I tried to see if there was already a thread (I think I remember
@MMC doing a bunch of individual game threads after a Switch direct or maybe it was E3) but for whatever reason searching for threads isn't working for me.
Anyway I'm quite enjoying it too. It's definitely another strong entry in the series.
From a visual standpoint, it's the best Fire Emblem has ever been between vibrant colors, well crafted map designs (even if the textures can still be a bit rough), excellent combat animations that feature unique parry animations instead of enemies just missing their swing or their magic/arrow shot, and lastly while this isn't a new feature, the map seamlessly integrates into the battle animation (to explain you have a 3d rendered top down map in one phase but for combat, the battle environment matches your location on the map. So if you're on a staircase you'll fight on the staircase and see other map features in the distance. And Intelligent Systems proves this by letting you explore the map in third person after every battle).
The "hub world" stuff from Three Houses is there but you're not locked into having to start there and follow a calendar of scheduled training and tasks. You can still do just about everything you could do at the Academy in Three Houses at Engage's Somniel but it really is entirely optional. If you want the benefit of grinding out minor buffs, you can. If you want to put your head down and just focus on battling you can. The only time you'd conceivably have to return to the hub world is to maintain your emblem rings and the bond levels with the units you put them on or if the story required it (only happened a couple times from what I remember). The only thing visually that I'm not fond of is the character designs and it mostly comes down to the design scheme for the eyes. I don't know what it is but the eyes look so similar and cartoony that it takes away from the individuality of the characters. I thought Three Houses had a great cast of unique looking characters.
As to difficulty, I'm playing on the easiest difficulty for my first play through but it does seem less brain dead than Three Houses on normal. I do like that through my 15 of 26 chapters, there's only been one with the damage sponge "monsters" from Three Houses. But I'm a little wary of calling it truly harder. My example is that I've gone way overboard on fighting in every optional skirmish between chapters which, the more you do, the harder they get to the point that they become harder than the story chapters and your troops are so overtuned that the story chapters are just child's play.
But what this amounts to with the scaling difficulty on skirmishes is higher level enemies with higher stats and skills, and there's a huge swath of them. And they don't advance on you as you get closer like in other fire emblem games. Typically, from turn one, the whole map of enemies will advance at your group all at once which leads to limited opportunity to craft your own offensive and instead you need to figure out the best positioning for a full on defensive where you fight more through countering and strategically picking off the right attackers. I don't know how much I like that but at least even on the easiest difficulty I'm being asked to really think about how I position my troops and how I counterattack. Mileage may vary depending on the player but I do intend to play through on hard and maybe again on maddening if I don't lose interest.
Where SJSharks72 and I differ is that I don't really like the story or the character writing. The story itself is fine but it really is too much of a generic fire emblem story with the one unique element being the impact of the emblem rings, mcguffins carrying the spirit of past legendary fire emblem characters which can imbue the wearer with their power. I think it may well just be a case that Three Houses spoiled us with a fairly deep and at times complex narrative with political intrigue, sociopolitical considerations, and some interesting stuff based around a world under Theocratic rule. And this is all supplemented by deep character writing amongst a large but diverse cast. No one character is like any of the others. And the more you dig into their supports the more you peel back how life in Fodlan is more grim than it seems and how the crests and the Church of Seiros have negative impacts on many. It really adds to how it's no real surprise that the continent broke out into war and that if Edelgard hadn't started the war, it would have happened eventually regardless.
There's nothing like that here. Three Houses wasn't some masterpiece in storywriting as it had its flaws but I appreciated being immersed in a deeper narrative. Outside of a twist in the first third of this game, the story of Engage is relatively simple and a little too familiar to past Fire Emblem games. And the characters still have more focus on background and personality than some other past games but a lot of backstory and character growth and development is slashed or rushed. I haven't gotten to the last third of the game yet but it seems these characters are and will be more or less the same people at the end as they were at the start.
Another complaint I have is this game absolutely inundates you with new playable characters so fast. It's not weird in a Fire Emblem game to have characters that ride the bench and never see the battlefield as it might encourage replays to try them out. My problem is that Three Houses found a way to make even extra characters story relevant by featuring them in cutscenes and dialogue and made it easy to build their supports at the Academy to learn more about them. At this point in the game I have more than a handful of characters I know nothing about that are just JPEGs in my character roster or characters I run past in the Somniel. In Three Houses you have the first half of the game where you spend time with pretty much the whole cast of characters and get to know/recruit them before the story mostly limits you to the characters in your chosen house and the ones you managed to recruit to your house. And that gave the player agency and control of their interaction with the characters. Here, outside a couple recruitable characters, new units are just shoved into your roster and if they start out weaker than your current units, they are effectively forgotten unless you go to the effort of playing them in optional content to build supports with other characters. It's not a huge deal but it puts an impediment on exploring your characters to build more backstory into the wider narrative.
All that said, I'm enjoying it a great deal. The main focus the developers put on the game was the gameplay and presentation and that is what (mostly) excels. As I said, I probably let Three Houses spoil me with respect to story and character writing and they didn't try as hard this time around.
I'd give it a solid 8/10 thus far.
Last note, I don't recommend getting the DLC if you plan on multiple plagthroughs. The Tiki and Edelgard/Dimitri/Claude rings have skills that boost stat and xp growth and the two characters I put them on are already more or less unstoppable death machines (and I haven't even spoiled what the rings actually do, the Tiki one is beyond overpowered). But then again that's partially my fault for overdoing it on the optional battles. But, the DLC rings are basically a cheat code. I'd save them for a hard or maddening run to reduce the difficulty on those a bit.