Once in a while, Intelligent Systems likes to coincide a new character banner with an update to the game.
This week was one of those weeks where that happened. So I figured instead of stretching this out over a two-day period, I would just put it all together and make one more substantial Friday post.
Normally I like to get this thing out early in the morning by writing something up late the night before… But I’ll blame my friends for keeping me up playing Monster Hunter instead.
Plus I don’t exactly have a huge connection to the new heroes, so I don’t have too much of an interest in any of them. Didn’t help inspire me to write anything in preparation.
That said, even if I’m not super inspired by them, let’s talk a little bit about who these characters are!
Quan — Luminous Lancer
Skill Set:
- Gáe Bolg (Might = 16, Range = 1)
- In combat against an infantry, armored or cavalry foe, grants Attack and Defense +5 during combat.
- Rally Speed/Defense (Range = 1)
- Grants Speed and Defense +6 to target ally for one turn.
- Draconic Aura (Cooldown = 3)
- Boosts Attack by 30 percent.
- Steady Posture (A Skill)
- If foe initiates combat, grants Speed/Defense +4 during combat.
- Drive Attack (C Skill)
- Grants Attack +3 to allies within two spaces during combat.
Silvia — Traveling Dancer
Skill Set:
- Barrier Blade (Might = 14, Range = 1)
- If foe initiates combat, grants Resistance +7 during combat.
- Dance (Range = 1)
- Grants another action to target ally (unless they have Sing or Dance).
- Mirror Stance (A Skill)
- If foe initiates combat, grants Attack and Resistance +4 during combat.
- Deluge Dance (B Skill)
- If Sing or Dance is used, grants Speed +3 and Resistance +4 to target.
Lewyn — Guiding Breeze
Skill Set:
- Forseti (Might = 14, Range =2)
- Grants Speed +3. If unit’s Health ≥ 50 percent and unit initiates combat, unit can make a follow-up attack before foe can counterattack.
- Glitter (Cooldown = 2)
- Boosts damage dealt by 50 percent.
- Swift Sparrow (A Skill)
- If unit initiates combat, grants Attack and Speed +4 during combat.
- Special Spiral (B Skill)
- If Special Attack triggers before or during combat, grants Special Attack cooldown count -2 after combat.
- Odd Attack Wave (C Skill)
- At start of odd-numbered turns, grants Attack +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted to unit even if no allies are adjacent).
Normally I would do an analysis of each new character after their skill breakdown, but I’m going to skip out on that for a number of reasons. Mostly the fact that I’m already pretty late on this and have a lot more to write, but also because I don’t have too much of a personal connection to Genealogy of the Holy War.
So like. None of these characters mean much to me at a deeper level.
However, there are some benefits to each that I can acknowledge.
- Thanks to his signature weapon and Steady Posture skill, Quan looks like he’s a pretty great offensive unit against physical attackers. He does a bunch of damage while gaining a big defense buff. Not quite as cool a cavalry unit as Sigurd, but still useful.
- There’s never anything wrong with more dancers, and Silvia certainly is one of those. She may be a sword-weilding infantry unit like many others are, but her Barrier Blade at least seems like a great weapon to pass around to other units.
- Lewyn is probably the most interesting and unique unit on the banner thanks to his brand new B skill Special Spiral. Utilizing it essentially means that he’ll be able to activate Glimmer every turn after activating it once, and that’s super cool. Arguably my favorite on the banner, a higher priority if I didn’t have +10 Nino in my army.
Unfortunately, these positives don’t outweigh my overall ambivalence toward this banner. After spending a whole heck of a lot of orbs on the Legendary Marth banner (which didn’t get me Marth) and on the 2018 Brave Heroes banner (which has gotten me all of the Brave Heroes except for Hector), I was in pretty dire straits regarding my stash.
Since then, thanks in part to the September quests and these new story quests, I’m back up around 100 orbs. But I’m planning on going back into storage mode, collecting as many as I can for a rainy day.
I’d hate for them to drop Neimi when I had zero orbs on hand, after all.
So I utilized my free summon:
Didn’t get a whole hell of a lot, and moved on.
Sorry guys, but you’re just not on my radar at the moment. Hopefully I can summon you all in the regular unit pool one day.
Luckily, I’m much more interested in the story that came with this new banner.
Chapter 12 begins with the aftermath of the “bombshell” that there might be a traitor hiding amongst the Order of Heroes.
I call it a bombshell only in quotes because I already had a huge rant about what a dumb, lazy storytelling tool it is to try a whodunit-type mystery when there is a canonical character in the main story who shapeshifts to cause mischief.
Like. We all know it’s going to be the shapeshifter. Don’t even try to hide it.
Spoiler alert, they don’t really try to hide it. I actually respect the way they do handle the big reveal, but I’ll get to that. Let’s start at the beginning.
Yes Anna, yes I do.
Of course Fjorm, oblivious to the fact that shapeshifting is a concern when it comes to her family members who both miraculously escaped from being held captive, defends her older brother and younger sister.
If I sound more than a little unimpressed with how things progress here, don’t worry about it. I’m just cynical and jaded.
There are actually some cool things in this chapter.
For example, this confirmation by Prince Hríd that Surtr’s ritual needs two sacrifices.
After you receive that warning, the missions are uneventful for a bit. Up until Helbindi shows up to stand in your way once again… Only to receive some news.
This is actually pretty sad. The only reason he continued to fight was because Surtr’s daughters told him they would convince the king to spare Helbindi’s family.
He can’t say anything after hearing the news. It’s the last time we hear from him for the rest of this chapter. Especially for this game, that’s pretty heavy.
Unfortunately that heartfelt moment is soon followed by a completely stupid, pointless thing.
At the beginning of the fifth battle, Fjorm is woken up by her sister — who everyone essentially predicted was just Loki in disguise since she joined your forces.
She reveals the fact that she was the traitor all along and poisons Fjorm, supposedly showing the source of her harsh cough.
It’s interesting, to say the least…
Except then Fjorm wakes up. Because it was all just a dream.
People like that trope, right?
Frankly it doesn’t upset me that they used the false dream trope so much as it upsets me that the very next cutscene makes the entire dream sequence pointless.
Because after Fjorm wakes up from her nightmare, Alfonse calls her into a war council to tell her about his suspicions that Ylgr is the spy.
Now don’t get me wrong, I respect the fact that Intelligent Systems acknowledged the plot points that led to players theorizing about who the traitor. That’s a much better way to handle this than trying to convince us all the characters had no idea something like this could be possible.
I just still don’t understand why we needed the fake moment with a dream sequence if there was a much better reveal in real life literally seconds later.
But I digress.
Alfonse also calls out the Ice Prince as being equally guilty of having been shape shifted, and Loki reveals that all his suspicions were correct.
Then the final fight begins.
It isn’t that hard, honestly.
So afterwards Loki decides to hand you a map for a secret entrance to Surtr’s ritual chamber that way you can go infiltrate it and battle him.
Because you know. She has ulterior motives.
We found out that much when she was searching for the legendary dragons of Nohr and Hoshido during the special Festival banner.
So yeah, that’s the story. I pretty much wore my heart on my sleeve while writing this portion, meaning I don’t think I have to say too much more. It had some good stuff, but for the most part the bad stuff was pretty frustrating.
But hey, now that the dumb traitor B story is out-of-the-way, we can finally move on and save a bunch of little girls from being thrown into a fire. Which is arguably the more fun thing happening here.
Until we get that next chapter, however, how about we take a look at the other major FEH update that came out this week.
Oh Version 2.9.0. Like with the new Genealogy heroes, nothing about you really excited me enough to jump on it right away. It’s a bit of a basic update compared to most of the others, so I felt justified tacking it onto the end of this post.
For instance, one of the biggest parts of the update isn’t actually a thing in the game yet.
Rally Defense is a new game mode that is essentially the same thing as Rival Domains, except focused solely on defending the territory you own for eight turns rather than trying to take over the opponent’s territory.
I’m not a huge fan of ‘survive’ missions like this, but if there are orbs involved I won’t be too upset.
Next.
Arguably the most exciting thing about any new update is older heroes gaining weapon refineries. This time around is no exception, in my opinion.
Odin
- Odin has been at the bottom of the game’s tier list pretty much since his inclusion at Version 1.0.0. He’s a really bad unit. But now his blade tome has an upgrade which grants him +6 Attack and Speed whenever he uses an assist skill like Reposition. I’m… Not sure that makes him too much better, but at least it has some good synergy with itself.
Cherche
- Cherche probably gets the biggest buff of the three. Her axe is now a Brave Axe, meaning it hits twice, and it comes equipped with Panic Smoke. I don’t know if she has great Resistance to make use of this as a whole, but being able to turn all of an opponent’s buffs into debuffs is great no matter the circumstance.
Celica
- I’m not completely sure why Celica got a buff here, as it seems like she was already a pretty decent unit in her own right. However, legendary weapons getting legendary refines is kind of the norm, and Ragnarok’s new addition is Brazen Attack/Speed, giving her huge buffs when she dips below a certain range of Health. I don’t own an OG Celica so I can’t say much about how useful it is, but it’s cool to see her get a great addition.
New refines aren’t the only skill-based change in this update. We also got something brand new known as the Combat Manuals system.
I feel like the game puts this into somewhat confusing terms, so essentially what you need to know is that excess units in your barracks can be converted into manuals.
By doing so, that unit no longer takes up space that you could use to summon another unit and their skills can be retained for inherited use on a different unit. It’s kind of just a perfect middle ground between overstuffing your box and sending home all the units with good skills without using them.
I haven’t personally gone through and converted all my units yet, but someday soon I will. As soon as I have more time to do so.
Most of these additional updates don’t mean too much for me either, so I hope you’re fine just seeing the whole laundry list.
I’ve probably kept you all hostage in this post long enough, so I’m just going to wrap things here.
With this veritable marathon of a Fire Emblem Heroes update post finally complete, let me know what you think of everything in the comments!
How do you feel about the new Genealogy heroes?
Do you think the traitor storyline is as stupid as I do?
Are you down with the additions from Version 2.9.0?
God willing this is the last update we see in a while. Because doing this long post while running around doing everything else has been pretty exhausting.
That said, I hope you at least enjoyed it if you made it this far.
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