Fire Emblem Engage centers around the new protagonists, led by the Divine Dragon Alear, summoning “Emblems” from various other worlds to aid them in battle. Each Emblem lends its wielder unique abilities in battle, with some Emblems even being able to perform devastating team attacks alongside the user if they are powered up properly. The main game will feature twelve Emblems, one each from the main games in the Fire Emblem series. The first wave of paid DLC, revealed during the Game Awards, showed off four new characters: house leaders Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, working together as a single Emblem, and Tiki, a young dragon who fights alongside Marth in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. More waves of DLC for Engage are expected, leading some to hope that the series’ villains might get their time to shine.
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Fire Emblem’s Villains Have Been Shafted in Spinoffs
While the Fire Emblem series has plenty of memorable villains, some of which even become playable in post-game missions in their home games, they tend to play a frustratingly limited role in spin-offs and crossovers. The two Warriors-style spinoffs, Fire Emblem Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, both featured villains from previous games as bosses to be defeated, but not as playable characters. While some fans still hold out hope that villains such as Thales, Solon, or Kronya will be added as DLC characters for Three Hopes, so far no such DLC has been announced. This was especially disappointing as the latest main series titles, Fates and Three Houses, seemingly ended the tradition of making villains playable for post-game or other bonus maps.
Another spinoff that minimized the role of villains was Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, which featured new characters teaming up with characters from Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light as “Mirages,” a concept inspired by Personas from the Atlus series of the same name. While many of the games’ antagonists were paired up with villains, no villainous Mirages were playable. While villains do appear as summonable and playable characters in the mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes, they are generally lower-rarity lower-strength characters that are often given away for free.
Villains Could Pair Well With a Dragon Protagonist
The absence (so far) of villainous Emblems is particularly disappointing given that the game will feature Alear, the first Divine Dragon to be a main character in a Fire Emblem game. Historically, many Fire Emblem games have had a powerful dragon as a major enemy or even the final boss. These include Medeus from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Duma from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, and Rhea / The Immaculate One from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It would be interesting to see Alear interact with other dragons who play an antagonistic role in their worlds, especially as Alear is venerated as a hero and savior in the world of Fire Emblem Engage
It is likely that the next wave of DLC for Fire Emblem Engage will not be announced until after the game releases in early 2023, with the DLC announced during the Game Awards being the only announcement of its kind. Hopefully, this future DLC will finally give the villains of the Fire Emblem series their time to shine.
Fire Emblem Engage will release on January 20, 2023 for the Nintendo Switch.
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