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I’ve been a fan of the Fire Emblem franchise for quite a while now. I got into the series thanks to Sacred Stones and like many, fell back in love with it thanks to Awakening. I’ve been following it ever since so imagine my surprise when I check social media and find out that a new mobile game just released with little to no warning.
Fire Emblem Shadows, perhaps appropriately, “shadow dropped” on September 24th and no one saw it coming. That might not be surprising as everyone is still talking about the recently announced Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave, coming to Switch 2 next year. Then again, with everyone focused on the franchise thanks to that, this might’ve been a deliberate move on the part of Nintendo. Regardless, we got a new Fire Emblem game and it’s very different from anything else I’ve seen the series produce for better or for worse. 
To start, I need to make it clear that Shadows is NOT a gacha game. If you came into this expecting it to be like Fire Emblem Heroes, you’ll be disappointed to know that it bears little resemblance to its older sibling. For one thing, this is an auto battler, meaning characters move and attack on their own, instead player input is limited to casting spells which range from healing, to dealing damage, to changing positions on the battlefield. Battles are also entirely online with three players participating at a time and last for two rounds.
This brings me to a major theme of the game: Light vs Shadow. In the online matches, three players work together to vanquish the foes in the room by making use of the various spells they have access to. The catch is that one of the players is a traitor and will try to take out the others using exclusive shadow side skills. After the first room is done, there is a momentary pause as players vote on who they think the traitor is. After a few seconds, the traitor is revealed and those who guessed correctly gain an extra life. Room 2 is basically a boss fight as the remaining two light side players try to take down the traitor and any additional enemies that may have spawned. Once a match has finished, players get rewards which include items for leveling up characters, pages to progress the story and more. 
I’ve seen some label this game as “pay to win” and I have to disagree with that notion. This game is bizarrely enough pretty free to play friendly. A lot of the things you can get in this game, you can get by just playing. Story, characters, items etc can be gotten from just grinding enough matches if desired. There is a battle pass with a “premium mode” that can be purchased with real money but the main thing that’s exclusive to it is a single character, that being Lyn from Blazing Sword(Fire Emblem GBA to us westerners). The various characters do have extra outfits that can be bought, but that’s par for the course with mobile games.
That’s one thing I did notice: Many of the characters in this game are original to it. Characters like Kurt, Carina, Skoll, Zasha and more are completely new. As of this writing, only two playable characters are returning faces, the aforementioned Lyn and Dimitri from Three Houses(Who is unlocked through gameplay). Each character in this game comes with some very nice looking artwork for both their light and shadow sides. See, when the traitor is discovered, they transform into their shadow self, which is a beastial, more monstrous form. All the characters have anthro elements like Kurt’s tail or Zasha’s wings and these become pronounced when the character transforms. For example Zasha becomes more of a bird person, gaining talons and a beak. Dimitri has lion ears and turns into a werelion when he’s the traitor and so forth and so on. It really is Fire Emblem meets Werewolf. 
Incredible art and character design lends itself to the story which at the moment isn’t much. Prince Kurt of the kingdom of Ast is forced to flee with his retainers as the kingdom is destroyed. He vows to one day reclaim it and meets with a number of new faces, both friend and foe. It’s nothing Fire Emblem hasn’t done before. I will say they took an interesting spin on it though. There's both a “Light” story(which follows Kurt and co) and a “Shadow” story(which follows the antagonists side of things). While I respect the idea, the Shadow side feels more disjointed than the Light one. Chapters for either can be unlocked by completing matches and getting pages for whichever side you choose to fight for.
One last thing I do want to praise is the sound design in this game. To Fire Emblem Shadows credit, it has a really good soundtrack. That music that plays when the traitor is revealed is appropriately tense and even the regular background music has its charms. Also the voice acting is very well done. The characters sound more alive here than they ever did in Heroes.
Fire Emblem Shadows is an oddity. It has some pretty cool ideas, some incredible artwork and I found it pleasant to the ears. At the same time, it’s a social deduction game…without the social part. There’s no chat room or any way to interact with other players. You have to rely on intuition and seeing how the match plays out to figure out the traitor. It’s also not doing much to really incentivize spending money. You’ll be totally fine just playing this game for free. There’s no ranked mode and prizes are earned regardless of outcome. I do like that it has this more laid back feel to it because of all that. It’s not for everyone but it may yet find its audience. If your interested, it's available for download on Apple, Android, etc.
