Lately I've been checking out Nintendo's mobile games or "smart-device apps", how Nintendo likes to call them. I was curious, how they play, because it might give me a better impression of what to expect from a potential Smartphone Zelda game. Normally I wouldn't buy any Fire Emblem or Animal Crossing titles, but since they are free-to-play, there was no real harm in checking them out. I did buy Super Mario Run, though, when the game was at a discount in early October. And I ignored Miitomo so far, because it struck me more like another silly Mii app and not as an actual game. I've had enough of those on the Nintendo 3DS...
Super Mario Run is probably my favorite of the three and it has become my main source of entertainment, whenever I'm on the go. It copied the simplicity of other platform games on smart devices, where you tap the screen to jump, while the character is moving on its own. It works rather well and I would compare it to the gameplay of the minecart levels in the various Donkey Kong Country games, just much slower. But it has the challenge of collecting all the KONG letters in the form of five colored Star Coins that need to be collected in one run. Each of the 24 levels has variations for pink, purple and "black" Star Coins, where it can take a long time to master and complete everything.
In addition there are multiple characters, including Luigi, Toad, different colored Yoshis, Peach and Daisy. Unlike in the New Super Mario Bros. games they actually have different attributes, for example Toad runs faster, while Luigi jumps higher, so there's some strategy to choosing the right character for the job. There's also the Toad-Rally mode, where you compete against other players to win Toads for your Mushroom Kingdom, which you can customize with around 150 different pieces to unlock. And there's the new Remix-10 mode, where you play 10 mini levels in a row, as well as a Star World with nine additional levels, where you have to fulfill certain achievements to unlock them... So, there's lots and lots to do in this game, which probably will keep me busy until Zelda arrives on Smartphones.
There aren't any microtransaction or pay-to-win mechanics, the only typical mobile game disease seems to be a login bonus, where you can get certain rare kingdom pieces as part of campaigns. For example they distributed statues based on Super Mario Odyssey in the last two weeks. There's also a "My Nintendo" bonus for playing the Toad Rally on a daily basis, but you don't miss any ingame rewards, if you don't follow this, so it's not really important. So, you pay once, get lots of content and aren't harassed into playing.
Fire Emblem Heroes on the other hand feels much more like your typical mobile game. In fact it's Nintendo's shot at the "Gacha" genre, where I'm currently also playing One Piece: Treasure Cruise. And it's not even funny, how similar both games feel in their setup. Both games use rainbow colored orbs as an ingame currency, which you have to trade to summon characters from the respective universes. There are lots and lots of different possible characters to get and the summoning is for the most part random, though Fire Emblem Heroes seems to offer the option to chose specific characters out of a selection from time to time. The characters are represented via artworks and as cute pixel graphics during the gameplay. Both games even utilize a red-blue-green weakness triangle system, where red characters are stronger against green characters and weak against blue characters, etc.
The actual gameplay is where both games differ. In One Piece: Treasure Cruise you tap characters to attack, where the attacks are based on timing. It's not very spectacular and feels rather dull. Fire Emblem Heroes on the other hand offers a square based strategy mode, where you try to pin the right characters against each other based on the weakness triangle. For me it's more interesting and fun to play, while I think that Fire Emblem Heroes also has the much better presentation and menu system. Nintendo did a really good job here and the music is very catchy.
But... since I've never played any Fire Emblem games, I don't really care about its characters and I don't feel that invested. It's more exciting in Treasure Cruise, where I'm a fan of One Piece and many of its characters. So, I'm much more inclined to collect the daily login bonuses in the very least and check out the regular summoning events. Fire Emblem Heroes has exactly the same stuff and it feels like Nintendo was copying much from the "Gacha" genre here
(Update, January 2018: Nintendo did such a good job with Fire Emblem Heroes that I actually uninstalled One Piece: Treasure Cruise, because I got sick of its lousy mechanics. The game also become my favorite, after Super Mario Run got somewhat boring. It's really the simple strategy gameplay of Fire Emblem Heroes that has me engaged here, while I also like some of the character designs. For example Tharja reminds me a little bit of Cia.)
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp was just released this week and it's not really my type of game. It feels like playing the worst side quests of Breath of the Wild over and over again: "Bring me 20 apples!", "Bring me ten bugs!", "Catch me five fish!"... At least it seems like Animal Crossing can stay true itself here and deal with lots and lots of limited time events and items, while the gameplay seems to be almost identical to the console outlets from what I can tell. It's just the setting of camping sites that's dumped down in comparison and everything in the game wants you to invest in "Leaf Tickets" now, so the game has been poisoned by microtransactions.
What's interesting here are the controls, which showcase how Zelda could play on a Smartphone with the Phantom Hourglass control system. Touch to move, tap to interact. Easy and intuitive.
Apropos controls, what all three Nintendo games have in common is the vertical layout and it's certainly more comfortable than playing in landscape mode, because you can hold the phone and play with one hand. So, they might do the same for Zelda, where the lower screen border could even be used to switch items. However, seeing Nintendo's tendency of copying other successful mobile games, I wouldn't be surprised if Zelda will be played in landscape mode like most of the Zelda clones on the mobile market. There's even a Stranger Things game that plays a lot like Zelda (and is entirely free), which uses landscape mode, and there's also the well known Wind Waker clone, Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas:
It looks quite nice, but I do hope that Nintendo won't copy its controls, because they are quite terrible. You don't move where you touch, but instead you have to swipe in a weird way to move your character around. And you actually have to use a "button" one the screen to swing the sword, instead of simply tapping the enemies. It feels inconvenient and I do hope that Nintendo will utilize the same controls as in Phantom Hourglass for the Zelda mobile game instead of doing any weird experiments.
But overall I'm quite excited for such a title, because this is where classic topdown Zelda might live on and even win some longevity, if Super Mario Run is any indication. Zelda also doesn't feel like a match for microtransactions, so you will simply pay for content and that's it. I would expect such a game to be released next year, so we will see soon enough.
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