Nintendo has done it again. They’ve released a great version of an old franchise to great acclaim… Only to region lock it. Despite what you may read online, Fire Emblem Heroes is NOT available everywhere yet. There’s only 39 countries that can play FE:Heroes legally now, and Malaysia is not one of them.

The good news is that if you are on Android, the apk or installation file is available on Apkmirror. Note that you will need to change your security settings to allow installation from unknown sources. Please note that you do this at your own risk – I usually switch this off once I’ve installed the apk.

The bad news is that we don’t know if your Nintendo account will be banned if you play this way. Nintendo has this thing against rooted phones and doing things that are legal but not necessarily beginner level (customising ROMs, changing themes etc). This could be a holdover from the DS days where homebrew led to great piracy.

My advice is if you can’t wait for the region lock to be lifted, go download and play the game. But don’t spend any money on it until we’ve heard otherwise about the ban possibilities. For all we know, this will be another miitomo (which never came to Malaysia, so boo on you, Nintendo).

That said, the game plays really well once you’ve installed it. The tutorial and details about what the different symbols mean could be better but if you’re a Fire Emblem fan most would be familiar to you already. Something to note:

Tacticians or Strategist or whichever version you want to call yourself, please note that your units have only ONE attack distance. This means your mages now have the same restrictions as archers (boo). There’s no relationship building either, so keeping them close doesn’t matter (except as protection for your range units). No, you cannot have a English menu voices (though that would be nice).