Like many people here in the states, I didn’t get into the Fire Emblem series until Awakening in 2013. Awakening caught my attention immediately after I got my 3DS. I opted to play with the permanent deaths on and the experience was one of the most gloriously tenses I’ve ever faced in a game. The main story was decent at best, and the party member relationship systems were great, and all of this applies to its sequel, Fire Emblem Fates, three years later. Heck, when I opted to upgrade to the new 3DS XL model I went for this game’s special edition console.
It's three routes, the easier: Birthright, the insanely hard: Conquest, and the compromised final chapter: Revelations, which is a unique spin on the multiple game concept popularized by Pokemon and left for a lot of game for fans to devour. Conquest is still giving me trouble a full year later and I can’t bring myself to purchase the finale until I beat it. Which is a problem given there’s a 3DS remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden coming out in May.
It’s in this environment that Nintendo, in an effort to place miniaturized re-imaginings of their franchises on mobile devices, starting with Super Mario Run, decided to release Fire Emblem Heroes as a free-to-play game.
The whole monetization hook this time is a well-worn template known as “gachapon,” where you use your free-to-play paid currency to get characters sorted on a one-to-five (sometimes six) star scale. The more stars, the more power they possess. Remember those machines that took a quarter in exchange for an unknown prize in a known pool? Here, the prizes are Fire Emblem characters with brand new art and voice acting, all justified with the flimsiest of excuse plots I’ve ever seen. There’s an evil empire. They enslave Fire Emblem heroes. Free them by beating them in Mortal Kombat.
Said Mortal Kombat is a miniaturized version of what can be found in the main series, with an 8x6 grid, no permanent death, 100 percent accuracy, no critical hits and only four characters per side. The rock-paper-scissors weapon triangle exerts more influence here than on the 3DS, especially now that weapon switching isn’t a thing and the characters are all color-coded. The result is an effective small burst of tactics games to complement, but not replace, the main games that serve as its inspiration, which has been Nintendo’s approach to mobile gaming relative to the other AAA developers who want mobile to fully replace their admittedly expensive console and PC markets.
The main quest itself is incredibly short and easy by genre standards, but it feels as though it’s going to get expanded in free updates, and what is here is bolstered by increased difficulty for the sake of developing your characters and earning more currency in order to summon more of them. In that respect, accumulating absurd amounts of power is more engaging than the story you’re using that power to progress.
And related to those characters, something that confused me was how the casual-baiting approach of “Nintendo is doing mobile” and the cut down game design clashed with the overt fan-service that the titular heroes are. I only had context for some of these characters, and even then, only from Awakening and Fates, so when I pulled a five star Roy from the Game Boy Advance games, I was like: “Oh, cool. Who were you supposed to be again?”
But hey, it’s more of a game than anything you’ll see on a mobile device, more generous by that same token and doesn’t look or sound half bad. Also, check out these gorgeous but inexpensive Ivanka Trump produ- ...
Logan Graham is a junior studying media arts with a focus in games and animation at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Have you played Fire Emblem Heroes? Let him know by emailing him at lg261813@ohio.edu.
