So remember in my Daily Titan article archiving post from yesterday when I said I haven’t posted on this blog recently and kind of jokingly passed it off as not having enough time?
Well allow me to completely destroy all credibility in that regard by immediately jumping into another post all about Fire Emblem Heroes. Everyone’s favorite, I’m sure.
What can I say, it’s hard for me to stay away when this game updates itself and gives us some new people to play around with, especially now that I’ve personally gotten more into creating powerful units to fool around with. That or it’s just hard for me to get away from this writing crutch that I’ve rested on one too many times as an excuse to write more fun things that I’m interested in.
Either or works as an explanation honestly.
But that said, let’s quit all the meta talk and move into some Fire Emblem talk.
Welcome to the World of Thracia 776 ©, the Fire Emblem game that literally nobody would have remembered existed if Reinhardt wasn’t added into Heroes with one of its first updates and became an overpowered meme machine.
Mm-mmm, That’s the kind of meme quality I’m after.
Though with that said, I think the elephant in this particular room should be addressed before I get too deep into things.
No, I will not apologize for using such a perfect pun in my post title.
Don’t bother asking.
But in all seriousness, my actual gripe comes from the fact that half of this new hero summoning banner is literally a re-tread of the only heroes from this game that we actually already have from that early update.
Like what’s the deal Intelligent Systems? I know that Reinhardt is a popular meme — as I’ve so graciously pointed out before — but are there really no more than three new heroes we can include from this generally unacknowledged title before resigning ourselves to new versions of ones that are already here?
They aren’t even special holiday variants guys. Seriously guys, come on.
But I digress. Even if they are partially re-releases, these heroes must have something to offer in their own rights, right?
… Right?
- Leif — Prince of Leonster
- Where to begin with these new heroes… I don’t have that much of a connection to any of them, so I suppose I’ll have to stick with their possible competitive viability. Lief arguably has the best chance to fit in somewhere in my opinion. His weapon has a cool effect that boosts his own defense and subsequently boosts his attack based on his defense. Add that to the Spd and Def boost and he’s got a nice core if you disregard the just ‘ok’ special attack. Plus I’ve been getting more into Drive skills lately so I dig that. However… He comes with an energy drink. For some reason. If it’s a reference I don’t get it, but what I do know is that drink is literally useless outside of Chain Challenges and Tempest Trial runs. So clearly this boy isn’t meant to be used in too many other places.
- Nanna — Nordion Princess
- Nanna is painfully forgettable. There aren’t too many cavalier healers in the game so she has a slight boost in intrigue there, but it clearly falls off a cliff from there. Her staff absorbs health, which is really only useful if you buff the staff to equal the damage of regular weapons. Restore is interesting but highly situational if the opponent doesn’t have stat negating abilities. Healing everyone with the special attack is also situational. A +2 buff to two stats isn’t anything to write home about. It’s just a mess. Granted, not pictured is a Drive Def skill, but even then it’s mostly good for passing off onto others. 0/10, would not want to summon.
- Olwen — Righteous Knight
- Here we go, into the strange clones. It’s like when Eirika showed up in the last Sacred Stones banner as a totally new unit all over again. Except this time she isn’t even radically different since our previous Olwen was also a mage cavalier. Blue last time to be fair, but in this iteration she simply gains a slightly bugged version of the Gronnblade tome. I already have a +10 merged Gronnblade Cecilia, game. I don’t need a new one. Even if she does come with Swift Sparrow, which is a decent ability to pass along. Next…
- Reinhardt — Thunder’s Sword
- Despite being another clone, this Reinhardt offers something interesting for himself at the very least. Rather than being a buffed up brave blue tome using cavalier, now he’s a buffed up brave sword using cavalier. Because that makes sense in the lore I suppose? I like his weapon a lot, since it’s along the lines of Elincia’s Amiti sword but works offensively and defensively. Plus adding onto that with Death Blow and Vantage is fantastic. Just switch out Pavise for something, get a new C skill other than the Spur x2 and he’d be pretty useful. It’s just a shame that weapon of his can’t be passed on… Especially because of it’s fantastic name. Meisterschwert. That’s on par with Mystletainn honestly.
Oh yeah by the way, there’s also a lance cavalier named Finn lingering around in the story mode who seems like the great knight early game protector-archetype character. But he’s a Tempest Trial reward character for the future, so we don’t need to worry about him yet.
All-and-all I’m not super excited about any of these guys. Leif and Reinhardt take two are probably the best looking units in the bunch, but I won’t be clawing at the seams trying to summon them desperately with the last of my orb reserves.
I’m back up to 70 at this point following my female Grima debacle, so I’d like to keep storing up for a rainy day at this point.
It doesn’t help that Mia from the Radiant games decided to show up unannounced as a red five-star unit instead of the two aforementioned characters I wanted.
Even though there’s currently a banner running that features her as a focus unit.
But that’s a gripe for another day. Because new character update also means new story missions! So let’s jump into that.
So one thing I have to give props to for the team that designs Fire Emblem Heroes is the map design. Even though we’ve mostly moved away from maps that reference the original titles directly (outside of Paralogues of course), Nifl is still an interesting winter wonderland to see develop over time.
Plus the transition into the last map where most of the snow is melted away thanks to the flames of the enemy is particularly beautiful.
Unfortunately, losing out on referential maps also coincides with losing out on a lot of the referential character-driven dialogue. As much as I enjoy the overall story arc being woven, it would be nice to see the characters being added into the fray getting a little more time to shine.
But hey I haven’t even gotten into the overarching story, so why don’t we discuss that first.
Once again this chapter begins with a dream sequence.
That’s right, Gunnthrá is back again and ready to drop some exposition all up on us.
You just know that if a fairly plot important character shows up with secret knowledge about how to win a war and the intent to meet with your party soon following a multi-chapter build-up, everything is going to work out.
But hey, dream sequences are so overrated. We’ve gotta get back to where the actual real plot left off.
Feel caught up? Good, because that’s about all they give us to jump back into things. I suppose it does the job, and gives us more time to get into who these strange Thracia people are.
Except just kidding. They all get one or two lines and that’s it. Most of the missions have no plot, hurray!
Though to be fair, in this case I’m led to believe it’s 100 percent intentionally cast aside just to show how in-tuned they are with the Reinhardt memes.
Clearly magic isn’t everything.
Also for real support these Fire Emblem meme generators, they’re awesome.
But back on track, after dealing with a couple of mindless battles the Order of Heroes finally arrives at the temple they’re supposed to meet Gunnthrá in. Except- Oh no! Plot development!
Darn right it is, owl.
The story actually gets surprisingly dark and serious at this point kind of out of nowhere.
Yeah it looks like Surtr straight up set a trap by capturing Gunnthrá and tortured her (not that her in-game art changed to reflect that) trying to find out what the Order of Heroes is planning to do in order to stop him.
Except obviously nobody tells him what we’re planning, so he does the next best thing.
She’s dead, yo.
Yeah in a dark twist, someone actually dies in this mobile Fire Emblem game. A pseudo-main character no less.
I was totally caught off guard by this development honestly, how could they have done something of this caliber without totally telegraphing their plot thread ahead of-
Oh wait they totally did.
Yeah, the whole death scene as a whole was hinted at a bit too strongly for my tastes. Kind of too obvious to really be a good twist.
Though to be fair, the fact that they killed a main character is still rather impressive. Especially considering they let us summon her… Months ago. In a Legendary Hero banner. Because she’s a Legendary Hero.
Who is now suddenly dead in the canonical story without having done anything.
But we can still use her if we summoned her…
So how much bearing does the canonical story bear on the in-game mechanics then? Because I’ve always been under the impression that they’re fairly tightly linked due to the fact that heroes in Paralogue missions always mention they can join you in your main army.
Though more than just raising a strange existential in-game question, the fact that Gunnthrá was summonable months ago also brings up the question of why Fjorm needed to have a moment of emotional turmoil?
Like I get it your sister died, but did she really? I could go S-rank your relationship right now if I wanted. And if that wouldn’t be a total waste of stat buffs.
Also, evil laugh is evil. Just saying.
Except wait, plot twist take two. As suddenly as before, turns out she’s not really dead?
Darn right again, owl friend.
Except just kidding again, she totally is dead. We just needed hers back for two seconds to Deus Ex Machina a solution for killing the ultimate invincible bad guy.
Just like she also telegraphed in her dream sequence.
So you go to follow the light because the invincible evil general who planned the ultimate evil ruse in this chapter and killed a main character… Kind of just lets you escape.
All is good in the world and now your party has a new mission to complete this ancient ritual and gain the power to defeat Surtr and get revenge. Even though your mission was already about revenge because Nifl was being destroyed as is.
So same mission, different route to get there?
The end.
…
Or is it?!
Dun dun duuuuuuunnnn!
But for real, that’s about it for the plot.
I know I made fun of it a lot in this post, but let’s be honest it is a bit too obvious and contrived as a way to move the story along this time around. It’s serviceable, but just a bit disappointing for my tastes.
Also I’m expecting a revival Jesus-style in the near future. But if they keep Gunnthrá dead, I suppose I’ll be impressed by the balls it took to kill off someone integral in this kind of silly mobile game.
Despite the fact that I already ripped that decision apart for being a little nonsensical from a gameplay perspective.
Fire Emblem Heroes also had a new big update just the other day. Version 2.4.0 baby!
I feel kind of bad about skipping over it before thanks to my class/work schedule, so I wanted to just run down exactly what was added into the game in my continued effort to keep a running log of the Heroes evolution over time.
But I’m already at 2,100 words, so I’m going to summarize it all with screenshots.
Totally not because I’m just lazy.
There are a few cool things that were added into the game this time around.
- More Grand Hero Battles being available on a regular basis is pretty dope, especially for someone like Berkut who sucks but I love as a character.
- I don’t use any of the heroes that are getting weapon upgrades in this cycle, though I have a Roy who might get some use now that he has a better Binding Blade. Plus it’s cool that OG Ephraim and Hector can use the weapons their variants own.
- I’ll probably delve more into Tempest Trial changes when the next Tempest Trial run arrives, since I haven’t done a post on the special game mode in a while.
- Aesthetic changes like a scrolling banner are neat, though somewhat negligible.
- SPECIAL ORB PROMO MORE LIKE SPECIAL GIVE US YOUR MONEY!
- Let’s see how many times these deals force me to spend money on the game for good deals…
- New game mode: Grand Conquests?
Whoa, mysterious new game mode time. I’m going to love talking about tha-
Oh. It’s just a tease at this point. So I literally don’t have a lot to say yet.
Alright, guess that will be a post for another day.
With that, we come to the end of the line once again.
Obviously there was a lot to tackle here between the new characters and the overall Version 2.4.0 update. I didn’t even get into the recent Feh Channel that I still haven’t watched… But considering what they talked about there is likely coming out with all of these updates, I’ll just let it slide.
However, speaking personally, I think there’s one major takeaway from everything that happened here today:
I’m going to abuse the hell out of this. Get ready, world.
How do you all feel about the new Thracia heroes? Or the fact that half of them are just rehashed versions of heroes we already have?
Let me know in the comments down below!
Though if you’re more interested in other Heroes topics… Well… Just wait a few days. Seems like there’s some stuff coming down the pipeline.
Work in Progress 
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