>>718174403
Honest answer? Engage was preceded by 3H which had several year's worth of political tribalism and LORE. So when Engage released and not only was there no lore but the bad guy was a literal HA HA I'M EVIL, it left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.

Now to be fair, I don't outright hate Engage's narrative. I used to. But it does some pretty neat things. However the story is somehow both very blunt and explains very little. There's several moments where something will just happen with no explanation or affect on the plot outside of that moment. For examples, and spoilers: Alear dies 3 times in this one game. Which is pretty hilarious in itself. But after his 2nd death, kek, Alear ends up in some weird afterlife. Okay fine, but then your sister somehow follows you there. Bear in mind, your sister isn't dead. Okay maybe she can just do that because her unique power is to raise the dead. Except that she didn't even have that idea before a very dead Alear brought it up. I do love fantasy stories, especially video game fantasy stories. I don't need the writing to be screened through 5 lore masters to enjoy it. But I feel like a plot beat surviving just 2 layers of scrutiny isn't unreasonable. And if it were just the one thing then it would be fine but this type of thing happens all over the game. You genuinely have to do your best to not think about what's happening to enjoy it. Which is really frustrating because there are parts of Engage and are genuinely interesting and the game gives it no attention