After today’s Nintendo Direct, we got a new Fire Emblem If video introducing the new My Castle System. We also got some info about this and the Amiibo interactivity during the Direct itself.
Here’s the video and a summary of what we learned today in the Direct. I will update you all again when I get more translated info about the video below:
https://youtu.be/6oO7b-oWl2g
The Fire Emblem If portion of the Direct introduced a brand new key feature of the game, My Castle. This is the player’s base of operations, a castle town that will serve as an hub where you can talk with characters and access various facilities, in a similar way to Awakening’s world map.
The first obvious thing you may notice is that the Avatar can walk freely around on the map, much like in a traditional RPG. Besides the typical top-down view, there’s an option to survey your surroundings from a behind-the-shoulder perspective.
You should have also noticed that players can customize the content of My Castle, which can include deciding what facilities to build and where to place them on the map’s grid. To add facilities, you will need “Dragon Pulse Points”, although we still don’t known how these points will be acquired in the game.
After building a facility, you can recruit characters to run them, such as having Kazahana manage a Hoshidan Armoury.
My Castle is also host to a variety of visitors, mostly other Fire Emblem If players that you have met via StreetPass. From the looks of it, StreetPass visitors spawn inside a designated StreetPass plaza.
The options you have available when meeting visitors are almost the same as the ones in Awakening. You can check out a visitor’s profile card, the stats of their units, battle them in your castle, battle them in their castle, visit their castle or simply dismiss them.
When visiting another players castle, you can speak with the other players’ units (to receive items, etc.) or even use their facilities (such as purchasing from their armouries, for example).
This time around, StreetPass battles take place inside My Castle and the focus is on defending your castle from the invading visitors. To spice things up a little but, there are now several new options that allow you to adjust your StreetPass team.
You can now choose the position of your characters on the map, whether they’re paired up or not and even tell them to fight in small groups instead of acting alone. You can organize them in up to three groups, in that case.
Interestingly enough, enemy units can be seen attacking and destroying your buildings, but it’s not clear whether this damage is permanent or not. If it is permanent, it will be very important to craft a good defence to make sure your facilities remain intact.
Last but not least, in addition to the visitors available via StreetPass, if you’re lucky enough to own any of the four Fire Emblem Amiibos, you can make these staple characters visit your castle by scanning them into the game through one of the NFC technologies at your disposal.
After you locate an Amiibo visitor, you can battle them and, if you win, they will join your side. The footage shows the Avatar and Takumi facing off against Marth and losing in epic fashion, so hopefully these battles will prove to be challenging.
Once the footage ended, Mr. Morimoto informed the Japanese fans that the pre-load (pre-order download version) for Fire Emblem If would be available soon after the Direct was over.
Like I said, I will update again with some info about the video above once I have access to some translated info!
Meanwhile, you can check out the updated Japanese website. It even has a new soothing music playing on the background!
Once again, special thanks to Serenes Forest for all the amazing information.
(I’m really liking this Felicia girl, she seems like a funny, clumsy maid! And her voice is somewhat soothing to me, for some reason…)