Category: Video Games

Many of the best board games are geared towards smaller groups of players. So what’s one to do when you have a party or other gathering of fun-loving people in higher numbers? Thankfully, board game and card game makers have not left these scenarios in the cold. If you know where to look, you can find some awesome tabletop experiences that cleanly and elegantly scale up to 10 or even more players, giving everyone something to do.

If you’re seeking a good board game to break out at your next party, these are the best board games for parties and large groups.

TL;DR The Best Party Board Games

• Wits and Wagers
• Codenames
• Time’s Up – Title Recall
• Snake Oil
• The Resistance: Avalon
• Sushi Go Party!
• Bang! The Dice Game
• Telestrations
• Dixit Odyssey
• Wavelength
• One Night Ultimate Werewolf
• When I Dream
• Mysterium
• Monikers
• Decrypto

Don’t want to read a bunch of words? These are our favorite party board games.

Wits and Wagers

• Players: 3-7 (standard), 4-18 (party), 3-10 (family)
• Playtime: 25 minutes
• Also at Target

Do you enjoy trivia board games, but aren’t very good at them? If you answered yes, then Wits and Wagers is the game for you. It’s a trivia game, but instead of using your own answer, you bet on who got the right answer. So if a football question comes up and you have no idea how many Super Bowl rings Peyton Manning has, you can bet on your friend who is a huge football nerd. If they get the question right you earn a point. It’s that simple. Because you don’t need to be versed in every topic under the sun, Wits and Wagers is the most accessible trivia game around. There are three versions of the game, with the party and family games having easier questions than the standard version. The party game, as the name suggests, also accommodates more players. You’ll have no reason to go back to Trivial Pursuit after picking up Wits and Wagers.

Codenames

• Players: 2-8
• Playtime: 15 minutes
• Also at Target

In this approximation of a spy thriller, players are split into two teams, with one player on each team assuming the role of “spymaster.” It’s the spymaster’s job to make their team name the codewords that will earn them points. In any given game, there are 25 available codewords arranged into a five-by five grid, and the spymaster must, without actually speaking the words, use a code phrase to describe what words belong their team. For example, if three of the words are “fence,” “tree” and “door,” the spymaster might say “wood, three” to indicate that three of the words might have to do with wood. Codenames depends heavily on the spymaster to think quickly, and poorly thought-out clues can lead to some hilarious arguments. If you tire of seeing the same codewords after a handful of plays, Codenames has seen severalexpansions and reimaginings since its 2015 release, which can add a great deal of replay value.

Time’s Up – Title Recall

• Players: 3+
• Playtime: 60 minutes

Like all the best party games, Times Up builds a neat twist into a very simple premise, in this case by combining the best bits of pop culture quizzes and charades. You start with a pool of 40 cards showing the titles of famous films, TV shows and songs which are used over three rounds of clues and guessing. In the first round, you can say anything other than the title on the card. In the second, your clue has to be one word. And in the third, it has to be a non-verbal pantomime. This escalating series of restrictions keeps delivering the most hilarious associations that only work because players have an idea of what’s already in the pool after the first round. A fascinating combination of trivia and free-association wordplay, and all fun, all the way.

Snake Oil

• Players: 3-10
• Playtime: 30 minutes

Cards Against Humanity has come to dominate store shelves and nearly every online party game recommendation list, but for my money Snake Oil is an infinitely better option. It sticks to a similar formula as CAH, but injects a healthy dose of player creativity. On the active player’s turn, they randomly draw a “customer” card. The other players then take turns pitching a product to that active player by combining two object cards from their hand. For example, if the active player draws the cheerleader card, other players must combine two cards in order to make an item that might appeal to a cheerleader. The sales pitches are the meat of the game, and it’s an absolute blast to watch your friends scramble to sell a “meat bicycle” or a “puppet helmet” to a caveman. In a perfect world, Snake Oil would replace Cards Against Humanity on every game shelf.

The Resistance: Avalon

• Players: 5 – 10
• Playtime: 30 minutes
• Also at Target

The original The Resistance was a sci-fi bluffing game in which a pool of players had to discover and out rogue agents. The Resistance: Avalon shifts the action to King Arthur’s court and ups the ante with some new roles and rules to enjoy. Everyone gets a secret role and then loyal knights have to try and complete five quests while keeping Merlin alive. The Merlin player knows who is loyal and who is not, but can’t reveal this without also revealing who they are and painting a target on their back. There are various other named roles with special powers like Percival and Mordred, creating an incredible, escalating soup of paranoia in which players have to stew for twenty or so minutes. After which it’s almost irresistible to deal some new roles and do it all again.

Sushi Go Party!

• Players: 2-8
• Playtime: 20 minutes
• Also at Target

Sushi Go! Is a simple, compact card drafting game released in 2013 that sold a huge number of copies. Because of its success, Gamewright was able to expand on the formula with Sushi Go Party!, a larger and more varied version of Sushi Go! The gameplay remains largely the same, with players choosing a card from their hand, playing it, and passing the rest to the player next to them. Party! includes several types of cards not in the standard version that mix up your strategy in different ways, and the variable setup means that every game will play out differently. As far as simple and quick party games go, it would be a mistake not to take a look at this one.

Bang! The Dice Game

• Players: 3-8
• Playtime: 15 minutes

The original Bang! was long considered a party game go-to, but one of the major complaints was its length–it was too long for what it was. The dice game version fixes this in a big way, and is now the best version of Bang! you can play. Players are dealt secret roles, with the sheriff revealing themself at the start of the game. Everyone is also dealt a random character card that gives them a unique power. A turn consists of a player rolling five dice Yhatzee-style, then applying the effects to the table, but because nobody is sure of the others’ role, figuring out who to deal damage to and who to heal takes on the form of a logic puzzle. There are different victory conditions depending on your role: the sheriff wins if all the outlaws are defeated, the outlaws win if the sheriff is defeated, and so on. Because of Bang! The Dice Game’s easy ruleset and quick playtime, it’s a great game to play while waiting for the rest of the party to show up.

Telestrations

• Players: 4 – 8
• Playtime: 30 – 60 minutes
• Also at Target

This is a commercial version of a popular family of games that involve image-based Chinese whispers. You start with a card with a phrase on it and do a sketch to illustrate that phrase. You then pass that to the next player in line who guesses the phrase, writes it down and passes that on for the next player to draw. And so on, until the whole thing comes full circle and you marvel at the garbled nonsense that’s come back to you, and every step in between, complete with ridiculous drawings to delight and amuse. For real party animals, there’s a twelve player expansion pack available to make the chains of nonsense even longer.

Dixit Odyssey

• Players: 3-12
• Playtime: 30 minutes

In 2010, the original Dixit won the Spiel des Jahres, Germany’s coveted game of the year award. Since then, its unique approach to storytelling in games has been expanded on and reiterated nearly a dozen times. Despite all the new content in recent years, 2011’s Dixit Odyssey remains the best version of the game. The concept is simple: each turn one player is the storyteller, and uses a simple word or phrase to describe one of the cards in their hand. Then the other players choose a card from their own hand that they feel best fits the description the storyteller gave. The cards are shuffled and then revealed, and everyone attempts to choose which card was the storyteller’s, who gets points if people correctly guess their card. The rub is they get no points if nobody or everybody guesses their card, so it’s important to find a balance between vague and descriptive when describing the card. Dixit boasts surreal and beautiful artwork that makes the game a joy to experience and discuss, and the reliance on creativity will bring out the storyteller in even your most stubborn friends.

Wavelength

• Players: 2 – 12
• Playtime: 30 – 45 minutes
• Also at Target

Wavelength brings a new dimension to guessing games by getting players talking about their opinions rather than their trivia knowledge. Each round posits a pair of extremes, such as “straight” and “curvy”. Players take turns giving clues to their teams, which involves spinning a dial in secret to get a point somewhere between these two limits and then trying to come up with a hint to guide them to the right point. So for those clues, if the dial is showing two-thirds toward “straight” a good clue might be “hand-drawn line”. Not only is this a fun, fresh challenge every time but it’s subjective enough to be a real talking point for your party. With cooperative and competitive modes, Wavelength is a great pick across all tastes and ages.

One Night Ultimate Werewolf

• Players: 4-10
• Playtime: 10 minutes
• Also at Target

The One Night franchise has become nearly synonymous with the term “party game,” and for good reason. It’s simple to learn, encourages a lot of player interaction, and plays in about 10 minutes. At the start of the game, each player is dealt a secret role, and it’s the goal of group to weed out who the werewolves are, unless of course you are a werewolf yourself. Each role has a special ability that help offer clues, such as the seer who can look at some of the roles, or the troublemaker who can switch roles with someone else. Because there’s no 100 percent way to know who is telling the truth, the game depends on your ability to read your friends’ tells. Each game is a chaotic flurry of accusations that will have the table in lively conversation during and after the game. If you want a good idea of what One Night Ultimate Werewolf has to offer, check out this video of a sample game. There are also several different flavors available, from vampires to aliens, if werewolves aren’t your cup of tea. Fair warning if you choose to pick this one up: friendships may be destroyed while playing this horror board game.

When I Dream

• Players: 4-10
• Playtime: 20-40 minutes

Fall asleep and and heed the whims of the dream spirits in this team-based game of clues and storytelling. Every round, one player is appointed the “Dreamer,” and must wear a cloth mask over their eyes. Then, players take turns drawing a card from the dream deck and the “good spirits” attempt to describe the picture using only one word in an effort to get the Dreamer to guess it. The “bad spirits,” however, are able to throw off the Dreamer with inaccurate clues. There are also “tricksters” who can switch sides during a game. What makes When I Dream such a good party game is that it’s so easy to learn and a round is over quickly, giving players the chance to drop in or out whenever they want. This accessibility makes it one of the best options for larger gatherings.

Mysterium

• Players: 2-7
• Playtime: 45 minutes
• Also at Target

Communing with the dead may not be the first choice of activity when hosting a bangin’ party, but Mysterium proves that it’s one of the best ways to keep guests entertained. As mediums and paranormal investigators, it’s your job to uncover a decades-old murder mystery in a haunted house. The spirit that inhabits the house gives clues to each player in the form of dreams, which help to inform the specific weapon, suspect, and room related to the mystery. Think Clue, but much more abstract. One player, as the ghost, gives each player a card that relates somehow to their specific clues. The ghost in unable to speak, though, so the players are left to interpret the vague illustrations. There’s a ton to love about Mysterium, from its incredible art to debating the meaning depicted on the cards. The back-and-forth between the ghost and other players that takes place at the end of every game is an absolute delight that very few games can match. Who knew a seance could be so lively?

Monikers

• Players: 4-20
• Playtime: 60 minutes

In Monikers–a brand new take on the old Charades-like game Celebrity–you’ll act out a variety of goofy characters like Count Chocula, Drunk Jeff Goldblum, a dead horse, and literally hundreds more. Rounds get progressively more limiting as the game goes on–for example, words and gestures are legal in round one, but you can only use one word in round two, and round three takes away your ability to speak altogether. Because you’ll be using the same cards in every round, you’ll wind up making clever in-jokes with your group as you start to repeat cards. The subject choices pay homage to not only celebrities, but to modern viral memes and videos like David After Dentist and Lady Gaga’s Meat Dress. Shut Up and Sit Down put it quite bluntly in its review: “It’s the most you’ll laugh playing a game.” Truly, Monikers is the be-all-end-all of party games.

Decrypto

• Players: 3-8
• Playtime: 15-45 minutes

In Decrypto, two teams attempt to work out a numeric code by interpreting clues given to them by an encryptor. At the start of a round, four words are randomly assigned to the numbers one through four, and the team’s chosen encryptor secretly draws a three-digit code. Their job is to make the rest of the team guess the code–in the proper order–by giving clues about the words associated with the numbers. It’s a bit like Codenames in that way, but the twist comes thanks to a clever “interception” mechanic that allows a team the opportunity to guess their opponents’ code. This means encryptors must be careful about giving out too much information about their code, making Decrypto a fascinating balancing act that does an admirable job of making players feel like actuals spies.

For more ideas, you can check out the complete other end of the spectrum to find the best solo board games. And if you and your gaming group fancy yourselves to be pretty darn smart, you can test that hypothesis with the best trivia board games.

The NPD Group has released its analysis of US game sales for the month of December and for the full year 2022, and while the full-year results aren’t shocking, December specifically has some interesting tidbits in the game sales charts that shed a bit of light on how well two supposedly “underperforming” games have done lately: Callisto Protocol, and Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope.

First, Callisto Protocol. It debuted in December at No.17 on the US sales charts (ranked by dollar sales), reaching No. 10 on the PlayStation charts and not cracking the top 10 on Xbox at all. That’s not bad in and of itself, to be clear: Callisto is a brand new IP by a brand new studio, after all. It was never going to beat out giants like Elden Ring or Call of Duty.

But it’s a little bit surprising it didn’t do better than some of its competition. For instance, it was beaten out by the nearly nine-year-old-and-only-on-one-major-platform Mario Kart 8 (which admittedly had some DLC recently that likely bolstered sales), the even-older Minecraft, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – another console exclusive that had no meaningful updates in December.

And it’s notable too that reports have indicated Callisto Protocol didn’t meet the company’s sales expectations after being billed as a “quadruple-A” game and having an absolutely massive budget. Given that context, a multi-platform game with essentially an entire month of sales included in the report debuting at No.17 isn’t great news.

That’s Callisto Protocol, but what’s going on with Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope? Just last week, Ubisoft stated in a press release that Sparks of Hope “underperformed“, citing it as one of multiple motivators behind a reworked business strategy that involves restructuring, canceled games, and delays. Sparks of Hope released in October of this year, debuting at No.6 on the NPD during its launch month and dropping to No.13 in November and No.14 in December.

Though we don’t have the actual numerical sales numbers on hand, that seems solid enough, especially when you consider it’s a Switch exclusive and Nintendo doesn’t share digital sales numbers, meaning it may have actually done even better.

So what does “underperforming” really mean? We can’t know what Ubisoft’s expectations for it were, but it’s interesting to compare its ranking at least with its predecessor, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Kingdom Battle came out at the tail end of August 2017, but wasn’t included in the August charts due to not landing during that month’s reporting period. But it debuted at No.5 in its September 2017 launch period, arguably with much less tough competition (Destiny 2 was the best-selling game that month, and that year’s Call of Duty hadn’t come out yet, for instance).

Then, it mysteriously vanishes from even the top 20 for the rest of the year. It didn’t crack the rankings in the US in October, November, or December that year. We have to take this with a grain of salt of course – rankings don’t equate to any specific dollar sales numbers and all of this can be explained away by particularly tough competition in a given month, games costing different amounts, or any number of other weird quirks.

But it’s still fascinating to see Sparks of Hope doing relatively well compared to its competition even months after launch (it also beat out Callisto Protocol in December, and was the third best-selling Switch title last month!), while its developer and publisher insists it’s still not enough.

Overall, US spending on games reached $7.6 billion in December, up 2% year-over-year. Hardware was up 16% with PS5 as the best-selling console of the month in dollar sales and Nintendo Switch as the best-selling in unit sales. Meanwhile, content and accessories spending dipped very very slightly. Content specifically was impacted by mobile, subscription, and physical software spending declines even as digital spending rose.

For the full year 2022, total video game spending was down 5% to $56.6 billion, with increases in hardware and subscription spending offset by declines elsewhere. NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella sites “continued supply constraints of console hardware, a relatively light slate of new premium releases, and macroeconomic conditions,” as factors impacting the year’s sales.

The PS5 was the best-selling console of the year in terms of dollar sales, and the Switch was the best-selling in unit sales. The best-selling game of the year was (unsurprisingly) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, followed by Elden Ring.

Here are the best-selling games of December 2022 in terms of dollar sales:

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
2. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
3. God of War Ragnarok
4. Madden NFL 23
5. FIFA 23
6. Sonic Frontiers
7. Elden Ring
8. Need for Speed: Unbound
9. Mario Kart 8
10. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII: Reunion
11. NBA 2K23
12. Just Dance 2023 Edition
13. Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope
14. Minecraft
15. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
16. Nintendo Switch Sports
17. The Callisto Protocol
18. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
19. Splatoon 3
20. Gotham Knights

And here are the best-selling games of the entire year:

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
2. Elden Ring
3. Madden NFL 23
4. God of War: Ragnarok
5. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
6. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
7. FIFA 23
8. Pokemon Legends: Arceus
9. Horizon II: Forbidden West
10. MLB: The Show 22
11. Mario Kart 8
12. Call of Duty: Vanguard
13. Gran Turismo 7
14. Kirby and the Forgotten Land
15. NBA 2K23
16. Sonic Frontiers
17. Gotham Knights
18. Minecraft
19. Nintendo Switch Sports
20. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Note that for both rankings, Nintendo and Take-Two do not share digital sales data, and thus digital sales data for their published games are not included.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

In the short time since a draft of Wizards of the Coast’s new Open Gaming License (called OGL 1.1) leaked, the tabletop gaming landscape has undergone incredible change.After overwhelming backlash online, several creators announced their intent to move away from the D&D ruleset, Fifth Edition (or 5E), in favor of open-source alternatives.

The leaked changes would do away with the game maker’s longstanding policy that empowers third-party Dungeons & Dragons creators to make and sell their own content to support the game, replacing it with a much more strict set of rules that would include a royalty and a controversial clause stating that Wizards has the right to use those creators’ content however it likes.

We believe that the OGL 1.0a cannot be deauthorized. Our resources are unchanged. #OpenRPG
However, the new Open RPG Creative License will be built. To join the effort and provide feedback on the drafts of this license, please sign up by using this form. https://t.co/AhkerJBLU1 https://t.co/FDWZL6e9Ma

— Paizo (@paizo) January 13, 2023

First Kobold Press, which makes products under OGL, announced their intent to “work on a new Core Fantasy tabletop ruleset: available, open, and subscription-free for those who love it – Code Name: Project Black Flag.” Though a move away from OGL and 5E is noteworthy, Kobold coupled this announcement with the news that none of their current OGL projects would be impacted by the new rules and would be proceeding as normal.

Other publishers weren’t so light-handed, as just two days later, Paizo, which makes Pathfinder, announced a similar initiative called Open RPG Creative License (or ORC), alongside some strong words directed at Wizards’ planned deauthorization of the original OGL.

“We believe that any interpretation that the OGL 1.0 or 1.0(a) were intended to be revocable or able to be deauthorized is incorrect, and with good reason. We were there… Paizo owner Lisa Stevens and Paizo president Jim Butler were leaders on the Dungeons & Dragons team at Wizards at the time. Brian Lewis, co-founder of Azora Law, the intellectual property law firm that Paizo uses, was the attorney at Wizards who came up with the legal framework for the OGL itself. Paizo has also worked very closely on OGL-related issues with Ryan Dancey, the visionary who conceived the OGL in the first place.”

The company added, “Paizo does not believe that the OGL 1.0a can be “deauthorized,” ever. While we are prepared to argue that point in a court of law if need be, we don’t want to have to do that, and we know that many of our fellow publishers are not in a position to do so. We have no interest whatsoever in Wizards’ new OGL. Instead, we have a plan that we believe will irrevocably and unquestionably keep alive the spirit of the Open Game License.”

The ORC announcement came alongside the news that fellow OGL publishers Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, and “a growing list of publishers” had already agreed to participate in ORC as an OGL alternative.

Chris Pramas, founder of Green Ronin Publishing told IGN: “The current leadership of WotC talks about the OGL only in terms of D&D but the reality is that many games that have nothing to do with D&D have been released under the OGL. The leaked OGL 1.1 took no account of this whatsoever. A revocation of the original OGL would create chaos in the tabletop gaming industry and put many small companies under existential threat.”

Over the past week we have witnessed an incredible outpour of passion and dedication from our community working together to protect and cultivate the inclusive environment of Dungeons & Dragons.

Please read our update on the Open Game License: https://t.co/9y4Z5MZpiq

— Dungeons & Dragons (@Wizards_DnD) January 13, 2023

That sentiment seems to be shared by others, like indie publisher The Rook & The Raven, who tweeted, “In light of recent events, cancelling our @DnDBeyond subscriptions didn’t feel sufficient. We have also formally withdrawn from all licensing negotiations with @Wizards / @Wizards_DnD / @Hasbro.” In reply to a commenter, the publisher also claimed that Wizards “had been issuing not-very-veiled threats us [sic] and our business every few months by video chat, phone, and email since 2019, and that’s a large part of the reason we decided to cut ties.”

Free League Publishing also announced over the weekend their own effort to move away from OGL and create two new open licenses of their own, citing OGL 1.1 directly. “It’s clear that it is high time for Free League to have an OGL that is fully our own,” Free League CEO Tomas Härenstam was quoted as saying in that press release.

Shortly after Paizo announced their OGL alternative, Wizards quietly cancelled their planned livestream to discuss OGL, before releasing an official statement the next day on their blog. In the statement, the publisher laid out their intent to make changes based on the community’s feedback, writing, “It’s clear from the reaction that we rolled a 1.” Notably, Wizards now says that the new version of OGL will not contain any royalty structure, and language that will allow content creators to own the content they create.

Wizards also seemed to push back against the narrative that they were changing course with OGL 1.1, adding, “You’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won–and so did we. Our plan was always to solicit the input of our community before any update to the OGL; the drafts you’ve seen were attempting to do just that.”

Advocates for the newly-announced ORC though, don’t seem convinced, as Chris Pramas told IGN after Wizards’ comments that, “People thought the OGL was a safe haven for both D&D compatible material and original games. WotC decided to assert that it was no such thing. Many publishers, content creators, and fans felt this was a betrayal. Something like ORC then became an inevitability.”

Wizards’ decision to upend the 20+ year OGL policy has already made very large waves in the tabletop space in a short period of time. Here’s hoping creators across the board can avoid a full party wipe.

Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.

After putting in some major study sessions and passing its tests in 2019’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fire Emblem Engage makes the potentially surprising decision to take a purposeful step away from that focus on time management and teaching. Many base activities and socializing aspects with your team are still here, but Engage makes the smart move to adjust its sights back toward the roots of the series by putting engaging tactical combat first and foremost. There’s a reverence for Fire Emblems past that is clear in every aspect of it, even including the spirits of legendary heroes from previous games that power up your team, which match the strategic depth they bring with an exciting visual flair every time they’re unleashed. Its classic good vs. evil story may not reach those same heights of its predecessor, but the Divine Dragon’s adventure still stands tall among its peers – both on its own merits and as a wonderful tribute to Fire Emblem’s legacy.

When Fire Emblem Engage first introduced the idea that twelve rings housed the spirits of protagonists of Fire Emblem’s past, I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical. (According to the story, they aren’t actually the exact same heroes from other worlds – more like incorporeal manifestations that retain the knowledge and abilities of their hero’s journey… or something). From Marth to Ike, Celica to Byleth, and plenty more, these legends will advise you, spar with you, and become your battle companions as you try to collect all 12 rings and defeat the big bad Fell Dragon who wants to corrupt them for nefarious purposes. While it’s fun to see familiar faces, there were also plenty I didn’t recognize, which had me worried about how much of the backstory of these heroes were going to be lost on me. Three come from games never officially released outside Japan, and several more have only been featured on the GameBoy Advance or similar decades-old Nintendo consoles — unless you count their inclusion in Smash Bros. or the mobile gacha game Fire Emblem Heroes.

And yet, over the course of my 60+ hour adventure, I found my worries to be unfounded. Fire Emblem Engage manages to celebrate its long history of compelling characters without making you feel left out if you’ve never played through their stories firsthand. Your own character (a Divine Dragon whose name defaults to Alear) has a story that is still the driving force behind your journey in Engage, and while the Emblem Rings play an important role, it’s one that does its best to stay within the context of your current adventure. Did I freak out a little when meeting Ike, the hero from Path of Radiance, since it was the Fire Emblem that really got me interested in the series? Yes, very much so. But even Emblems like Sigurd and Leif were a joy to fight alongside despite me knowing next to nothing about their respective stories. Whether it was offering helpful anecdotes to my character about the trials they faced, or granting me their power and skills to inherit in combat, they became the backbone of my army, and each new Emblem Ring I collected gave me new strategies to work with.

The true talents of these Emblem Rings shine when taken into battle. Just having one equipped provides a host of passive bonuses and skills. Watching both my unit and their spectral Emblem Ring counterpart slice into foes at the same time was always great to see, even if the animations didn’t actually translate to increased damage. Depending on which rings you use, the skills your team inherits abilities that range from the more mundane stat boosts to incredibly useful skills like attacking twice before opponents can respond, repositioning allies, or altering terrain effects to control the battlefield. All of this culminates in the ability to “engage” their true power for a short period, as your unit essentially fuses with the Emblem hero, gleaming with new shining white armor and inheriting that hero’s hair color or style. These fused characters also sport wild neon blue wings and other crazy effects that felt straight out of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s Sheikah tech, making them unmissable standouts on the battlefield.

Engaging also lets you temporarily equip extremely powerful or unique weapons — often giving units access to attacks they would normally never be able to use. Coupled with special “Engage Skills” that are only available for this brief period, it became a huge game changer for how I approached each mission. By engaging with the Emblem Lyn, my lance-wielding pegasus knight could suddenly become winged Death incarnate; able to launch an extremely powerful ranged salvo of arrows to out-snipe otherwise lethal archers, then fly in close to slice and dice with Lyn’s signature katana, and even create illusory doubles to distract foes and counter with their own attacks. Engaging my units with their Emblem Rings became the highlight of every encounter, and the flashy ultimate attack animations were always worth watching. Since it can often take awhile to recharge this power, finding the perfect time to have one more more units engage to turn the tides always had me trying to plan my moves out in advance, as even the most powerful attacks could still leave my characters in danger if they got surrounded or overwhelmed without backup.

Each Emblem Ring is unique enough that no two ultimate abilities feel the same: Some rely on single target or area-of-effect damage, while others work in support roles like sacrificing health to heal the rest of the team. Many of these abilities also have small but interesting modifiers depending on which unit type has the Emblem Ring equipped, adding even more layers of strategy and customization that I absolutely loved to experiment with. Because of this, there was no wrong answer for pairing up my teammates with different Emblem Rings — only a wealth of possibilities. My thief ended up becoming my natural choice for pairing with Emblem Corrin from Fire Emblem Fates, as her Dragon Vein ability added mist cover to the surrounding terrain when used by covert-type units, and the debilitating effects of Corrin’s draconic aura skill was further bolstered by poisoning daggers.

Rock, Paper, Fist

In addition to the larger changes Emblems introduce, Fire Emblem Engage has refined almost every aspect of its turn-based battles in smaller ways, too. Enhanced visuals have made each mission more pleasing to look at, UI improvements mean the action is easier to follow, and subtle new spins have been introduced to cornerstone combat mechanics. The classic weapon triangle has made its triumphant return after disappearing from Fire Emblem: Three Houses but its not content to simply return to the status quo: this time, using the right weapon like a lance against swords won’t just translate into better accuracy and damage, as the new “break” mechanic can also disarm that opponent for the rest of the turn. Of course, your enemies can do the same to you, making the weapon triangle even more fearsome this time around. Even when certain defensive spaces let units become “unbreakable,” Engage provides an answer with a new heavy weapon type that can shove defenders backwards – of course, the smart trade-off for this powerful effect is that heavy weapons hit dead last regardless of how fast the other opponent is.

These new features are brought to life in a fun way thanks to Engage’s expansive maps, which are quite similar to Three Houses. Battles zoom right down to the action (wonderfully transitioning the music to be more energetic) and look way more dynamic than they have in the past, as mighty attacks can send fighters flying backwards, even breaking apart fences or crates in the process. Watching someone miss an attack no longer feels like a pathetic whiff, as combatants will cleanly translate the numbers game into seamless parries and counter-attacks that feel way more like an active battle than two opponents just rolling the dice one at a time.

My favorite new battlefield addition, by far, is the massive overhaul to the healer class, which has melded them with martial artists to become “Qi Adepts”. Healers in Fire Emblem have historically always been the weakest link, often requiring the most baby-sitting or being shunted to the back of the army – but no longer! While they still might not always be able to face down a knight or axe-wielding berserker, they can break the weapons of archers, mages, and thieves using punches and kicks. They can also guard another unit from the first incoming attack so long as the healer has full health. This became a recurring theme as enemy bosses would often have an entourage of Qi Adepts just waiting to take one for the team, requiring me to strategically wound them first before I could unleash my full force on the enemy leader.

Ringbearers

Where Fire Emblem: Three Houses thrust you into dramatic conflict between rival nations and eventually forced you to fight against the very friends you’d bonded with, Fire Emblem Engage dials things back a bit, for better and for worse. Its story is a classic tale of ancient evils re-awakening, amnesiac protagonists, and various nations uniting under a common banner for good. I’ll admit, I wasn’t quite sold on Alear and their Aquafresh toothpaste hair design, but I got over that fairly quickly – perhaps when you’re stacked against the various blue-haired guys and gals of Fire Emblems past, you gotta stand out any way you can. In truth, what really turned me around was finally having a fully voiced Fire Emblem protagonist (and allowing the past heroes to be voiced as well). The three-pronged story of the last Fire Emblem is a tough act to follow, but having a main character who does more than stare blankly at people during cutscenes and conversations went a long way. It helps sell many of Engage’s plot points, from the growing bonds between Alear and their friends to some insidious plans enacted by the Fell Dragon and his minions. While not every twist or reveal hit its mark, I was generally surprised by some very late game developments that affected more than just the immediate story.

You’ll gain a host of quirky allies at a reasonable pace along your journey to collect all the Dragon Ba… I mean Emblem Rings. Normally I’d be a bit skeptical at how almost everyone is all too eager to pledge their service to Alear’s quest, but I guess when you’ve been worshiped as divinity during your centuries-long slumber, people are just happy to see you awake and slaying evil at last. I also found myself impressed at how Engage handled padding out the acquisition of the rings. Some clever ideas kept me from getting too overpowered too fast, while giving me just enough Emblem Rings to respect the power they added to my army. Even more humbling was learning what could happen when the enemy used the power of Emblem Rings against me. Boss fights in Fire Emblem have usually been tense standoffs where a wrong move could lead to one of your favorite characters getting demolished – but even in that context Engage had me double and triple-checking the skills and abilities of my adversaries before putting one foot into their lair. Using an Emblem’s power to teleport across the map and explode some poor sucker with the Ragnarok tome is a ton of fun — but when it happened to me it was downright terrifying.

The various missions and maps in Engage tested my strategic knowledge in different ways, and it was fairly common for battles to last more than half an hour as I carefully considered my path forward (or sometimes rewound time by a turn or two if I realized my path was leading to certain death for a few characters). Most chapters usually end with defeating a boss, and the way these bosses are handled has left me feeling a bit conflicted. Not far into your journey you’ll meet the main executors of the big bad’s will: The Four Hounds. They all have different personalities and reasons for being on Team Evil, and made for some challenging opponents, but problems arose when I found that they kept coming back for more. I can’t even count the number of times I’d have to fight these lackeys, beating them to a pulp only to have them laugh it off in the ensuing cutscene, swearing revenge for next time like a cartoon villain. And my army would just… watch them saunter off. Again, and again. I don’t even think they were bad characters, as some late game developments did a great job to make me understand them more – I just really wish Engage had at least tried to offer a passable excuse for why I let them get away so many times. I’d even be okay with an overly convenient teleportation spell!

Even when facing the otherwise decently varied enemy commanders, I still found myself waiting for developer Intelligent Systems to get bold enough to stop relying on “defeat the enemy boss” as the main objective for the bulk of its 26 chapters. Thankfully, this isn’t too big of an issue, as the maps themselves would often involve some inventive hazards or features that I couldn’t just charge through – like changing tides on the beach limiting movement, or obstructions that I could have an easier time dealing with if I had the right Emblem Ring equipped on a unit nearby. When the missions did occasionally change their objectives, things would often get a little harrowing, and one tense chapter in particular that had me on the run did a superb job of making escape feel like it was truly my only option instead of recklessly standing my ground.

Some of my favorite missions didn’t even come from the main chapters, as Fire Emblem Engage offers some very interesting takes on paralogue side missions. These challenging encounters revolved around trials to defeat the heroic Emblems in combat, and within these trials are some of the best homages to Fire Emblem’s history. Each trial takes place on a map that’s almost directly lifted from a previous game in the series, and often includes hazards, ambushes, or mechanics from that exact mission. I still believe you won’t feel left out if you haven’t experienced the stories of past Fire Emblems, but those who have will be treated to some very faithfully adapted pivotal moments in time. Moments like Ike taking command of his father’s mercenary company, or Byleth defending the Throne of Knowledge from the theft of its relics. Missions like these, coupled with the care that went into creating skills and abilities for each Emblem Ring that are both fun to use and provide great callbacks, ring with the same reverent tone as when Nintendo expertly adapts fighters into the Super Smash Bros series. Even the music for these side missions are uniquely arranged medleys from previous soundtracks, providing new energetic or dramatic twists on some of my favorite Fire Emblem music. I’m doubly glad I was then able to set these music tracks to play during other side skirmishes, because honestly, even after spending more than 60 hours clearing the story and paralogue missions — I can’t get enough of them.

Up On Cloud Nine

Between fights, you can move around the world map at will, opening up new locations for main missions as you progress, while randomly backfilling previously completed maps with random encounters to gain more experience, money, and materials. This system is much more satisfying to navigate than simply looking at a list to pick my next task, and the option to fast travel directly to a map point or back to my base made things quick and easy. You can even explore the maps you beat in a neat post-battle exploration. It doesn’t really bring anything huge to the table as you have limited actions, but I appreciated being able to enjoy the scope and scale of certain locations I’d fought in – like vibrant palace throne rooms or viewing impossibly-sized statues guarding expansive bridges strewn with barricades. Plus, this activity gives you time to check in with your team for some quick chats, even letting some of the units you didn’t take with you into battle have their chance to add their thoughts, which made me feel like my entire army was still tagging along and not just stuck at home bored to tears.

Speaking of home, Engage has kept the concept of having a large, explorable hub base like in Three Houses, but has wisely dialed back the scope from the mammoth size of Garreg Mach Monastery. A special floating island called The Somniel instead focuses on both managing your team and keeping up with socializing and bonding, but in ways that aren’t as drawn out and time-consuming as those featured in Three Houses (though I am a bit surprised having tea with your friends didn’t make the cut here). You can still partake in fishing, cooking meals to enjoy with friends, and sparing for a bit of extra experience – plus a few new hit-or-miss activities like strength training exercises or petting this weird dopey cat thing that I immediately put sunglasses on, though all are completely optional.

Having my character go to sleep also became super optional once I realized random allies would just wander into my bedroom to wake me up in really weird sequences – it’d be cool if we could establish some boundaries on The Somniel! Still, it was nice to see my team enjoy their downtime, whether working out, swimming, dining, or just generally relaxing, rather than having everyone awkwardly stand around until we left for the next mission. Although, I do wish there were a few more direct ways to bond with another teammate besides eating a meal or getting the same old gifts to give en masse. When I found some horse manure on the ground to give away as a joke gift, I thought it was a little funny. Finding more and more poop that was added to my inventory each time I came back to explore my base… not as much.

The Somniel is also where you can manage the Emblem Rings you’ve collected, and there’s a surprising amount to do with them – perhaps even too much. In addition to utilizing skills from an active Emblem Ring, you can also spend points to inherit skills from other rings. This encourages lots of customization and passing rings around so everyone can make use of them, and I had a lot of fun planning out the perfect set of skills for everyone to eventually inherit, though the sheer number of skills and point values can sometimes become a bit of a headache. You can also create smaller stat-boosting rings for your units who don’t have their own Emblem Ring yet through a system that strongly resembles the Fire Emblem Heroes gacha game, with an assortment of tiers for each ring and the ability to meld duplicates into better versions. Certain rings may even have a really useful skill at their highest tier – but only if you get really lucky creating a bunch of rings, or you’re prepared to shell out a lot of in-game currency. (Never fear, though, as there is no option for real-money microtransactions or anything like that here.)

Together We Ride

Perhaps the most surprising addition to The Somniel is a combat tower that lets you take on a variety of challenge missions – two of which feature neat asynchronous multiplayer options. Given how long people can take to move their units in a single turn, this might be the most well-realized multiplayer Fire Emblem can have, but it’s not without a few hiccups. One mode allows you to fully customize one half of a map to either challenge another player’s computer controlled team on their half of the map, or have your AI team defend against other opponents with the base you’ve built. You can place everything from ballistas to breakable walls and healing tiles, and even give units a variety of orders to follow, though if you want to hit the upper limit for tiles to customize, you’ll end up with a mish-mash of random objects that don’t really let you set a theme for your base.

The second mode is a clever attempt at Fire Emblem co-op: Relay Trials. One player starts a trial that must be completed in 10 turns, picking a small group of units to go up against a horde of enemies. The twist is that the initial player only has two turns to move their team before their time is up, at which point the data is uploaded and another player can then download that trial and pick up where the first player left off, potentially adding a few reinforcements of their own. Players who join get a fun and quick recap of the battle so far, then need to do their best to forge ahead and put a plan in motion to clear the map, even if they won’t be around to finish it. I really love the idea of having to adapt to someone else’s strategy mid-battle, pick the right reinforcements to help bolster any lacking defenses, and decide whether to utilize as many Emblem Rings as possible or hold off in engaging in case the next player may need them to get out of a bad situation. Players who have beaten the story can unlock a sort of “post game” trial map which is a great way to keep the fun going — but it’s the earlier players I worry about, thanks to some very vague matchmaking. Unlike offline trials, you can’t really set a specific difficulty level, nor can you see one when Engage picks a random relay trial for you to join (aside from maps being listed simply as Normal or Hard). Whoever starts the trial seems to set the bar for the level of the enemies within, which means you may find your reinforcements either under or over-leveled for the task at hand. I would have loved for a way to at least get an idea of how challenging the multiplayer battles were going to be so I could decide whether it was worth my time, instead of being thrown into the first result without an easy way to back out. Worse yet, it’s possible to join a trial and find characters you haven’t yet encountered on the team, which may spoil you to later reveals.