To be completely honest, I think my most fond Fourth memories date back to these pool parties I used to go to at a family friend’s house. Not only was it a poolside BBQ every year, but we could all see fireworks from that yard as the night fell.
Also I have very fond recollections of playing Donkey Kong Jr. one year off of that kind of bizarre card reading attachment that existed for the GameBoy Advanced I think? That might just be a fever dream, but if nothing else it helps me associate the Fourth with DK jr.
Probably a different story for another day, though. I just wanted to punctuate my conversation about Alyson with a video game thing.
Because she loves that.
Spiteful recurring jokes aside, this 4th of July I went out past LAX to Westchester for a parade. Alyson and the RUHS band perform in this particular parade every year, and it’s my second time coming along for the ride.
Last time I went was a few years ago when I wasn’t focusing so much on the power of having a blog to spout nonsense into, though.
So I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to fill up one of my daily writing requirements.
However, I’m also spending the day with the family since it’s July 4th, so I’m going to keep it brief and just do a neat little slideshow of all the cool stuff that made its way through the parade route before RUHS performed.
Hopefully you enjoy this very non-politicized Fourth of July post. Because god knows the fervor is strong when I hear people yelling things like “take him down” at Maxine Waters, a U.S. Congresswoman, as she makes her way down the parade path.
God bless America.
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Also, can’t forget the bonus recording of Aly and the band performing:
Happy birthday, America. May your founding principles continue to hopefully shine through to number 243 and beyond!
Hope everybody in the states enjoyed their 4th of July this year! Mine was rather quiet, not counting the fireworks that began to explode around my neighborhood after a certain hour. Pretty much just spent some time with the family, had Korean BBQ for lunch, watched some movies and enjoyed the fireworks shows in both Washington D.C. and in New York.
If I had to put in my two cents, the Macy’s 4th of July Firework Show had the undoubtedly superior display of bombs bursting in air, though PBS’s A Capitol Fourth had nicer musical acts and such leading up to a subpar series of fireworks.
But I digress, I’m not a fireworks review blog after all. Not yet anyway, haven’t felt the burning desire to review them that badly.
No, I’m here to move past the stars and stripes, the explosions of color in the sky and the insane hot dog eating contests so characteristic of America’s birthday to instead talk about Japanese interactive media localized so those like me can enjoy it. As usual.
Because video games.
Of course, the video game I have to talk about today is Fire Emblem Heroes. Big shock, I know… But there’s a pretty legitimate reason for it today. Plus I don’t have too much more to say about how much of a dick Yami Bakura is or about the Awakening characters trailer I saw released today for Fire Emblem Warriors.
That’s… A lie. I’ll be honest, I have quite a bit to say about that little trailer. However, most of it boils down to me fan-girling about being able to play as Lissa swinging a giant axe around or getting to play as Lucina with and without the Marth disguise. So I figure it didn’t need a whole separate thing for itself when I can just sum it up here.
Anyways,
In the aftermath of a recent Voting Gauntlet:
Somehow I lost all three rounds. Elise beat me while supporting Sakura, Priscilla beat me while supporting Lissa and Elise beat me again when I tried getting revenge by supporting Priscilla. Don’t think that’s ever happened to me before.
And in the days leading up to our second Tempest Trials:
It’s Echoes themed, which has me pretty excited. Especially since one of my favorite characters, Tobin, is the special hero reward this time around. But I’ll go more into that when the event actually drops.
A large update for Fire Emblem Heroes, Version 1.5, dropped for the world to enjoy. The update has actually added quite a bit, and I’ll sum up all of it, but arguably the two main additions are the “Chain Challenge” and “Squad Assault” story map battle modes.
Chain Challenge
Here’s a new game mode taking the conceptual ideas from the Tempest Trials event and applying them to a wider experience.
And giving us the chance to get a crap ton of goods, which is a better incentive than almost anything to keep on chugging through this game, I’d say.
All of the game’s story maps and paralogue maps have been grouped together to give players the chance to play them in a new format. Much like the Tempest Trials, each map is fought in succession, and you’re allowed to take one to three teams worth of chances at each.
The rewards for completing these are either feathers or orbs. Both are greatly appreciated items in this game, and after a while they really start to stack up.
By the time you get to the Lunatic-level challenges for the newest maps, you can get up to 8 orbs per three maps.
While not necessarily a lot on their own, all of these maps put together provide a heck of a lot of orbs for everyone’s summoning desires. In fact, just the prospect of having these orbs for the future has encouraged me to break into my stash to try my hand at summoning an Eldigan.
Fun fact, while writing this paragraph about how I was struggling to summon Eldigan and feeling bad about wasting a good chunk of my orb surplus, I actually managed to summon him.
Amazing how the power of complaining about things seems to have an effect on games like this. Now that I have him and his legendary meme-worthy sword, I can start to save up my supply again.
Feels good.
Squad Assault
Squad assault is just mean.
Right now there’s only one Squad Assault map, and like the Chain Challenge mode it also seems to take cues from the ‘permadeath’ feature Heroes started using during the Tempest Trial last month. However, there’s more of a twist to this version.
In Squad Assault, to earn the two orbs and sacred seal rewards, players have to take on five battle maps in a row. The battle maps are based on story missions, like the first map from the “World of Mystery” series and the first map from the “World of Conquest” series from what I saw in my first attempt.
However, after each map, the four heroes you used to beat it are cycled out. So if you don’t have 20 good units to beat through each of the five battles in the series, you’re going to have a bad time.
Also you aren’t allowed to let any of your units die on any of the individual maps. If any unit dies, you automatically lose and have to start back from the beginning of the series all over again.
Just. Mean.
Granted, it isn’t a timed event, so you theoretically get as many attempts as you want… But it is still a little frustrating to even think about.
Other updates
This portion is going to be more of a lightning round, since it’s a lot of smaller improvements and edits that are relatively short to sum up. At least, theoretically they’re relatively short to sum up. Who knows how much I’ll wind up blathering on about it.
EXP adjustments
Not only will it now be easier to train cleric units due to an increase in experience points from healing, there are also going to be more experience points rewarded for defeating enemy units stronger than your own and less detractions for battling enemy units that are weaker than your units. Small changes relatively speaking, but all welcomed changes nonetheless. Training isn’t a huge burden in this game admittedly, but making it easier to get units to level 40 can’t be bad by any stretch of the imagination.
Sorting options
When searching for units to build teams, use in tributes, accomplish certain specific challenges and more, we were only able to use one method of categorization at a time prior to the 1.5 update. While this worked just fine in its own right, as categories like “movement type” or “rarity” are useful and generally all I’ve ever had to use, now it’ll be that much easier to pick out specific units in the barracks by categorizing using up to three sorting methods at a time.
Summoning screen user interface
Again, another small change, but each of these smaller user interface and aesthetic changes do contribute to making a smoother game experience. In this case, now the time remaining for each Summoning Focus will be displayed at the main screen for each of the focuses. While this information was available one click away from where it is now in the detailed information screen, having it on the main page is just a bit more convenient. They also added an extra “more information” link that brings you to the page detailing the focus that was previously only available from the update bulletin board. So that’s cool.
Purchase interruption protection
I’ve never had this problem myself, but apparently communication errors have been issues for people who tried to purchase orbs for a summoning session. Now there’s an option to complete a previous purchase so that the issue doesn’t require a complete restart of the application.
Larger Barracks
As someone who has become frugal with his orb purchases in the hopes that one day a focus I really want to see arrives, I’ve yet to have to expand my barracks past the initial 200 base units allotted. However, for people who really like hoarding units I suppose, the overall maximum unit space in the barracks have been expanded from 500 to 1,000. Small details once again, but I imagine some collector out there appreciates the extra space.
Additional Improvements and Changes
Here’s where we get into the nit-picky stuff that even the update page I’m working off of delegates to small sentences, so I don’t think I have too much to say about much of it myself. I’ll drop this here and probably leave it at that:
I will say, the added danger area setting, special conditions tracker and sacred seal information displays are all useful changes I can personally get behind, at least.
Some frankly much needed changes to the structure of the Tempest Trials events have also been implemented with this update… But I feel like that will be a better topic to broach when I write up my post about the new Tempest Trials after it drops on Friday.
So if you enjoy me talking about this game, look forward to that.
If you don’t enjoy me talking about this game… Well I’m sorry. I personally happen to enjoy writing about this game, so I really appreciate you putting up with it one way or the other.
Now then, onto my standard end card questionnaire. What do you think of the new Fire Emblem Heroes update? Do you feel it’s substantial and improves the game widely? Or would you have rather they done more, either on top of what they did or instead of what they did.
Let me know in the comments below! I’ll probably be off getting more feathers and such from these Chain Challenges.
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 