So as a massive fan of Fire Emblem I await the introduction of each and every release with baited breath. I have from time to time talked about various mobile games so I figured with a Fire Emblem Mobile game now out I should review it so without further ado here I go. Fire Emblem heroes is not too bad, its a cut down mini version, basically the fights are all on tiny maps where its ussually about four on four. On the good side this means it takes like 2 minutes to play a level which is good for bus journeys and to otherwise just kill dead time but then it has that sort of stanima system a lot of mobile games go for where you have a set amount of some bar or points total and each time you have a go/play a mission your total goes down and then you have to either wait to play again or pay some money to get something to raise this to let you carry on. It does have a cool Fire Emblem vibe having the music and featuring characters from like pretty much all the Fire Emblem games, the graphics are also very good for a mobile phone game with the menu screens basically looking pretty much like a normal handheld Fire Emblem console game and the in game graphics providing super cute chibi versions of the characters, this really helps it feel better than it otherwise would.
It is not bad for what it is but yeah deep down you kind of know that its a bit of a cynical cash grab. Like most games of this type though a lot of people will just play it using what you get for free and have quiet a bit of fun with it for awile but there will be people who stupidly sink a lot of money into the game, money it doesnt deserve. The main money pit I would imagine would be for the orbs which you use to buy characters. All of the characters you get have a Star ranking from 1 to 5 with 5 being the best, when you buy a character with orbs its random who you will get and how good they will be. I have managed without paying a penny to get like 3 five star characters and I have managed to get a few characters I really like from the franchise but if you were determined to get someone you like and to get them in 5 star form then you could spend a lot of cash. You can up lower star ranking units up all the way to a 5 star but it basically takes a lot of time as you go through a ritual of getting them to level 20 then spending resources to swap all of your levels for a star so theyll go for example from being a Level 20 One star unit to a Level 1 Two Star Unit and youll have to start building those levels up again. Theres so many missions that are part of the game itself and then there are like daily challange ones and such. In fairness I am on the last set of story missions and I havent found any of it hard so far. Units come back when defeated though unlike the normal difficulty settings on most regular Fire Emblem games.
The thing the game really says to me is that if Nintendo actually wanted to, like for example if they decided to get out of the hardware business then they could build a perfectly good workable fun Fire Emblem game on a standard mobile phone platform. I wont pump money into this kind of thing where you get characters randomly but if they did a Gameboy Advance sort of quality Fire Emblem game where everything was won through gameplay, there was a full real story and a good number of levels and they just charged one set fee to buy it like you do with most regular games then I would pump like £10 in to that no problem.
As for this game as it stands how would I rate it? Well this is a tough one as I cant really rate it against the usual kind of Fire Emblem game as this is free, so I guess I would have to give it a rating out of 10 which is based upon what it actually is which is a free to play freemium mobile game (as in a game which you can play for free but have to pay for content, and/or to regain stamina to make moves without waiting). I guess under the circumstances rating it as what it is I would have to give it a 7.5 out of 10. It is a good bit of pick up and play fun but you need to remember you need an always online connection to play it which if your doing so out of the house could get expensive, fortunatly the bus I take most of the time has free wifi so this helps but others might not be so lucky.
Nintendo clearly have made money from this game though as it was announced that during the first day of release the game generated more than $2.9 million. The game also ranked in third place in Japan when the game launched, also making shares skyrocket for the company. So I guess all in all Nintendo has to be considering this game a pretty big success, I have no idea what they invested in this game but they have to have turned a very handsome profit from it.
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