Fire Emblem Shadows Review – Emergency Meeting

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A new Fire Emblem game typically generates a lot of excitement, so I was quite curious-and a bit puzzled-when I noticed “Fire Emblem Shadows Available” on the Nintendo Today app calendar on September 24th. Nintendo had just held a Nintendo Direct on September 12th, during which they revealed the next core game in the series for Switch 2, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave. There was absolutely no mention of Fire Emblem Shadows. Now that I’ve played it, it’s clear to me why Nintendo didn’t feature it during that major presentation.

I originally thought they were talking about Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, you know, the 2009 remake of the very first Fire Emblem game. I just moved on with my day, but later that evening I found out that Fire Emblem Shadows was something completely new – a mobile game! Apparently, it’s a pretty unique experience where you’re doing real-time strategy and social deduction all at once.

Hearing about a new installment in the popular tactics series appearing unexpectedly made me excited to download it and check it out. I enjoyed Fire Emblem Heroes, Nintendo’s earlier effort to bring Fire Emblem to free-to-play mobile gaming (and which ultimately became Nintendo’s first mobile game to earn $1 billion). So, I was interested in seeing how Shadows, also free-to-play, would be different. Sadly, my initial enthusiasm quickly faded, and I was surprised by how little Fire Emblem Shadows actually resembled a traditional Fire Emblem game.

The basic idea behind Fire Emblem Shadows is intriguing. Instead of the usual story of heroes escaping after a kingdom is destroyed by outside forces, this game explores what happens when a kingdom collapses due to internal issues. It introduces the possibility that some members of your team – even the main character – may already be compromised and willing to betray the others.

Going into Fire Emblem Shadows, I was really wondering how they’d make the tactical gameplay work, and honestly? It just doesn’t. The biggest reason is that this isn’t really a tactics game at all. It’s more of an auto-battler where I control just one character out of a three-person team. My character, and my teammates (whether they’re NPCs or other players), all move and attack on their own. The only actual gameplay is picking a spell from a small selection, dragging it onto enemies or allies, and then waiting for it to recharge before I can use it again. Most spells have a cooldown, so there’s a lot of waiting involved. It’s a pretty different experience from traditional Fire Emblem!

Battles tend to be fast-paced, and I usually only use three or four spells in each fight. There are spells that target a single enemy, spells that damage both enemies and allies in an area, and abilities to heal. You can also move around the battlefield a little, because some spells let you push or pull units, or even switch places with a nearby one. Fans of the series will also recognize the classic “weapon triangle” – a rock-paper-scissors system where certain spells are more effective against specific enemy types. However, battles often feel lacking in strategy, mostly involving hitting enemies with their weaknesses and healing when necessary. This is largely because you can’t directly control where your character moves – a core element that defines the Fire Emblem series.

The most interesting part of Fire Emblem Shadows is really its “social deduction” gameplay. In each game, one of the three players is secretly a Shadow, working against the others. This Shadow tries to eliminate the other players while pretending to be one of the good guys. After the first round, everyone votes to try and identify the traitor. In the second round, the identified traitor transforms into a powerful, corrupted version of their character and can call on computer-controlled minions to help them fight.

If the non-Shadow players correctly identify the traitor in the last round, they get another chance in the next one. Therefore, it doesn’t benefit the Shadow players to be obvious and attempt to eliminate both good players right away. Instead, Shadow players should focus on eliminating just one player while creating confusion to improve their chances in round two.

The concept is interesting, but it doesn’t really work well when you play it. With only three players on each team – and one of them being you – guessing who the Shadow is feels like a pure coin flip. It’s also quite simple to figure out. If you notice someone (or yourself) taking a lot of unexplained damage while another player isn’t, you can safely assume the uninjured player is the Shadow. There’s room for deception, though. Players might try to mislead others by healing teammates while secretly harming them, or even the Shadow can damage themselves using their own skills. Additionally, players can use spells even after dying, but these spells have a longer wait time. This means the Shadow can continue to attack their allies even from beyond the grave.

In the end, lying won’t take you very far. Even if you’re skilled at being the Shadow, with limited players and gameplay options, you’ll likely be discovered simply because of chance. Games feel too brief for real strategy to develop, and since there’s no substantial way to communicate with others except through spells during combat, voting becomes a very fast “this person or that person” choice. Honestly, it doesn’t even seem to matter much. I’ve easily won games even after being revealed as the traitor, and I’ve lost games early on despite successfully deceiving my team.

Here’s the next, and perhaps biggest, problem with Fire Emblem Shadows-figuring out who the Shadow is doesn’t feel very important. The game constantly reminds you that the vote isn’t the deciding factor, as you’ll always advance to the next round and can still win regardless of how people vote. It also makes sure you have enough information to guess the traitor, even if you didn’t fully follow the battle. The game directly tells you which players were affected by different types of magic, which helps you eliminate suspects. While this information *can* be misleading, in many of my playthroughs, simply choosing the player who wasn’t damaged by shadow magic revealed the traitor.

Developer Intelligent Systems is trying to have it both ways. They want players to be involved in figuring out who the traitor is, but they’re hesitant to make that aspect crucial to the game. They want you to actively watch battles and deduce the traitor’s identity, but then they immediately reveal the clues, leaving no room for thought or investigation. This approach doesn’t succeed, either as a social-deduction game or as a strategy game.

And that’s without even talking about how Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon makes money – it’s a free-to-play game where you can buy Gems, a special currency, and medals to improve your characters. Thankfully, unlike many other free-to-play mobile games (like Fire Emblem Heroes), this game doesn’t use a gacha system. Instead, it regularly gives you new characters just by playing the game.

Instead, the game makes money in different ways. Although you usually need both character medals and Crystals-another form of currency you get by playing-to improve your characters, the game frequently suggests you can simply purchase Gems to skip all of that and level up instantly. While you *can* earn some upgrade materials and Gems by playing, it quickly becomes clear that players who spend money will have significantly more powerful characters-to the point where it diminishes the social deduction gameplay that the game is built around. Some characters are also exclusive to the premium battle pass, meaning you have to pay extra to unlock potentially strong or popular characters (right now, it’s Lyn from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade).

The matchmaking system uses level ranges to try and keep players roughly equal, but it can still be frustrating to be put in a match where others have much stronger characters. Even a new player, right after the tutorial, could face someone several levels ahead. The difference in health, attack power, weapons, and spells between levels is significant – a Level 1 character has almost no chance against a Level 4, even with an extra life from correctly identifying the Shadow. When you add in limited character control and weak social deduction aspects, it feels like strategy and deception don’t matter. The game often comes down to simply overpowering your opponents. If players can pay to win through brute force, regardless of the social deduction element, it raises the question: what’s the point of even playing the game as intended? It’s a real issue.

Fire Emblem Shadows feels most like a traditional Fire Emblem game thanks to its characters and how it presents them. The character designs are vibrant and expressive, and it’s interesting to see how they evolve when you play as the Shadow. As you progress, you build Rapport with each character, which reveals more about their past. The main story unfolds gradually through beautifully presented, voice-acted cutscenes reminiscent of visual novels, and there are separate storylines depending on whether you’re playing as the Shadow or a Disciple of the Light. While these elements stay true to the series, even if the gameplay doesn’t, they aren’t much reward for slogging through repetitive battles, especially when you often feel like you have little control over what happens. It’s frustrating that a lot of the story requires replaying levels as a Disciple of the Light, when playing as the Shadow is significantly more enjoyable.

The game has a promising core concept, and it sounds good in theory. However, Fire Emblem Shadows’ most creative features are hampered by being designed for mobile devices and a free-to-play model. This results in a game that doesn’t quite appeal to existing Fire Emblem players and is difficult to recommend to others.

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2025-10-01 22:11