Why Fire Emblem Cipher Sucks

Fire Emblem Cipher is a trading card game, or TCG, developed by Intelligent Systems, based on their SRPG series, Fire Emblem, featuring characters from all over the series. Several artists, from Rika Suzuki, to mayo, and even Sachiko Wada, have drawn beautiful art for the cards, and like some Bushiroad-developed games, every card is a character that can be added to your deck (with some logistical restrictions).

Now, let's proceed onto why this game is terrible. It must first be established that at the start of the duel, both players have a unit (card) on the field designated as the "Lord", five cards in their hand, and five cards face-down in their Orb Zone. Unlike most units, the Lord does not go to the Retreat Zone (Graveyard, as some might know it as) when destroyed, but its player instead takes a card from the Orb Zone. While it's a nice comeback mechanism, the flaw in that mechanic is that one is never sure of what cards are in the Orb Zone, until you actually take them out of your Orb Zone, or if they are revealed through a card effect.

We now may speak of the game's means of a resource: Bonds. After the Start Phase of a player's turn, they may choose to place a card from their hand face-up into their Bond Area. You must have Bonds equal to the Cost of a unit to play it onto your field and not already control a unit with the same name (but not title) as the unit, thus gating you from making stronger plays early on. However, another limitation is that you must have a face-up card in your Bond Area with the same Insignia as the unit you wish to play. This generally serves as a way to pidgeonhole players into playing cards only of one or two different Insigniae, and rarely the former, as mixing card pools generally increases one's potential deck quality.

On the topic of Bonds, these are also used as a resource for effects. Many cards flip 1 or 2 Bonds, and some may also even flip 3 or 4, but generally, as you increase in the amount of Bonds, the better the effect (on paper, at least).

All that aside, now is the biggest flaw in this: Class Changing/Leveling Up. As mentioned before, a player may not play a unit while they control a unit of the same name. They may instead Level Up the unit with that card, or, if it has a Class Change Cost, Class Change it, which generally results in being able to not only Level Up that unit one Bond earlier, but also to net you a card draw. As one would imagine, Leveling Up the Lord is extremely important, but Orbs and a later mechanic hinders being able to do so immensely.

The next big thing is battling. Like Fire Emblem, a unit may attack from 1, 2, or both 1 and 2 "spaces" away. This is shown through the rows that both units control. A 1-Range unit on the Front Row can attack enemy units in the Front Row, but cannot attack units in the Back Row or attack from the Back Row. A 2-Range unit on the Front Row can attack enemy units in the Back Row, but can only attack enemy units in the Front Row while in the Back Row. A 1~2 Range unit gains the benefits of both, while not having the drawbacks of either Range. As in Fire Emblem, characters wielding swords, lances, axes, or "stones" tend to be 1-Range units, characters wielding a bow tend to be 2-Range units, and characters wielding magic of some sort tend to be 1~2 Range units.
When a unit attacks, both players reveal the top card of their decks in what is known as Supporting, adding the Support of the revealed card to their unit's Attack, along with activating any Support Skills on the revealed card, if any, before sending them to the Retreat Zone. The increase in Attack can range from 0 to 50, but their Support Skill is generally what makes or breaks them. The egregious case here is in how Intelligent Systems designed their cards to support. 10-Support cards generally have terrible Support Skills that make them horrendously unusable when supported outside of their particular situation, 20-Support cards generally have overly-conditional effects, or have an immensely useful means of cycling your hand, while 30-Support cards, which ironically also lose a small amount of Attack, have a much-coveted Support Skill to enable movement, something, as mentioned before, can be useful, if the Lord or an essential unit needs to move away from units or towards them.