New Fire Emblem spin-off drops out of nowhere, mixing Among Us with evil furries, and I see why Nintendo made zero noise about it: "This is a contender for the worst game I've ever played"

Out of nowhere, Nintendo has shadow dropped a new Fire Emblem mobile spin-off game – rather appropriately called Fire Emblem Shadows – which offers a bizarre blend of strategy and Among Us-like social deduction. Oh, and did I mention every character has a fursona?

Living in the UK, this announcement was dropped overnight, and as the first thing I saw when I woke up, I honestly thought I was stuck in a weird dream. As per a Nintendo news release, "One of the three allies participating in each battle is secretly a treacherous disciple of shadow. Players choose to take on the role of either a disciple of light, aiming to find their way through the labyrinth, or a disciple of shadow."

After an initial battle, players vote on who they think this impost–, sorry, disciple of shadow is, and "the outcome of the vote affects whether the next battle is more favorable or more challenging." What this boils down to is incredibly simplistic battles, where each side moves and attacks automatically. You can occasionally choose to launch things like magic attacks and heals to have some level of input. The good guys simply aim to defeat all enemies, and the bad guys secretly attack them while they're busy, aiming to take out as many as possible.

And then comes the voting. Now, it's worth remembering that battles are for three players. One of those is you. That means that you always have a 50/50 chance of correctly selecting the 'imposter' even if you've not been paying attention. Then again, it doesn't make a massive difference either way – you still have to fight them even if you choose correctly, but you just get some extra revives to help you win if your 'deduction' was correct.

Fire Emblem Shadows – Launch Trailer - YouTube

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Oh, and here's where that whole fursona thing comes in, too. Every character in the game sports some kind of animal characteristic, from cat ears to wings, and if they're revealed to be one of the bad guys, they suddenly transform into an even furrier form. Dimitri from Fire Emblem: Three Houses changes from a catboy into an anthropomorphic lion, for example. Look, I don't know either.

And how is all this going down with Fire Emblem fans? Uh, not well. "I don't say this lightly, I think they just made the worst Fire Emblem game of all time," one player on Twitter writes, and after around 30 minutes with the game, I'm inclined to agree.

Another player takes things a step further: "I played Fire Emblem Shadows for about an hour. This is a contender for the worst game I've ever played."

"Played like 10 minutes, it's not even Fire Emblem it's just using the name for the slop mobile auto chess gamplay," writes another. "They also immediately try to sell you a season pass when the tutorial is done."

This isn't Fire Emblem's first mobile outing, either. The 2017 gacha title Fire Emblem Heroes is still going strong, and although power creep has become an increasingly prevalent issue over the years, there's still plenty of fun to be had with it to this day – I've been playing almost daily for over eight years. As for Fire Emblem Shadows, though, it doesn't look like Nintendo has another immediate hit on its hands.

At least we have another mainline game to look forward to with Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave launching next year.