Fire Emblem Engage Team Discusses Emblems and Game Balance

Tomorrow is the day that many are looking forward to. Why? Because tomorrow is when Fire Emblem Engage arrives on Nintendo Switch! The game is hyped for numerous reasons, not the least is the positive reviews that have come out about the title. But just as important, the dev team has been doing special interviews highlighting various game elements and what it took to develop the title. The final part of the interview focused on the Emblems, the characters you summon via special rings, and how the team had to balance the gameplay to ensure they weren’t OP. As you can imagine, it was a difficult task.

At first, it was pointed out to them by one of their team members that by doing the abilities they had planned out, the battles would be over quickly:

“Even though we came up with many different abilities, the stage designer said, “If the character can move up to five additional grid spaces by Engaging with Sigurd, the tactic would break, and there wouldn’t even be a battle!” On our end, we were thinking the characters actually need to move further than that, because without it, we won’t be able to communicate the increased character movement, nor will it look appealing.”

Hopefully, you can see their dilemma with this. On the one hand, they needed to have the Emblem Rings be powerful, or else they would be a worthless mechanic. But if they didn’t balance it right, there wouldn’t be a challenge in the game, which would contradict the series’ style. So what did they do? Simple, they called in some help! They brought in an experienced member of Intelligent Studios to assist them and help balance everything out. Sometimes you need a little help.

Another thing they wanted to ensure was that they didn’t want the Emblems to be considered “just another item.” So that’s why you’ll be able to have support conversations with the Emblems, which will boost the bonds between the characters and affect the battles to come.

Finally, the team leader made a very sweet note about Fire Emblem Engage. Mainly that the theme of the game of the past helping the present also was relevant to how the game was made:

“Similar to how heroes of past titles, like Marth and Sigurd, helped Alear, my predecessors who created the past Fire Emblem titles supported me in bringing this new Fire Emblem game to life.”

Source: Nintendo