After Super Mario Run, we already had a suspicion, but now we know for sure: Nintendo understands smartphone games. Read why in our Fire Emblem Heroes review.
Fire Emblem Heroes review
It was a bit of a shock when Fire Emblem Heroes was announced, because this is not what fans of this series had hoped for. They know Fire Emblem from the long battles, where your strategic insight is put to the test around every corner. In deep contrast to those games, Fire Emblem Heroes is a game with short games of a few minutes.
Nintendo has handled this cleverly. Many elements of Fire Emblem, such as the fighting style and the many characters, have been put into a new kind of game that works perfectly on a smartphone. One that is less in-depth than the source material, but has a lot to offer in other areas.
The fights are simpler, but still a lot of fun and that’s important. In combat, two sides, you against the computer, take turns with teams of four fighters. Here, the environment and the type of characters must be taken into account. And while the characters’ stats are more important than your tactical choices at any given time, it’s fun getting to grips with the heroes every time.
Besides the battles, the focus of the game is mainly on those characters. Nintendo hopes you want all heroes, because that makes money. However, you cannot just buy them. Fire Emblem Heroes is one gacha game and that means you have to gamble. When you spend money on characters, you don’t know which character you will get and how strong it is. This gacha style of in-app purchases will appeal to a lot of people, and understandably so. However, it is also a successful model that Nintendo uses cleverly in this way.
Lots to do
Fire Emblem Heroes is mainly notable for its possibilities. There are the story missions in nine chapters, which you can complete in three different levels of difficulty. In between you can train in the training tower to make your characters as strong as possible. You can also focus on the duels, where you compete against the teams of other players to achieve a high ranking at the end of a specific period. Or you go all out for the characters to assemble a top team. In addition, there are Special Maps to earn characters and items and there is a new unknown play mode.
All in all, there is a lot to keep you entertained. Whether you go hardcore for those characters, or you just enjoy doing the battles of the story missions. And however you play the game, you don’t have to pay. Especially in the first stack of hours, the game is very spacious with the items it receives. Later it gets more difficult, but then you have already had a lot of hours of fun and you just have to wait a little longer between the play sessions.
We’re not happy with Fire Emblem Heroes about everything. For example, the fact that we still have to exchange friendcodes in 2017 to add friends is very outdated. No use is made of Game Center or the Nintendo Account that you link to the game. The in-app purchases are also quite pricey. It can also feel very unfair if you don’t get good characters from the slot machine every time, but that’s part of this type of game. Ultimately, just like Super Mario Run, this is a real Nintendo game, but as it fits on a smartphone.
Download Fire Emblem
Fire Emblem Heroes can be downloaded for free via the link below. To download the app you need 82.5MB of free space, but for the actual play you need a little more space. You must also run at least iOS 8.