Tag: Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

Seeping with Content: New Genealogy Units and Version 2.9.0

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.

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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.

The Hero-King Reigns

The original Hero-King, legend of Archanea, first champion of the Falchion.

There are many ways to describe Marth. He’s a vastly popular character, essentially the face of the entire Fire Emblem series.

Hell, Marth being included in Smash Bros. Melee (alongside Roy of course) is a major reason why the Fire Emblem series started to see releases in the United States. Without Marth, none of my love for this series — which has filled countless blog posts — could have existed.

I mained this man during the Smash Bros. Brawl days. He was only replaced in Sm4sh by Lucina, who is his echo fighter with slightly faster movements.

Sacred Stones may be my favorite Fire Emblem game, with Ephraim and Eirika taking high billing as lords in my head. But Marth.

He’s truly a legend.

So thank goodness Intelligent Systems finally got their heads out of their asses and made a really good Marth alt. Let’s check him out!

Marth — Hero-King

Skill Set:

Exalted Falchion (Might = 16 / Range = 1)
- Effective against dragon foes. Grants Speed +3. Grants bonus to Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance during combat = current bonus on each of unit’s stats. Calculates each stat bonus independently.
Fire Emblem (Cooldown = 2)
- Boosts damage dealt by 30 percent of unit’s Speed. Grants Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance +4 to unit and all allies for one turn after combat (bonus granted to allies even if unit’s Health reaches 0).
Attack/Speed Bond (A Skill)
- If unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Attack and Speed +5 during combat.
Binding Shield (B Skill)
- In combat against a dragon foe, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack and foe cannot counterattack or make a follow-up attack.
Infantry Flash (C Skill)
- Infantry allies within two spaces gain: If unit’s Speed > foe’s Speed, grants Special Attack cooldown charge +1 per unit’s attack (only highest value applied, does not stack).

Based on his skills, Marth is clearly meant to be a dragon slayer that grows stronger when supported by his allies.

Danny Sexbang would be proud.

Not only is his weapon effective against the Manakete menace, but no counter or follow-up attacks are possible thanks to that Binding Shield. It essentially gives his weapon the extra utility of being a firesweep sword when fighting dragons.

His Special Attack also has some great utility, between a large and frequent attack buff based on his Speed stat (which presumably should be high based on the +3 his weapon grants and the C Skill) and a buff to himself and his allies.

Honestly the only thing I don’t totally understand about Marth here is his weapon’s main, new effect. The wording seems confusing to me, so from my best guess it seems like all of his stat buffs are doubled during combat. Could be totally wrong about that though, so don’t hold me to it until I actually see the skill in action.

Besides that bit of confusion, however, I like Marth here. It’s certainly a better alternate form than his groom outfit. Even if it’s just another sword infantry unit to clog up the pipes.

Also he is literally carrying THE Fire Emblem into battle. That’s just dope as shit.

I’m not totally sure if he’s worth summoning compared to all of the new Brave units that are still cycling through the game (of which I still only have 2/4). Though I suppose part of that intrigue also depends on what other characters are part of the event!

This special Legendary Hero banner also includes the chance to summon:

Reinhardt — Thunder’s Sword
Lene — Yearning Dancer
Fjorm — Princess of Ice
Lucina — Brave Princess
Nephenee — Fierce Halberdier
Gunnthrá — Voice of Dreams
Alfonse — Spring Prince
Hector — Just Here to Fight
Robin — Fell Vessel
Kagero — Spring Ninja
Faye — Devoted Heart

Honestly, Green and Blue are immediately negligible for me in this Legendary Hero Banner. I have all six of those heroes, and while getting another Valentines Hector would be good to pass Distant Counter off with, otherwise none of the others excite me too much.

The Red and Colorless pools, however, are pretty fire.

I already have Female Grima, but outside of her I’m missing the other five.

Obviously Marth is Marth, I already discussed why I’d like him. Reinhardt is one of the best units in the game as a sword-wielding cavalier. Lene would help me fill my catalog. Spring Kagero is just a great unit who’s hilariously out-of-place in a playboy outfit. Finally, Faye is one of my favorite Echoes units, and I haven’t had her since she dropped near the beginning of the game.

So frankly any of those five are in my wheelhouse, and I’m starting with about 100 orbs to burn (though I don’t want to burn all of it considering my investment into the Brave banner).

Luckily I don’t have to burn a lot of orbs thanks to my free summon.

Yeah Kagero. That spring breeze is what makes you difficult to be concealed.

I loved how hilarious this Kagero was when she first came out, and I’m glad to have her finally since I only got Spring Alfonse when that banner was around.

Plus she’s +Attack, -Health. Which may as well be the perfect stat spread.

Who can complain?

Now normally I would count my blessings and move on to bigger and better things… But I let my greed get the best of me a little.

Hoping to get one of the three units I don’t have in the red pool, I kept summoning. Now I’m down to 40 orbs at 9 percent. So I basically can’t stop summoning now even if I wanted to, meaning all the orbs I get from here on out are funneling into getting SOMETHING.

Twas hubris killed the beast.

Luckily there are a lot of orbs offered by the battle map.

There’s a few interesting things about the Legendary Hero Battle Map this time around. First, obviously, is the fact that Marth isn’t the only one in the spotlight.

Female Grima has also reappeared to challenge players.

If I’m not mistaken, her Legendary Hero Battle was the first, which means we should presumably see more coming back soon.

Though the completed difficulty levels stay cleared, Intelligent Systems appears to have added a brand new surprise for all of us:

Abyssal difficulty is a new challenge above even Infernal difficulty. Which, to me, is kind of hilarious. Because I cannot even beat Infernal half the time.

Perhaps some YouTuber out there will figure out the solution and I can copy that.

Given that I have not unlocked Abyssal difficulty for Marth (or Robin for that matter), all I have is the Infernal map to show off.

I like that Marth approaches his battle as more of a training exercise than a serious skirmish. Most of the Legendary Heroes take that perspective, and it makes a lot of sense considering their status as main characters and actual heroes of legend.

Except. You know. Grima.

Who is undoubtedly a villain.

But that’s another story I’ve already discussed.

I actually find Marth’s fight rather difficult, so I don’t have much to say as far as tips, tricks or cool details go. So I’m just going to cut myself off now before I get to rambling for forever.

So I was originally just going to end this off with the usual bs fanfare.

Then I let myself be consumed by addiction once more and tried summoning on Marth’s banner again.

The gods of gotcha were unusually kind and gave me this boy on my first summon back:

He’s no Marth, but he is my excuse to separate from the banner before I literally bleed myself dry. For that I am grateful.

Even if I now have to restock my orb pile once again.

I thought about changing this whole post to reflect summoning two five stars, but it was all set up before I got this guy so I think it’ll add to the story if I “post-writing” this part.

That said, back to the usual bs fanfare.

What do you think of the Hero-King himself, finally gracing out world of Heroes? Are there any heroes on his Legendary banner you’d like to summon?

Let me know in the comments down below!

Dancing with the Genealogical God and Goddess

This post here is part two of my big two-part Fire Emblem Heroes update from the last week. I’m doing it all post-hoc since I’ve been heavily focused on the end of the school semester, but I didn’t want to leave things on the back burner forever.

If you want to see part one, where I talked about the Version 2.5.0 update, read all about it here.

I’ve had no qualms talking about the fact that I have zero history with many Fire Emblem games in the series’ long history. In a sense that creates a dichotomy with my Heroes posts between new heroes who I adore (See: Kinshi Hinoka) and new heroes who I have no connection with (See: The Thracia 776 heroes).

This post is going to be more of the latter. I don’t have much to say about these characters outside of whatever context I’ve gotten from heroes that joined the fray in the app before them.

However, despite my lack of in-game context, I do have a lot of positive things to say about their skills and my excitement to summon them. So let’s see what we’re working with!

Ares — Black Knight
Skill Set:
- Dark Mystletainn (Might = 16 / Range = 1)
  - Accelerates Special trigger (cooldown count -1). If Special triggers before or during combat, grants Special cooldown count -2 after combat.
- Draconic Aura (Cooldown = 3)
  - Boosts Attack by 30 percent.
- Brazen Attack/Defense
  - At start of combat, if unit’s HP ≤ 80 percent, grants Atk/Def +7 during combat.
- Seal Defense/Resistance
  - Inflicts Def/Res -5 on foe through its next action after combat.
Analysis:
- Ares lives up to his name sake, the Greek god of war, quite well. His father’s Mystletainn was already a powerful weapon, but with the new upgrade it allows him to trigger Special attacks that have three-turn cooldowns (like Draconic Aura, for example) in a single blow. That’s kind of a scary amount of power for a unit with such high range as a cavalier, especially one that strikes hard when weakened against enemies he can weaken further. Definitely a powerful unit to grab.
Lene — Yearning Dancer
Skill Set:
- Safeguard (Might = 14 / Range = 1)
  - If foe initiates combat, grants Defense +7 during combat.
- Dance (Range = 1)
  - Grants another action to target ally.
- Firestorm Dance
  - If Sing or Dance is used, grants Attack and Speed +3.
- Sword Valor
  - If unit survives, all sword allies on team get 2x SP.
Analysis:
- In all honestly, Lene is probably the weakest of the three in this banner. Or, perhaps it’s not fair to call her “the weakest” considering dancers are in a league of their own, but she’s the least valuable to pull in my opinion. The defense boost from her weapon is great to have considering a dancer’s frailty, and the multi-faceted boost given by Firestorm Dance is nice… Though arguably Performing Arts Azura had a better boost inherent to her weapon.
Ishtar — Thunder Goddess
Skill Set:
- Mjölnir (Might = 14 / Range = 2)
  - Accelerates Special trigger (cooldown count -1). If unit initiates combat, grants Speed +6 during combat.
- Moonbow (Cooldown = 2)
  - Treats foe’s Defense and Resistance as if reduced by 30 percent during combat.
- Swift Sparrow
  - If unit initiates combat, grants Attack and Speed +4 during combat.
- Vantage
  - If unit’s Health ≤ 75 percent and foe initiates combat, unit can counterattack before foe’s first attack.
- Odd Attack Wave
  - 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).
Analysis:
- Ishtar is, unapologetically, my current video game girl crush. That’s right I said it. But no, it is not just because she has a fairly provocative set of poses drawn up. As the inspiration for Reinhardt and carrier of a tome named after Thor’s hammer, it’s clear the developers wanted to have her live up to those namesakes as much as they did with Ares. She hits hard and gives herself massive boosts to both attack and speed quite often, which makes her a force to really be reckoned with. Plus, she can hit an opponent before they can kill her if she has a little health gone, which may just be a nice saving grace here or there. Long story short: She’s the one that I want (hoo, hoo, hoo).

Alright so I’m trying a new layout for the character analysis here. Let me know what you think, because it’s a bit more labor intensive but I feel like it lays out on a page way nicer.

My more extensive standalone ‘analysis’ section for each character also lays out what I would usually fill this break with, so I can jump straight into my current summoning experiences.

They’re uhh… Not great so far.

In my first set of summons, I did pull a five-star red hero. Unfortunately…

It was Soleil.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love Soleil. One of my favorite characters from Fire Emblem Fates. In fact, when she first arrived in the game, I blew all of my orbs just to summon her!

But then she got downgraded to summonable at four-star rarity. Since then, I’ve summoned her quite a few times.

Maybe I’ll make her my next merging project once I’m done with Cordelia… And Nino… And Eirika…

Yeah I’m working on a few.

That said, I can’t say I’m particularly excited to have pulled Soleil when there are two red heroes on this banner that are both worth getting — one moreso, but still.

In terms of summoning on this banner as a whole, I am a huge fan of how strong these units look so I’ll continue to spend some orbs. As far as how many, I’m not too sure. At the very least I’m going to try to keep myself above 50 orbs minimum, as the new calendar that came out recently confirms that special heroes are coming out on May 10.

Will we see more brides coming into the game? Who knows. All I know is I’ll try to save some orbs until then.

That said, the story section always nets me some orbs, and the plot is getting exciting overall. Let’s see what they’ve got in store for us this time around:

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“Hellfire” is a pretty apt name for the series of levels in which the Order of heroes finally leaves the frozen tundras of Nifl to walk into the volcanic landscapes of Surtr’s homeland, Múspell.

Even though for some reason we needed a few chapters as a transition where everyone walked to Nifl, but they just decided to whisk us to this new location through a portal.

But I digress, because I’m not here to discuss the clunky parts of the story.

When they arrive, Fjorm seems to still be feeling the aftereffects of the Rite of Frost (to a currently unknown end), but nobody has a lot of time to reflect on what’s going on.

Among the first strike party is a new significant character, Helbindi. He’s a general under Surtr who looks… Interesting, to say the least.

Yeah. Not sure I even have to say anything about that face of his.

After you defeat him at the entrance to the Kingdom of Flames, he retreats back to his fortress where you find out just a little more about his actually kindhearted nature.

Oh yes, that’s right. Helbindi isn’t the only new character unveiled in this chapter. We also have Ylgr, the youngest sibling in the Nifl royal family (alongside Fjorm, Gunnthrá and their currently unseen brother Hrid). She’s cute, she’s kind of sassy and she brings out the best in this new villain.

So all-and-all a pretty great character, for just being introduced.

Gotta love that dysfunctional sister/brother Stockholm relationship we’ve got going on.

From there, the Order makes their way through the typical mission set of fighting our new Genealogy heroes in various configurations. No real plot relevance, just minor original game references to give them characterization.

My only real thought process throughout the three filler battles actually went back to a character we don’t see: Veronica.

Yeah that’s right, the good old princess of the Embla Empire. Obviously she was the one who would have made the portal between Nifl and Múspell, as well as the one who would have gone to get the Genealogy heroes.

But at the end of the last chapter, we found out that Surtr was going to bring her back to his Kingdom to use her as a sacrifice for a ritual of sorts. If so, why would they still be giving her the chance to possibly escape their grasp by going around signing contracts with new characters?

I don’t know, perhaps that’s getting too into the weeds when thinking about what’s going behind the scenes, but I’d like to see them show what she does in the background once in a while.

That said, the lull of thought dies off quickly when the final battle starts with a cutscene featuring our favorite new Stockholm brother/sister pair.

Things actually get fairly deep as Ylgr digs up some past details about Helbindi’s real sister, and how she must be the reason why he can’t bring himself to hurt the young girl.

Like I said before, for a couple of characters who just got thrown into the game, I quite enjoy how much development and intrigue is being put into their interactions.

The second battle against Helbindi goes rather smoothly, with a little bit of playful banter between him and Fjorm leading into it.

If you consider sizing one another up ‘playful,’ that is.

Once you win the fight, the fate of Helbindi seems vague:

On the one hand, it’s typical for a Fire Emblem death prattle to sound like this. Calling out to a loved one, saying they need more time to live.

But with Helbindi being such a fresh, interesting character, is Intelligent Systems really going to kill him off right away? Or will he slip away to find his sister, for us to find later?

Who knows right now, I suppose. Time will tell and all that.

Now is not the time to mull it over, because the plot quickly moves into a different beat.

Remember that she said this, it’s actually going to be important in a second.

Introductions go around, and Fjorm begins to cough again, which offers Ylgr an opportunity to show some of her good nature. As well as hint at the fact that she may be some sort of cleric if added into the game.

When the plan to move forward comes out, Ylgr asks to come along, but does not seem to get a very positive reception.

Then everyone agrees to bring the sister along, and chapter 9 ends on a… Sort of quiet note.

However, it’s the underlying details that make this scene as interesting as it is.

See I cut a few panels out that show Ylgr being introduced to almost everyone in the main circle of the Order… Except the player character.

Yet the player character is called out specifically. That, in a sense, has become the basis of a fan theory that my friend Jonathan pointed out to me. It seems as though Ylgr might actually be the shapeshifting trickster Loki in disguise.

After all, she’s shown off the ability to hide as almost anybody quite often before, and it would explain not only the convenience of a little girl escaping the clutches of an evil empire but also the convenience of her knowing that name without being told it.

Yeah it is, Feh.

I quite like this theory, and I can easily imagine it actually being where this plot is going, so I wanted to bring it up here.

While I’ll be disappointed if things go in such a predictable direction, I am impressed that the fanbase is so cognizant of such minor details that they’re able to extrapolate on them so quickly.

But I suppose we won’t find out whether or not this is the case until the next few chapters hit. With a special set of characters coming soon, however, there’s no guarantee that’ll happen for some time now.

So stay patient, everyone. You know I’ll be here to talk about plot as it’s developing.

That’s all I’ve got today I’m afraid. With this post I have officially caught up with everything going on in the game.

Until May 20 when the special heroes drop. Because you know, no rest for the wicked and all that jazz.

In the meantime, let me know what you thought about this two-parter in the comments. I know it’s really no different from just doing two posts a few days apart when they were first happening, but I like to think there’s something special about putting them under the same umbrella.

While you’re at it, let me know what you think of the new set-up I’m trying for establishing details on the new heroes added in a summoning banner. I think I’ll keep it up for the next few banners just to see if it sticks at least, but I’d love some feedback all the same!

Trials of the Holy War

The time for Tempest Trials has come once again in Fire Emblem Heroes. Unlike the last go around, I wouldn’t say I’m needlessly exhausted and upset with the event. Perhaps the set of mini trials in between the main installments really were what did it for me. Who knows.

Whatever the reason was, I’m not expecting to take an angry spin on this one like last time. However… Part of that might be because I don’t have all that much to say about these Trials in the first place.

All things considered, beyond the different underlying motivations of the characters and the unlockable elements involved, the actual playtime involved has simply become somewhat monotonous and same-y. Not all that much to say about it overall.

So let’s just address some of the basics of what makes these Trials different than what we had in the past.

The theme for this set of Tempest Trials is Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. Like I said when we got new heroes from this older title, I have very little experience with anyone involved outside of whatever research I’ve done.

Granted that research has improved my attachment to a few of them and informed me enough to understand where the characters are coming from in the “plot” of these Trials, but still. I’m generally left without any comments on maps or music or anything of that nature like I would usually have.

I do think its worth mentioning that I’ve gotten my hands on both the characters I was really looking for out of the three added the other day:

They both came rather easy so I didn’t have to waste too many orbs, which was sweet.

If anything that means I can focus on the summoning banner for the Tempest Trials if I want… Though I’m sort of in the same boat as the general public in thinking that the whole approach taken here is a bit duplicitous.

Rather than having this new character, Ayra, show up in a Grand Hero Battle or something along those lines, the developers at Intelligent System have put her in a totally separate summoning banner than the other Genealogy heroes. One that’s running at the same time as the other banner.

Plus, she’s a red unit in the same focus as another red unit, Eldigan. So the chances of getting her are cut, and if you want to even attempt to get there you have to deal with pulling time away from the other banner with Sigurd, Deirdre and Tailtiu.

It is a pretty lousy, orb-draining thing to do, arguably a strong attempt to force players to spend money on the game… But to be fair, I’m not sure Ayra is that worth getting in the first place outside of how cute she is. So I might not try too hard to go after her.

Possibly duplicitous practices aside, let’s talk about the Trials themselves.

The “plot” this time around boils down to Lucina encouraging Seliph to tackle the Tempest to protect Julia, as you can see above, while he has the chance to meet with his parents Sigurd and Deirdre so they can help him fight. Time and space shredding excuses around canonical timeline barriers abound.

The main bonus allies are the four new heroes from Genealogy featured in the two summoning banners I talked about earlier.

Luckily, Sigurd fits my most powerful cavalry-based team remarkably well, so I immediately have a great advantage walking in. I’ve already swept through entire runs with just one team alone thanks to that team, and it’s an amazing feeling for sure.

The secondary bonus allies are Eldigan and his sister, who came in some time ago, Arvis from the current Grand Hero Battle, and Arden, one of the main rewards from these Trials.

By rising in the ranks high enough, you can also earn three Sacred Seals from these trials:

Brash Assault: Unit automatically follows-up when attacking a foe that can Counter if they have less than 30 percent health.
Attack Smoke: Inflicts -3 Attack on all foes within 2 spaces of a selected attack target.
Guidance: Allows infantry and armored units to move to an ally with this seal that’s within two spaces and has full health.

It’s also worth noting that some of the rewards on certain tiers are Sacred Coins, which is something we were promised back in the update when we got the ability to upgrade our Sacred Seals. Pretty cool to see that coming to fruition.

My horse-based team makes this run of the Trials quite easy for me, like I mentioned before. I made it to the final map pretty quickly in fact, only to find that Julia is the main villain taking over… Whatever castle this is:

Honestly this fight is pretty easy too, compared to most of the others in the past. She’s certainly no insane powerhouse like Hector or the Black Knight, that’s for sure.

I will say, even if the fight isn’t all that difficult, the scenery of the map you fight on does make it pretty worth to get there.

Seriously, these backgrounds are super pretty. Just saying.

Well, that’s all I have to say about this run of the Tempest Trials. Remarkable I know, considering I haven’t even hit 900 words. I’m amazed I was able to be this… Somewhat concise with all of this.

Some of that might honestly be because I’m starting to run out of things to say about these after so long. Honestly, after going after the few things that are new, there isn’t that much else to dig into. Perhaps from here on out that means I might not write so much for Tempest Trials, if I even write anything at all. Who knows.

We’ll see as time goes on I suppose.

In my empty attempt at trying to push for audience engagement this time around, how’s this for a question. What do you think of the fact that Intelligent Systems put out a second summoning banner just about a week after the first one to force players to split their time and resources for summoning? While it’s not necessarily that new remembering the double summoning banners for Fire Emblem Echoes back when the game was first coming out, this time around things just feel a bit more scummy to me.

Is that impression just in my own head though? Or do you agree?

Let me know in the comments below, and until next time I’ll be off doing work and likely stressing over the upcoming visit of Milo Yiannopoulos at CSUF. Because yeah, that’s happening soon. Time sure has flown this semester.

Fire Emblem Heroes: Genealogy of the characters I don’t know

I think the title of this one basically says all that needs to be said.

Hey everybody, welcome to another long-winded Fire Emblem Heroes update post here on Jason’s blog. Normally I’d start off this kind of post with a whimsical affirmation that things definitely won’t be as relentlessly wordy as before… But considering how many times that particular mindset has backfired in hindsight, I’m just going to skip over all that and go straight into the meat of things.

That cool with all of you? I sure hope so, because when I’m typing this I’m literally the only person that can answer that question.

Today’s update brings us heroes from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. As a Japanese-exclusive title in any official release, I haven’t personally played the game in any capacity, since I don’t tend to play with emulators all that often. Hell, I haven’t even seen any let’s plays of this game floating around in any of my usual Youtube channels.

Because of that, I have no experience with any of the characters in the game and no personal connections whatsoever. The best I could figure just from the initial teaser video was that two of the characters seemed to be related to two heroes we already have in the mobile game, but even then they’re units I’ve never used.

So that was a load of help.

As there’s only three of them, at least it makes it easier on me to do some basic research so I can pull together these small character bios like I enjoy to do.

Tailtiu – Thunder Noble
- A noble from the House Friege, where the greatly abused powerhouse Reinhardt and his sister Olwen also hail, Tailtiu is a bubbly girl known for her protective personality and strong thunder magic. Really that’s about all the wiki expands upon for the most part, aside from a horrifically tragic part of her life where she endures torture and depression to protect her young children, only to die from said depression and torture. Yeah, that’s one of the most definitive portions of her story arc. I’m actually getting sad and emotional over this character I don’t know at all because of it, too. I suppose if nothing else that encourages me to go after her when I start summoning on this banner, despite the fact that her initial build is a little ‘meh’ just looking at the list. Blarblade is always great for accumulating extra damage with more stat buffs, but otherwise everything else is basic stat-related stuff: +2 attack and resistance, rallying +3 speed and resistance on an ally and grinding +3 speed to nearby allies during combat. If nothing else, seems like she’ll be helpful in letting her teammates attack twice more often.
Deirdre – Lady of the Forest
- Deirdre is a women from the Spirit Forest with the holy blood of the dragon Naga and a curiosity for the outside world after an isolated upbringing. She comes to marry Sigurd, with whom she conceives Seliph, and after her husband’s death she begets Julia and Julius with a man named Arvis. Her weapon, Divine Naga, stands out much like her daughter Julia’s as a green tome effective against dragons that also nullifies stat bonuses from certain skills during combat. With the popularity of teams themed around things like cavalry units, this is a pretty useful weapon to have around. She also comes with the somewhat situational Ardent Sacrifice, Quick Riposte to make automatic follow-ups and Speed Ploy to lower the speed of units in cardinal directions with lower resistance than she has.
Sigurd – Holy Knight
- Apparently the protagonist for the first generation story in Genealogy of the Holy War, Sigurd is a mounted lord that uses swords and lances. He has quite literally a billion relatives, though the most notable ones here for this description are his wife Deirdre and son Seliph, who has to clear his father’s name after he’s killed and labeled a traitor. Sigurd uses the legendary Divine Tyrfing, a sword that grants him +3 resistance and makes it so he receives half damage from every first magic attack used against him. Like the Brave Heroes Lyn and Ike, he also comes with four extra skills rather than three: His special skill is Miracle, which lets him survive a lethal attack, he has Close Defense to give him +6 defense and resistance when attacked by a close range weapon, he has Speed Smoke to inflict -7 speed on enemies within 2 spaces of each attack he deals and finally he has a new ability called Crusader’s Ward that reduces damage from the second attack onward by 80 percent if attacked from two spaces away. From what I understand, word is going around that Sigurd could be a perfect anti-meta unit by essentially nullifying most damage from magic attacks all together… And I can’t argue that this sounds pretty overpowered. I’ll look forward to seeing it in action.

One thing I’ve come to find from researching these three is that Genealogy apparently had an absurdly huge cast of characters that intertwined in a billion different ways. I’ll be honest, for this being such an older game in the series, I’m pretty impressed. It apparently featured a multi-generational split story system, which is something I believed was a more recent phenomenon.

Even if 99 percent of what I read also suggested that this entire game is just a deep dive into depressing character arcs… I’m still impressed.

Frankly, reading about Tailtiu made me really, REALLY feel for her character, and it makes me want to summon and use her in combat. On top of that, Sigurd does seem like he’ll shake things up quite aggressively and Deirdre could be pretty fun with that special Divine Naga tome. All three seem pretty worth summoning, so I’ll probably work at getting at least one of them now that I’m done torturing myself trying to summon Performance Arts Olivia.

Editor’s Note:

For context: I got to about a 4.75 percent chance of finding a 5 star in the Performance Arts summoning focus banner, and during the first round of summoning that I didn’t have a colorless orb to choose from, Inigo broke my streak of trying to find his mother Olivia.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Inigo so I’m not that mad… But it did suck that all of that effort to aim for one unit wound up getting blown away in an instant.

Editor’s Note Part 2:

So this wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but I’m going to have to put another aside here because… Well…

Turns out my decision to stop summoning on the Performance banner was actually a good idea.

Seriously this was not at all what I expected to happen, but I drew Sigurd on my second orb – with the first orb being a freebie to begin with. It’s quite possibly the quickest, luckiest unit grab I’ve ever gotten, and luckily it seems to be with the guy who will probably be the most powerful of the bunch.

I’m going to take it as a good sign and keep summoning for a while to hopefully get Tailtiu. Wish me luck!

As far as additional story goes with these new characters, most of the underlying stuff is par for the course. Three Paralogue levels, three difficulty settings and some extra missions to give players a total of 12 orbs to obtain.

When you get into the actual story itself, it seems as though Intelligent Systems is using this Paralogue to begin building up to whatever large-scale event they have coming down the line. Though… At first things certainly don’t seem that way.

The arc begins with Veronica commanding an armored knight, Arden, to come fight alongside our main man Sigurd.

Once you make it through the fight, Arden is let go and gears quickly shift over to round 2, where there’s more of a surprise visitor making an appearance.

That’s right, the evil shapeshifting trickster god Loki, who some time ago decided to masquerade as Anna for some reason, is taking more of a front line approach by helping Veronica command units to go to battle.

Though, by commanding them, I suppose I should say blackmailing them.

Yeah… There tends to be a pretty big dichotomy between some units happily helping the bad guys while others need to be forced in some way. Like promising to send them home only if they fight and win. Which is pretty scummy, let’s be honest.

But anyway, after battling against Ayra and Tailtiu, you move on to the final encounter. Before getting there however, things once again shift pretty dramatically into a much more suddenly emotional bit of character development.

This game was already playing the “villains aren’t actually so bad because things are going on beyond their control” card by developing Prince Bruno/Zacharias’ backstory as much as it has been the last few story missions, but it’s easy to tell that we’re really banking on the sympathy to hit hard this time around given how Veronica sounds more like a confused child than ever before.

Oh, and there’s the whole evil trickster god influence underlying everything as well, but we’ll actually get into that in a minute.

First things first, Veronica is somewhat consoled by Deirdre, who seems to share the same pain as one with divine blood.

While things are perhaps being laid on a little thick for my tastes, I can always appreciate taking that humanizing approach to a character who seemed so utterly ruthless at one point or another. Though I will credit my boy Seth from Sacred Stones for getting that train rolling, because I’m sure he deserves is.

Once the final fight is out of the way, you’re once again treated to what is essentially a ‘congratulations’ screen as Sigurd and Deirdre thank you for freeing them from the contract and letting them go off to be happy together forever. So on and so forth. Nothing we’ve never seen before, honestly.

But then there’s something like a post-credits scene hinting at more to come:

Whatever the developers have been building up to for some time now, it seems we’re finally getting to a point where all of these plot threads are going to reveal what they’ve been leading up to. Loki appears to quite literally be opening the way to Asgard, looking to bring an army to the world of Askr to destroy it. Or just to destroy everything. Who knows, really.

The whole thing is frankly a hell of a lot more like an actual Marvel end credit scene than I think anyone was intending, but you won’t see me complaining.

I’m honestly really looking forward to seeing whatever comes out of this, and it makes me glad that I didn’t succumb to that slump I was feeling a few weeks back that almost had me drop the game for a while.

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Once again, my lack of experience with the original game doesn’t give me much to talk about as far as remembering what locales these little maps are mimicking or even having some sort of a nostalgia trip over the music. On top of that, I’d argue these maps were some of the easiest to blow through and earn all the available orbs in my recent memory.

But I did want to bring up the maps as a separate idea because I thought it was interesting that, once again, a few of the maps introduce us to more characters we’re going to see become relevant in the near future:

As these two are not a part of the summoning focus, that begs the question of whether we’re going to see them show up in some sort of a Grand Hero Battle, or whether we should be expecting a new Tempest Trials sometime soon with a Genealogy theme.

I suppose only time will tell… But if I were a betting man, I’d vote for the latter.

Well, that should do it for now I think, seems as though I’ve bled this particular topic thread dry. And this time I came in at… Approximately 2,000 words.

Perhaps jinxing myself at the beginning of the post wasn’t the problem. Perhaps I’m just pathetic and compulsively write too much about everything. Hell, I wrote a 900 word story about the Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga remake for my school paper just today, and that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the extended version I’m planning on posting around here soon.

But I digress, since obviously going off on small rambling fits like this is exactly how I get to be this long-winded in the first place. Hopefully you all enjoyed my thoughts and observations no matter how long they were!

Do you have a favorite hero in this summoning focus? Have you had the opportunity to play Genealogy of the Holy War? Is it worth putting in some effort to find and either play or watch? Let me know in the comments below!

The Fire Emblem Heroes mid-April trilogy: Starter Support, Version 1.6 and the upcoming Tempest Trials (take three)

As promised, here we go again with the Fire Emblems. Because of all the work I’ve got slated this week between DT orientation and my Gladeo internship, I decided to make this a larger overarching post regarding lots of stuff that’s going on in the game right now. It’ll be easier for me that way, rather than splitting things up into three smaller posts, and I’m sure it’ll probably be easier for anyone who actually pays attention to these notifications on social media.

Speaking of, shoutouts to Kaleb for reminding me to treat my Fire Emblems to a nice dinner, and to Gerry who’s probably going to try summoning as soon as he sees this.

Now without further adieu, let’s get going shall we?

The Starter Support event

The Starter Support event isn’t a new happenstance in the world of Fire Emblem Heroes. What it entails boils down to a new summoning banner called the Hero Fest, which has an increased chance to summon strong and highly desired heroes, as well as an influx of extra orbs to help summon said powerful heroes.

Though I didn’t pay it much mind before, this time around I have tried my hand at the Hero Fest.

We’re only a few hours in and the banner has already hurt me.

As I mentioned in my previous Fire Emblem Heroes post, I did not partake in the previous Hero Fest. However, the content of this banner was extremely enticing from the moment I opened up the game:

Ike – Young Mercenary
- Hails from the Radiant series, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
- A powerful sword-weilding red unit that holds the sword Ragnell, giving him a built in long-distance counter, and abilities to make use of his high attack stat as a means of buffing his power further.
Julia – Naga’s Blood
- Hails from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
- A green tome unit who wields the Book of Naga, helping her serve as an effective dragon killer alongside the powerful special attack Dragon Fang.
Ninian – Oracle of Destiny
- Hails from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
- A blue dragon unit who also has the ability to dance for allies, giving them a second movement or attack option during one turn. Also comes packed with Fortify Dragons, allowing her to increase the stats of adjacent dragon characters.
Genny – Endearing Ally
- Hails from Fire Emblem: Gaiden and it’s remake Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
- A colorless cleric unit who can use the Gravity attack to slow other units to one movement space per turn and who comes with the rare Wrathful Staff, giving her staff attack similar damage calculations to regular weapons.

Seriously, all of these heroes are great! Even if Genny is more of an intrinsic fan-favorite level of great as far as the unofficial hero ranking lists are concerned.

It’s hard to pass up Ike, an intense and widely popular swordsman; Ninian, a blue dragon that has an ever-coveted singing ability; and Genny, hands down my favorite character from Echoes. I can pass on Julia, however. Nino and Summer Elise already fill the niche she would try to take up more than well enough.

The Hero Fest banner increases prospects of summoners pulling these focus heroes by increasing the initial summon rate from 3% to 5%. That may not seem like a lot, but in a game where summons are totally based on the random number generator, that 2% makes a pretty big difference in the end.

In fact, those three desirable heroes with a boosted drop rate is such a great deal that I decided to start blowing my orb surplus already. I know I keep bringing up my surplus like it’s a child I’m frivolously wasting away or something, but as I’ve said before it really is more of an issue to me mentally. The safety associated with having lots of orbs is one of my personal idiosyncrasies when it comes to FE:H.

Unfortunately the used fruits of my labor have not blossomed into any flowers of brilliance based on the first big binge I undertook.

For context, I did my first two summons with all five orbs just to boost the rates of getting the focus Heroes overall, then stopped summoning green heroes as, like I said, Julia is not in my sights this time around.

While having a second Eirika is cool, as is getting my hands on new characters with Mae and Athena… Overall most of what I got was either garbage or skill inheritance fodder.

Feels bad, man.

On the bright side, the other part of the Starter Support event is a log-in bonus of two orbs a day for ten days. Not necessarily consecutive days I might add, but it’s going to be consecutive for me. Add those free orbs to the six-month anniversary free orbs AND the orbs that we’re going to be getting from the next Tempest Trials (to be discussed later), and thinking it over does admittedly make me feel less bad about the desire to funnel orbs into the Hero Fest banner.

Whether you take the positive or the negative approach to looking at summoning, here’s hoping things wind up going well down the line. For me and for everybody else putting their money on the line for the next week!

The Version 1.6 Update

Editor’s Note: A couple of the things technically associated with this update were items that I discussed in my last post about the six-month anniversary of the game – namely the changes to the summoning system. A lot of the reasons for updating the game tied back to the fact that it hit that milestone, after all.

Thus, I’d recommend going back and taking a look at that post for some of the summaries of things that have changed. I’m going to be talking about some new ones of course, but that’s a good place to start.

In regards to what has been changed in Version 1.6, the biggest thing first and foremost, besides the summoning alterations, is probably the addition of the Arena Assault game mode.

Arena Assault sits alongside Squad Assault as a challenge requiring players to have plenty of powerful units to show their worth. Although Squad Assault focuses on playing through a series of story mode maps and Arena Assault focuses on playing against teams put together by other players, both follow similar ground rules.

In the Assault games, the aim is to beat a number of challenging fights in a row. For the two Squad Assault maps (as a second was added with the 1.6 update), this entails five story missions. For the Arena Assault game, this entails seven battles against player-built teams.

The catch is that once you beat a round with your team, the units on that team are unusable for the rest of the challenge. Thus players need a large collection of powerful units to truly succeed, as just having one ultra powerful group of units won’t help when they get cycled out of usability.

Beyond featuring different battles, Arena Assault offers quite a few other differences compared to its predecessor. Namely: Special items.

These items are awarded to you for completing runs of the Arena Assault and have a variety of cool effects. One restores all of your unit’s health whenever you need it. One gives each of your units an extra space to move. One allows them to take a second turn in a round. One buffs all of their offensive and defensive stats for a battle. So on and so forth.

According to the chart we were given, when you win three matches against teams with lv. 35+ opponents, you earn one item. Five matches earns you two items. Seven matches earns you three items. Simple as that.

You can only take three of these items with you per-run of the Arena Assault, so collecting and using them sparingly is going to be the name of the game. However, I can see them being very useful in the right circumstances, especially since you get more rewards the further into the challenge you manage to get.

Just like in the regular Arena, the higher your winning streak is, the higher your overall rank will be. Both will allow you to receive goods at the end of a season, each of which which lasts a week at a time.

Your rank at the end of each season earns you both Hero Feathers and a new item called Sacred Coins. While the use of these Sacred Coins has yet to be unveiled, I’m willing to bet there’s going to be a store that will open after the first season ends that will allow players to buy special items for future runs.

On top of that, there are going to be daily missions available for participating in Arena Assault runs:

Requiring players to get through a certain amount of battles consecutively may seem unfair to some extent… But considering the Arena Assault games cost literally nothing to participate in (unless you decide to use your special items), it’s definitely a nice way to provide some extra goods over a long period of time.

That just about sums up everything in regards to Arena Assault, so let’s move into the second big addition of the Version 1.6 update: The Catalog of Heroes.

Here’s an addition to the game meant to scratch that “Completionist” itch hiding out in probably just about every gamer out there.

The Catalog of Heroes serves as a database housing the information of every hero in the game based on the amount of heroes you personally have seen or summoned.

Heroes you haven’t had any interaction with whatsoever (not including battling them) are completely unavailable for you to look at. Heroes who you’ve seen through means like story cutscenes are available as silhouettes with names, but not much else.

For heroes you have personally summoned, however, you get a bit more.

The screen you can access with heroes you’ve summoned give you a couple of things to do. Not only do you get the names and miniature biographies of the character in question, you also get to see their portraits and battle sprites at all times, plus you can hear whatever noises and soundbites those include. The new and cool feature of the Catalog is that it allows you to reread the character’s summoning text and the text you unlock when you bring your five star unit up to lv. 40.

The Catalog of Heroes boils down to being a slightly interactive checklist, letting you keep track of which heroes you have and have not gotten access to during your time playing the game.

On the one hand it’s an arguably negligible addition if you don’t care much about collecting. Rereading the text from one-time only events is cool, but otherwise most of the other things the feature offers were already available if you still have copies of units in your barracks.

On the other hand, if you are a collector, having a comprehensive list of characters in one place is actually super dope. There are little visuals cues included that fans of the Fire Emblem series will appreciate, namely the fact that characters are displayed in order of appearance. Both for games and for characters specifically.

For example, Marth and his merry band in the original game appear before Alm and Celica’s armies in the second Fire Emblem game. Yet there’s also organization within the games, as you can see with Fire Emblem Awakening, in which the order goes from Chrom to Robin to Lissa to Frederick to Sully… So on and so forth.

While I’d say the feature is neat and visually appealing, I’m personally not super concerned with collecting EVERY single character considering the sheer amount of characters and the degree of randomness required to summon them. I appreciate the addition and I’ll probably use it frequently enough, but I wouldn’t call it a game changing addition.

For me personally, at least.

Finally, just like last time a major update rolled around, I’ll handle the smaller-scale updates in more of a lightning round format.

The boosted hero merit cap is pretty dope, since it means each hero has the potential to provide an extra 1,000 hero feathers. Never a bad resource.
Having a card to represent the Log-In Bonuses are cool and all, but it’s purely aesthetic. Nothing too weighty here.
Toggling units in the Training Tower is something I took note of early and took advantage of very quickly. Seriously, especially when you’re doing things like the monthly ‘Beat level 10 with only x kinds of units’ missions, this is an immensely helpful way to get the best bang for your buck while training.
- I also figured I would add that there’s a new way to look at your list of teams while building them on the Allies screen, but since I didn’t see it anywhere on the update logs I felt like it seemed to fit alongside this change.
I haven’t noticed a strength adjustment in the Training Tower as of yet, but I guess that’s probably useful.
Again, a change in experience and skill points in either the Arena, the Training Tower or both isn’t something I’ve noticed, but I’m sure it’s helpful.
More aesthetics, this time on the settings screen. Ohh. Ahh.
The idea of skipping teams with no members when selecting what team you want to go to battle with is a relatively small change, but it’s a nice quality of life improvement all things considered.
I don’t have the Summer Gaius, but I guess maybe he was just too sexy for the game’s good. Who knows.

Now, even with all of that out of the way, I technically haven’t actually hit every single update as of yet. But that’s only because the final piece of this puzzle takes the form of my next overarching topic of conversation:

The Tempest Trials: Reunited at Last

So obviously this event isn’t active as of the time that I’m writing this. It starts tomorrow, but I’m going to be off working most of the afternoon so I probably won’t have a lot of time to write about it then.

I could stay up really early into the morning to talk about it, of course… But considering that’s what I’m doing right now, I don’t feel like it’ll be the best plan of action for me to do two nights in a row.

Luckily, we preemptively know just about everything that’s going to be different about this cycle of the Trials, so I’ll be able to discuss my thoughts without having to experience it. I’ve already slogged through two previous entries in the series for some background, after all.

In case you want to catch up on my adventures through the trials, you can here for the first and here for the second.

The second version of the Trials made the overall experience much easier by fixing things so that enemy teams would be easier to take down over time, even after your teams start to get worn down.

This version promises to add more value to the Bonus allies while still making it simpler to hit higher goal markers, something I know I’ll be shooting for.

Bonus allies have been a staple of the Trials since the very first event. Essentially, eight units provide an extra score multiplier to your overall run when used on at least one of your teams. Four of those units are considered more valuable and give bigger bonuses than the other four, and those heroes are the focus of a summoning banner that runs throughout the duration of the Trials.

This time around, my diligence during the last Echoes summoning banners has served me well.

Because I already own a Delthea and a Sonya, I’ll be able to make use of the bonuses they provide without having to blow any orbs on this banner. Considering the Hero Fest is more of an area of interest for me right now, that’s certainly nothing to complain about.

Starting with the Reunited at Last event, Bonus allies are now being given more value. When you use them on a team, not only do they get double experience and skill points, they are also going to get extra stat buffs. +4 to attack, defense, resistance and speed as well as a whopping +10 to health.

Not gunna lie, that’s crazy. 10 extra health alone is nothing to sneeze at, and when you add on the rest of the stat buffs there is plenty of incentive for me to use both Delthea and Sonya to breeze through everyone and everything.

Adding that incentive to using the Bonus heroes is great, especially since the extra score multiplier will make it that much easier to score all the prizes. We already know that Clive, who appeared in the most recent Echoes-themed level set, is going to be the unit prize.

I’m afraid I won’t be able to predict what the Sacred Seal rewards are going to be, however… That’s one of the unfortunate detriments to doing this preemptively.

Using the Bonus heroes more won’t be the only way Intelligent Systems has increased the chances of getting the rewards this time around. One of the other changes implemented will make the first two attempts at the Trials each day worth triple their overall score. On top of that, they’re adding lower level units to the normal difficulty runs, and although that doesn’t apply to me I do appreciate the attempt to make completing runs easier for new players.

Ties in well with the Starter Support event, after all.

The only other big change to the Trials will be the addition of a continuous auto battle function. Due to the tedious nature of slogging through tons of runs at the event in the past, this change is really valuable to make a casual experience out of grinding. That casual approach might not be the best considering you could lose more easily, but still. I can certainly see myself using it just to rack up points without needing to be too attentive.

That’s about all I’m about to talk about regarding the next Tempest Trials. Like I said before, I won’t be able to predict the Sacred Seals, the special final battle map or how everything is going to tie into the overarching storyline of the Tempest (other than the fact that Alm and Celica will be reunited, obviously) due to the fact that I’m writing this before the event takes place.

If there winds up being something significant I see that I desperately want to mention, maybe I’ll put something out here for it. Otherwise, those details might just become a small mention in a later post.

Alright so let me be honest, I’m a little burnt out right now. I’ve had a couple long days in a row on account of Daily Titan orientation and I probably stayed up a little too late writing this, so I’m going to make my conclusion here nice and simple.

You’ve already read like 3,100 words, so you deserve to be spared of my tyranny.

Out of the three facets I discussed in this post – the Starter Support event, the 1.6 update and the Tempest Trials – which do you think provides the coolest things to the game? Obviously one option technically adds more than the rest, but each do have their own individual focuses and merits as far as helping players and fans, improving the inner and outer workings of the game as a whole and providing more fun challenges in the game.

Let me know in the comments down below, and I’ll see you again probably in the next couple days as I talk a bit less about video games and a bit more about my life outside the digital domain.

More siblings hit Fire Emblem Heroes

Intelligent Systems seems to be hitting a pretty solid stride with Fire Emblem Heroes content introduction, as six new heroes have been released just about two weeks after our last batch.

As part two in what is apparently a series of siblings getting released into the game – unfortunately killing my hopes of seeing characters like Neimi show up anytime soon – quite a few new characters have been added from a variety of Fire Emblem titles. The six are:

Lachesis and her older half-brother Eldigan, siblings from the kingdom of Nordion from Genealogy of the Holy War
Olwen and her older brother Reinhardt, siblings from the Dukedom of Friege from Thracia 776
Klein, the older brother of Clarine, has been added to complete the sibling pair from Etruria’s capital city Aquleia from The Binding Blade
Sanaki, Empress and Apostle of Begnion, has been strangely added without her older sister Micaiah

Note: Some of the spellings may be different than on the online source from which I pulled the bios, as I’ve used the spellings given directly in Heroes for names like Friege

To be completely honest… I don’t really know much about any of these characters. I haven’t played any of the games they come from, so I don’t have too much of a connection to any of the sibling pairs like I did with Eirika and Ephraim.

I suppose if there’s anything I can pull, it’s that they’re almost all pairings of older brothers and younger sisters. That hits pretty close to home considering I’m the older brother to a younger sister in my family.

Oh, and through my research I discovered that Eldigan wields the original “Demon Sword” Mystletainn, which would then become the basis for Owain’s signature parody weapon in Fire Emblem Awakening. For that matter, it’s also technically also the namesake of his daughter Ophelia’s signature tome in Fire Emblem Fates. So if nothing else I’d love to summon a five star Eldigan just to see him using that legendary sword.

Along with these newly summonable characters came another Paralogue chapter titled Sibling Bonds.

Once again, this chapter comes with nine new orbs to obtain – three from each difficulty level in the game.

I wish the music was more specialized for these paralogues, since the music on all the main maps are game specific… But I guess that’s more of a personal complaint.

On top of that, new quests have also been added that primarily reward those who summon the focus heroes or complete their paralogue missions with specific additional requirements fulfilled.

Within these missions are another orb to obtain, which means players can get exactly halfway to earning the chance to summon five more heroes. For someone like me who’s just about wrung the story missions dry and needs the extra boost on top of his weekly 15 orbs, this is a much appreciated addition each time it rolls around.

However, this update added more than just the new character focus. It also added in part four of the Launch Celebration maps.

I have no idea when we’ll be getting to the point that the game isn’t considered to still be in it’s launch phase, but honestly I’m not rushing it. The two difficulty levels for each give six orbs altogether, which is a pretty lucrative amount considering most maps only give you one.

I’m not entirely sure why the four characters that were chosen to appear in this map were chosen. Perhaps there’s simply an argument to be made for the symmetry of Azura and Olivia as characters that provide an extra move through dancing and singing on top of Leo and Cecelia as mounted mages… But considering the last launch map was all infantry axe-users, it just seems like a strange direction to go in.

While that’s all that has been added into Heroes today, just the fact that anything has been added this soon after the last update really helps me hit home the point that this mobile title should last quite a while in the hands and minds of gamers.

What do you think of the new heroes added to Fire Emblem Heroes? Do you have more of a connection to the characters or the games they come from then I do? Let me know in the comments below, and let me know who you’re looking forward to being added in the (hopefully near) future!

A promising amount of staying power

Just about two weeks after the game’s initial launch, Fire Emblem Heroes has received a new set of downloadable content that, despite being small, gives me some hope that this mobile game will keep itself in the hands of fans for some time to come;

Yes that’s right, new heroes have arrived. Two heroes from games that haven’t had characters in the mobile title yet, I might add. Eirika and Ephraim have arrived from The Sacred Stones, meanwhile Seliph and Julia have arrived from Genealogy of the Holy War.

While no other characters from those two games have been added yet (unfortunately), the fact that new heroes are being added this soon after the game’s launch is a good sign compared to certain other titles I’ve seen handle this kind of system in less than impressive ways. In fact, the model of launching just a few heroes at a time in this manner might be a little frustrating for players like me who want more of their favorites to arrive in droves, but it makes sense as a strategy to consistently space out content in a game where there’s plenty of potential content just waiting to be unleashed.

It isn’t just the four new characters to summon that give me hope for Fire Emblem Heroes, either. There have also been new Paralogue story maps added to the game, much in the same fashion of extra missions appearing in main series Fire Emblem titles.

The Paralogue boast its own bit of branching story from the main story mode with three maps that each award an orb for completion. With three difficulty levels on each of these maps too, all together they give players nine more orbs for their collections. With this, anyone can be at least a solid halfway to another full summoning session.

Nine orbs alone may not seem like a lot, but considering these extra orbs were added in just two weeks after launch, there’s plenty of promise that many Prologues will be added in the near future. Between this, the two daily orbs and whatever extra orb rewards are given through quests, summoning heroes after burning through the 135 main story reward orbs should still be a rather attainable goal.

Speaking of quests, that’s another reason why this small update shows promise in extending the shelf life of Fire Emblem Heroes.

New quests were added specifically pertaining to the Family Bonds Summoning Event, and though some of the goals are a long shot to complete (such as the ones that require the special focus heroes to be used), they are just another example of how goods will continue to be dispersed to players over time.

I’ve been enjoying Fire Emblem Heroes way more than I ever expected the past few weeks. Super Mario Run, while a really fun game (for reasons I’ve discussed previously that I still stand by), feels a little constrained by its smaller maps and limited main story content. I still go back to it, but even when I first started playing I didn’t find myself returning as religiously throughout the day as I do now with Fire Emblem.

Of course, part of what makes the game so fun is having a few close friends just as invested as I am, giving us things to talk about throughout the day. Whether it be about someone’s terrible summons or the daily event that just arrived, it’s interesting to see the different ways we’re all experiencing it.

To make a long story short, as I write this sentence I’m playing out a few maps to earn some new orbs so I can build up to summoning again. The game is just that addictive and I look forward to every moment I’m playing it.

And I say that not only because Sacred Stones heroes have officially shown up.

I’m still holding out for Neimi, game.