Nintendo's Fire Emblem Direct: What You Need to Know

The biggest Nintendo news to land on our lap, more so than EA’s trepidation with the Switch and a distinct lack of Netflix for the console, is that yesterday we had a Nintendo Direct live stream focused on Nintendo’s premier tactical adventure. I’m talking, of course, about Fire Emblem, where we learned about a host of new games coming out in the coming months and years.

Sorry to mislead you, any Code Name S.T.E.A.M fans out there.

Anyway, there are four, count em’, four new Fire Emblem games coming in the future, and while that’s exciting, we don’t know that much about any of them, so we’ve lumped them all together into this one article. Without further ado:

-The long-awaited second entry into Nintendo’s foray into mobile gaming was revealed, Fire Emblem Heroes. In Heroes, players act as “summoners," conjuring legendary heroes and characters from the games to fight against an evil empire. It has familiar but toned-down tactical combat, and you build your army out of ‘cards’ you can either earn or buy… although unlike Super Mario Run, this game is free to download and play, so those in-app purchases will probably be pretty heavy. At least this game doesn’t have permadeath. We can expect it sometime next year.

-We got a slightly longer look at Fire Emblem Warriors, the game we got a quick glance at during the Switch reveal. It’ll be coming out for Nintendo 3DS and the Switch come Fall, although the exact date of release wasn’t specified. And if it looks a little familiar, that’s because it’s from the same team who did Hyrule Warriors, so, I look forward to seeing how they make this feel unique rather than just a reskin. The trailer is below.



-A new “mainline” Fire Emblem game was stated to be coming for the Nintendo Switch, but that’s pretty much literally all we know, other than the fact it’ll be coming in 2018. This will be the first time we’ve had a Fire Emblem game on a console since 2007.

-Finally, another major Fire Emblem game, called Fire Emblem Echos: Shadows of Valentia, will be coming to the 3DS come May 19th… astonishingly soon, all things considered. Echoes is looking to be an odd duck, in that it’s actually a spiritual successor to the second game in the series, the Japanese-exclusive Fire Emblem Gaiden. It’s also been promised to be very different, with free-roaming, flexible character progression, and even dungeons. So… that’s going to be interesting.

A pretty good chunk of info, I’d say, but nothing that’s really worth getting excited or hyped about, not yet. We’ll have to wait until we learn more about each before I start saving my money, and I suspect we’ll hear more about Echoes first… I mean, it comes out in five months, I should HOPE so.