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I'm always suspicious, a little tiny bit at least, of games that I play on my mobile phone. Not because I'm somehow wise to something about the platform others aren't, but more because I'm old and remember the long and arduous 'Trash Years' (as I like to call them) of terrible, terrible games for your phone. You know the stuff. Games you'd try to play at work in the toilet, but then quickly realise that doing your actual job was more fun than your legs going dead on the bog. The good old days.

Of course, things have come a long way since then (I can sit on the toilet for hours now and my legs are fine, for example), and Nintendo already has some decent mobile titles out there, such as Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes. I know deep down that I'm entirely wrong to be concerned in any way about modern mobile gaming quality. I know it. So it's funny in a way (it isn't), that Fire Emblem Shadows, the first phone/mobile game I've played in blinking ages, is so terribly, terribly bad that it gives me immediate nostalgia for the Trash Years. Put me back on that toilet.

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Yep. Unfortunately, and all joking aside, what we've got with Fire Emblem Shadows is a terrible waste of an amazing licence, and something that I am not surprised they just kicked out the door in the end. Unless you like incredibly simplistic, badly planned, poorly executed "tactical" turn-based combat with an awful art style and pay-to-win mechanics, I'd steer well clear of this one.

Rather than stick with any sort of tried and tested genre, or work within the perfectly reasonable confines of the tactical turn-based RPG, the devs have gone all in on a hybrid of turn-based FE stuff and Among Us. Can I see what they were trying to do? Yes. Does it work as a fun thing to spend time playing? No. Is it trying to fleece me? I'd say, yes. Are my legs dead? It's hard to tell.

In Fire Emblem Shadows, you jump into the franchise's signature grid-based battles as part of a fairly rote genre story that tells the tale of Kurt, a prince and heir to the throne of Ast, who goes on the run in the midst of an attack by the evil empire. Tempted to the dark side as he goes, Kurt has two paths presented in the game: dark and light. Choosing to play light gives you the main thrust of the story, while the dark route provides some other perspectives on the events that take place.

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The battles themselves, which adopt a simplified, colour-coded version of the series' signature triangle battle system (green beats blue, red beats green, blue beats red), see you and two other online players — this is an online-only venture, remember — placed on a small grid-based battlefield where you'll take on dull CPU enemies in auto-battler scraps.

Your units attack and do all the fun stuff by themselves, whilst you — dingus — drag and drop a selection of surprisingly bland attacks and items (heal, fireball, shove and so on) onto areas and units as and when they are cooled down and ready. Simple. Except that here they've added a crappy social experiment aspect that's been ripped from Among Us for no reason other than 'people seemed to like that in another game.'

You see, one member of your team is secretly designated a saboteur, so they are working against the other two players with some special shadow magic moves, the ability to kill and damage themselves, and friendly fire, making for ways in which they can try to hide themselves or make it look like someone else is at it.

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The first round of the game, where you all fight and then guess the traitor's identity, whilst fine on paper, is already a total waste of time thanks to the wildly limited scope of the fights and the current online 'meta.' You can, if you choose, literally do nothing in this round, or maybe just repeatedly stab yourself as the saboteur to put others off your scent. By checking the social media and forums, and by sitting through many, many matches, it seems people are already playing this part of the game by not playing it properly at all. It blows, and the way Shadows is set up allows for it, I suspect, because the endgame here is getting you to blow your wallet on a battle pass.

As there are only three players, you only ever have a choice between two suspects, and the rounds are way too short to really do any meaningful study of behaviours. You only gain one extra HP for guessing the saboteur correctly, too. It's not exactly enticing me to be bothered, folks.

Once the first round ends and the saboteur has been identified (you even get clues to who it might be, if it wasn't simple or boring enough already), you then face them in a second battle where they can summon lots of annoying small enemies, resulting in you and your online partner spamming 'heal' ad nauseam on a timer in between firing off some underwhelming attacks that provide little to no visual feedback. This is not fun.

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It all falls apart so very quickly, it really does. There's no way to actually communicate with other players, so the social aspect, beyond being bland and overwhelmingly dull in its simplicity, is some seriously low-effort, low-energy stuff.

Also! Everything on the screen (you can only play in landscape mode, take note) — and maybe this is a me thing only — but on my phone screen, it's not particularly easy to see the tiny details, so how much time are you going to actually spend observing the actions of someone else? Not much before you get bored, I'd wager.

You have a premium battle pass, because of course you do (this is a free game after all), and it's got better characters, attacks, an exclusive combatant in Lyn, who'll be paid access only until the end of Season 1: Wind of the Plains (which runs until the 28th October), level skips, and all that stuff — so pay-to-win is in, baby — as well as the expected wide array of cosmetic items and outfits that you can then rock into battle on a cast of characters that include a good few franchise returnees. There are also coins and gems which unlock new moves and things like that, but the premium goods are locked off behind gems that cost real-world money.

Making your way along the free battle pass, well, you do get some rewards, and you can earn most of the stuff through digging in and playing, but pay-to-win is an issue, as Lyn brings powerful moves that can swing scraps. Now, with this in mind, the game has a "Souls" system in place so that you can technically pick Lyn up at a later point by collecting 12 subs from post-game chests, once Season 1 exclusivity for paid punters ends. However, even then, you're looking at a fight against drop rates. How long is this going to take?

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They've made sure the outfit viewer in the store manages to look much better, more detailed graphically, than the fighting or anything else, too. Which I guess is good, as the outfits, even on special offer, are costing you a couple of quid. The battle pass, as things currently stand, shakes out at about six or seven British pounds, and honestly, I don't see how anyone will be roped into this, as the game itself provides little to no incentive to persist.

In fact, the only reason I can think of, unless you have a kink for this sort of thing, is that some hardcore Fire Emblem fans will want to watch the cutscenes and follow the story, which isn't worth it either. It's all very rigid and basic, there's nothing to be wowed by narratively here, not even close. Don't be fooled because you get to play the dark and light side of the tale, it's all tedious, no matter the route you forge. More of the same not-very-good thing.

In trying to be a little more positive to wind up, I will give it some points for serving up a few good-looking cutscenes that show flashes of the usual Fire Emblem style. There's no denying it looks polished in places, and it has a fine soundtrack and some voices for characters as you attack. It also has weekly content drops and challenges, new dungeon maps to fight on, and increased soul-drop rates for certain periods. So there is stuff to work towards for those interested.

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However, most of the fun bits here are gated off behind the winning of the game's core turgid battles, and this isn't something that's gonna change with new content or a few nice outfits. Overall, I've got to say — and even with the prospect that it could improve down the road — this feels like a one-off botched experiment that nobody will remember in a week or two.

Conclusion

Fire Emblem Shadows is a turgid mobile game that serves up dull automated battles involving pay-to-win nonsense, timers, and cooldowns. The main selling point of a unique social experiment/turn-based battle hybrid is very weak in its setup, with neither enough players nor time in combat to create any semblance of actual strategy, and the game itself looks and plays poorly on the battlefield.

There are a few nice cutscenes for fans who persist, and outfits for the outfits fans. But beyond this, it's thumbs down as far as the eye can see for this failed experiment.

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