Fire Emblem is one of those long-running series I don’t have a huge affinity for. Considering it’s a tactical RPG, I should be all over it. Unfortunately for me, it’s a series I’ve skipped out on for no particular reason. I only learned about Fire Emblem Shadows by chance. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems did a stealth drop. Unless you’re using the Nintendo app, you may not have known this was a thing. Considering the game feels half-baked, it makes sense to limit the marketing. What’s sad is that this could be a much better game.
Fire Emblem Among Us Lite
The key gameplay hook around Fire Emblem Shadows is the game’s traitor element. What this means is that in battles, one member of your trio is a member of the evil forces, known as the Shadow. As a member of the Light, you need to figure out which of your two other teammates is actually sabotaging things. If you’re part of the Shadow, then you want to cause problems but not make it too obvious.
There are two parts to every match. In the first stage, you’re “working together” to fight a group of enemies. During this stage, light characters will issue attacks. Meanwhile, the shadow traitor can attack the monsters and/or their so-called allies. Regardless of the outcome, you head into a voting intermission and the second stage of combat. During voting, the three players all vote for who they think is the traitor. If you’re not the shadow, getting this right gives you an extra life in the second stage.
Once voting is complete, the shadow reveals itself and the second stage commences. Here, the two remaining heroes must kill the traitor and their minions before they do. Light characters still have access to their arsenal of skills. Meanwhile, the Shadow character gains a set of shadow-specific skills. They can now summon more minions and other attacks. There is a limit to the number of minions you can cast, so there isn’t an unfair advantage.
This is an interesting concept on paper. Unfortunately, the execution is where it falls apart. Since you’re a team of three, it’s very easy to figure out who’s good and bad. In every match I played, you can figure out who the shadow character is if you pay attention at the start. With only two other characters, the moment a teammate isn’t helping, they are usually the one to accuse. It’s hard to say if I was playing with humans or bots at this point, but regardless, it’s far too easy to notice key cues.
Pretty Good at Tricking My Teammates
What’s odd is that I was dominating when I played a Shadow character. The game doesn’t track your stats, but in all the games I’ve played so far, my success in winning on the Shadow side is high. The key to victory on the bad side is to avoid hesitation. If you can mix good and bad attacks, it can be difficult to trick your teammates. I rarely tricked both players. But I would be able to go into the second stage of combat knowing that I could take out at least one player.
Light characters who vote wrong go into the stage at a disadvantage. Correct votes give you an extra revive for the second stage. You get one revive regardless, so that extra one is helpful. If your character fell in battle in the first stage, then you use that revive to start the second. So, this gives the Shadow character a clear advantage.
Experience helps the traitor. I felt that once I was able to grasp the gameplay, I could issue attacks without making mistakes. Special attacks have a 5-10 second cooldown, so you should be using that downtime to watch the others. On the light side, this helped me figure out the traitor. But on the shadow side, I was using this to maximize my attacks to destroy my foes.
This needs larger squads
Since your squad is three members, figuring out the traitor is a 50-50 guess. At the same time, it can be hard for the traitor to trick people. If squads were large, at least 4 or 5, then it would make things more challenging. With a larger squad, you have to pay more attention to your surroundings. It would make it harder to guess who the traitor is and more likely to get it wrong.
Because this is a mobile game, I suspect the squad size is to keep matches shorter. It’s also possible they feared matchmaking would take a lot longer. The key to mobile games is accessibility. Matchmaking is fast, but a larger squad size would take longer. The focus on speed hurts the gameplay enjoyment.
Also, I am having more fun playing as the traitor. Shadow characters get to do more things. Light characters only need to guess which of their two other teammates is the traitor. Once I knew who it was, I could then focus on keeping my character alive and killing the other foes.
So much grinding with little progression
There is a story in Fire Emblem Shadows. It’s broken up into two stories that will intersect as you progress. One focuses on a fleeing prince, trying to avoid invaders. The other on a group hunting the prince. Right now, the two stories are independent, and you only progress them by playing in matches.
The more times you play as a member of the light, the more you unlock in that story. On the flip side, the more you play as a member of the shadow, you’ll unlock that story. This takes a lot of time. You’re playing a lot of matches to get access to story content that only lasts around 30-60 seconds.
All the matches are the same, so there isn’t enough variety to keep players engaged. I have noticed that there are different maps. But, these seem locked to being character-specific bonus stages. The difference in those stages is that you don’t have to find a traitor. Unfortunately, once you complete them, there is no incentive to play them again.
At least there is variety in the characters
One thing I haven’t mentioned is that there is a significant cast of characters in the game. At the moment, there are 14 characters, which the game calls “disciples”. At the moment, I’ve only unlocked 10 of them. You unlock some characters by progressing through the story. There is at least one character that you unlock by completing the game’s Season Pass.
At the same time, you can spend real money to unlock and level up characters faster. This is the game’s monetization focus. As mentioned in the last paragraph, there is one character who seems to be exclusive to the Season Pass. You might be able to unlock via grinding the story, but I’m not sure, though. You also level up characters by using them, so there is an incentive to play with all the characters you unlock.
There is a nice variety of characters available. You have characters who can fly over certain terrain. Others ride horses. Plus, their skills and attacks vary. On top of that, you do unlock stronger weapons and improved skills. But again, you have to play a lot of matches to unlock those upgrades, so I’m not sure who’s willing to do that much grinding.
This should be better than it is
What’s crazy is that even with the limited gameplay appeal of Fire Emblem Shadows, I was having fun. It’s unfortunate since there are aspects of this game that could be more enjoyable. This is a long-running series that has had success on mobile in the past. If the squads were bigger and there was less reliance on grinding, more people could enjoy this. This needed a bit more time in development. We may see the game improve down the road. Unfortunately, I’m not so sure the audience will come back in 3, 6, or 12 months from now.
