It’s hard to see the Fire Emblem through the trees right now, aside from the presence of Lyn from Blazing Blade and Dimitri from Three Houses, and overall aesthetics of a FE game.At the moment, it’s largely a random slide/attack while along trying to sneakily injure your two fellow players if you’re the Shadow or figure out who “the traitor” is if you’re on the Light side. The rewards also change depending on which one you play more often, including whether you can unlock particular “disciples” (ie the units), incentivising you to try both at less a bit.Storywise, it’s very simple. The main character is “Prince” Kurt, a woman living as a man, who is trying to rebuilt their kingdom after her father’s assassination at the hands of “The Empire”. There’s kinda a ‘split pathway’ where you can unlock chapters depending on how many times you play as a Shadow or Light, which screams Fates/3H core.Overall, I think it has promise and is surprisingly functional despite being so new. I understand people’s criticisms as this is very different from FEH and the gameplay doesn’t entirely “scream Fire Emblem.” Hopefully, they can add a bit more FE in through future updates.

like, the review title says it all. It just quite literally is not Fire Emblem. there are exactly three things this game shares with fire emblem as a whole - the weapon triangle, some units (dimitri and lyn are in the game already, with more to come in the future surely), and the fact that it is a strategy game, albeit in the wrong genre. I suppose there are things like elfire and elthunder too I guess. The game does market itself as a real time strategy game rather than a turn-based one, so I can’t really fault it for that alone, nor does it feel fair or right to be angry that the franchise is trying new things, but.. it just feels wrong? half-baked? It’s as if this was meant to be an entirely separate, new IP, and then at some point through development, the franchise name was simply tacked on to drum up interest. I mean, this is the fourth game in the franchise to feature the word “Shadow” in the title, to the point that it’s impossible to search it up as all the other aforementioned games come up instead. Doesn’t that feel a bit thoughtless to you? And the game itself just doesn’t have a lot going for it. I mean, even if it is a real time strategy game, what Fire Emblem fan would want to play a game where you can’t even control your units? The magic you do control is powerful, and definitely impacts the battlefield, but again, it just feels wrong. Anyway, despite all that, it’s still worth a try. It’s certainly not Fire Emblem, but I’m sure there’s merit to the game if you want to find it. Personally, I’ll keep waiting for Fortune’s Weave.

Initially I was put off by the game as it didn’t feel or play or look like a fire emblem game, beyond some referential material but it’s actually incredibly fun to just pick up and play, especially as you increase in level. rounds are short and sweet, so it’s easy to pick up and play and a lot of the time you do rack your brain around what to do (the voting stage). The chibis look goofy and the art is good if a little generic. The soundtrack is nice. It’s free to play friendly, with the only cost really being for the battle pass (the rewards of which can be obtained randomly later anyway or bought with gold from the bazaar). I do wonder what they will do to give the game longevity though, and am interested to see future updates.

Prior to rank 2500+ you’re matched with dumb bots. As soon as you hit that, you get put in a pool with whales who do twice your damage and have far more health because they dished out their wallet to level up and skip the ungodly long grind.You wait 20+ minutes for a match, often even longer (or break the ToS and use a VPN to change your region and hope you only wait 10). When you finally do get in one it’s extremely unfair and pay to win with payers getting massive gameplay advantages (you will not kill them with buffed, single tile timed attacks. They will kill you with unbuffed instant AoEs). And then because rewards don’t scale with loot you’re getting extremely mediocre rewards that aren’t helpful and you were bored of weeks ago.Missed out on previous battle passes? Tough luck, those powerful characters and those skills aren’t going to be available any time soon. It’s been over two months without a single event but they expect you to pay up every month for a battlepass.I want to love this game but you NEED to fix it because getting gameplay advantage with money is NOT cool and there’s basically no content here but doing the exact same one mode on the exact same one map until you reach the point where you can’t win because the whales need to feel good.Avoid until an overhaul, they shouldn’t be rewarded.