My youngest son is into Fire Emblem on the 3DS, and when the recent iOS game came out I decided to check it out for myself. I’d never played the 3DS version before, so I was walking in somewhat blind. My son filled me in on the basics, and I dove in to see what I could do.

The game is a turn based strategy game where you control various units on a battle field. Each turn you can move your units around (based on their movement capabilities) and perform attacks on opponent units. You can also perform healing actions if you’ve chosen a healer to be on your team. Once you engage in an attack, the battle animation plays and you see the results. Once of the neat features is that you can see what the results will be (based on strength and defense of the units) before you engage, allowing you to pick the best unit to battle.

Once you’re completed all of your moves the opponent also gets to go, and the battle progresses on thus. Once you’ve been victorious, you receive orbs that you can use to spend on discovering new heroes and other upgrades. One of the cool features is the hero summoning function, which grants you random heroes that you can add to your 4-person team if you so desire. Because this is random, and heroes are drawn from across the Fire Emblem history, every person’s team will be a bit different.

You can also battle random people in an arena to gain rewards, as well as participate in transient battles that only exist for a month at a time. Because this is a typical mobile game, you can purchase items to develop things faster, but the actual battling is still based on your skill and the skill of your team. It also means that the game gets frequent updates in content, which will help to keep things fresh.

I’ve been enjoying mixing a few rounds of this game into my evening game putzing, and if you like turn based strategy you might like it too.