 Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Nintendo Prime podcast. As you can see, we returned back to using two microphones if you're watching the video version. We heard you. The audio levels were a little uneven, which happens because you and I speak at different volumes. I've always been kind of a loudmouth, is basically the gist of it. And you only get loud when you're angry. Yeah, there's that. Usually. I'm sometimes excited. Yeah. Hopefully, it's a little bit better this week. We've been playing around with it. We do not have a separate person, like off-camera, away, adjusting the audio as we go to make it sound perfect. So it kind of is just one of those things that we just have to make minor adjustments every podcast. So stick with us as we try to perfect the audio. We are just two people trying to make this podcast run. So once you kick off, what our first topic is this week? Our first topic would be Fire Emblem Heroes reactions. Yes. Fire Emblem Heroes. We are late to the party. It's a wrap. Oh yeah. We actually warned you guys last week because we recorded the day before Fire Emblem Heroes came out. Or the day it came out, but it wasn't out yet in the United States. So this is, well, I guess, what is Fire Emblem Heroes? Huh. You know, I have only played a little bit of it, so I'm trying to still quite figure that out. And I haven't really played much for Fire Emblem Periods. Yeah, this is probably your first Fire Emblem. Yes. Hands-on Fire Emblem Experience. Yes, it is. So he's coming out as a new person, which is how it's going to be for a little while. Outside of Breath of the Wild. We have equal experience there, basically. And then for this game, I guess the quickest way to say it is that it's a Fire Emblem game made for mobile smart devices. And I've heard people say that it's called a gotcha game. I have no idea what that means to be frank. It's obviously a style of game on phones or something. Because a popular thing people are doing with this game is uninstalling and reinstalling it to get that initial like 15 orbs or whatever you start with. Because this game draws in heroes from all the other games. Right. And there's different ranks and different star levels. So like, you know, you can get Marth, who's from like, you know, a whole bunch of Fire Emblem games, but you might get a one-star version or you can get up to a five-star version, five-star being the best. So people are uninstalling and reinstalling it so they can get those initial orbs and just re-rolling until they get a whole bunch of five-stars. Yeah. And apparently the whole methodology behind that makes it a gotcha game. And maybe it just has to do with random... As far as I could tell, it has to do with just getting randomly generated characters based on a certain scale and trying to get the best of them. So that's kind of the bare basics of it. If you've ever played a Fire Emblem game, Fire Emblem game, this is, by all intents and purposes, a Fire Emblem game. Missing a few features to be expected. There's no relationships. You're not making babies. That's just kind of, I don't know if people expected that out of this game, but previous Fire Emblem games, I thought you'd get married and stuff. So that's not here, although, you know, the characters definitely show you the love sometimes that they do, but it doesn't go anywhere. So I consider your talk, you know, from an experience standpoint, because I played a lot of Fire Emblem Awakening specifically. I played a Fire Emblem game back in the GameCube days that I loved a lot. I really apologize, folks, that I forget what it's called. And that's basically the gist of my experience of Fire Emblem. Basically a couple games. I loved them both. Really want to get into fates. I do own Birthright, but I haven't really gotten much chance to play it. So, you knowing nothing about Fire Emblem. This is what I'm interested in, because I know what to expect going in. You don't know what's going on. I have some vague ideas of what's going on, because... What do you think Fire Emblem is? Well, I knew it was like a turn-based... Strategy? Well, a turn-based strategy, but where you can also only move a certain number of tiles. So it's not like you can run all the way across the map type of thing. Like I said, or I haven't said, but my friend Chris is a huge Fire Emblem fan. So I've watched him play. I've heard him talk a lot about it. So I have some understanding of the game. I was expecting the whole marriage thing to be in there too, because I had heard of it and whatnot. But now hearing that it's not a big deal to me, because I'm new to the game, so whatever. So far I've only completed the prologue, but it is fun. I will give it that. Yeah, it's interesting to me as a new player to the series. Maybe not brand new, like, oh my god, I've never heard of this series before. But as someone that maybe didn't have expectations of, say, a veteran Fire Emblem player. And I wouldn't even call myself a veteran Fire Emblem player. What's your feeling coming out of the little bit of time you spent with it? Like I said, it is fun. It's definitely interesting. I'm not a whole, sure about what's going on with the story in a certain sense. But I get that there's two factions, and one opens portals, one closes portals. Other than that, I really don't know what's going on, because again I'm only through the prologue. So it does open up a lot more after the prologue. Because after the prologue, that's when you can enjoy other aspects of the game. You still have your main story mode, which I don't even know if there's an end to it, because I personally haven't gotten that far. But it opens up arena battles and all these other things that earn you different items. Like the story mode seems to earn you orbs, like one orb per battle one, which again is really, really important. It's also a really, really slow way to get orbs, which again, to get more orbs faster, spend money, that's how these games are built. Fire Emblem Heroes, I'm sorry, is one of the top grossing games on Apple and Android right now. Because of this, that doesn't bother me. Because as I'm playing, the game never really forces me to... Even when I run out of orbs, it's not like, hey, click here and spend 50 bucks and get 100 orbs. Yeah, that is nice in a way that it doesn't force it down your throat. But at the same point in time, I don't know if I know exactly where to go to actually buy orbs if I really want to. Okay, so this actually brings up an interesting aspect I want to talk about. Because I'm an experienced Fire Emblem player, so even me coming into the game, after you get past the initial trial demo area when you first boot up the game, it looks extremely complicated with no explanation for what any of the stuff in the menu is. So this is why, as an example, I didn't know where to buy them either. I just tapped around until I found it. Sure, most people do it anyways, but... The thing is, it made sense where it was, and I'm not saying the game needs to hold your hand. Especially for an experienced Fire Emblem player like me, it didn't bother me. But I think for a lot of newer players like you or people who have never even heard of it, and maybe just see what's the top app on the extra right now for free, like a top free app. Let me go download it. It's one thing that I think will really put them off once they get past the demo. Like, oh man, the demo part was fun, but now they're throwing all this complicated stuff at me. Like, what's all these feathers do? What do these dual swords do? None of it is explained to you. Yeah, I will definitely agree with that one. And I'm sure somewhere in there there's like a help menu with tips and explains everything, but I have to go find it. Yeah, that shouldn't happen. It should just be explained in a tutorial that has a skip option for those who want to skip it. Just a personal thing. So, and that might be the only negative I really have to say about the game, is it just approaches, it's very abrupt in its complexities. And that's not necessarily a problem because Fire Emblem is a complex game. It's always been a complex game. Many, many different facets. You know, there's differences in this game, like your heroes can't die. That's an option you can turn on on most games. Have you looked to see if there is an option to actually turn that on? No, it does not exist in the game. So, there are difficulty levels that open up once you get out of the prologue. But, so like right now everyone plays on normal, and then there's like harder modes and easier modes, which Fire Emblem has always had. But there's no like the insanity mode, which is like where, where if your character dies in a battle, they're dead. They're dead, yeah. Done, you can't do that. I knew that one, yep. And that's something that as a Fire Emblem fan I missed, because it made me, I guess more careful in my strategy, it's like, oh, if I fail, oh, it just cost me some stamina that comes back if I just stop playing the game for like an hour. Yeah. So... Yeah, I didn't know that is one complaint I think Chris had, that it is kind of in a way almost too easy. The game itself. Has he gotten to the harder difficulty levels? I'm not 100% sure. I'm sure he has. By now. Yeah. It's... That's really the only complaint I have is, I don't really... I mean, there's other ways you can complain about the game. You know, you always only battle with like four characters at a time. It's always on the same size tile map, like 16 by 9 or whatever it is. Yeah. And a lot of that's probably just because the limitations of the phone and they don't want to make it more complex by having arrows and having to scroll all over the battlefield. Right, yeah. Like, I get it. Oh, it makes sense. I get it. So in a way, it was going to be simplified. It was going to be a story that's really almost irrelevant. And I don't want to say it is irrelevant, but it's like in a world between worlds that summons in things from all the different Fire Elm games. It really doesn't matter what happens to this world, per se. Yeah, right. At least to this point where I'm in the story, it's like, yeah, someone's dominating this world and controlling heroes and I'm not supposed to care about that. But, you know, if you go back and play Awakening or you play any of the Fates games, it's like, yeah, it doesn't really... there's no reference to this stuff happening. So it's kind of like, it's just kind of happening in its own universe. And I'm okay with that. The gameplay is fantastic. It does start out easy, but I think Fire Elm games always, in my opinion, start out kind of easy. I know some Fire Elm games that you select the hardest difficulty right away. So you can make it super, super difficult if you want. But I've always started out with normal just to kind of get my grips what's going on. And then if I want to bump it up, I bump it up. Great. So maybe my experience is a little different. It's just a complex game. It's a complex game that I think is actually working really well on mobile. It is. I think it runs really smooth, actually. One of the smoothest. Yeah. So there is that. And I mean, is this actually Nintendo? Yeah. Okay. So it is actually Nintendo. And this is a Nintendo game. Okay. I wasn't 100% sure. Yeah. Just like Super Mario Kart. Okay. So again, we're still going to realize though that this is still fairly new for Nintendo. Yeah. This would be their third mobile app, their second game that they personally have been responsible for. Right. And being that as it is, this is for that a phenomenal app. Sure. I think it's a phenomenal app overall because, I mean, user reviews have it at 4.5 stars, which already means a majority of people playing it love it. Part of the reason that they love it is when it works. Oh yeah. That's a lot of games with server issues and all this stuff. We had problems with Pokemon Duel. None of that exists here. Everything just works. It is a little abrupt when you first get it. It's like, oh hey, download this 300 megabyte. Yeah. Okay. It's a little abrupt. No real warning. There was a warning, hey, you need to update. Yeah. But it's like, it doesn't update. Other apps were like, you know. You just open up it and just automatically updates. Open up it and automatically updates. Or like, and I know this is the case on iOS devices. If you go into your app store, there'll just be a whole list of things that need to be updated. You just hit update and just update something. Yeah. I think that's the same way on Android too. But this game is just like, you're just playing and all of a sudden it'll just stop you and be like, hey, you need to download this update. Yeah. It's like, okay. I mean, I'm not mad about the initial. I know some of you are like, oh, 300 megabytes. I'm like, yeah. But how many of us can't connect to Wi-Fi if we really want to update the thing? Right. So, especially since like, if you own a smart device, just stop at McDonald's. Order a water. Yeah. Small water. Of course, they'll tell you need to buy something, but just go wing, wing, nudge someone to hand you a cup. Yeah. Yeah. I'm speaking from experience of when I used to work at McDonald's. Or just go into the bathroom and take a crap. Yeah, right. And then connect to the Wi-Fi quick. Yeah. Download it. So, overall, I don't want to get too in-depth on the game itself because it's free. You guys can go out and play it right now. I was actually technically wrote up a review for it. Then I decided, you know what? It's not really worth publishing because reviews are nice, but I feel like they are a way of presenting an opinion to help people decide if it's worth investing in. Purchasing something? Yeah. And whether or not this game is worth spending any money on is going to be up to the individual just like it was with Pokemon Go. It's a game you can play entirely for free. You get as much out of it as you can. If you pay for it, if you pay for it, you get more characters faster. You know, you can complete more stuff maybe faster and level up people faster, but it's not really a pay to win, per se, even though there are arena battles because it kind of pits you against people using the same level characters, so it is a lot of strategy. It feels like a complete experience, which it feels weird saying, but that's kind of a rarity on smart devices. Oh, definitely. Even Super Mario Run, which I think is fantastic, it hasn't end. You spend 10 bucks on it, and it just ends the single player mode. Now, there is a multiplayer component that's not direct multiplayer, but it's kind of like trying to beat ghost times of other players. Right, okay, yeah. That makes sense. It's fun, it's repeatable, but I don't play Super Mario Run anymore. Eventually it loses its glory and fades away. It's still fantastic. It's utterly fantastic. I feel like it was worth my 10 bucks, but that is something I feel like is reviewable because to get the whole experience, you know, was that $10 worth the price of admission? Personally, I think it was, but as I was about to publish this review, I'm like, you know, this is better just to have as a discussion, rather than throwing it out there as you should invest heavily in those games, spend your time in it. The end rewards are going to be worth it. This, unlike Super Mario Run, doesn't seem to have an end. They have future DLC planned for it, whether, you know, it's probably going to be free, I'm assuming, but you know, again, you have to spend money, you have to get more orbs, you have to get out of it. So it's kind of one of those games because it's a gotcha game that it's just going to keep going. It's going to keep going, it's going to keep having the life of its own. I'm just glad that when you do play it, it works. It's utterly fantastic. It feels like a Fire Emblem game. The money stuff, is it pushed upon you? But if you're an addict, you're probably going to end up spending money. It's just how it goes. Or you're going to end up deleting it, it's 50 times until you hit on five, five stars right away. It's not like us in baseball at all. Yeah, no. So, yeah, it's... I'm pleasantly surprised because it's a very different approach than with Super Mario Run. And just like with Super Mario Run, they kind of nailed it. Yeah. And it did something that Super Mario Run didn't do, have a simultaneous release on Android and iOS. Right. Where is that? So hopefully that's a continuous thing, even as I'm an Apple user and haven't had to worry about not getting stuff early or getting it on time. It still does suck that you can't play Super Mario Run until sometime in March. Or I take your phone. Or I take my phone. I know, but on your own. Still. So yeah, Fire Emblem Heroes. Great. I guess if I had to sum it up, it's the perfect type of Fire Emblem game for a phone. I would actually agree with that statement. Like the features cut out from it don't feel like it detracts from it being like a true Fire Emblem game. Because it just feels like those features would detract from what this game is trying to do personally. Especially since it's all the summoning thing, like you're going to get married to a hero you're summoning and then going to send back at some point. Bye! Oh, we got married. Bye, go back to your world. Oh, I'm pregnant! Tough means. Yeah, that's really it. The only thing I'll say is confusing so far to me. And again, this has to do with the fact there's no explanations. Given to you, you have to dig it up. Is you friend people, right? Yeah. And when you friend people, you get like a bonus feathers or something. And you get to greet them and you get some bonuses from that. But after all that's all done, I don't really know what the point of the friends are. I haven't really been able to message them after you arena battle them. You can friend them. I don't really... I don't really get... It's almost like, is it just a competition to get the most friends or something? That's a different possibility. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure you guys are out there just yelling at me, like, oh my God, you really don't understand how this game works. I'm like, that's kind of... The point we're making. That's kind of my criticism is it doesn't explain it. Right. But if you spend the time to invest into it, everything works. And I'm sure the friends thing, in a different way that everything works. You don't even know how to buy things in the game. The game one doesn't tell you to buy things, which I like. And two, I guess it encourages you to explore the UI on its own. And unlike Pokemon Duel, when you tap the icon, they work. And it doesn't actually shut off on you. And it doesn't try to like loading. Yeah. Loading on every little thing you're doing. It seems like a lot of it works locally on your phone and only connects to the server when it has to. Which is the way it should be. Exactly.