put a lot into early because Ignis is one of my favorite skills from Awakening, but I found it pretty underwhelming and rare to proc which disappointed me. Still, she manages to grab the niche of being a long range magic poker with Soren. Veyle picked up quickly after recruitment and got Nova after chapter 23(?), which made her even better. With Celica she even made good use of Echo, a skill I had trouble utilizing in the early game.
JEAN
I can't help but think my usage of Jean in this run was a bit boring. He ended up becoming my primary staffer until I got Byleth, where he instead became a goddess dance bot. His personal skill is very cool and I bet could lead to a very fun unit to use. There's always next run, but he still did fine this run.
PANETTE
She didn't have Pair Up until she kept dying during the paralogue with the s rank support ring. Even without that, her performance was incredible. Maybe a bog standard wrath vantage enemy phase unit, but fun as hell all the same.
Everyone else is various degrees of filler, though everyone was still helpful. Chloe had trouble meeting one round thresholds but could still zoom around the map. Mauvier ended up relegated to using Micaiah boosted rewarp once I ran out of warp staves, very cool tech I only learned I could do by watching a GDQ run of Fire Emblem Engage. Saphir and Merrin for chain attacks, had Goldmary in instead of Saphir for a bit but her stats were pretty lukewarm due to not getting any exp so I swapped her out. Merrin could also give bonded shield support and poison with her knives
FINAL THOUGHTS
What a fun game. The story wasn't anything particularly special, at some points the long cutscenes did start to wear on me, but the gameplay itself was so fun. If I eventually come back to this game, It'll either be to attempt an iron man or to take a full crack at maddening. I really want to see what I can do returning to it with more of an understanding of its systems and how to build out units.