Fire Emblem Shadows review – RTS Among Us?

Fire Emblem: Shadows isn’t anything like what I imagined it to be. When I saw that a new mobile Fire Emblem game was available, I instantly assumed it to be similar to Fire Emblem Heroes, one of Nintendo’s more successful mobile games attempts — probably because of its gacha mechanics. Actually, it’s nothing like that. Instead, Fire Emblem Shadows is a real-time strategy with light social deduction elements — y’know, like Among Us.

If that sounds weird, that’s because it is. Instead of patiently marching your small army across a map one at a time to dispatch ne’er-do-wells, you will instead only control a single character on a small combat arena, and they move entirely independently. Melee attacks are outside of your control. All you can do is aim a few offensive spells at foes and defensive magic at your allies in order to help everyone survive.

You only control one of those allies because the others are online players. Three players come together, but the twist is that one of those allies is actually an evil monster attempting to sabotage the team. That sus player will be able to direct attacks at your allies secretly in addition to spawning in extra foes. After the first round is over, you must guess which of your allies is the traitor — if that’s you, you’ll need to make another player look suspicious via your own gameplay.

For example, if you attack your ally secretly, and then openly heal them, you just might take the suspicion away from yourself. Attack both allies indiscriminately, however, and you’ll make yourself the obvious target. If you guess the imposter correctly, you’ll get an extra revive for the upcoming fight against them, and if you manage to trick your former allies as the traitor, they’ll lose that extra revive, making them easier to defeat. In round two, the imposter transforms into a monstrous beast form with lots of extra health before attacking.

There aren’t any gacha mechanics to speak of — instead, all progress is done by ranking up and participating in enough battles to unlock the story segments, though story segments are, sadly, just unvoiced dialogue scenes. As you progress through the first few early ranks you’re granted a variety of disciples – playable characters that rank up individually – along with weapons and spells to kit them out ahead of battles.

There is a battle pass with free and premium tiers, which grants you easier access to disciples, weapons, and upgrade materials (you need to spend an easily accessible in-game currency to level up), in addition to alternate outfits for your characters that need to be paid for with premium currency exclusively. All said, it’s not a particularly money-hungry mobile game by any means, but that doesn’t mean it will appeal to existing Fire Emblem fans.

It might be developed by Intelligent Systems – along with DeNA, responsible for Pokémon Masters, TCG Pocket, Mario Kart Tour, and more – but it doesn’t have the sauce that Fire Emblem fans are looking for. Being able to bond your warriors with one another, allowing them to cooperate and efficiently take out enemies, is part of the magic, in addition to the truly top-tier turn-based strategy gameplay. With so much control taken away from the player, Shadows only manages to feel like a Fire Emblem game aesthetically.

Taken as its own thing – let’s imagine for a moment that Nintendo and the Fire Emblem brand were completely unrelated to this game – it’s fine. It reminds me of other RTS-lite mobile games like Command & Conquer: Rivals, but with even less control over your unit. It’s not bad, but unless you’re an avid Fire Emblem fan looking for a second Fire Emblem game to play on your phone, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to play this over similar mobile experiences.

There’s a new cast of characters to meet, but the slow unfurling of the story makes them hard to empathize with, even if the character designs are – for the most part – pretty fantastic. You can also expect to earn familiar Fire Emblem characters as disciples, with Blazing Blade’s Lyn and Three Houses’ Dimitri currently available in the game, though all of Shadows’ disciples have animalistic features – such as pointy ears and a tail – to justify the round two beast transformations. Oh, I guess furry Fire Emblem fans are an obvious audience for this one.

Fire Emblem Shadows is a fine enough game, but once you play it you can understand why Nintendo didn’t bother marketing this much. It’s not quite Fire Emblem enough for Fire Emblem fans, and non-FE fans probably already have a roughly equivalent game to enjoy on mobile. If nothing else, it does what it intends to do relatively well, and the monetization doesn’t actively try to pick a player’s pockets. Give it a download if you’re curious, but those looking for a true Fire Emblem experience should wait for 2026’s Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave.