Fire Emblem Heroes just came out earlier today (2nd February, 2017), here’s a first look at what the game is like.
Fire Emblem Heroes is a turn-based tactical RPG featuring heroes from the Fire Emblem universe. Players assume the role of a summoner to summon the various heroes from the Fire Emblem universe to defend the Kingdom of Askr from the armies of the Emblian Empire, which is determined to rule all worlds.
The game is what you would expect from most mobile RPG, a main story line, PvP, Daily Dungeons, in which players can farm for different materials to develop their characters, and Events. Staying true to its Fire Emblem heritage, the game looks and feels like a Fire Emblem title, which is good news to fans of the series. Nintendo has done a great job at recreating the Fire Emblem experience for mobile gamers with Fire Emblem Heroes’ simple controls and smooth transitions between map and battle cutscenes. The smart assists featured in the game makes the game truly feel like a mobile intended game and not just a cheap port from another console.
In terms of graphics, Fire Emblem Hero embraces the old-school Fire Emblem 2D graphics with a little bit of a modern twist. The iconic characters re-illustrated by Yusuke Kozaki, famous for his works on Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates, is a welcoming twist to Fire Emblem Heroes. Cleverly including different illustrations for the same characters during battle depending on remaining HP is a subtle feature that really gets the player more immersed into the game.
A brand new cast of voice actors for all the playable characters in-game is a fresh idea for the Fire Emblem series. Sure, previous Fire Emblem anime adaptations already featured voice actors, but Fire Emblem Heroes brings both Japanese and English voices to characters that didn’t already previously have a voice. In terms of in-game soundtracks though, it’s good buts its not incredible.
A great bonus to the game is how much additional content Nintendo has created for Fire Emblem Heroes. Although most characters that appear in-game are existing characters, for special heroes like Lucina and Camilla, a special cutscene is played when you get them through summoning.
Final Thoughts
Overall Fire Emblem Heroes is definitely worth investing time into, especially if you’re already a fan of the Fire Emblem series. The vast amount of familiar faces for fans and depth of turn-based tactical RPGs combined makes it a game that would easily keep you busy for hours a day.
Although the game itself is nothing extraordinary, everything comes together quite well in terms of controls and the smooth transitions between different scenes and different pages of the game. The network is a little unstable, increasing load times on certain parts of the game i.e. Summoning, but that’s understandable as the today is the launch day and the game was highly anticipated.