With Fire Emblem Heroes, Nintendo is trying their hand at the mobile market for a third
time.
And while Miitomo was more of a social experiment and Super Mario Run was a runner with a single
price, Heroes is more traditional in its implementation as a mobile game.
But does it gel with the gameplay that Fire Emblem fans are used to?
And will veterans and newcomers alike be able to enjoy the simplified tactics?
Well, let’s take a look.
Fire Emblem Heroes has one the simplest plots imaginable.
You are cast as the Summoner, tasked by the Askr Kingdom to help fight the Emblian Empire.The
Emblians are taking control of Heroes from across the Fire Emblem series, and it’s
up to you to summon others and put to a stop to it.
In order to free the Heroes, they must be defeated to break the contract.
However, this leads to its biggest weakness.
Almost all the chapters, of which there are currently 9, consist of you going to a world,
being introduced to a character and then fighting through the notable Heroes of that game.
Once you beat them, they thank you, and you move on to the next.
It’s fine as far providing a reason for all these Heroes meeting and for maintaining
an ongoing plot to carry you along, but it’s never engaging.
Some originality comes in toward the end, but it feels more like they’re trying to
entice you to continue playing once more Chapters become available rather than a natural flow
of the story.
Gameplay is where Heroes shines though.
These are bite-sized chunks that you can play through in a few minutes but contain almost
all of the elements of Fire Emblem, just simplified a bit.
The Weapon Triangle is the most important element and every unit is assigned a color,
Red, Green, Blue, or Gray.
Red units have an advantage over Green, Green over Blue, and Blue over Red while Gray units
can use either bows, daggers, or healing staves.
The Grays advantages are more situational with Bows easily defeating flying units, daggers
effective against mages, and healers keeping your party alive but not great as a fighting
unit.
This should sound all too familiar to those who’ve played Fire Emblem before.
And the same movement options are available with just a few taps or swipes.
It’s super easy to get into and do quick match, but I often found myself having to
really think about how to best outwit the other side, especially since you can only
have 4 units.
Strategy and figuring out the ideal way to handle each situation is key.
But not everything in a full Fire Emblem game can be found here.
Units can’t bond, there are no attacks that can miss, and most importantly, characters
can’t permanently die, which is definitely a good thing in a mobile game.
With the one screen maps available, it can be quite tricky keeping everyone alive.
As far as a mobile representation of Fire Emblem, Heroes does a great job capturing
the spirit of it within its gameplay.
It’s everything surrounding that gameplay that starts causing the annoyances.
The Stamina pool is far too small with later maps only allow you to play 3 or 4 matches
before needing either a stamina potion or waiting for it to refill.
This is fine for short play sessions, but it got a little annoying when I was trying
to earn enough Orbs to summon new Heroes.
And Orbs are the key item in Heroes.
They can be used to change your base and allow you to earn more experience in battle, but
more importantly, they’re used to summon new Heroes.
And this is where the random element of the game comes in.
Up to 5 Heroes can be summoned at a time using 20 Orbs.
Two Orbs are given daily, but otherwise they must be earned through Story missions and
challenges and it can take quite a while.
Worse is that the Heroes you summon can’t really be decided by you.
A random assortment of colors are presented and the Hero summoned from each can be anyone
from that color and even the same Hero could have a different Star Ranking.
The more Stars, the more powerful the unit.
In my several attempts at summoning Heroes, I’ve only gotten one 5-Star.
And yet I’ve been shown other players who have gotten multiple 5-Star Heroes in a single
summoning.
It really is random and is meant to drive you to purchase more Orbs so you have another
shot at getting the Hero and Star ranking that you want.
Now it is possible to increase a Hero’s Star ranking.
Simply raise their level to 20 then use the appropriate items.
However, I say simply, but this is easily the most aggravating aspect of this game.
It costs 20,000 Hero Feathers to rank a character up from 4 to 5.
Currently, the only way to earn a lot of feathers at a time is with the Arena Duels.
The higher you get your score within the week-long season, the more feathers you’ll earn.
However, the most you can get in a single season is 1600.
That is a ridiculous cost with no easy way to get the character you want to a better
ranking thereby forcing you to rely on the random element of the Orb Summoning.
I understand why it’s structured that way, but it’s the single biggest issue in the
game.
Even if the cost was just halved, it’d be so much better.
Whether or not Heroes will eventually do that though is up in the air.
I want to like this game more than I do.
The gameplay elements are fun, there’s a lot of options for how you can play and it
encourages you to use units in battle to make them even stronger through the use of Skills.
The graphics are simplistic yet everything pops.
And the character art is gorgeous with some very entertaining lines performed by a huge
line-up of actors.
I haven’t played every Fire Emblem game.
So seeing new characters and flashes of their personalities does make me interested in check
their games.
Mobile games are not my forté.
I understand their place, but many times they feel designed to force me down a path I don’t
really want to take.
To the game’s credit, I haven’t spent any money yet, but it’s incredibly easy
to fall down that rabbit hole.
I think Fire Emblem Heroes is best played in short bursts.
It’s slower, much slower, but it’s a pace where you can keep up the enjoyment.
And despite my issues, I still like the game.
It’s a good gateway into Fire Emblem if you’ve never played a game in the series
before.
If you like this, then definitely check out one of the other games.
Thanks for watching and be sure to subscribe to GameXplain for more on Fire Emblem and
other things gaming.