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Fire Emblem Heros Comparison to Other Popular Mobile Titles


Sai1523
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So I've been playing quite a few mobile games on and off for the better part of about four years and I have come to see many similarities between Fire Emblem Heros and a couple other mobile titles. For the sake of this post not being any longer then it already is, I've decided to focus my comparisons specifically on Alim Co. (Developers of both Brave Frontier and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius) as the most comparisons I have seen relate to titles they have developed. This post is going to cover what specifically is similar to Alim Co. titles and what unique features within Fire Emblem Heros we should be looking forward to. Of course, this is based off of the information we have available at the moment so some speculations on mechanics I make may not quite be the case so take things with a grain of salt. Also note that I am not stating anything negative about the game just because it has a few similar general mechanics. I myself am a big fan of Alim Co. and Fire Emblem games. With that out of the way, lets get started.

1. General HUD

Hud Comp.png

So right off the bat, we can already see quite a few comparisons to the Alim title Brave Frontier. Both games feature the standard Stamina/Energy system (top left) that appears in many if not all mobile RPGs, limiting the amount a person can play before they are set off on a cooldown period. Generally this is so players don't beat the whole damn game in about week and leave themselves with nothing left to offer. On the top right of both images we can see both games micro-transaction system appearing as orbs and gems. In Brave Frontier, gems are used for summons and a quick energy recharge after you have completely drained your bar. In Fire Emblem, we have already seen the orbs operate also as a means of summoning and I speculate they will more then likely also recharge stamina as a secondary use. Under the orbs, we can see a sort of feather icon followed by a number. I have come to believe that it will act as a universal currency or simply an upgrade material as shown in the image bellow describing the upgrade system.Stats.png

I would now like to turn your attention to the three sword icons in the top middle of the Fire Emblem image. I believe this will be the amount of Hero Battles you can conduct before being placed on a cooldown period. My basis for this is the arena mode presented in Brave Frontier as it appears as three arena orbs on the image to the right. The arena exists as a non-direct player vs player mechanic in BF and seeing as they didn't mention any limit on Hero Battles or even stamina for that matter, I strongly feel that this is the case as a balancing measure. They wouldn't want players recruiting units at an astounding rate. As for the bottom portion of both images, i'm sure the comparisons are quite obvious minus the "Town" and "Social" tabs. I will continue posting some images in an imgur format due to a limit on images in general.

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2. Summoning

VrSwqOY.png

Generally, with these types of games, its quite difficult to build a viable team without spending at least SOME money on the game; however, there are a few alternatives. As stated in the Fire Emblem Direct, one can obtain orbs through simply playing the game and completing missions. In Brave Frontier's case along with Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, you can earn summoning currency through many promotions and events along with some upon first time completion of a dungeon. I suspect this will also be the case in Fire Emblem and that you won't earn orbs after literally every encounter. Since the battles are four on four by the looks of it, it would be so easy to earn orbs that they wouldn't even bother with micro-transactions. Seeing as they put so much work into this game, there is no way this would ever be the case.

As for the act of actually summoning anything, they have this system in place: http://i.imgur.com/p0RmYy4.png where you can summon unit based specifically on a criteria you are looking for. Now for the fun part, the prices. So they already announced via the FE Direct that a normal summon will cost five orbs and that the price will reduce upon each consecutive summon in a section. I bold out consecutive to point out that as soon as you exit the menu with the five orbs, (This one! http://i.imgur.com/p0RmYy4.png) the price reduction will disappear. Some may think this is rather obvious, but in Brave Frontier's case, they occasionally have times where something like rare summon rates are up and they stay up throughout the duration of the event. To anyone who believed they could return to the main menu and summon again in an attempt to reset the section of summon orbs they got, they would be sorely disappointed. So this acts as a warning to whoever had that go over their head as they watched the Direct. The price of three orbs $1.99 USD and the next step up is ten orbs for $5.99 USD. Unless you already have at least two orbs, the cheapest amount won't do you much in terms of summons. In general, with buying in bulk within either game, you might be able to get more for less from Fire Emblem Heros in comparison to Brave Frontier. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius has a system in place where the first summon of the day is half off. This system has me coming back to the game very often (even if I don't want to). The developers of FE Heros would be smart to consider a system like within this title, but at this point anything could be the case.

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3. Rarities & Evolution

wQHszVB.png

With the Section summoning system in place (http://i.imgur.com/p0RmYy4.png) the odds of getting a specific unit you want goes up significantly in comparison to BF or FFBE. With both of Alim Co's titles, rarities are set in stone and with the limited number of summon available to most players, it can be quite difficult to get something you are looking for. With Fire Emblem, if you are looking specifically for a swordsmen, you simply choose only to summon from the orbs that provide them. This will help limit the randomness out of summoning from literally every other unit and avoid situation where you get multiple copies of the same unit you didn't want like this: http://i.imgur.com/2XEF3sY.png

zSLnnoA.png

Acquiring summoned units seems to be quite similar in both games cases. The unit is presented after some flashy animation and give you a ranking along with a quote/introduction. However, I did notice "Solitary Blade" over Lon'qu's name and I suspect that might be a passive or sort of ability. Passives are present in Brave Frontier and introduced in Fire Emblem Fates so the idea of them existing shouldn't seem that far-fetched.

h9iB306.png 

As presented in the Fire Emblem Direct, the rarity/rank of each unit can vary throughout multiple summons and they directly influence the unit's stats. They also state that a lower ranked unit can be promoted using certain materials and can eventually attain the max rank of five stars, but I suspect even then they might not be as well off as they could have been starting at that high rank. In Final Fantasy's case, a lower rank unit will always be worse then one that started at a base higher rank. To the right of Robin's stats, we see the units inventory. They show in the Direct that you can eventually upgrade a units arsenal, but I believe it will be rather linear based on the only image of it they provided : http://i.imgur.com/43A9ocv.png

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4. Gameplay

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On the Fire Emblem side, battles seem to conduct very similarly to previous titles in the series; however, on a much smaller scale. As far as we know, the battles conduct in a four vs four format on a small grid map with ground units limited to two moves more or less. Comparing it to Brave Frontier, it definitely will take more attention to actually win a battle as you can literally just have the game play itself in BF. Fire Emblem Heros also comes with some pretty combat animation reminiscent of older games in the series : http://i.imgur.com/oJZolLP.png 

The games also functions with the staple "Weapon Triangle", present in all Fire Emblem games prior : http://i.imgur.com/bS2vNFa.png

TQyWNQ0.png

 In the Direct, we also see that units can obtain special abilities in combat, but they were not explained in depth. Normally, in the Fire Emblem series, abilities come out on random based on the unit's skill stat. In this title, the skill stat isn't even present on units. Instead, we have an unknown stat known as SP which I assume stands for "Special" or something along those lines and skills are based of off that. If that's the case, it would make sense why the image of a level one Robin earlier had zero SP as skills are eventually learned. In Brave Frontier, skill use is based off of the Brave Burst meter and is earned through attacking opponents and getting attacked in return.

kiOOEcV.png

 A very cool minor detail they never directly referenced to is that each illustration seems to have a battle damaged version that appears upon sustaining heavy damage. This is shown multiple times throughout the Direct.

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5. Miscellaneous 

zNPVuAy.png

They never really explained this to a full extent, but it seems there is some sort of support system in Fire Emblem Heros. For example, they show clips of taping on multiple character and having a heart appear, followed by a quote directly referring to the player character. This would also support the claims that the player actually is represented in some way, shape, or form within the game. Also, on the team selection screen, you can very clearly see hearts above a few of this players units furthering my belief that there is some sort of support system. While we are on this image, I also wanted to point out the drastically different art styles throughout the illustrations due to having multiple illustrators for this project. Another minor thing to note in case you were worried about this for whatever reason, you can clearly see female Kamui/Corrin in this image, removing any doubt that both male and female counterparts were not included in this game as male Kamui/Corrin is shown during the Direct.

3ib7vIU.png

Also I thought it would be fun to point out how similar the unit menu appears in both titles. You can also see here a scrolling option for editing team, confirming that you can make multiple.

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Conclusion:

I'm very happy to see so many similarities between series i'm a big fan of and am very excited for the release of Fire Emblem Heros! This took a pretty long time to write and was done for the hell of it. As you could probably tell, i'm not the best at writing. If you have any comments or things you'd like to point out i'd love to hear them. Thanks for reading to the end!

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1 hour ago, Hero of the Fire Emblems said:

I'm praying they add an option to look for units from specific games as well so we don't have to spend $200 trying to get units from, say, Sacred Stones if we keep rolling Binding Blade

These types of games will typically have events where groups of characters have higher appearance rates and/or guaranteed units for summoning x amount of units. I'd imagine being grouped by game will be one such event/string of events.

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Could it also be possible that "Solitary Blade" is just a title of the character and part of the name?  I know in the epilogues of the games (forgot how it was for Awakening) they give the character a nickname

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Here's my concern with the summoning system... If you're like me and want to avoid spending money on the game for a while until you get the hang of it and know what you want to spend the various currencies on, at the very least, then it goes without saying that you'll want to save up enough orbs to do the 5 consecutive summons each time, which costs 20 orbs and saves you 5 orbs for every 5 summons you do (5+4+4+4+3,  as opposed to 5x5). That can really add up. HOWEVER, let's look at that summoning circle image again: 

p0RmYy4.png

Specifically what I'm looking at is the wording at the top of the smartphone screen. Furthermore, it does not look as though there is any means of changing the color of the summoning nodes allotted to you in this selection, which leads me to the conclusion that this selection is probably random, with the likelihood being that you get at least one of each color each time, with one getting repeated (maybe sometimes one color will be omitted so two can be repeated, etc.) If this is the case, it will mean that players will not get as much freedom to summon for the type of hero desired as was suggested in the trailer, at least, not without spending orbs in an inefficient manner (presumably leaving the summon screen to reroll what colors of summoning nodes are available? but who knows). If you're like me and want to spend orbs efficiently, it seems like having to suck it up and summon for the all the different summon colors, as opposed to multiples of the same color as the hero you're seeking, is an inevitability. This of course means finding a balance between dedicated summoning for one color at a higher cost, VS taking longer to get the heroes you're looking for (and let's be real here, no one is getting their Lon'qu on the second attempt like Yuri Lowenthal did in the trailer).

In all likelihood, it's gonna require a LOT of patience. Ideally, they'll have specific summoning circles for characters from each game, as people have suggested, but until we see evidence that that will definitely be the case I'm not holding my breath. 

Edited by BANRYU
toning back the frustration lol
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1 hour ago, IGdood said:

Could it also be possible that "Solitary Blade" is just a title of the character and part of the name?  I know in the epilogues of the games (forgot how it was for Awakening) they give the character a nickname

That is Lon'qus Epilogue title. Every character had there epilogue title above there names, with the exception of Narciana who just had Wyver General. Seen as he isn't a PC so doesn't have one I'm not surprised he just has his in game title.

6963b0d9bc.png ff1cbe13ca.png

After some looking they are altered versions of the titles for some characters. Lyns was Noblewoman of Sacae. I feel this will be for the more casual players who don't know the lore shall we say so don't know what a Sacae is. Meanwhile I feel Fates and Awakening characters will retain most of there titles intact given the new nature of them, seen as Azura is keeping Lady of the Lake.

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I think the heart thing is just a lock/favorite system. FGO uses this so you don't burn/sell/use as EXP fodder your servants. (And unlike a TON of mobile games, 1 and 2 stars are worth using in that game) If you look at the set of Robin pictures, there is a heart button in the top left of each one.

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28 minutes ago, Moondrag said:

I think the heart thing is just a lock/favorite system. FGO uses this so you don't burn/sell/use as EXP fodder your servants. (And unlike a TON of mobile games, 1 and 2 stars are worth using in that game) If you look at the set of Robin pictures, there is a heart button in the top left of each one.

Yeah, this seems more likely than a support system to me. TBQH, I have a hard time seeing how supports could be viably used in a game like this, I think the simplification of the FE formula will most likely result in them getting cut. And honestly, I don't think that's a problem for this kind of game. 

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19 minutes ago, BANRYU said:

Yeah, this seems more likely than a support system to me. TBQH, I have a hard time seeing how supports could be viably used in a game like this, I think the simplification of the FE formula will most likely result in them getting cut. And honestly, I don't think that's a problem for this kind of game. 

If they did do a support like thing, it would most likely be something like the how the Bond levels work in Fate/Grand Order at best.

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5 hours ago, DemolisherBPB said:

That is Lon'qus Epilogue title. Every character had there epilogue title above there names, with the exception of Narciana who just had Wyver General. Seen as he isn't a PC so doesn't have one I'm not surprised he just has his in game title.

6963b0d9bc.png ff1cbe13ca.png

After some looking they are altered versions of the titles for some characters. Lyns was Noblewoman of Sacae. I feel this will be for the more casual players who don't know the lore shall we say so don't know what a Sacae is. Meanwhile I feel Fates and Awakening characters will retain most of there titles intact given the new nature of them, seen as Azura is keeping Lady of the Lake.

Ah that's right. I guess this went over my head thanks for the catch.

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3 hours ago, Moondrag said:

I think the heart thing is just a lock/favorite system. FGO uses this so you don't burn/sell/use as EXP fodder your servants. (And unlike a TON of mobile games, 1 and 2 stars are worth using in that game) If you look at the set of Robin pictures, there is a heart button in the top left of each one.

Yeah you got a point there, it does seem like a favorite system now that you mention it.

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2 hours ago, Moondrag said:

If they did do a support like thing, it would most likely be something like the how the Bond levels work in Fate/Grand Order at best.

I thought it might be a simple FE10-style support system, but it might be more of a "Preferred Units" kind of thing, where units that you frequently field gain trust in you as their leader, or something

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Most Gacha games I've played or are familiar with have interactions between the characters, so you can probably expect to see "events" that fulfill the same role as support conversations in developing the characters, but not support conversations, per se.

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The reasons I don't think that the support system as we know it will be in largely have to do with 1) the amount of writing that they typically take, which I wouldn't expect a mobile game to contain (not that it's completely out of the question), and 2) the stat bonuses that typically come along with supports, which seem overly complex for this sort of game, as well as somewhat counterintuitive to the microtransaction business model.

Couple the random acquisition factor for new units with the necessarily small pool of supports that units WOULD have, and I think it's safe to say that it's pretty unlikely that units will be able to support with one another. The most plausible use of anything resembling a support system would be the characters with the player, simple 1on1 dialogue options, or otherwise just the main/new characters created for this game supporting with one another and/or the player. I wouldn't rule out other possibilities entirely, but I have trouble seeing them happening.

For other FE games, the supports are a big part of the appeal, but for something like this I think just the presence of so many beloved and/or classic characters is meant to be the main draw.

Edited by BANRYU
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8 hours ago, DemolisherBPB said:

That is Lon'qus Epilogue title. Every character had there epilogue title above there names, with the exception of Narciana who just had Wyver General. Seen as he isn't a PC so doesn't have one I'm not surprised he just has his in game title.

After some looking they are altered versions of the titles for some characters. Lyns was Noblewoman of Sacae. I feel this will be for the more casual players who don't know the lore shall we say so don't know what a Sacae is. Meanwhile I feel Fates and Awakening characters will retain most of there titles intact given the new nature of them, seen as Azura is keeping Lady of the Lake.

cool detail. i hadn't noticed that, or the damaged lon'qu artwork.

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