Fire Emblem Heroes is the second foray from Nintendo into the mobile game space, and while a free-to-play product usually interests me less than paid endeavors I had to give it a try being a big Fire Emblem fan. The end product is an interesting game that doesn't abuse its premium currency while being a fun light version of the original thing. I think that you still need a certain mindset before diving in - particularly because of the randomness of unit 'pulls' but it's still a neat strategy game.
I started the game like devoted people approach 'gacha'-style games, games where you get random units when you spend premium currency. The process is really fast, so in theory it wouldn't take long to delete the app and retry if you get nothing you'd like, but the 300mb download you had to do each and every time really strained my nerves at this point. When I got a team with barely one five-stars characters, I dove in the game. The story isn't very engaging and the added paralogues and side-stories are still lacking at this point, since they are the main way you get orbs - the premium currency - we can all but hope that nintendo will add more of them over time. You get a fair number from completing quests and events, enough to pull multiple heroes if you play a bit everyday.
Which is a good thing, since the price of orbs is kinda crazy. I can't fathom being compelled to spend that much money only to buy orbs, which have no uses besides getting characters. Maybe if you could upgrade your maximum stamina or buy other resources in the game it could be more tempting. Pulling units is a slot machine where you have five orbs of different colors and you want to pull five in a row to minimize the number of orbs spent, this is a neat mechanic except when the orbs aren't of the colors you want, then it's a bit of a bummer. Characters have star ratings and five is what you want. Although four-star characters are usable as well, if you really try to.
You can upgrade the characters using feathers but these are doled out really slowly, it's really difficult to get them and you need about 20 000 to get a four star characters upgraded to five. Characters get SP you use to buy skills and these affect how characters differ from each others, besides their stats. In a game like this, it's always fun to use characters you like, but some are just more powerful and as the game goes on - past level 20, let's say - you need to use specific units if you want optimal battles. I'm looking at you, Takumi. The battle system is okay, it is a very streamlined version of Fire Emblem, with the weapon triangle remaining - although maybe unbalanced, since at high level you're almost out of luck in a weapon disadvantage - but most of the other mechanics flattened out. You don't have accuracy anymore and units more either two or three squares per turn, fitting with the smaller maps.
Speaking of maps, luck factors in a bit after a while since maps have different starting positions for units and you'll sometimes get stuck in a really disadvantageous position. The game has a few battle modes split between story, training tower and the arena and each of these cost either stamina or dueling swords in order to fight it out. There are also a bunch of quests related to these various play modes and while some quests have very specific requirements that you might not be able to complete, it adds something to strive for and gives you a timesink while waiting for the next update.
I like Fire Emblem Heroes, it's not bad! It didn't hook me in entirely, but it's a quality product with good fire emblem art and music, the gameplay is solid and the free-to-play concepts aren't too evil. I just hope they'll add my favorite characters soon!
