Jello Reviews "Fire Emblem: Engage"
Added 2025-01-30 05:06:25 +0000 UTCYou've heard of the Fire Emblem game with ballistic missiles. Get ready for the Fire Emblem game where you play as toothpaste and die twice.
You've heard of the Fire Emblem game with ballistic missiles. Get ready for the Fire Emblem game where you play as toothpaste and die twice.
Spoilers for all of FE: Engage, not that anyone on earth could possibly be moved by this story.
This review is best listened to after you've already listened through the marathon 5-hour review of Three Houses, which can be found here.
Read the character review document here.
Here's the absolutely incredible breakdown of the Resident Evil franchise by Noah Cadwell-Gervais that I mention in the audio. I cannot recommend his stuff enough. In addition to video game franchise overviews, he also has really interesting and equally-long road trip videos about the history of American highway infrastructure. Noah is probably my favorite video essayist.
THINGS I REMEMBERED TO TALK ABOUT THE INSTANT I STOPPED THE RECORDING, AS PER USUAL:
This is the only FE game with a weak soundtrack. Almost entirely unmemorable aside from a few of the Solm maps.
One of the Emblems, Erika, comes from Sacred Stones. She and her twin brother Ephraim are the dual protagonists of that game. Ephraim has no dialogue and basically doesn't exist if you play the game with zoomed-in combat turned off, so Erika is just like "MY BROTHER IS HERE TOO. I SWEAR!" but he never shows up in any cutscene or any Somniel animations. This is extra weird because another emblem, Celica, is also from a game with two protagonists, but her dueteragonist Alm isn't secretly chilling out in her armpit like Ephraim allegedly is.
February will be an exciting month to be a patron! The giant 1.5 hour anime opening video is finally dropping, along with SEVEN HOURS OF EXTRA PATRON-EXCLUSIVE VIDEOS. Wowza! Don't miss it.
Comments
That’s it, I’m making a protagonist who’s a sadist and feels really awkward and bad about how being violent kinda turns them on and that’s not a character arc or central characteristic it’s just a little quirk
ASquared
2025-07-04 20:11:49 +0000 UTCYa know? Following these Fire Emblem and tactical game reviews and how they’re easy has gotten me thinking a lot about the one tactics game I’ve ever played, Triangle Strategy. Is it a perfect game? Far from it, the narrative is rough and the replays are not easy on the soul, and it kinda goes annoyingly hard into its 3 scales and triangle strategy gimmick. But its combats are good. Really good. I think the mark of a good, challenging strategy game is if it gives you, the player, stories to tell. And Triangle Strategy did that in fucking spades. I have 3 separate stories about how most of my units died, the “watch out most of your units died” music started playing, and I clutched + cheesed the whole combat while sweating my skin off praying the enemies didn’t pull a wildcard or that RNG fucked me over. And those are just the ones for where my Archers saved me! And from what I hear about Modern Fire Emblem in these reviews they just… don’t do that. Jello has to pull really generic examples that may or may not have happened to him because they’re arbitrary examples, and the best stories he has are ones the game gives him, not his actual gameplay. And that’s really disappointing.
ASquared
2025-07-04 00:29:59 +0000 UTCOoh... this is smart.
JelloApocalypse
2025-06-02 03:01:46 +0000 UTCReListening to this and honestly, my ideal Fire Emblem idea for turnwheels. Is that for 1. If you playing on casual, no matter the difficulty you have an infinite amount of turn wheels. I don’t see the point of having limited ones on casual if no one is gonna die. Your already playing the baby mode might make it stupid fair. BUT. There is a difficulty you get after you beat the initial game I think called maddening, which they added for more experienced FE players. they added since 3H, I want to make that available from the get go. If you’re playing that mode on classic. Then I think you should only get 10 turn wheels THE WHOLE GAME. That way if a character dies it could be like. “Ah shit, not Steve! I really liked him! I could use the turn wheel. But I only got like six left and I’m halfway through the game… he wasn’t that good of a unit… shit I think I’m just gonna have to let him die here.” That way it could give players a choice whether or not to save units. And if your units are actually CHARACTERS and also maybe good ones, it could cause players to decide whether or not they should sacrifice their favorite or not.
BigMoffers
2025-05-18 22:20:08 +0000 UTCoh my god...
JelloApocalypse
2025-04-12 04:52:38 +0000 UTCI wonder if Phoenix Spaulding could tell me any 6 letter words I could use to describe that dragon loli girl
Somme_One
2025-04-09 03:04:06 +0000 UTCOh that idea of playing as Veyle summoning you after you become an emblem is AWESOME!!! 👏👏👏 Genuinely why didn't they do that 😩 It made no fuckin sense that you're the only one who gets to keep a physical body.
Bunni89
2025-03-22 21:49:44 +0000 UTCHope this didn't come off as too aggro, I tried to phrase it as best as I could.
Bunni89
2025-03-22 21:13:26 +0000 UTCHey uhh, hope it's ok to say but you seem to be oddly vicious about your dislike of characters with anxiety/depression? It's fine to just dislike them, you're allowed to have different opinions. But the "wish he'd take that razor out of his hair and slit his own throat" joke here was way too much. You have every right to find characters "whiny", but joking about literal self harm is a bit insensitive. That moment just really shocked me. (To be clear I'm not saying this as a hater comment, I really enjoyed the rest of the review!)
Bunni89
2025-03-22 21:13:00 +0000 UTCThanks as always for the longform audio to listen to while I work! Excited for the many hours of anime opening opinions!
Candaru Driemor
2025-03-14 21:34:53 +0000 UTCI made the mistake of choosing this as my first fire emblem and man I was disappointed. I didn't know it'd be the way it was with emblems and such.
MtnUwU
2025-02-12 22:57:03 +0000 UTCPlease please talk about Octopath Traveler. It’d be nice to hear a fun review. There is really only 1-3 criticisms and their fine.
Masofuts
2025-02-10 23:05:51 +0000 UTCIs there a world we can get either the open thoughts fire emblem, or a mass review of fire emblem? It sounds like youve played most of em, and I'd love to scrub through to hear about the ones Ive played (my beloved Sacred Stones I haven't played since I was a child) and the ones I just am not ever gonna play (sorry geneaology, I dont care enough to play you, but I'm curious enough to listen to the spite machine[affectionate] I subscribe to talk about you)
Daniel
2025-02-09 21:28:39 +0000 UTCMassive agree on the thing about "He stole the orb!" *Nobody fuckin moved* Genuinely no clue why they haven't fixed this in the 3D games? It's SO fuckin obvious when they're fully rendered people. You can SEE they're not animated! This isn't a visual novel lol. I still can't stop laughing at that goddamn "Caspar! That guy offscreen is menancing offscreen children! Oh no he committed offscreen suicide!"
Bunni89
2025-02-09 07:21:19 +0000 UTC2:00:23 this gave me the idea that IS should’ve just leaned into Alear having severe amnesia to make him a better character Alear, for the millionth time: “there are other worlds?!??!” Vander, to a new party member: “oh, don’t mind him, he was in a coma for 1,000 years, his brain isn’t quite working right”
ver.
2025-02-04 20:37:59 +0000 UTCNo, I killed him instantly lmao
JelloApocalypse
2025-02-04 17:19:11 +0000 UTCWas Ashnard able to actually attack you this time
dan the human
2025-02-03 23:48:35 +0000 UTCEtie really is the epitome of that one meme that goes: "OMG look at her curls!" *image of someone who's hair couldn't be any straighter if she tried* "Kpop fans will wake up and just lie." now if anyone wants to see an ACTUALLY buff girl in fire emblem, Rinkah is right there in FE:Fates.
jubbybubby
2025-02-03 18:32:47 +0000 UTCSo you said you are playing games of this style to prepare for your own FE script, does this mean you’ll play Redemption Reapers? I haven’t it, it’s not quite my style, but I’m just curious if you had plans on doing a review or stream.
Veeson
2025-02-02 19:44:21 +0000 UTCI think the last one broke something in my brain cause I looked at the 2 and a half hour runtime and thought “that’s not too long” before realizing what a fool I am
Ricky Conrad
2025-02-01 15:58:44 +0000 UTC30:21 The county of Evillainous? No, the country of EvilAnus!
Drednot
2025-02-01 01:49:50 +0000 UTCRe: The Weird Adjective-Noun Emphasis (speaking as someone who, admittedly, hasn't played the game): While, in general, I suppose I agree on the noun needing to be emphasized, I think there's some circumstances where it makes sense to emphasize the adjective. For example: "Republican/Democrat Party" sounds right to me with "Republican/Democrat" emphasized. It's the part that's important.
Cephalo the Pod
2025-02-01 01:19:42 +0000 UTCI know what they were going for, the problem is that they didn't make it work even slightly. So now she is stuck with a bizarre circular grid on her head.
CallistoDragon
2025-01-31 13:46:39 +0000 UTChe's so swagless
Flaming Olive
2025-01-31 00:45:42 +0000 UTCY'know what I hate is how in this game's DLC campaign about teaming up with "good versions" of the Four Hounds against "evil versions" of your entire army, instead of Griss they give you "Gregory", a version of Griss without any of his tattoos or piercings, whose entire shtick is "AH!!! PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!!! I DON'T LIKE GETTING HURT!!!"
Flaming Olive
2025-01-31 00:45:32 +0000 UTCi think the waffle grid is meant to be a veil. she got that #funeraldrip
PurpleIsDebeste
2025-01-30 23:20:38 +0000 UTCThink this game would've been better if the rings were certifications to become a Senior Divine Dragon, and every time someone mentioned S-Rank Divine Dragon Lumera, Alear goes "You know my mom?"
Act One
2025-01-30 21:38:09 +0000 UTCLooking through the rankings here, I'm relieved to see Yunaka up there, because like... I thought I was going insane. Someone asked me who my favorite character in Engage was, and I was racking my brains, like... no. No way. That can't be right. The fucking *Hiya Papaya vtuber* made the best impression?! Is something wrong with me? But yeah, she's like, a solid B minus of a character in a game where no one gets higher than a B. Every character is "here's character trait X, stapled to incongruous character trait Y! that's a character, right? we're done here? we don't have to figure out how to make this bit work?", and Yunaka feels like one of the only characters where they thought about it for two minutes and kind of put any effort in. Plus Laura Post put in a really good performance and sold a concept that could've easily been grating. Also, she's like... one of, what, three characters in the entire game who have a reason to be in your army besides "I'm a royal or one of their retainers and I am here to be On Your Side now and have no other character motivation"? Her and... what, the eleventh-hour old man character? The two optional babies? Pickings are *slim*. (Plus she came stapled to Micaiah, and an infinite free Physic staff on a thief does a lot for a first impression.)
Benedict Ide
2025-01-30 18:29:46 +0000 UTCCeline is the #1 design you can absolute tell was made to be a vtuber that stands in the corner of a stream and not a fully-realized model that's supposed to exist in a game world
JelloApocalypse
2025-01-30 17:16:30 +0000 UTCWhen you said you liked the Zephia Griss death scene I raised a pitchfork for a second but after reading this I slowly lower it back down. This is pretty funny.
JelloApocalypse
2025-01-30 17:13:34 +0000 UTCYou can listen to it, I cannot stress enough that Engage doesn't even have a story to spoil
JelloApocalypse
2025-01-30 17:10:57 +0000 UTCLike I said, someone on the dev team was a Tellius appreciater because for all of Engage's flaws they do get Ike and Soren very right
JelloApocalypse
2025-01-30 17:08:50 +0000 UTCHaving finished the review, I can't say I disagree with anything. But man, I nearly died of laughter learning it was a Vtuber designer making these characters. It explains everything.
Crimson Claw
2025-01-30 17:00:15 +0000 UTCAlso FF9 did something similar with armour
Bunni89
2025-01-30 16:30:06 +0000 UTCceline you have to stop. your hair too long. your dress too stupid. your swag too different. they’ll kill you
Flak0ps
2025-01-30 16:05:35 +0000 UTCJello if you liked Ike’s conversations in the game you should look a video showing Soren’s, who is a dlc ring who honestly out of all of the telleus characters was picked for the game. But in those conversations, Soren is just fucking done with everyone’s bullshit the whole time. Here’s an example. Rosado: You’re pretty cute Soren. You’d be even cuter if you let loose once in a while. Have some fun! Soren: I don’t recall asking for your advice. Citrinne: You have such a calming air about you, Soren. Why not showcase it a little more. Soren: I’m too preoccupied with minding my own business. You should try it. It’s just that energy from him the whole time and I love it
BigMoffers
2025-01-30 16:00:12 +0000 UTCAfter your advice i looked up the designs of the characters after having legit never having seen any of them beyond toothpaste. Here are my thoughts on some of the more notable ones: Alear - Just gonna ignore your dumb toothpaste hair for a minute but like WTF is going on with your outfits? Whats with the crotch X?? Framme - You would look much more normal if you werent in a hot pink dress, its SO much more saurated than everthing else. Why? Alfred - Yet another victim of 'stupid outfit disease'. The yellow cravat? The collar?? The brocade??? Céline - She looks like an orb. Theres honestly too much to unpack here but I hate her hat. Louis - He looks like you glued a dolls head on a gundam Alcryst - His leg armour makes it look like hes got chaps. Also whats with the 8 million arm belts?? Lapis - It is literally insane to me that you are named after the colour blue and your design is RED??? Ivy - Why does she have like a waffle grid or some shit glued to her face? Hortensia - The crotch X is back Veyle - Girl what is going on with your hair wings? cause its bad Zephia - So is the big moon going through your skull?? Marni - I also hate this girls hat Sombron - Bro. What???
CallistoDragon
2025-01-30 15:19:04 +0000 UTCI hope, “He taught me to wash my hands” is an Indus line in the next Epithet Book lol
Jack Patterson
2025-01-30 14:27:50 +0000 UTC🥳octopath mentioned!
dollqueen
2025-01-30 13:23:45 +0000 UTCI think the reason games are generally rated on a 4 to 10 scale, is that the 1 to 3 ratings are often reserved for games that are broken or have a lot of technical issues.
Ziggy
2025-01-30 13:13:47 +0000 UTCMy friend and I became friends over fire emblem and we could NOT stomach streaming this game for more than 4 chapters of it. Debating whether or not to just listen to this and spoil the “story” or save it til we finally finish it
T1ggles
2025-01-30 12:54:11 +0000 UTCTwo MORE hours of FE opinions? Let’s fucking go.
Michael Dunne
2025-01-30 11:25:04 +0000 UTCThe key difference between 3H bad and Engage bad is that the 3H review is hours of barely-suppressed rage, and the Engage review is hours of barely-suppressed laughter. You can just go ahead and have fun taking the piss out of it without having to preface every bit of mockery with a sober analysis of exactly why it doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work! No one's gonna argue that point! One thing that I actually kinda liked about Engage's long cutscenes in the lategame was... the bit where Zephia and Griss die? Taken at, like, face value, the way it was probably intended, as a bit of last-minute pathos in the wake of a heel-face turn, it's nonsense. But like... you can also look at it through this lens where it's fucked-up on purpose. Here's this evil genocide collaborator who's just made a waste of her entire life by selling out her boss at the last minute, out of spite for promises left unfulfilled... and then she gets *validation*. She gets a sincere expression of love and approval for her stupid vacuous mockery of a family dynamic... ...from this total freak who's in it for sex reasons, who until this very moment she hadn't cared about for one second. *That's* the self-narrative she finds closure in at the last second! She was a good mommy, according to the serial killer step-on-me guy who's also dying right now! She's so pathetic that *that's* the consolation prize she has to take with her to the grave, and her decision to be satisfied with it highlights what a pitiable person she is. (I don't think that's the read they were *going* for- I think they were going for "oh, she had a heart of gold all along, how tragic"- but it's accidentally a pretty good sendoff for a shitty villain.)
Benedict Ide
2025-01-30 09:05:09 +0000 UTCThe thing about weapons having skills that you need to keep the same weapon on a character to learn, also make me think of the Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced games
RazTheGiant
2025-01-30 08:27:26 +0000 UTCI glad you atleast like octopath, really hope you try out the 2nd one at sone point
Low Charisma (LC)
2025-01-30 08:24:19 +0000 UTCMore fire emblem? You're spoiling us. I can only hope to see some fates criticism someday soon. I love the gameplay, but almost literally everything else is so comically bad (sans the rare support that helps a character, such as Camilla) that the whole game serves as a warning of what NOT to do when writing a plot or characters for the genre.
Crimson Claw
2025-01-30 05:29:22 +0000 UTCYay, I needed something to watch tomorrow at work
nightstar6
2025-01-30 05:21:44 +0000 UTCI was listening in and out and then i heard big cartoon boobs
Leif Rein
2025-01-30 05:19:05 +0000 UTCIt's definitely *less interesting* but it was so much easier to get through than 3H was.
JelloApocalypse
2025-01-30 05:11:40 +0000 UTC*rubs hands together like a greedy little gremlin* Yesss, more salt
Bunni89
2025-01-30 05:11:11 +0000 UTCWeren't you afraid this would be worse?
Arjun MK
2025-01-30 05:11:00 +0000 UTChello luigi
pictrable
2025-01-30 05:09:46 +0000 UTC
