Fire Emblem Heroes is Great for Beginners of the Franchise

Last year Nintendo announced that they are developing mobile games for Mario, Fire Emblem, and Animal Crossing. We already saw what a Mario mobile can be with Super Mario Run, Animal Crossing on mobile seems like a genius idea, to be able to bring your town with you on the go and explore other towns by physically walking to a curtain area, but Nintendo has delayed the title and won’t be shown until fiscal next year (which starts at the end of March). Don’t worry Fire Emblem did release on February 2^nd titled, “Fire Emblem Heroes”. Nintendo is creating buzz again in a different market, in turn introducing them to Nintendo’s successful IPs.

Battle System

Fire Emblem Heroes is true to its handheld predecessor – a turn-based tactical game. The grid system has been worked to fit on a mobile screen with an 8x6 grid creating a more compact and smaller experience of Fire Emblem. When starting a match, you must choose which hero is best for the situation. The weapon classifies every hero for example, a bowman is a ranged type, or a lancer that can move through terrain. Heroes also have an element attached as the “rock, paper, scissor” element of the battle system.

• ·         Red beats Green
• ·         Green beats Blue
• ·          Blue beats Red
• ·         Colourless is Neutral

A simple system that a lot of gamers can understand.

What makes Fire Emblem great are the massive and diverse maps. Like the other games, maps will have rivers that you can’t cross – unless you have a lancer, which can fly, or even a building you can break for easier access to the entire map. These obstacles make the game more dynamic and makes the play think about their every move.

Characters and Gachapon systems

When first starting out you will get a set of heroes and then will have a free “Summon” (pay orbs to get heroes) this is how to grow your party. When using a Summon you must pay five orbs to randomly choose 1 out of 5 coloured random orbs. The cool thing about this is that once you picked a hero you can pay another four orbs to unlock one more orb.

Unlocking heroes is just the first step of putting together your party, you also need to level them. Every battle a hero encounters without dying gains experience, more experience equals better stats.

• ·         HP – Hit points (dies when reaches 0)  
• ·         Atk – This determines how much damage that hero does
• ·         Spd – This allows the hero to attack twice if its 5 more than is target
• ·         Def – This affects the amount of physical damage taken
• ·         Res --This affects the amount of magical damage taken

For farther customization, you can change the attack they use. Using SP – which can be gained every level, you can unlock attacks and skills from A, B, or C type skill. These skills can activate passively or triggered when taken a curtain amount of damage. These system is nothing new to the mobile market, being mostly free-to-play games the developers need income from the in-game store.

Quests and Missions

What’s a Fire Emblem game without story? At launch, there are four modes you can participate, Special Maps, Story Maps, Arena Duels, and Training Tower.

• ·         Special Maps – Are timed events that has an existing Fire Emblem character attached to it, to then be added to your team.
• ·         Story Maps – These are story driven battles that involve characters from the franchise.
• ·         Arena Duels – This mode is a PvP mode that ranks you for every match, note that these battles aren’t real time.
• ·        Training Tower – This mode provides multiple battles with rewards that increase a hero’s experience, each battle changes when played.

Story is not interesting compared to the handheld predecessors. There aren’t relationships you can develop between characters, no character progression in the story. The main thing about the story is you’re the hero that was “Summoned” and now you must lead a group called, “Order of Heroes” to fend off the evil. Not a compelling story if you ask me.

My time with the Fire Emblem franchise is short, I wanted to give it my time and try to enjoy the systems the game offered. But once I got my hands with the Gameboy versions of the games, I couldn’t wrap my head around all the complex mechanics. These games pick-up and play games, you need to understand all the systems and how they work with each other.

A game like Fire Emblem Heroes offers the same type of battle system, but strips away all the other complex mechanics of character relationships and how it affects the world. For new comers of the franchise, this game is a great start, the simple grid system with a less but still tactical turn-based system lends well to new comers.