S-Ranking your way to romance in Fire Emblem Engage

Learning that love can bloom on the battlefield

Fire Emblem Engage is out and, as the name might imply, you can indeed get engaged. Specifically, the characters in Fire Emblem Engage are available not just for battle but also friendship, and possibly love.

[Note: This guide will include spoilers for particular paralogues in the game, as well as recruitable characters in Fire Emblem Engage.]

Romance has been a part of Fire Emblem since some of its earliest iterations. Building up relationships between units, or Support, allows them to benefit each other on the battlefield. The better your fighters know each other off the battlefield, the better they’ll support each other when the fighting gets heavy.

These are codified by the Support Ranks, of which there are four. Most units have a C, B, and A rank support with Alear (the main character) and with other units in your army. While not every unit has a Support with another, it’s easy enough to see who does back home at the Somniel. Just hit the + (Start) button and look under the Reference section for the Support rankings.

Here, you’ll be able to see who Alear is able to build Support with, through actions like eating together, giving gifts, or fighting side-by-side on the battlefield. While these max out at A-rank on the tracking, there is an S-rank of sorts, in the form of the Pact Ring.

How to get the Pact Ring in Fire Emblem Engage

The Pact Ring is, essentially, S-rank turned into a single-use item. You get this ring by completing the Paralogue “The Connector”, at the Garden of Memories, later on in the game.

After beating the mission here, you’ll pick up a ring. But unlike other rings, this doesn’t see you getting a new companion from Fire Emblem past, but acquiring a new one for a special someone of your choosing.

With this in hand, you’re ready to romance the Fire Emblem character of your choosing.

How to romance a character in Fire Emblem Engage

Once someone is at A-rank and you have the ring, a special icon will appear next to their name, indicating you can seal the deal. This will not only unlock combat bonuses, a special skill when using Engage Skills together, and other battle boons, but ensure that your chosen character appears in the epilogue alongside Alear.

Importantly, unlike other Fire Emblem games where romance is a more prominent game mechanic (Awakening, for example), only Alear can give a ring to someone else. This means that, effectively, no one can S-rank besides Alear and their chosen partner.

However, there is a pretty wide variety of options open. Anyone with the ring icon is engageable. This includes same-gender romances, so you won’t be limited by being male or female Alear.

One point to note is that while there are a lot of options, not all options are explicitly romantic. A good few are strictly platonic and played off as a supporting friendship, rather than an explicit romance, and others are a merely flirtatious. This Cupid’s advice is to simply follow your heart where it takes you. And also that, unlike the real world, save states exist in Fire Emblem Engage, so feel free to marry to your heart’s content and roll it back if you don’t like it.

Related: Here Are All the Fire Emblem Engage Characters’ Birthdays on Silconera