Tag: Fire Emblem

Halloween Horror Heroes

Obviously my blog posting schedule has been a little out of whack the last couple of days. Between exams and essays — one of which I was up from 7:00 p.m. to about 1:30 a.m. this morning finishing — I haven’t had too much time to write.

But considering I have now officially turned in that essay, bookending my week from hell, it’s time to relax a bit.

What better way to relax than talking about some spooky new Halloween units in Fire Emblem Heroes?

At least one in particular is especially beloved in my eyes. So I’m going to be trying something different with this new hero banner post by talking about the characters in order of how much I like them. That way I don’t have to waste a lot of time prattling on about “oh I want this guy over them because they’re great.”

That said, I’ve prattled on enough as is. Time for some spooks.

Myrrh — Spooky Monster

Skill Set:

Spirit Breath (Might = 16, Range = 1)
- Grants Defense +3. If unit initiates combat and unit’s Defense ≥ foe’s Defense +5, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack. If foe’s range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of the foe’s Defense or Resistance.
Bonfire (Cooldown = 3)
- Boosts damage by 50 percent of unit’s Defense.
Defense/Resistance 2 (A Skill)
- Grants Defense and Resistance +2.
Vengeful Fighter (B Skill)
- If unit’s Health ≥ 50 percent and foe initiates combat, grants Special Attack cooldown count +1 per unit’s attack, and unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack.
Armor March (C Skill)
- At start of turn, if unit is adjacent to an armored ally, unit and adjacent armored allies can move one extra space.

Analysis:

Myrrh is my baby from Sacred Stones and I love her. That would have inherently put her at the top of this list today, but luckily she also happens to appear god damn broken.

An armored dragon completing our color trifecta alongside male Grima and Legendary Tiki (who unfortunately alluded me), Myrrh keeps the defensive breath of her original form, just presumably boosted by the fact that she’s a heavy armor unit. Vengeful Fighter and Armor March also speak for themselves in terms of giving her power as an armored unit… With Defense and Resistance +2 kind of standing out as being really terrible.

That’s the first thing I’ll replace in a heartbeat if I get a Distant Counter fodder like Hector. But otherwise it’s hard to find anything to complain about here.

Especially since she’s so gosh darn cute:

Mia — Moonlit Witch

Skill Set:

Witchy Wand (Might = 12, Range = 2)
- After combat, if unit attacked, resets Special Attack cooldown of target and foes within two spaces of target, and inflicts the following status those units through their next actions: “Inflicts Special Attack cooldown charge -1 per attack during combat (only highest value applied, does not stack).” Skills that accelerate or slow Special Attack cooldown are still effective.
Recover (Range = 1)
- Restores Health = 50 percent of Attack +10 (minimum of 15).
Heavenly Light (Cooldown = 2)
- When healing an ally with a staff, restores 10 Health to all allies.
Speed/Resistance Bond (A Skill)
- If unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Speed and Resistance +5 during combat.
Hone Fliers (C Skill)
- At the start of the turn, grants Attack and Speed +6 to adjacent flying allies for one turn.

Analysis:

Mia isn’t a character who I personally care for like I do Myrrh, but she is the first flying healer in FEH.

So… Yeah. She gets a nice distinction from that. Even if I do think Nowi pulled off the witch-and-broomstick flying unit thing better last year.

In fact, probably my biggest problem with Mia here is that her weapon is really the only thing that helps her stand out wildly from Nowi last year. Because by god does she have a long-winded, complicated weapon. Guess we should thank Flora and Brave Veronica for getting us here.

Essentially, that wand of hers completely nullifies the opposing team’s Special Attacks. If you’re about to proc a Moonbow, it’s gone when Mia hits you. As is the attacks of everyone around that Moonbow user. After that, if I’m reading it right, it becomes harder to build up that Special Attack charge post-nullification. That’s a really powerful supportive niche to fill.

Niles — Forbidden Tease

Skill Set:

Devilish Bow (Might = 12, Range = 2)
- Effective against flying foes. Inflicts Special Attack cooldown charge -1 on foe per attack during combat (only highest value applied, does not stack).
Smite (Range = 1)
- Pushes target ally two spaces away.
Swift Sparrow (A Skill)
- If unit initiates combat, grants Attack and Speed +4 during combat.
Attack/Speed Link (B Skill)
- If a Movement Assist skill is used by unit or targets unit, grants Attack and Speed +6 to unit and target ally or vice versa for one turn.
Fortify Armor (C Skill)
- At the start of the turn, grants Defense and Resistance +6 to adjacent armored allies for one turn.

Analysis:

Frankly, Niles makes sense as a unit to give a Halloween variant. More than Kagero, in my opinion — but we’ll get there.

I actually love the way Niles looks like he just haphazardly threw his outfit together with some plastic toys. It’s a great ensemble.

Beyond just his looks, Niles also stands out in that he’s an armored archer who builds up a significant amount of Attack and Speed to power up that bow, which is our second blue colored bow in the game. Interestingly enough, that bow also focuses on Special Attack cooldown. So I guess that’s our theme this year, like with panic-enducing weapons last year.

Kagero — Beverage Ninja

Skill Set:

Bottled Juice (Might = 12, Range = 2)
- Inflicts Special Attack cooldown charge -1 on foe per attack during combat (only highest value applied, does not stack). After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Defense and Resistance -7 on target and foes within two spaces of target through their next actions.
Draconic Aura (Cooldown = 3)
- Boosts damage by 30 percent of unit’s Attack.
Mirror Strike (A Skill)
- If unit initiates combat, grants Attack and Resistance +4 during combat.
Bold Fighter (B Skill)
- If unit initiates combat, grants Special Attack cooldown charge +1 per unit’s attack, and unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack.
Even Attack Wave (C Skill)
- At start of even-numbered turns, grants Attack +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted even if no allies are adjacent).

Analysis:

Honestly… I have next to nothing to say about Kagero. Everything about her feels rather… Average.

Like it was jarring when Kagero showed up in a bunny outfit during the Spring banner. But the maid outfit is a bit low-key, and especially strange with her wielding “soda bottles.”

Which, by the way, I imagine must be beer in the Japanese version, right? Probably.

Past that lukewarm internal debate, she’s just rather average all-in-all. Sorry Kagero, but for now I’m going to pass.

For a banner labeled “The Land’s Bounty,” I have not exactly seen a lot of bountiful harvests thus far.

Ironically enough a lot of Niles, though. Not the Niles I’m looking for, but clearly he’s on my radar in some capacity.

To be fair I’m not exactly spending a lot of orbs on the banner yet. After being burned so bad by Legendary Tiki, I’ve spent a fair amount of time rebuilding my storehouse. So I’m trying to be a bit more frugal with my orb use for now — at least until the next Tempest Trials comes around.

But that said. Orbs. Paralogue story. Cliché transition.

Let’s do it!

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I do so love the aesthetic of the Harvest Festival maps. Especially this year where the generic unit design took inspiration from the recent Summer banners by having them hold weapons from last year’s celebration.

That’s just a nice touch no matter how you slice it.

Now unfortunately the actual story here is sparse and somewhat uninteresting, so I’m going to blow through it right quick.

We begin with Anna dropping this little piece of information on us:

I’m not entirely sure how this royal army is constantly running out of money… But I do appreciate the specific detail used here. Makes for some decent recurring comedy.

As does probably the only stand-out character detail in this Paralogue outside of Myrrh being the cutest thing on the planet. Dorcas, despite being the future Tempest Trials reward that we don’t have access to now, has a great bit with Niles.

After all we know Niles is a foul-mouthed scoundrel who wants nothing more than torment. Dorcas ain’t having none of it, and constantly walks away from the conversation.

It’s just funny, in my opinion.

In fact you can see a bit of the interaction during the character’s gathering together at the end:

After beating them all out and winning the Triwizard Tournament or whatever, the Order of Heroes gets a grand prize of candy and vegetables.

Hooray.

There’s a moment where Anna is so touched by the gesture that she sets out a plan to become self-sustaining and help the world.

Except that quickly devolves back into her wanting to sell that surplus for a profit.

Much laughs ensue. And no real progress was observed.

Amen.

In conclusion, Halloween is great and you all are great for reading this far.

How do you feel about the special holiday units this year? Which character truly is the spookiest?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments! Because frankly I just feel like wrapping this one up quick.

Don’t Sleep on this Legendary Dragon

Remember that last Fire Emblem post I wrote where I said it seemed like Intelligent Systems was releasing banners at a mile a minute?

Well…

Here’s Legendary Tiki’s banner. Insert confetti hurray noise from Halo’s Grunt Birthday Party here.

Tiki — Legendary Dragon

Skill Set:

Divine Mist (Might = 16, Range = 1)
- Effective against dragon foes. Unit can counterattack regardless of foe’s range. If foe’s range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe’s Defense or Resistance.
Moonbow (Cooldown = 2)
- Treats foe’s Defense/Resistance as if reduced by 30 percent during combat.
Fierce Breath (A Skill)
- If foe initiates combat, grants Attack +4 during combat and Special Attack cooldown charge +1 per attack (only highest value applied, does not stack).
Bold Fighter (B Skill)
- If unit initiates combat, grants Special Attack cooldown charge +1 per unit’s attack, and unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack.
With Everyone! (C Skill)
- At start of turn, if unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Defense/Resistance +5 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn.

I’ll admit, some mix of trying to keep things short after my conversation with Spencer and general exhaustion from these showing up so often will probably result in this post feeling a bit bare-bones compared to most of my FEH posts.

But don’t let that fool you into thinking I’m not interested in Legendary Tiki. By all accounts she’s one of the strongest units released into the game, and she’s a character that I personally love having played both Shadow Dragon and Awakening.

Like. An armored dragon, colored differently than Grima, who hits the foe’s weakest defense stat at any distance with an affinity against dragons… There’s almost no downside. Even if I do think adult Tiki might have made more sense as a Legend to spotlight.

Either way she’s incredible. And I love her.

In terms of other things to say, I noticed that we’re running out of room on the Legendary Hero graphic now that Tiki has been added on:

There’s a few different ways to take that information.

Perhaps we’re going to not get any more Legendary Heroes once it fills up.

More believably, perhaps after it fills up we’ll get a new graphic that’s just a repeat of this one. Personally, I believe we might see a new graphic emerge as soon as Book III of the story starts, bookmarking these 16 heroes as ‘Book II’ Legends.

Or who knows, maybe once the Legendary Hero listing is full we’ll get a brand new kind of special hero as a ploy to take all our orbs. The sky truly is the limit.

As usual, Tiki isn’t the only thing we have to focus on here today. There are also a number of other heroes stuffed into this Legendary Banner:

Ike — Vanguard Legend
Tharja — Obsessive Bride
Karla — Sword Vassal
Catria — Spring Whitewing
Micaiah — Princess of Dawn
Hector — Marquess of Ostia
Sharena — Spring Princess
Ike — Brave Mercenary
Robin — Fell Vessel
Maribelle — Dire Damsel
Jaffar — Angel of Death

Right off the bat, colorless heroes are out of the running for me. The only one on that list I’m missing is Maribelle, and I unfortunately don’t care for her enough to risk getting another female Grima or Jaffar.

The other three colors have two heroes I don’t own that I am interested in summoning, though.

Bride Tharja and Karla for red, Legendary Tiki and Spring Catria for blue, as well as Legendary Hector and Sharena for green.

Though the green heroes much less so, to be fair. So namely red and blue stones are my interests this time around.

With 150 or so orbs to start off, I figured I would be wasting a lot in my search for Tiki. At this point I’ve spent ~50 of them, and even if I haven’t found Tiki the fruits of my labor have been sweet.

I forgot to screenshot Micaiah’s appearance, so my apologies.

To be completely honest, Micaiah and Ike are a little underwhelming. As nice as it is to have them both as five stars from this banner, they’re my third and fifth duplicate of those units specifically.

Either of the other units on those colors would have been better in terms of getting something new. So let’s just say I’m not mad, but I’m fairly disappointed.

Karla, however, was a very welcome surprise. Even though her boon and buff aren’t great for me, she’s generally considered to be one of the strongest units in the game. Can’t argue with that!

Even if I am more personally interested in Bride Tharja. Don’t know if it’ll be worth risking the other two reds to get her now though, which is a shame.

But hey, Tiki and Catria are still on the table! I’ll just be slowing down on my summoning fervor from here.

Though the orbs that are coming out of Legendary Tiki’s battle map might help with that!

Solid segue, Jason. Nailed it.

Out of the Legendary Battle maps we’ve gotten so far, this one is probably the map I would describe as being the most “eye-roll” worthy.

Even from the lowest difficulty, so many reinforcements arrive that I immediately knew I would not enjoy taking on the higher levels. The idea brought about more of a resigned sigh if anything.

Especially considering we’re continuing the trend of adding ‘Abyssal’ difficulty maps to these things.

Alongside Tiki we’ve gotten an Abyssal difficulty Legendary Hector map, as well as the return of the Legendary Robin/Grima map once more.

Maybe you’re interested in tackling those higher tier challenges, but I’m probably going to pass. Leave it to the experts like Pheonixmaster1, who has much more time to pour into these things.

Alright, that’s about all I have to say about Legendary Tiki. She’s a great unit that I want to summon, and even if I haven’t summoned her yet I did get a couple other fun five stars to mess around with.

Sorry that this post is coming later in the day once again. I had a Gladeo meeting to run this morning, so I wasn’t able to stay up late and have it out early.

Either way I hope you enjoyed my brief look at the new Legend!

Let me know in the comments, or somewhere on the Internet, who you want to see given Legendary Hero status next.

Also, let me know what your thoughts are on the next “era” of Legendary Heroes, whether we’re just going to recycle the idea for Book III or try something new. I’m pretty interested in thinking that over right now!

The Flame Kingdom’s Generals rise from the ashes

Boy Intelligent Systems sure has been relentless with all these new character banners lately.

Within the span of two-or-three weeks, we’ve gotten Genealogy units, Fates units and these Múspell units all in a row. Plus the return of the original Performing Arts banner for… Some reason.

Seriously IS I don’t understand why we brought that one back out of nowhere. Would’ve made much more sense alongside the festival units who essentially served the same purpose for this year.

But I digress.

On the bright side, these new units kind of stand on their own. They’re basically in the game because their story arc just ended, so there isn’t any sort of pomp and circumstance adding them in. We just saw the story they go along with, so no paralogues or anything to help flesh them out.

Sucks for anyone looking to nab some extra orbs, but it makes my job here today much easier.

So let’s see what these three generals bring to the table.

Helbindi — Savage Scourge

Skill Set:

BÝleistr (Might = 16, Range = 1)
- At the start of odd-numbered turns, grants Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance +4 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted even if no allies are adjacent).
Vengeance (Cooldown = 3)
- Boosts damage dealt to foe by 50 percent of damage dealt to unit.
G Duel Infantry (A Skill)
- Grants Health +5. If unit is five star and level 40 and unit’s stats total less than 170, treats unit’s stats as 170 in modes like Arena (higher-scoring opponents will appear, stat total calculation excludes any values added by merges and skills).
Guard (B Skill)
- At start of combat, if unit’s Health ≥ 80 percent, inflicts Special Attack cooldown charge -1 on foe per attack (only highest value applied, does not stack).
Infantry Pulse (C Skill)
- At start of turn one, grants Special Attack cooldown count -1 to all infantry allies on team with Health < unit’s Health (stacks with similar skills).

Analysis:

To get to the elephant in the room right away, Helbindi and Laegjarn share the same A Skill, just for different contexts. I’m not huge into the competitive Arena scene, so I can’t tell you what it means for a unit’s stats to be treated as 170 outside of what the skills mention — the fact that higher-scoring opponents appear.

What that means I couldn’t necessarily tell you. You’d have to ask my friend Jonathan about that, because he’s very into the competitive Arena scene. I just love the characters.

That said, a Health buff is a nice compensation for people like me so it doesn’t seem like that A slot is wasted.

As far as Helbindi specifically goes, his weapon is kind of phenomenal, and his other skills that essentially vampire Special Attack cooldown for your team from the enemy team work well together.

But that weapon is what really stands out. We’ve had Odd or Even Wave attacks on a number of units (including Laevatein in this banner), but none of them have buffed every single stat. That’s kind of crazy.

Essentially, Helbindi is a unit that goes berserk every other turn. His stats get cranked up and he’s probably built up enough charge to release his Special Attack by then. I personally would replace Vengeance, but it’s the thought that counts.

He’s a solid green axe infantry unit in a pool that doesn’t have too many standout options.

Laevatein — Searing Steel

Skill Set:

Laevatein (Might = 16, Range = 1)
- Grants Attack +3. Adds total bonuses on units to damage dealt.
Swap (Range = 1)
- Unit and target ally swap spaces.
Fury (A Skill)
- Grants Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance +3. After combat, deals 6 damage to unit.
Attack/Defense Link (B Skill)
- If a Movement Assist skill is used by unit or targets unit, grants Attack and Defense +6 to unit and target ally or unit and targeting ally for one turn.
Odd Speed Wave (C Skill)
- At start of odd-numbered turns, grants Speed +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted to unit even if no allies are adjacent.

Analysis:

Laevatein is probably my personal favorite of the three units here. From the very first opening trailer for Book II, when she and Alfonse duked it out in front of Surtr’s castle, I already loved her design. Then (Spoiler Alert) the fact that she was the only surviver by the end of Book II, left to be the next queen of Múspell, almost felt like a justification for that love.

In practice as a unit, she actually strikes me as being very similar to infantry Eirika — which again helps her stand out because Eirika has been my flagship unit in this game since forever.

If you count her weapon and the Link skill buff (though I’m not a huge fan of it generally), Laevatein can boast a 28+ Attack to her base stat every turn. Which is kind of wild, especially since she also gets a bit of a Speed and Defense buff in that perfect circumstance. Also Resistance thanks to Fury, but that’s a smaller deal.

Yet, on top of all that, she also has cumulative damage based on the bonuses she has applied. Her sword is literally a close-combat blade tome.

Which is pretty nuts?

Like I’m sure she’s a glass cannon to compensate that kind of power, and infantry units aren’t as great at abusing this kind of ability as the other three movement types, but it’s still just such a sweet base skill set.

I really like Laevatein, okay? I know everyone’s all over Veronica and all… So let me have this one.

Laegjarn — Sheathed Steel

Skill Set:

Níu (Might = 16, Range = 1)
- Grants Speed +3. Adds 50 percent of total bonuses on foe to unit’s Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance during combat.
Bonfire (Cooldown = 3)
- Boosts damage dealt by 50 percent of unit’s Defense.
R Duel Flying (A Skill)
- Grants Health +5. If unit is five star and level 40 and unit’s stats total less than 170, treats unit’s stats as 170 in modes like Arena (higher-scoring opponents will appear, stat total calculation excludes any values added by merges and skills).
Chill Attack (B Skill)
- At start of turn, inflicts Attack -7 on foe on the enemy team with the highest Attack through its next action.
Distant Guard (C Skill)
- Allies within two spaces gain: “If foe uses bow, dagger, magic or staff, grants Defense and Resistance +4 during combat.”

Analysis:

Laevatein’s older, deader sister feels a bit like diet Laevatein when just looking at her weapon specifically, but she adds a bunch of utility as a dedicated flying team unit.

Adding on stat buffs based on an opponent’s buffs is much more situational than a blade tome effect that you yourself control, even if it makes her more effective at tackling powerful enemies. Chill Attack and Bonfire are clearly meant to help with this as well, so it’s clear Laegjarn wants you to use her to kill off whatever Ayra or Zelgius the opponent is packing.

Her Duel Flying skill does the same thing as Helbindi’s skill, so I can’t speak to that much more beyond it being specifically for flying units.

Distant Guard is a nice skill for her as that dedicated flying unit, as it gives her flying allies a defensive buff when encountering bow-wielding units. The only problem is that +4 Defense probably won’t do much against the super effective bow damage, so it’ll wind up being more useful in making magic resistant fliers more resistant to it.

So… Yeah. I like Laegjarn as a character, but in terms of skills I’d almost consider her the most hit-and-miss of the three generals.

Plus I wouldn’t replace my Elincia even if I did get her. So sorry about that.

As I mentioned up top, there is no story section for this post. No extra orbs or anything.

Luckily I still had about 150 orbs stored up because of how easily I got the three girls of the Fates banner (who I’m still training up thanks to the recent event modes taking up my stamina, but that’s another story).

Thus I was able to dedicate everything I had toward summoning these Generals. It’s actually kind of a special banner considering they are original characters to Heroes, so they’re a bit more special than the units from other games — even if they’re fan or personal favorites.

But uhh…

I didn’t have to dedicate a lot of orbs to the task.

I actually somehow managed to get the unit I really wanted on my first batch of orbs. I could probably stop now if I wanted and be happy about it, in all honesty.

But I won’t. Because I have a problem.

I’ll just be sure to space out my orb use a bit, just in case Intelligent Systems decides to curveball and throw us a Sacred Stones banner next. Or an Echoes banner.

Seriously it’s been forever since we’ve seen those games IS. Just give us something.

Except don’t give them toes when I have no resources to allocate. Thanks!

Well, that’s about all I’ve got for this FEH post. It’s a shorty boy because all we got was the new units, and honestly I can’t really complain about that.

It’s refreshing to have one of these posts where all I need to do is the fun part. Copying out skills and stuff in my little special pattern.

But of course we still need to get to the Call to Action formality.

What do you think of the Múspell Generals? Do you have a favorite, either by skills or by characterization?

Let me know, and let me know who you want to see next as well! Obviously IS is on a roll with giving us these guys, so I’m sure we won’t have to wait to long.

The Final Fate of Book II

I’m kind of late in the day getting this post out, but this time it isn’t so much from lack of interest as it is from other life obligations.

Led my first Gladeo meeting this morning, so I had to go to bed a bit early to make sure I was prepared.

It went pretty well in my opinion, though I don’t know if it’s faux pas to talk about how good I did that way, so I’ll leave it at that.

After all we got some more FE babies to chat about today, and this time they’re actually a bunch of characters I care about!

Let’s talk about them.

Ophelia — Dramatic Heroine

Skill set:

Missiletainn (Might = 14, Range = 2)
- Accelerates Special Attack trigger (cooldown -1). At the start of turn 1, grants Special Attack cooldown -1 for each magic ally on your team, including unit.
Rally Up Attack (Range = 1)
- Grants Attack +6 to target ally and allies within two spaces of target, excluding this unit, for one turn.
Blazing Light (Cooldown = 4)
- Before combat this unit initiates, foes in an area near target take damage equal to 1.5 times (unit’s Attack minus foe’s Defense or Resistance).
Sturdy Blow (A Skill)
- If unit initiates combat, grants Attack and Defense +4 during combat.
Chill Resistance (B Skill)
- At start of turn, inflicts Resistance -7 on foe with the highest Resistance through its next action.

Analysis:

Ophelia stands out pretty well on her own for just being an amazing character. As Odom’s daughter, her in-game posture and overly fantastical dialogue are just great. As a unit in FEH, however, she suffers from having to fit into a blue tome pool that’s already fantastic. Thanks to her special Missiletainn spell and new Assist skill, she does actually present an interesting opportunity to create a mage-only team that’s glued together by her specialty. It’s something I’m actually interested in trying, so she’s pretty cool for that as well.

Nina — Eye Spy

Skill set:

Shining Bow (Might = 12, Range = 2)
- Effective against flying foes. If foe’s Defense (greater than or equal to) foe’s Resistance +5, deals +7 damage.
Draw Back (Range = 1)
- Unit moves one space away from target ally. Ally moves to unit’s previous space.
Moonbow (Cooldown = 2)
- Treats foe’s Defense/Resistance as If reduced by 30 percent during combat.
Speed/Resistance Link (B Skill)
- If a Movement Assist Skill is used by unit or targets unit, grants Speed and Resistance +6 to both units for one turn.
Bow Valor (C Skill)
- While unit lives, all bow allies on team get 2x Skill Points (only highest value applies, does not stack).

Analysis:

Despite being one of my favorite child units from Fates, Nina’s base kit in FEH is a little underwhelming. Her bow is very situational, and even if Draw Back/Link is a great combination who knows how they’ll play well together with the base weapon.

Plus that C Skill is outright useless unless you’re doing very specific grinding.

So with some investment Nina could be a solid unit, but I’m more interested in her for her personality than her viability in all honesty.

Silas — Loyal Knight

Skill set:

Slaying Spear (Might = 14, Range = 1)
- Effective against armored foes.
Reposition (Range = 1)
- Target ally moves to opposite side of unit.
Steady Stance (A Skill)
- If foe initiates combat, grants Defense +6 during combat.
Even Defense Wave (C Skill)
- At start of even-numbered turns, grants Defense +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted to unit even if no allies are adjacent).

Analysis:

Out of all the units on this banner, Silas is kind of the odd man out. Literally in that he’s the only man in the group, but also just in that the rest of the banner is child units and Flora, who’s kind of a weird special case.

But he’s a cool character as well, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That said, I’m least interested in summoning Silas due to how generally uninteresting his basic skill set is. Like yeah he’s a good defensive lance cavalry, but that’s kind of it.

Ophelia certainly outclasses him in intrigue on the blue stones, and it’s a shame that they’re stuck in there together. Just begging to cuck some poor player out of their orbs.

Flora — Cold as Ice

Skill set:

Hoarfrost Knife (Might = 14, Range = 2)
- Accelerates Special Attack cooldown (-1). If unit initiates combat and foe uses a sword, lance, axe or dragonstone, grants Defense +20 during combat, and if foe can counter, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack. After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Defense and Resistance -7 on target and foes within two spaces of target through their next actions.
Iceberg (Cooldown = 3)
- Boosts damage dealt by 50 percent of unit’s Resistance.
Attack/Resistance Solo (A Skill)
- If unit is not adjacent to an ally, grants Attack and Resistance +6 during combat.
Quick Riposte (B Skill)
- If unit’s Health (greater than or equal to) 70 percent and foe initiates combat, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack.
Defense Plot (C Skill)
- At start of turn, inflicts Defense -5 on foes in cardinal directions with Resistance < unit’s Resistance through their next actions.

Analysis:

Now Flora. Is a very interesting unit, to say the least.

She has easily the longest weapon description in the game, which is hilarious by itself until you consider the fact that it’s kind of a broken weapon. +20 Defense on a unit that already has stellar Resistance is kind of crazy. Combined with her other skills, she becomes a walking wall who runs into enemy territory on her own, which is an intriguing play style.

Even though I feel like Close Counter would be good on her but that would conflict with the new Solo skill she boasts.

On top of that, she’s also the first colored dagger unit to be in our primary, not special event-specific summoning pool. So that’s kind of awesome.

Good on you for standing our Flora. As my secondary Fates waifu I’m proud of you.

I’ve come to find that it’s a bit silly to do the charade of “here’s what I want,” and “let’s see how lucky I am” leading into my summoning luck. Because let’s break the fourth wall here, I write all of these well after experiencing the story mode and doing my initial summons.

So I’m just going to cut to the chase. Got myself two of the three characters I actually care about already:

Ophelia here is totally neutral in terms of stats, and Flora has a Speed boon. Can’t really complain either way!

The only person of interest I’m currently missing is Nina, as Silas — for as good a character as he is — doesn’t seem super great. Plus, I’m of the camp currently assuming he’ll be demoted to four star status after this banner passes.

So there’ll be time for him.

But I would still like to have Nina. If for no other reason than the fact that I can make the perfect ship with Soleil that Fates never allowed.

Like come on IS, making Soleil only able to have a lesbian relationship with Corrin was pretty dumb. Soleil and Nina were meant to be together.

But I digress.

After all, cliché transition about getting orbs from the story mode to summon.

Except this time, the story of Book II is actually concluding with this installment. So we have an extra special layer of intrigue!

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It’s a bit odd how quickly IS decided to push through the end of this story. Typically we have to wait until the previous banner with a main story tie-in ends before getting the next one, but this time they decided to throw it in after the Brave Heroes banner cycled out — despite our last Genealogy banner still being available.

I suppose I can’t complain though. I’ve been looking forward to see how this wraps up after all.

Turns out they decided to take a much darker approach than I would have expected.

See it all begins with King Surtr torturing his daughter Laevatein because of how often she’s failed to stop the Order of Heroes now that they’re approaching his sacred ritual temple.

Her sister, Laegjarn, offers herself as a surrogate to take on the power of Múspell’s legendary dragon, a power they all know kills whoever takes it on.

As soon as the Order arrives thanks to the map Loki gave them at the end of the last chapter, they encounter Laegjarn for one final fight.

Once defeated, she dies. But not before begging the Order — and Fjorm in particular, who she’d bonded with earlier on — to protect her younger sister.

There’s also this kind of morbid part where she comments that her eyes have burned out her skull?

I’m not entirely sure whether that’s literal, but either way it’s pretty intense for a gotcha mobile game.

Oh, and let’s not forget, there’s also that cliché “could we have been friends in another circumstance” speech she gives before passing on.

It’s an emotional scene and everything… But that emotion is kind of undermined by the fact that some data miners found out the Múspell family members are going to be recruitable units eventually.

So the whole exchange just wound up being kind of hilarious in meta hindsight. Everyone assumed we’d be getting her after this chapter… But then she died.

I think that’s funny, at least.

Anyway, as the Order moves on we get to watch a B plot unfold with Veronica and Ylgr stuck in a jail cell together.

It’s kind of fun seeing Ylgr’s more immature personality bounce off of Veronica’s cold, gruff isolationist sentimentality.

But that’s quickly broken off when Helbindi comes to save the two by getting them out. He plays it off as just doing it because, but those of us with context clues know he sees Ylgr as a surrogate for his own sister who was just recently slaughtered by Surtr.

Long story short, Surtr isn’t a great dude.

We get even more evidence of that in the very next scene when Surtr actually shows up after Helbindi sends the girls off on their own.

And then he dies. So that’s 2/3 down.

As Veronica and Ylgr keep running through the maze of a temple, they eventually run into Laevatein, who’s pretty upfront with the fact that she knows how shitty her father is but also doesn’t want him to kill her.

So.

Yeah. Shout out to daddy issues? I guess.

But then, completely out of the blue, Bruno finally makes an appearance around the same time that the Order converges:

It was pointed out to me that this is actually the first time Bruno has shown up on-screen this entire Book, so it’s a bit of a deus ex machina to save Veronica.

Especially considering he has maybe… Two lines? For the entire chapter.

But hey, he’s here. That’s just kinda cool by itself.

With all of her rivals gathered in one place, Laevatein fights and then prepares to do the same blood ritual her sister did upon losing as a last-ditch effort.

But Fjorm stops her, letting her know that Laegjarn’s last wish was that she be safe and protected.

It’s actually a scene that’s very reminiscent of the end of Fates in the Birthright and Conquest paths, ironically enough.

Laevatein decides to live on and escape, that way she can take over her father’s empire once he’s defeated so she can make a much more peaceful regime.

I like the idea of her becoming the ruler a lot, but I’m a bit disappointed that they don’t play with it too much here. This is actually about the last time we see Laevatein for now, so outside of a reference to her at the end it’s sort of the end of her arc.

But hey, at least she didn’t die.

Oh yeah, also. We get official confirmation that Xander is fine after Veronica was taken away.

It’s a bit silly that they break away for a moment to let us know about this, but I do really appreciate the closure it provides.

The scene makes for a good bit of lightheartedness before jumping straight into the final battle.

Fjorm has a great moment of calling him out on his shit:

Then the duel begins.

It’s actually a relatively hard fight even on the easy difficulty, so I’ll give IS some credit for making a nice final boss.

But once he’s defeated, he is officially killed by those he’s scorned.

From there we enter an epilogue that wraps everything up in a… Kind of sloppy bow.

As I mentioned, it’s implied that Laevatein takes over Múspell, but we never actually see her again.

Veronica and Bruno just disappear off on their own to do whatever it is they’re doing, probably setting up the story of Book III.

Hríd and Ylgr are set to go back to Nifl, rebuild and have the older brother take over as King in the memory of Gunnthrá and their mother.

However, Fjorm decides to stay with the Order. Apparently, it’s only just now revealed that taking part in the Rite of Frost will lead to her dying, so as she says:

She’ll be staying with you until her inevitable death, apparently.

Which again is somewhat morbid to think about… Until you conflate it with video game mechanics and realize the fact that she’s on your team at all means she’ll live forever.

So.

Yeah. Good emotional punch without too much follow-through.

And that’s all for Book II. After probably close to a year’s worth of development, this arc in Fire Emblem Heroes history is finally over.

As I stated a number of times during the early chapters, I really enjoyed watching a sort of small mobile game take on an overarching tale with interesting plotting and characters… Even when it got kind of goofy.

At the end I can pretty confidently say that it was worth following. So, I’m looking forward to seeing where the team goes with Book III!

That’s really about all I have to say about the end of the story and these new heroes.

I tried something a bit different with this post, trimming down on the wordiness in the character section and trying to be a little less picture-heavy in the story section. I think together those changes might make these posts a bit easier to put together and a little shorter, with more opportunities to use my own voice on them.

So let me know what you think about this style in the comments, when you’re also telling me about your thoughts on the new heroes and all those other calls to action I like throwing in.

I know nobody ever does them but hey. I like to leave open the opportunity.

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.

Temporal Contiguity

I’m trying something totally radical today. Instead of writing this post after my trip to the gym, I’m writing it while currently at the gym!

Using the treadmill, to be specific.

About 10 minutes into my run and I’m already beginning to suspect this whole split mindset is a mistake. But overall I’m very interested in killing two birds with one stone, because once I get home from the gym I’ll have to study for this quiz I’m dreading.

Somehow we’re only a week into the semester and have already covered two whole chapters in this class. No idea how the quiz is going to go because it’s uncharted territory and this is the class where I don’t feel totally confident in my notes, so…

Yeah.

Should be fun.

That’s another story, though.

This blog post isn’t necessarily meant to be about me writing it at the gym. That would probably be weird.

Instead I figured I would try to write something positive about school considering yesterday’s post was so negative.

During my Learning and Memory class this morning I learned about something really cool which put words to a thing I’ve always thought about:

Temporal Contiguity

Occurs when two stimuli are experienced close together in time and, as a result an association may be formed.

I think this just about explains itself honestly.

I’ve talked about this same subject probably countless times before, particularly concerning my nostalgia for certain games being intrinsically linked to different locations.

Playing Pokémon Sapphire and the first run of Shovel Knight on 3DS while in Florida with my grandparents.

Playing through Pokémon Firered while in New York many, many years ago for my cousin’s Bat Mitzvah.

Playing Fire Emblem Fates (Birthright specifically) while in New York for a journalism conference.

Playing Pokémon White 2 in a Target near the Del Amo Mall by my house.

I could go on and on with this list frankly, and at least 80 percent of the examples are clearly Pokémon inspired — in case you ever needed a good reason why the series is my favorite of all time.

But I think you get the point.

Before you think I’m a total loser though, just know it isn’t all video game examples running through my head. Even if those are the most prevalent.

For instance, I remember finishing Wilson Rawls’ “Where the Red Fern Grows” while riding our family exercise bike when it was still in my parent’s room.

Followed soon after by bawling uncontrollably all over our family exercise bike when I finished the book.

Screw you Rawls. I’m still not over that.

This writing on the treadmill thing actually kind of sucks so I think I’m going to cut things off here. Try not to kill myself on exercise machines and give myself some closure to focus wholeheartedly on stressing myself out over a quiz later.

Just figured it would be worth sharing this cool new term I learned today that gave me the words to describe a phenomenon I’ve noticed quite often.

Have you found any sort of terms or words like that recently?

Or, if not, what sort of temporal contiguities have you experienced that really stuck with you?

Let me know down in the comments!

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!

Arrival of the Brave 2: Electric Boogaloo

When Fire Emblem Heroes first came out, the biggest draw to the game was the fact that characters from every game in the series would be available in one place.

To prove their commitment to that ideal, Intelligent Systems posed a contest. Everyone who enjoyed Fire Emblem could vote on their favorite heroes from any title, and the top four would become special units once the game dropped.

This Choose Your Legends event culminated in the release of Brave Lyn, Ike, Lucina and Roy.

Then after that, popular but not high-tier units from the Choose Your Legends vote came in the form of farfetched heroes some time later.

Eventually, Intelligent System announced around the game’s one-year anniversary that we would be getting a brand new Choose Your Legends vote, with the heroes who won previously being disqualified.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, Neimi has not been chosen to join the game.

Hopefully one day Intelligent Systems will come to their senses.

In the meantime, the winners of that second Choose Your Legends vote have finally come to the forefront. Veronica, Ephraim, Celica and Hector have joined a higher class of units and are available to summon as of today following their skill announcements during a Feh Channel livestream yesterday.

So, let’s take a look at the heroes we demanded, shall we?

Veronica — Brave Princess

Skill Set:

Hliðskjálf (Might = 14 / Range = 2)
- Foe cannot counterattack. After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance -4 on target and foes within two spaces of target through their next actions, and grants Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance +4 to unit and allies within two spaces for one turn.
Recover (Range = 1)
- Restores Health = 50 percent of Attack +10 (minimum of 15 Health).
Windfire Balm (Cooldown = 1)
- When healing an ally with a staff, grants Attack and Speed +6 to all allies for one turn.
Wrathful Staff (B Skill)
- Calculates damage from staffs like other weapons.
Close Guard (C Skill)
- Allies within two spaces gain: “If foe uses sword, lance, axe or dragonstone, grants Defense and Resistance +4 during combat.”

Analysis:

Good luck pronouncing the name of Veronica’s weapon. God knows I’ll never be able to.

Thanks to the power of the people, we finally have access to the Princess of Emblian Empire as an ally rather than a foe. Even if she stipulates that she’s not the Veronica we personally know.

The fact that she’s a cleric cavalier who dresses like her older brother Bruno is more than indicative of that, and she has a super solid base kit to facilitate her abilities. She not only has the classic dazzling/wrathful staff combination popularized by Genny, she also offers a host of buffs.

Healing your ally? Buff their attacking stats.

Attacking an enemy? Buff all nearby ally stats while nerfing all nearby opponents.

Standing nearby Veronica at all? Buff their close-range defenses during combat.

It’s an interesting little niche to fill, and while I don’t imagine she’ll be as game changing as Brave Lyn, Veronica will undoubtedly be the best staff-weilding cavalier added into the game.

Ephraim — Sacred Twin Lord

Skill Set:

Garm (Might = 16 / Range = 1)
- Grants Attack +3. If a bonus granted by a skill like Rally or Hone and/or extra movement is granted by a skill like Armor March or Armored Boots is active, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack.
Draconic Aura (Cooldown = 3)
- Boosts Attack by 30 percent.
Close Defense (A Skill)
- If foe initiates combat and uses sword, lance, axe or dragonstone, grants Defense and Resistance +6 during combat.
Special Fighter (B Skill)
- At start of combat, if unit’s Health ≥ 50 percent, grants Special Attack cooldown charge +1 to unit and inflicts Special Attack cooldown charge -1 on foe per attack (only highest value applied, does not stack).
Armor March (C Skill)
- At start of turn, if unit is adjacent to an armored ally, unit and adjacent armored allies can move one extra space (that turn only, does not stack).

Analysis:

It’s my boi. He’s here. Ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum, but he’s all out of gum.

The OG Ephraim was a lance infantry unit, and his Legendary Hero counterpart was a cavalier. Now we have an axe-wielding armored knight — a nice bit of diversity, even if he never actually uses that kind of set-up in Sacred Stones.

Beyond being a cool reference to the sacred weapon of Grado, Ephraims axe gives him an immediate +19 attack and guarantees a follow-up attack if he’s next to an ally with adjacent-benefiting skills. An interesting contrast to his stand-offish Legendary Hero variant.

Ephraim also takes hits well, only to make his own further attack-boosting Special Attack more active and lessen the effectiveness of his opponent’s Special Attacks in the process.

Honestly the only thing he’s missing to be a truly phenomenal unit is Distant Counter. Without it, he doesn’t completely overshadow the likes of Hector — in any of his three axe armor forms.

Even so, he’ll probably replace my Valentines Hector. Because I love Ephraim.

Who knows, maybe one day I’ll even be able to sacrifice a Hector to make him the best he can be.

Celica — Warrior Priestess

Skill Set:

Royal Sword (Might = 16 / Range = 2)
- Grants Speed +3. If unit is within two spaces of an ally, grants unit Special Attack cooldown charge +1 per unit’s attack (only highest value applied, does not stack).
Galeforce (Cooldown = 5)
- If unit initiates combat, grants unit another action after combat (once per turn).
Death Blow 4 (A Skill)
- If unit initiates combat, grants Attack +8 during combat.
Double Lion (B Skill)
- If unit’s Health = 100 percent at start of combat and unit initiates combat, unit attacks twice, but deals one damage to self after combat (does not stack).
Attack Tactic (C Skill)
- At start of turn, grants Attack +6 to allies within two spaces for one turn. Granted only if number of that ally’s movement type on current team ≤ two.

Analysis:

Celica is the definition of a glass cannon, but she’s somewhat restricted by what clearly seems to be an attempt by Intelligent Systems to not make her too broken to handle.

She essentially follows the design of Elincia, but as an infantry unit. Utilizing the extra special large buff of her power crept Death Blow, she runs into battle and gets to double her attack output with Double Lion — obviously taught to her by Alm back in Valentia. Then she gets to move again using the power of Galeforce, more likely to trigger when an ally is nearby thanks to her blade.

It’s all copacetic when you discount Attack Tactic, which seems to be more of a reference to her leadership role in-game if anything. Likely the only thing players may want to replace.

Unfortunately, the niche she fills is undermined by the fact that Double Lion negates itself by costing one health. We’ve seen the same thing used with characters like Summer Tana, but in this case it’s more severe because she can’t use a skill like Renewal.

So Celica will probably be a phenomenal glass cannon in terms of killing two units right at the beginning of a match. But with longer, multi-stage fights she might fall more behind than her brave allies.

At least it’s super cool that her design is based on the character’s original appearance from FE Gaiden.

Hector — Brave Warrior

Skill Set:

Maltet (Might = 16 / Range = 1)
- Accelerates Special Attack trigger (cooldown count -1). If unit’s Health ≥ 50 percent and foe initiates combat, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack.
Ignis (Cooldown = 4)
- Boosts damage dealt by 80 percent of unit’s Defense.
Ostian Counter (A Skill)
- Unit can counterattack regardless of foe’s range. If foe initiates combat, grants Attack and Defense +4 during combat.
Bold Fighter (B Skill)
- If unit initiates combat, grants Special Attack cooldown charge +1 per unit’s attack, and unit makes guaranteed follow-up attack (does not stack).
Even Resistance Wave (C Skill)
- At start of even-numbered turns, grants Resistance +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted to unit even if no allies are adjacent).

Analysis:

Hector Emblem is finally complete.

If you’re interested in using three axe and one lance armor units and risking instant death from my friend Jonathan’s +10 armorslayer Hana.

Much like his last three variants, Brave Hector is clearly meant to top the meta with just ridiculous damage output and skills.

He has a distant counter lance and can use guaranteed follow-up attacks from both his own and his foe’s attacks. From there, he has multiple opportunities to quicken that Special Attack and bust out a brutal 80 percent damage buff.

Again, his C Skill seems somewhat out-of-place unless he’s meant to take down mages as much as physical attackers. But if you want to run him that way, more power to you.

There’s not much else to say about old Hector here. He’s probably going to be obscenely powerful, and easily replace the top-tier lance armor units like Effie. She unfortunately needs to inherit Distant Counter to be a true beast.

Sorry Effie, I love you… But you’ve been outclassed.

Like the Choose Your Legends banner from last year, players once again have the ability to immediately summon one of the four new brave heroes for free.

In the previous batch, Brave Lyn was almost ubiquitously the best option in the bunch. Everyone wanted a free version of her.

In the new brave banner, at least using my own friend group as a barometer, the decision seems more split.

Personally I decided to use my free summon on Ephraim:

Because I love Sacred Stones. Like a lot.

However, I also see the merits of wanting to summon Veronica or Hector… Celica to a lesser extent.

I already managed to summon Performing Arts Elincia and Micaiah from the most recent special banner, so I’m more than eager to throw a lot more of my orbs at the Brave heroes.

Yet, it appears I may not have to. While I started with 140+ orbs, the game didn’t waste any time by giving me this for my free summon post-guaranteed unit:

Yeah, who would have thought?

Perhaps if this keeps up I won’t have to spend too many orb on this banner. In fact, for now I think I’ll try to keep my bingeing above 100 like I was on the Performing Arts banner. Just to see if anything else comes out in the near future.

So, I suppose that just leaves some story to talk about. For as little as there is here.

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Our newest paralogue begins with the conceit, once again, that all of the terrible things happening in the main story are totally separate from what’s happening here.

While it has been a long time since Brave Heroes were summoned into the world of Askr, it seems as though the Order of Heroes is better prepared for their arrival.

Alfonse, in this case, becomes the surrogate for Intelligent Systems from what I can tell.

IS: “Wait, are you serious? They voted for the main villain? Well… Guess we might as well make the Order as confused as we are.”

That’s about all the set-up we get for these encounters. In fact, it’s the only set of lines we get from the Order of Heroes. The rest is character-driven by the new Brave Heroes.

I’ll give the developers credit, they’re good at pairing characters together in such a way that the interactions are compelling to see.

For instance, we start with Celica and Veronica:

They bond over their shared loss of significant relations. Celica being separated from Alm and Veronica being separated from her brother, Bruno.

In fact, Veronica gets a super interesting development overall thanks to this paralogue. But I’ll get into that later.

For now, the characters move on uneventfully when you win the first match. So it’s on to Ephraim and Hector.

Because I don’t know Hector very well, I wouldn’t have drawn the connection initially. But both Lords are thrust into power by outside tragedies despite being mostly self-reliant warriors who love to go it alone.

So naturally they decide to train with each other after bonding for all of three seconds.

Except never mind, you show up first and interrupt the sparring match. Only for you to essentially blow them both away, that way they retreat.

Once all the brave heroes regroup, they give you that stock “time to fight” dialog.

Once the fight ends, Veronica sticks back to talk to your group about her strange presence.

Veronica has a few moments throughout the main story where it’s obvious that she’s lonesome and likes summoning heroes to keep her company.

But through the surrogate of alternate dimension Veronica, now we have a much better clue as to the origin of her neuroses.

She feels abandoned by her brother, who left to try to find a cure for the curse of their bloodline.

Having summoned Veronica, I also have a little more insight into her character. One of her voice line mentions having learned how to ride a horse thanks to her brother and Xander, the Nohrian prince who acts as her chief guardian.

Xander is quite literally a stand-in for her brother. Which is something he likely knows, and may be a strong reason why he stays with her despite the contract being broken between them.

That’s pretty powerful, honestly. Makes me like Veronica that much more.

Good on you Intelligent Systems, I appreciate you making me care more.

With that, we come to the end of another Fire Emblem Heroes adventure.

As always Intelligent System makes these posts some of my favorite to craft, because there’s always something new and unexpected that makes me care for the stupid gotcha game style they’re pushing.

That said, I know nobody but me cares about these posts. So if you managed to make it this far, go ahead and say ‘We the Bravely Default’ in the comments. Because even though I’ve never played the game before, it seems like something that would fit. Plus it would let me know that we are, in fact, the Bravely Default.

While you’re down in those comments there, let me know who’s your favorite new Brave Hero! Also, let me know how you feel about the character development we’re watching unfold with Princess Veronica.

Until next time, stay real y’all.

What’s in a name?

While I can think of very few distractions better suited to the title than a video game where I’m able to kill a gun-themed dragon with bees, Enter the Gungeon cannot keep me from doing some work I need to do forever.

Mostly because the Switch battery doesn’t last forever. Otherwise it most definitely could keep me from my work for forever.

But that being said it doesn’t, and thus I have broken away from the addiction of roguelikes to work some more on my Senior Honors Project.

I’ve taken a bit of a turn in my approach to the project as the summer starts to wind down. Originally I had been simply starting to write the novel I’m working on while using a separate outline to keep track of things (as I pointed out in a previous blog post). However, I’ve found that hasn’t worked out phenomenally well.

It mostly left me in a place where I had a basic idea of some key plot points and the main characters, but no real sense of progression to build upon. Just figuring out things as I went along.

So I’ve decided to step back from the actual physical writing and focus more on the finer details of outlining this puppy.

Notably:

Fleshing out a more complete plot line
Coming up with the characters I want my heroes to encounter in their journey, with all the relationships those entail
Actually imagining more of the world they’re in, different names for locations included

With those in place I think writing a novel should actually be a sensible pursuit.

The thing that I’ve found most difficult about all this is naming everything. Who would have guessed that when you’re building a world from scratch you have to name all of the things?

All the characters, all the locales, all of the lore bits. So on and so forth.

Luckily I’ve made the task easier for myself by not establishing my world as one that has very strict hard-and-fast rules. I’m not Tolkien creating a crazy immersive, new fantasy world full of completely novel interactions amongst different races.

If anything… I’m kind of piggybacking off of the work he already did years ago.

See, for those who aren’t aware, my novel is a parody of sorts. It started as something meant to emulate the ideas of a book called ‘Redshirts’ but in the fantasy genre rather than science fiction.

Then I decided to narrow my focus even further. While I don’t necessarily read a ton of fantasy novels, I do play a lot of fantasy-themed video games. Zelda, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy. So on and so forth.

This my novel evolved into one where the focus is on NPCs in a video game who gain some semblance of sentience, realizing they are caught up in the tropes of a world created by game developers who, like me, love fantasy themes.

As well as tropes of the video game medium as a whole, of course.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m hoping not to create a boring environment seeped in tropes for the sake of it. Hopefully by the end I’ll have an interesting world inspired by and utilizing said tropes.

Because of this I’ve felt free to come up with names for things in a number of ways without having to worry about standardizing too heavily.

Looking up name generators is a good general practice for character names especially, an idea bestowed by my friend Sam who does similar things for her Dungeons and Dragons campaigns.

However, I’m also trying to look to some real life inspirations. For example, the holy order of royal guards in the kingdom which presides over the land (currently unnamed since, like I said, names are hard) is based on my mom’s name.

Or in a more fun example, one character I have is named after this glorious little thing I found at Ikea the other day.

Seriously how could I not make Eldig Black a semi-significant character in my story.

It’s just too perfect.

In fact, just perfect for the grizzled, Old veteran in charge of watching over the prince of the kingdom. The Gunter to my Corrin in Fire Emblem Fates, or the Jagen to my Marth in the original Fire Emblem.

Because at least one faction of characters in my story is not-so-vaguely inspired by the archetypical group of traveling adventurers in the early stages of a Fire Emblem game.

Those are just a few of the ideas I’m juggling right now, trying to create a cohesive world with a web of relationships among its inhabitants.

If you’re a creative-type, I’d love to hear what kind of means you tend to use for inspiration when it comes to things like character creation. Let me know somewhere on the Internet.

Dancing right into Version 2.8.0

Today we got a brand new bunch of dancin’ fools in Fire Emblem Heroes on top of the ramifications of the latest version update that came yesterday.

That’s a lot of ground to cover, so I’m not going to waste your time with a flashy intro.

Let’s just see who’s new and what they can do!

Xander — Dancing Knight

Skill Set:

Dusk Uchiwa (Might = 12 / Range = 2)
- Effective against cavalry foes. Disables unit’s and foe’s skills that change attack priority. After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Defense and Resistance -7 on target and foes within two spaces of target through their next actions.
Dance (Range = 1)
- Grants another action to target ally (cannot target an ally with Sing or Dance).
Close Counter (A Skill)
- Unit can counterattack regardless of foe’s range.
Quick Riposte (B Skill)
- If unit’s Health ≥ 70 percent and foe initiates combat, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack.
Odd Defense Wave (C Skill)
- At start of odd-numbered turns, grants Defense +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted to unit even if no allies are adjacent).

Analysis:

If I’m just being honest, the most important thing about this Performing Arts Xander is his dance.

Like. I don’t know how Intelligent Systems did it. But they created literal perfection.

Outside of that dance animation, however, he still seems to be one of the most worthwhile heroes on this banner to summon. Like every hero here, his weapon disables priority-changing skills on top of being effective against a specific kind of unit.

Plus he comes with three passive skills, again like every unit here. I don’t know why IS decided to make these dancers so stacked, but I’m not complaining.

Xander is obviously built to be an interesting defensive dancing dagger user. His close combat lets him hit from one space away, where his Wave and Quick Riposte can help him survive an attack and hit back twice.

If his stat line is any good, he’ll be an interesting character to throw onto a team.

Mainly because of that dance, though.

Elincia — Estival Princess

Skill Set:

Cloud Maiougi (Might = 12 / Range = 2)
- Effective against dragon foes. Disables unit’s and foe’s skills that change attack priority. After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Defense and Resistance -7 on target and foes within two spaces of target through their next actions.
Dance (Range = 1)
- Grants another action to target ally (cannot target an ally with Sing or Dance).
Attack/Speed Push (A Skill)
- At start of combat, if unit’s Health = 100 percent, grants Attack and Speed +5, but if unit attacked, deals one damage to unit after combat.
Rockslide Dance (B Skill)
- If Sing or Dance is used, grants Speed +3 and Defense +4 to target.
Drive Resistance (C Skill)
- Grants Resistance +3 to allies within two spaces during combat.

Analysis:

Elincia holds the distinction of being the very first colored dagger unit in Fire Emblem Heroes. Hurray! Congratulations on your accomplishments girl, you’re doing the Radiant games proud.

Now I already have a pretty strong tie to Elincia as a unit in FEH because she’s such a powerful staple on my flying team. One that I happened to summon when I was in the hospital.

Unlike Xander, her skills are a little more spread around and don’t fit one play style in particular. But they leave her more readily available to fill a variety of niches.

She can be a solid blue dragon killer with that dagger of hers and the Attack/Speed Push. Probably combined with a healing skill.

Or she can be focused purely on buffing dances through that double stat improving Rockslide, improved further by her ability to grant Resistance buffs to nearby allies during combat.

There’s just a lot of potential with her, and I’d be excited to summon Elincia as well.

Ryoma — Dancing Samurai

Skill Set:

Sky Maiougi (Might = 12 / Range = 2)
- Effective against armored foes. Disables unit’s and foe’s skills that change attack priority. After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Defense and Resistance -7 on target and foes within two spaces of target through their next actions.
Dance (Range = 1)
- Grants another action to target ally (cannot target an ally with Sing or Dance).
Triangle Adept (A Skill)
- If unit has weapon-triangle advantage, boosts Attack by 20 percent. If unit has weapon-triangle disadvantage, reduces Attack by 20 percent.
Chill Defense (B Skill)
- At start of turn, inflicts Defense -7 on foe on the enemy team with the highest Defense through its next action.
Spur Speed/Resistance (C Skill)
- Grants Speed and Resistance +3 to adjacent allies during combat.

Analysis:

Ohh, so sorry Ryoma. If only you were one reveal ahead, you could have been our first colored dagger unit.

Luckily we have a consolation prize in the form of a very special niche for you to fill as a red armor killer.

Yeah, oddly enough this unarmored lobster seems built to kill powerful red armor units like the Black Knight or Zelgius. He has color priority on a ranged weapon that’s boosted by Triangle Adept and effective against armor units specifically. Plus, he inflicts a hell of a defense debuff at the beginning of each turn.

Now I can’t promise Ryoma will be defensive enough himself to tank a counterattack should his effort to kill fail, but still. Thanks to canceling out abilities like Vantage he may actually have a chance to be a super solid tech choice on teams that are weak to red armored boys.

Micaiah — Summer’s Dawn

Skill Set:

Dawn Suzu (Might = 14 / Range = 2)
- Effective against armored and cavalry foes. Disables unit’s and foe’s skills that change attack priority.
Dance (Range = 1)
- Grants another action to target ally (cannot target an ally with Sing or Dance).
Attack/Resistance Bond (A Skill)
- If unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Attack and Resistance +5 during combat.
Fireflood Dance (B Skill)
- If Sing or Dance is used, grants Attack +3 and Resistance +4 to target.
Resistance Ploy (C Skill)
- At start of turn, inflicts Resistance -5 on foes in cardinal directions with Resistance > unit’s Resistance through their next actions.

Analysis:

Color me impressed, every single unit on this banner is actually friggen useful. Micaiah here because she carries a legendary weapon with double ranged type effectiveness that cancels out abilities like Vantage while also lowering an opponent’s resistance and boosting her own Attack and Resistance during battle.

Yeah that’s front loaded I know, but it’s really solid on paper.

Of course the Fireflood Dance is a bit more situational as it seems better fitting for a purely supportive dancer, but hey. Maybe she’ll be a great offensive and defensive dancer.

Seriously I don’t have too much to say here because she’s just a good unit. I do wish she had a red dagger just to round out a banner full of each other colored dagger… But beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.

I don’t think I can state enough how great every unit on this banner is. Seriously, if you didn’t waste too many orbs on the last Summer/Awakening/Legendary banners like I didn’t, you can have a good time stacking your roster with dancers that can fit on a variety of teams.

Personally I think Elincia and Ryoma are my favorites just based on skills alone. But I’d frankly be happy to get any of them.

In fact, for that reason I’m spending a whole bunch of my ~170 orbs on this sucker. Though probably not enough to go below 100 orbs considering all of the summoning banners coming up soon…

But with my recent lucky streaks, I should have a good time here, right?

Actually, interestingly enough I have been rather lucky. Just… Not in the way that I’d like to be.

I’m admittedly not entirely sure where these three came from. Micaiah was sort of funny just from the novelty of her alternate skin being in this new banner, but the other two were just. Eh.

I didn’t have a five-star Shigure before, so he’s got some catalog novelty, but Sonya is unfortunately just merging fodder.

So yeah, three five-stars in about 70 orbs. Can’t necessarily complain since my friend Jonathan didn’t get anything tonight… But boy do I want to complain about only getting duplicates.

At least there’s a whole month to score some silly dancers! Plus, the story mode we got to accompany this Paralogue is as interesting in lore as it is useful for orbs.

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Unlike most Paralogues in Fire Emblem Heroes, I would argue the ‘Festival in Hoshido’ Paralogue is much cooler for the story it presents than the pretty art style.

Though that, of course, is just as pretty as ever.

We start off, as you can see, with some exposition by the great Lobster himself regarding the history of the Hoshidan festival. He’s introducing the festivities to Princess Elincia, who has been invited to partake alongside Micaiah. Also Xander. But he’s just right across the gorge so it’s a little bit less of an interesting invitation.

The stakes are raised very quickly when Loki shows up to remind the two that they’ve been put into a contract by Veronica. As they distract the Order of Heroes, who have come to protect the festivities:

Loki goes off to investigate whatever it is she has come to Hoshido seeking. Something that I’ll get into in a minute.

Already this plot is more engaging than the fifth session of Anna tries to sneak peeks at naked Heroes to raise money.

Even if Sharena doesn’t seem to be taking it too seriously.

As the Order makes their way around, they then come across Xander giving some similar exposition to Micaiah.

While Loki arriving to put a wrench in the festivities was already an interesting point of contention, Xander adds more depth into this particular event by explaining how he’s there in more of a peaceful mission following the conclusion of Fates.

That’s actually some pretty cool world-building. Especially in a world where heroes from other realms can show up to experience the same activities.

It kind of makes up for the fact that I was upset seeing another Fates-based alternate art banner. Even with the Radiant representation, we just have way too many Awakening/Fates characters getting special treatment at this point.

Anyway, once the Order arrives at the final stage, Loki adds even more intrigue to her arrival at the festival.

Yeah, that’s right. Loki is after Anakos. ANAKOS of all things.

Apparently a fire dragon god isn’t good enough for the Múspell army. Now to be completely honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of this ultimate dragonic antagonist in Fates. Especially following Grima in Awakening, he was just sort of forgettable and weird.

But if they incorporate him into the plot of the mobile gotcha game somehow, I’m all in IS. You’ll have us good.

I agree completely.

But am also very invested in exactly where this sideplot is headed.

Normally I would just conclude my pieces here with a quick question about who you’re most interested in summoning off the banner and what you think about the suddenly interesting developments in the Paralogue story.

But this time I have a little more to jump on.

Version 2.8.0 dropped yesterday, and while it may not have added enough to warrant a full post yesterday I still wanted to dedicate some time to it. Because you know. I like cataloging this stuff.

A lot of what was implemented here are minor adjustments to pre-existing modes. Adjustments that don’t really do a lot for me specifically.

First and foremost is a new tier being added to the Arena. Once players hit tier 20, now they can go further and become a Great Summoner. Anyone who does gets an aesthetic crown mark on top of Feh’s head on the home screen.

I’ve never made it to tier 20. So… Yeah. Doesn’t mean too much for me.

Intelligent Systems also added in the ability to have multiple skill sets for each unit. That way you could have a build if your Reinhardt is on a cavalry only team versus if your Reinhardt is on his own. For example.

There’s also some more options in the allies menu to sort different combinations of favorite characters together. But that’s another functionality I never used in the first place so… Yeah. Again.

Probably the only thing that was added which I could actually see myself using is the Order of Heroes weapon refines.

Perhaps these three could actually be useful now! Which would be very beneficial to new players especially.

With those changes out-of-the-way, everything else is summed up as minor additions. Very cleanly summed up by this succinct list:

Gaining extra rewards during Grand Conquests is probably the best thing just in this section alone, though I am very interested to see what it will be like to play tap battles at triple speed.

Also I would be interested in having my orbs hit quadruple digits. But that’s a different story.

That’s about all I have to say for Fire Emblem Heroes for the day.

Since I was already on track for this earlier, let me know what you think about those questions I asked in the comments! Based on the events calendar, it’ll be a couple of weeks before one of these shows up again. Considering I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who enjoys them, hopefully you all enjoy the hiatus.