With the spring 2019 semester recently kicking off, I can’t think of any better way to stave off my looming cloud of stress than to blather on about nonessential pleasantries.
Luckily Intelligent Systems has just what the doctor ordered with a well-timed banner of special heroes!
If unit’s Speed > foe’s Speed, deals damage = 70 percent of the difference between stats (maximum of 7, combos with Phantom Speed). After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Defense and Resistance -7 on foe’s within two spaces of target through their next actions.
Rally Up Attack (Range = 1)
Grants Attack +6 to target ally and allies within two spaces (excluding unit) for one turn.
Swift Sparrow (A Skill)
If unit initiates combat, grants Attack and Speed +4 during combat.
Attack Feint (B Skill)
If a Rally assist skill is used by unit or targets unit, inflicts Attack -7 on foes in cardinal directions of unit through their next actions.
Dagger Valor (C Skill)
While unit lives, all dagger allies on team get x2 Skill Points (only highest value applied, does not stack).
Effective against dragon foes. Disables foe’s skills that “calculate damage using the lower of foe’s Defense or Resistance” and “calculate damage from staff like other weapons.” After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Defense and Resistance -7 on foes within two spaces of target through their next actions.
Draw Back (Range = 1)
Unit moves one space away from target ally. Ally moves to unit’s previous space.
Attack/Speed Bond (A Skill)
If unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Attack and Speed +5 during combat.
Attack/Speed Link (B Skill)
If a movement assist skill is used by unit or targets unit, grants Attack/Speed to both unit and ally for one turn.
Air Orders (C Skill)
At the start of the turn, grants “Unit can move to a space adjacent to any ally within two spaces” to adjacent flying allies for one turn.
Seeing the initial silhouette teaser for this banner piqued my interest.
I have the latest info for you! Starting 1/22 at 11PM (PT) Some new Heroes free of tension and ready to battle will make an appearance… I can't wait! There's also going to be a Special Log-In Bonus to celebrate their arrival! #FEHeroespic.twitter.com/PkVvMWHG2s
I had no idea who we were looking at and, at the time, wasn’t expecting any special banners until Valentine’s Day.
Yet I rolled my eyes without even thinking after I found out we were getting more Fire Emblem Fates royal sibling alts.
I’m a fan of Fates and everything, but there are so many characters from it who have no representations. Meanwhile Tempest Trials Camilla is her sixthalternate costumes.
It’s disheartening… But unfortunately I’m such a fan of the Hoshidan royal sisters that the game had me at Sakura and Hinoka.
Wanting this Sakura because I like her character and status as a pegasus-riding staff user probably won’t save me when the police come for summoning a near underage girl in a towel…
But that’s a bridge I’ll cross later.
Oh, and I’m 100 percent summoning for characters, not skills, on this banner. Hinoka is the only one with an interesting build, so she and Sakura are my focus.
Unfortunately, all 60 orbs have gotten me is a 3-star original Sakura.
So you know what that means? Time for paralogue orbs!
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Shout out to that armored unit with the buns on his head in map 30-1. He’s worth this entire mediocre banner.
Outside of his majesty there isn’t a whole lot to say for the story.
There’s kind of no explanation as to why the Order of Heroes has to jump in. The royal siblings have just been put under a contract but… Nobody knows why?
He’s simply concerned about heading into such a private place.
Luckily my keen interest in cute redheads is vindicated by the way they share Alfonse’s reservations.
The Nohr sisters seem more than eager to just let a bunch of soldiers join them in the baths.
Yet that’s the only bit of story worth talking about here.
After the fighting ends, Anna makes a comment about wanting a hot springs in the Order’s castle, which seems less a nod to future content than it is an outlet for Alfonse to make fun of the girls for getting into useless tasks too quickly.
So… Orbs.
Hurray!
If it wasn’t obvious, this banner didn’t really excite me.
I’m happy to shill out orbs for Hinoka or Sakura in lieu of the beast units who are going in the main summoning pool, but I don’t particularly care about any of the units mechanically.
Even my complaint about Fates units being used again is easily mitigated by the argument that Fates had the first canonical hot spring system. So that’s a banal annoyance at best.
Perhaps the Valentine’s Day units will get me more hyped up, but for now this isn’t much more than a neat distraction from school.
That’s just my opinion though. Let me know what you think of these special hot springs units!
Oh boy, it’s a brand new year! Everything feels fresh and crisp, absolutely rife with possibilities. I can’t imagine what kind of great blog posts are going to come out of 2019!
…
What’s that? Fire Emblem Heroes updated?
Welp. If that’s not the most Jason’s Blog way of starting off the new year, I don’t know what is.
Grants Speed +3. At the start of the turn, inflicts Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance -4 on the nearest foe within four spaces through their next actions.
Glimmer (Cooldown = 2)
Boosts damage dealt by 50 percent.
Swift Sparrow (A Skill)
If unit initiates combat, grants Attack and Speed +4 during combat.
Desperation (B Skill)
If unit’s Health ≤ 75 percent and unit initiates combat, unit can make a follow-up attack before foe can counterattack.
Joint Hone Speed (C Skill)
At the start of the turn, if unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Speed +5 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn.
Effective against flying foes. At the start of the turn, inflicts Speed -7 on foe on the enemy team with the highest Speed through its next action.
Reposition (Range = 1)
Target ally moves to opposite side of unit.
Attack/Speed Bond (A Skill)
If unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Attack and Speed +5 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 both units for one turn.
Even Resistance Wave (C Skill)
At the 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).
At the start of the turn, inflicts Attack and Speed -5 on foe on the enemy team with the highest Defense through its next action.
Rehabilitate (Range = 1)
Restores Health = 50 percent of Attack -10 (Minimum of 7). If target’s Health is ≤ 50 percent, the lower the target’s Health, the more Health is restored.
Earthfire Balm (Cooldown = 1)
When healing an ally with a staff, grants Attack and Defense +6 to all allies for one turn.
Wrathful Staff (B Skill)
Calculates damage from staff like other weapons.
Even Defense Wave (C Skill)
At the 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).
With Legendary Azura having literally just happened and the Christmas units still in rotation, I was a little burnt out coming into this New Year’s banner.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to see that the Múspell and Nifl units getting more love. Even if they still had to be in Hoshido to make this another pseudo-Fates banner.
But I paid little-to-no attention to what they were actually offering. I wasn’t strongly anticipating any of the units besides Laevatein, as she’s my favorite.
It seemed Intelligent Systems knew that, as they offered me a little New Year’s gift:
Yee.
Having paid their skills more mind now, I can easily say Laevatein is the weakest of the bunch… But character preference is half the battle.
We’re getting free summon tickets for this banner, so I’ll keep throwing some orbs at it to get some of the Nifl units. Any of them look great honestly.
Luckily, even if I’m ambiguous on the units, there’s plenty happening at the start of 2019 to keep me invested. Not only are there January quests, we also have New Year’s celebration orbs, Aether Raids quests AND a new run of the Tempest Trials.
Plus, of course, there’s the Paralogue.
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The interesting thing about Paralogue 29 is that there really isn’t too much of a story to discuss. Rather, it serves as an outrealm circumstance of sorts.
It stipulates how great things could have been if the Nifl and Múspell siblings teamed up to defeat Surtr instead of slaughtering one another. Because they get along quite well.
Laegjarn and Fjorm have a moment together:
As do Gunnthrá and Laevatein:
And everything ends with the very sweet sentiment of Laegjarn’s wish:
It’s a feel-good moment meant to wrap up the Book II character arcs.
Unfortunately, it would ring out much more sweetly if we didn’t have the knowledge that in our universe they do, in fact, all slaughter one another and end their stories in a more somber note.
Alright I know, it’s silly for me to start the year off with one of these. But what can I say? It’s an easier banner this time around, and that gives me the chance to spend the first day of 2019 relaxing.
… If that weren’t obvious by the fact that I seem to have completely abandoned my desire to put these out early in the morning. *Glances anxiously at the clock*
I’m sure you all don’t mind, though.
Still convinced I’m the only one who enjoys these posts.
But that said I dostill enjoy them, even in our new year of 2019! There are still interesting little tidbits that entice me. Like the fact that Laegjarn is more prominent in the Paralogue than Hríd in spite of being a Tempest Trials reward.
So let me know what you think about this first banner of 2019, and what you might be looking forward to seeing later into the year! Lord knows I’ll still be blathering on about this game.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Normally I try to have this kind of Fire Emblem Heroes post out early in the morning, but after exploding all over Pokémon news yesterday I couldn’t bring myself to stay up late to write more.
So enjoy this later-than-average look at the Legendary Lobster himself: Supreme Samurai Ryoma.
If foe initiates combat, grants Attack and Speed +4 during combat.
Bushido (B Skill)
Deals +10 damage when Special triggers.
Guidance (C Skill)
Infantry and armored allies within two spaces can move to a space adjacent to unit.
Clearly not wanting to be upstaged by his younger sister, the crown prince of Hoshido is here with his first alternate form since the game was released. Instead of being a grounded samurai warrior, he has taken to the skies on a legendary Kinshi mount to bring swift destruction using his legendary electric blade.
As our seventh Legendary Hero, Ryoma brings all water-blessed allies +3 Health and +4 Defense when they enter battle during a water season. Something particularly interesting about the banner this time around is that it actually laid out exactly how legendary hero stat bonuses work:
This, by extension, also just about confirms that there are only going to be 16 Legendary Heroes all together. Unless they do something like add more elements of course, but that’s a bridge we can cross when we get to it.
I quite like the chart. It’s succinct and shows pretty neatly how the developers have begun to plan things out.
Next presumably is a fire element Legendary Hero with a Resistance buff, and I’m interested to see who they choose to fit that role.
But we’re not here to discuss future content. Let’s discuss current content.
Many of you who know Fire Emblem fairly well like I do probably thought the same thing:
Why the hell is Ryoma a flying unit?
It’s rather bizarre seeing him take a Kinshi mount, because it seems like the only Legendary alt that’s somewhat out of character. Sure, Kinshi are great mythical beasts associated with the Hoshidan royal family, but Hinoka made far more sense riding one than her brother does here.
If anything, I would imagine Ryoma to fit the archetype of someone like the Black Knight better. A hulking armored unit with samurai gear turned up to 11, stomping around like an impenetrable tank that fires back from all distances with his Raijinto.
Would’ve been pretty dope if I say so myself.
Even though that isn’t what we got, what Legendary Ryoma is certainly isn’t anything to scoff at. Sword-wielding fliers are a rare unit type in Heroes, and even if I have a personal bias for the Elincia that has served me so well, the Hoshidan crown prince is imposing to say the least.
Stat-wise he’s near perfect based on what we can see in his legendary battle. Attack and Speed stats that are both around 50 while still having a baffling high defense stat for a flying unit. Even his resistance isn’t so bad, so he’s well-rounded enough to take a hit and retaliate.
In fact, that’s essentially what his base skills are meant for. If he can tank that bow or that magic attack, not only can Ryoma counter attack from a distance, but his attack and speed are buffed by his A Skill and he deals an insane critical hit thanks to the signature Bushido B Skill.
With it, his distant counter Raijinto also acts like a Wo Dao weapon. It’s kinda nuts.
I’ve seen some buzz talking about how Ryoma may just be the strongest Legendary Hero we’ve ever gotten, and I can’t say I disagree. I had expected a complete glass cannon based on his flying attribute, but those defenses don’t lie.
However, he isn’t the only thing available on this summoning banner. Also in the eight percent pool are:
Being blunt about it, the red stones are the only ones I truly care about in this pool of focus units.
Ryoma is obviously the chief goal, but Sigurd and Tiki are both solid options to summon for me as well. Both units are perpetual projects of merging that I tend to be working on, and both are frequently in use in my army. Plus, Tiki is about to get a new legendary weapon, so she’ll be even more fun to see in action.
Beyond that, I already have both the Legendary Nifl sisters and Legendary Grima — though I do find it interesting that Legendary Lyn is not on this banner given the fact that she’s the last one we saw implemented.
The Christmas and New Years units that are returning aren’t exactly my favorite either. I already have Azura and probably wouldn’t bother with anyone from the Christmas side but Tharja.
Though if they brought Tharja back she would be in three different summoning banners at the same time right now… So I can understand the restraint.
The non-special units, Hardin and Innes, just seem kind of random honestly. They’re both good of course, but not necessarily good enough for me to bother pulling them.
So that means we’re just sniping the red orbs fellas, where are those-
… Oh I see.
Yeah that has been a bit of a pattern for me on this banner so far, just pulling singular red stones. In the case above, Ares was a cool compensation unit since I didn’t have him before, but beyond that I haven’t had a whole lot of luck.
This time I swear I’m going to keep my orb counter above 50, I won’t break that promise. There are still brides waiting in the wings for me somewhere, I hope.
That said, orbs are available through Ryoma’s legendary battle.
Except if you’re going to try that, you should know it’s a little…
Intense.
The dude basically surrounds himself with long-ranged units so he can wear you down before coming in for the kill. I’ll admit that the map does a great job showcasing why Ryoma is so powerful, but boy that Infernal difficulty hurts when you need to get through so many waves of reinforcements.
Oh well. Even with the Tempest Trial cleaned out for me, hopefully I’ll be able to stock up on some more orbs somewhere or another.
Beyond that I don’t have too much more to say about this Legendary Lobster. What do you think about him? Is he too overpowered? Or just overpowered enough?
Let me know in the comments below, and while you’re at it let me know who you think the next Legendary Hero is going to be! I’m down to start taking bets.
Okay so in my end-of-year post earlier today I mentioned that I would be doing something “when New Year heroes dropped tomorrow.”
I apparently don’t know how to read dates because as it turns out they’re here for New Year’s Eve, not New Year’s Day.
Then I went to bed early last night before checking the game, so I never found out until this morning.
Oops.
That said, looks like you’re all getting two posts today, even though I was planning to try and use this as a kicking-off point to do a post every day for the first week of the new year. I’ll see if I can still get that to work out.
But enough pussyfooting around, let’s get into these Heroes, shall we?
Okay before I do get into these new heroes, I am actually still a little annoyed about this timing. Why aren’t the New Year heroes out on the first day of 2018? I feel like that would make so much more sense. Especially since there’s still one more day for the Winter/Christmas units. Why not just hold off one more day?
I suppose there’s no use complaining about it, it just does bug me a bit.
That said, I’m not necessarily mad that these new summonable heroes are here, because I do like them quite a bit.
I mentioned briefly in my Top 10 Games of 2017 list that I was going to try and figure out a way to either cut down on my Fire Emblem Heroes posts, or at least shorten them somehow so they aren’t quite as much work for me to produce so often.
I’m going to be trying a couple things in the next few posts, this time by distilling down the skills list for each new character through using the official descriptions. After all, for something like this there’s no better way to summarize information than to just have it in the original form, right?
Takumi is frankly the most ‘eh’ hero on this list for me. I really like his weapon (even though I’m disappointed that he doesn’t throw soup at people), especially in combination with a natural Moonbow, since together they give him repeated high special attack potential. However, the Attack and Resistance boost is a little situational because he needs to be next to someone, and Bowbreaker is contradictory if you want him to have boosted resistance. Plus, let’s be honest with ourselves, not many dagger-based units are viable. So all-and-all, I might skip out on Takumi for now, but we’ll see how good my luck is elsewhere.
Camilla is clearly the odd one out when it comes to these New Years heroes. While I acknowledge that it’s part of her character in the Birthright game’s conclusion that she travels Hoshido, I still can’t see a reason why they wouldn’t include a Hoshidan sibling that hasn’t gotten any love yet – Hinoka and Ryoma, namely. Well… Okay, I know why they would choose Camilla, because everyone loves her and probably spends a lot of money to get her… But still. She is special as our first sword-wielding Wyvern unit, which opens up the possibility of a fully balanced wyvern-based team, but otherwise she’s somewhat unremarkable too. Okay weapon effect that stacks with her ward skill alongside a strong special attack, but also a strangely combined boost to her Defense and Speed. Maybe it makes sense for her stat spread, but personally I’m not sure I understand it.
While Camilla is an odd flying unit in this banner, Azura is a freaking incredible flying unit in this banner. I’m not going to bury the lede here, she’s the unit I’m after right now. As far as I can recall, she’s also unique as an axe-wielding pegasus knight, but she’s also a flying unit with Azura’s signature Sing ability. That. Is. Awesome. Even if she doesn’t have the same beneficial weapon buff that the Performing Arts Azura has (in fact her weapon is basically a clone of Camilla’s, so it’s just ok), she does grant a large defense boost with her Earth Dance skill. Plus, she comes with Hone Fliers, arguably one of the best skills you’ll need on a flying unit focused team. Give this girl the Iote’s Shield Sacred Seal that was added during this last Tempest Trial, and I get the feeling she’s going to be an unstoppable force.
Honestly I’m really glad Azura’s skills look as good as they do. Even when I originally talked about these guys a few days ago I was convinced I would love Azura just because of her nice artwork, so it all just seemed to work out perfectly.
My only question is… What happened to Corrin, exactly?
Back in those leaks I talked about before, a bow-wielding Corrin was one of the featured heroes:
And he does, in fact, appear through the Paralogue missions that accompanied these heroes. Yet, he’s not in the main summoning focus banner, and the upcoming Winter’s Envoy vs. New Years Voting Gauntlet is not going to feature him as a hero to support. So what happened to him?
Is he going to be in a separate banner that drops on New Year’s Day? Is he going to be a future reward unit, perhaps in some sort of Grand Hero Battle or? Who knows.
I get the feeling Azura would have been my focus whether or not Corrin was here too, so I suppose his absence is alright for now. It’s given me more of a chance to blow all my orbs on green, after all.
Except for the one time I pulled a series of summons that didn’t include a green unit.
Which was the one time I naturally got a five star unit.
Love you Tharja, really I do… But you didn’t have to show up now you know.
Also why couldn’t you have shown up during my attempts at the Winter/Christmas banner?
Ah well, guess I can’t really complain about a new five star. Especially since this banner is going to be around for the entire month of January, so there’s going to be more than enough opportunities to get my Azura.
In the meantime, I’m getting a bunch of Cecilia clones all of a sudden, which means I’ll be able to keep improving mine in place of getting a Gunnthrá. Gotta love consolation prizes.
This story portion of the main event is probably going to be a short one, or at least a photo-heavy one. There really isn’t a hell of a lot to say about the Paralogue this time around besides the fact that Corrin shows up in it despite being absent elsewhere.
Even the maps you battle on aren’t super exciting for me this time around.
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I suppose there’s some traditional Japanese elements to them considering how Hoshido is heavily inspired by feudal Japan, but most of those references go right over my head if they’re there. As a result, all I really see is a couple of maps that are less visually enticing than the last few special holiday maps we’ve gotten for Halloween and Christmas.
But I digress. What exactly is the story here?
Well… You and the Order of Heroes start off by going to Hoshido to celebrate the New Year.
When you get there, the special heroes have already made their contracts with Princess Veronica, so as usual it’s right to battling – though you do get some interaction between the characters beforehand.
For example, leading into the first map, Corrin and Takumi talk about getting fortunes:
Spoiler alert, Takumi’s fortune says the exact same thing as Corrin’s fortune does. They’re just playing up the ‘Takumi doesn’t like Corrin’ thing I’m pretty sure.
The interactions between Azura and Camilla are a bit more interesting to me, admittedly.
Not going to lie, pretty sure they’re referring to the fact that her bust is way more restricted in this outfit than in… Just about any other outfit she gets in this game.
But that’s not the part that’s interesting to me. Rather, it’s the aspect of them interacting as sisters, playing on their relationship in Conquest version where Azura turns out to be the sibling from Nohr that was stolen away to Hoshido at a young age – opposite Corrin, as the plot goes.
It’s nice to see them have a moment to be sweet with one another from that perspective.
Even if it does get kind of weird.
Camilla is just a wonderfully awkward character in almost every respect. Honestly that’s one thing Heroes has done well, made me care more about her than I ever really did in the original games.
The final map is just about as generic as it gets. Everything leads in with the four heroes preparing to fight their last stand:
I’m definitely Takumi in this scenario.
Then you win the battle, and the Order of Heroes decide to stay back a bit and make wishes for the New Year.
As is characteristic, Alfonse wishes for world peace, Sharena wishes to be friends with everyone forever and Anna wishes to fill the coffers of the Order with lots and lots of money.
And that’s it. No more pomp and circumstance, no tie-in to a more overarching plot. Just a simple filler arc to celebrate the New Year, exactly what you might expect to see.
I suppose I can’t complain, after all we got an easy 12 orbs out of it. Plus, it houses my new dream hero Azura.
I will get to you eventually, Azura. No matter what it takes. As long as what it takes doesn’t include spending money because I’ve already done that too recently and I’m not starting bad habits for the New Year.
With that said, here’s all there is to say about this Heroes update. Like I said above, I’m going to keep experimenting with these to try and cut them down, so let me know what you think about trying to summarize the skill list using the list given in-game.
Also, let me know what you think of the New Year-themed heroes! And what you think about the absence of Corrin, for that matter. Will he appear soon? How will he appear? I’d love to know what you think.
The timely journalist in me couldn’t resist getting this post out the day the update happened, so now that this post is the last one I’m publishing for the year I’d like to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2018! May it be full of good times… And good luck when pulling heroes.
There are discussions about who’s going to be added whenever new summoning focuses approach, and reactions to those characters when they show up and inevitably get placed on tier lists.
Artwork abounds of characters who not only just appear in skimpy or cute outfits (because let’s be honest it’s a game with an anime aesthetic, so there’s plenty of it), but of characters who have gained relevance solely because they matter in Heroes. Like Reinhardt, who appeared in a currently Japanese-only Fire Emblem game but is now unforgettable as a destroyer of everything in the mobile title.
Probably the most interesting thing about the fanbase for heroes is seeing them deal with the interactions between characters from different games coming together. Never is this more apparent than during Voting Gauntlets, when artwork starts popping up of front-running units beating the crap out of each other. People pick sides and root vehemently for their favorites, only to cry out in disappointment as Intelligent System’s ‘inability to math’ screws them over.
Editor’s Note: For those who don’t know, there’s a meme among members of the Fire Emblem Heroes community making fun of the fact that the point calculations in Voting Gauntlets are screwy, making it so the two sides can be labeled as having the “same score” when the numbers above clearly show that one side is a few million points ahead.
It’s never not hilarious.
I don’t think of Fire Emblem Heroes as a social experiment because of the community, however. I think of it as one because I’ve never seen a game that’s taken such an interesting shift in story development over such a long period of time.
When this game came out in February, it started with a rather simple story through ten sets of missions. You, as a summoner of characters from all over the spectrum of Fire Emblem games, traveled with the Order of Heroes to stop an opposing summoner from destroying the homeland of your friends. That was about it, a fairly thin layer of skin over a random number generating summon mechanic clearly designed to make you want to spend money.
But now, about 11 months later, we’ve arrived at the release of Book II, and things are dramatically different.
Most of the extra story chapters and paralogue missions in Book I expanded upon the original premise of the game by taking you to different Fire Emblem worlds to find more heroes that you can throw your orbs against the wall to summon. However, under the surface, there was more being developed, slowly but surely.
Princess Veronica, the leader of the opposing nation, developed a partnership with a mysterious character named Loki who disguised their appearance but hoped to bring their king to Askr to fight the good fight. Prince Bruno, Veronica’s brother, is revealed to be the old ally of the Order of Heroes that provides much of the motivation for Prince Alfonse and Princess Sharena. But these developments with the villains are slow to arrive, and give the game a chance to develop its characters over a long period as players become accustomed to them.
Then, Book II takes the story through a rapid paradigm shift.
The new part of the story begins with a cinematic that introduces the overall theme of this leg. New characters, allied with Veronica and clearly fire-themed, take on the Order of Heroes allied with a new character who controls ice. There’s some impressive displays of power, but otherwise it doesn’t tell you a lot.
It also turns out to just be a teaser of sorts, looking at future events as Fire Emblem likes to do. The actual story of Book II begins well before what they show you.
When you arrive at… I’m not even sure I can write the name of this land, so I’ll just say the ice kingdom… When you arrive at the ice kingdom, Alfonse and Sharena remark on the cooling magma that covers the once beautiful farmland they used to visit as children.
The first chapter of Book II pretty much goes on without any other story until the fifth map, when you first run into Princess Fjorm and King Surtr.
The two are dueling, though the fight is clearly lopsided in favor of the king. He leaves after defeating Fjorm, but leaves his assistant Loki in charge of taking care of your team.
Defeating Loki leads to her retreat, and allows you to bring Fjorm to safety, where she joins your team to help fight against the evil monarch.
Once she’s on your side, you take on chapter 2, where you and your allies chase after Surtr.
It’s mostly a story-less approach (though it introduces a few interesting things that I’ll go into in a bit), besides the beginning and the ending maps.
The first brings you face-to-face with Veronica, now open about her allegiance with the fire kingdom.
She sends new Heroes at you over the next few battles to slow your progress, but eventually you reach the fifth map and encounter the king himself.
His fight is a timed survival, as special magic makes the armored king invincible. You have to survive six turns against Surtr and his main allies, who all get a proper first introduction here.
If anything, this fight is arguably the representation of the opening cinematic in-game… Though it’s much less exciting than the specially created video, of course.
When you survive long enough, the Order determines that they cannot win and retreat.
Oh also, there’s a prophesy. Because of course there’s a prophesy. Can’t have a big dramatic story without it, apparently.
Minor clichéd gripes aside, that wraps up where Book II ends… For now.
To be completely honest, like I’d mentioned toward the beginning of this, I’m very impressed at how things have developed, and glad I’ve stuck around long enough to see it happen.
Over 11 months, the entirety of the game we’ve seen up to the release of Book II felt like the end-all-be-all of Fire Emblem Heroes. It was a simple game with a simple premise that delighted players by finding a basic way to throw a ton of Fire Emblem characters together.
But now, that entire 11 month developing story just feels like it was a prologue. Expositional, introducing us to the main characters and what they can do and how they interact with one another to build up to the actual chief conflict of the game: This war of fire and ice that everyone gets dragged into.
It’s kind of incredible really, thinking that all of this was likely planned in some capacity from the beginning. Granted, thinking back to a game like Fire Emblem Awakening where halfway through the story you jump ahead a few years and suddenly have a whole new story that’s the true meat of the game, it’s the kind of developmental ‘pulling the wool over one’s eyes’ that the series does frequently.
But Fire Emblem Awakening was one contained product, a single game cartridge with just about all of its main content available at launch.
For Fire Emblem Heroes, developers had to make sure players stuck with their game for almost a year to get the big reveal and find out that everything they’ve seen is just build-up. That’s a crazy feat, but one that really seems to have paid off in the long run.
Though this post was mostly intended to elaborate on why I felt the Book II story is more impressive than others might give it credit for, I did also want to touch on some of the new, interesting thing they added throughout the maps as well.
In chapter 1, there are a two new generic units that fill different archetypes from Fire Emblem games which haven’t gotten any villainous love up to this point.
Manaketes and Wyvern riders are staples of the series all the way back to the original Fire Emblem game with characters like Tiki and Minerva. The fact that they didn’t show up in the enemy armies up to this point was a little odd, though I suppose it becomes a nice and convenient excuse to say that they were added in as units from the fire kingdom who didn’t exist in Emblia.
I can respect that. Waiting long enough that you get a convenient out. Much better than just adding them in randomly a few months later like they were forgotten originally.
However, the generic units really aren’t the highlight of the new units added in. Rather, it’s the heroes that Veronica brings along, teasing the next summoning focus:
Children of characters from Fire Emblem Fates are next on the docket, which is something we knew about from previous calendar updates, but never knew exactly who would be showing up until now.
I’ll keep my thoughts abridged for now, since I’ll probably be more over-the-top and wordy later once the main banner is released… But let’s just say there’s a certain Nohrian girl I’ve got my eyes on.
Even if the way they split the heroes into two banners bugs me.
But again, I’ll save that discussion for next time.
Hopefully you all enjoyed me blathering on for almost 3,000 words on a mobile game once again. There’s going to be more later this week, like I said, but for now I’m going to be taking another break to work on all of my final projects and exam study guides. Gotta love this time of year.
What do you think of the Book II story? Are you as enamored with the idea of the long-term story telling as I am? Or is it just basic enough to keep you invested in the game a bit longer? Let me know in the comments below!
Boy, Intelligent Systems sure is looking to wring all the money it can out of its gaming audience this summer, aren’t they?
Of course I say that in jest (as much as I can muster out during my early morning writing binges), as I happen to really enjoy what they have been doing and what they will be doing in the near future.
It’s only slightly in jest, however.
My friend Jonathan has been going nuts with all of the frequently added characters he’s wanted to get, and though he succeeded in getting Delthea and Sonya from the Echoes banners (like me!), he did have to spend some real money to do it. I’m starting to feel the same way at this point, as I just barely started to replenish my surplus when today’s new banner dropped.
I’ll be completely honest and admit that I probably would have been much more excited for this if we had gotten Hoshidan royalty, as I have much stronger personal connections with the Birthright side of Fire Emblem Fates than the Conquest side. However, beggars can’t be choosers. The special heroes we got are still great and rather quirky in their own rights.
Four members of the Nohrian royal family are here to spend time at the beach with the boys and girls summoning heroes on a day-to-day basis:
A princess caught between her ‘birth’ family in Hoshido and her ‘adopted’ family in Nohr who comes to be the hero that leads one side or the other to victory in a war between the two nations. Unless you played the Revelations version of course, in which case you’d have a completely different story. In this special summertime edition of Corrin she appears as a tome using wyvern rider who attacks with Finding Nemo characters. If that’s not enough to make her enticing, I don’t know what else could.
Notable Skills: Each of the heroes in this focus comes with a weapon that grants a +1 attack and speed boost to all allies within 2 spaces during combat, which is a useful idea… Even if in execution a +1 boost isn’t necessarily the most helpful thing. Corrin’s weapon of choice is a blue tome, and she also comes equipped with a decent spread of skills right out of the box, including the Dragon Fang special attack, a +4 speed and resistance boost during initiated combat and the ability to fortify the defenses of fellow flying units.
The Nohrian royal family’s youngest sibling, Elise is a princess known for her charm, boundless childlike energy and great horseback healing capabilities. Finding her adorning a lei while on a summer vacation grants her a different set of skills, however, as she becomes an infantry unit who excels at using flower-based green tomes.
Notable Skills: Each of the heroes in this focus comes with a weapon that grants a +1 attack and speed boost to all allies within 2 spaces during combat. Elise’s weapon of choice is a green tome, and she comes with skills that grant her +2 speed and resistance, allow her to provide a +3 attack and resistance boost to allies as well as a skill that gives fellow green tome users extra ‘special points’ through battling. Honestly her skills are probably the least impressive when compared to the others.
Being the younger of the middle children among Nohr’s royal siblings, Leo tends to be a little abrasive – particularly in the face of being teased by his siblings. Despite this, his strength wielding the mystic tome Brynhildr is unquestionable and gives him a cocky edge alongside his vast intellect as a mage knight that nobody can really deny. His summer attire loses a lot of the heavy black armor he’s known for wearing in place of a simple blue cloak, and his mystic tome has been replaced by a book discussing the ever beloved(?) tomato. Which he can launch at his enemies using magic. For some reason. It’s strange, though I’d argue his older brother’s gimmick is a bit stranger.
Notable Skills: Each of the heroes in this focus comes with a weapon that grants a +1 attack and speed boost to all allies within 2 spaces during combat. Leo’s weapon of choice is a red tome, though he also comes with the Iceberg special attack, the Seal Resistance skill and Attack Ploy, allowing him to lower the attack of anyone in cardinal directions with less resistance than him.
The crown prince of Nohr, known for his stalwart attitude and willingness to fight against even the mightiest of forces if it’s necessary to protect his siblings. Out of all the characters here, Xander easily has the strangest additional ‘summer attribute’ in that he apparently cannot swim and needs the help of a floatation device to stave off what seems to be a fear of the water. However, this strange attribute becomes one of the most endearing things I’ve ever seen when it appears he uses a floatation device modeled after the dragon form of Lilith as an axe. Though I get the feeling it would be even better if Corrin had the Lilith-themed gear, just the fact that he has this makes him the one character I’m pining after for this focus.
Notable Skills: Each of the heroes in this focus comes with a weapon that grants a +1 attack and speed boost to all allies within 2 spaces during combat. Xander’s weapon of choice is an axe, and he comes with the powerful Bonfire special, a skill called Fire Boost that gives him +6 attack if he has more health than his opponent and a skill that lowers the special cooldown for infantry units with less health than him. His skills are another reason I really want to add him to my team, I’d say.
For real though, look at this:
Look at this wet and glistening beefcake swinging around an amazing dragon floatie around. It’s as magnificent as it is ridiculous and I am 100% down to add him to my teams.
In fact, I’ve already spent the 50 orbs I’ve collected over the last week or two (or however long its been since I summoned Sonya) on green orbs for him. To little avail thus far, but the summoning focus lasts for more than 30 days, so I’m sure I’ll have the chance to catch him… Even if I feel like shit to some extent because I gave up on my orb collection so early.
At least there’s more opportunities for orbs coming down the pipelines. Though I’ll mention that after I get into what has become probably my favorite part of these events: The story.
Three new Paralogue missions providing nine orbs and three corresponding missions provide for a nice bit of an orb boost after already burning away quite a few. Though the storyline you have to move through to get these orbs is… Interesting. To say the least.
Last time around I mentioned that the strange approach Anna took to taking pictures of summery heroes seemed characteristic of the game’s writers crying out for a vacation.
They really stepped it up this time around and helped me double down on that opinion.
While Anna once again hopes to document heroes in their swimsuits to sell to the highest bidder as a means of filling the Order’s coffers, this time she’s decided to abandon her goal of starting her own playboy magazine in place of starting… What I can only think to describe as her own pornography website.
I’m honestly not sure what to say, though Alphonse sums up my overall impressions fairly well:
Anyways, that just about bookmarks everything once again. You go to the Nohrian islands to find scantily-clad heroes under a fighting contract so you can get pictures of them. Starting with the girls:
Then hitting the boys as well, since Anna is an equal opportunity monetarily-driven pervert as it turns out:
Then, once you get to the end of the line with Anna’s movie collection complete, she finds that loopholes once again ruin her plans.
This, of course, leads to a comical overreaction from a character now afraid of going bankrupt. Though this one takes the cake as one of the strangest experiences I think I’ve had as a gamer.
Never before has a video game character asked me to strip down and put on a skimpy swimsuit. Caught me pretty off guard, though I’m not sure if I’d say doing so was a good or a bad thing in the grand scheme of things.
That odd experience was really the biggest thing this part of the ‘filler arc’ had to offer, and I’m already pretty much out of things to say about it. Just off of one full stamina bar I was able to collect all of the orbs available from this story focus, so I’ll probably be spending some time trying to get my hands on Xander while playing Splatoon with my friends and grinding up cards against Yami Marik in Duel Links on the side.
Speaking of probably not being worth a whole post on its own, one of the reasons I’ll be working hard to get a Xander summoned is so I’ll be able to use him in the Voting Gauntlet coming up on the horizon:
This summer hero-themed gauntlet looks like it’s going to be way more exciting than the healer unit-themed gauntlet we had in the last go around, and I’ll definitely be backing my boy Xander all the way even if I don’t personally have one to use. Though if he loses I’ll probably go with Gaius. Or I’ll improvise if both are taken down, I suppose.
We’ll see how it all turns out with time.
Another thing relevant to the game that I figured would be worth noting in this post is the launch of Feh Channel, where the in-game item delivery owl (called Feh, appropriately enough, not-so-coincidently matching the anagram for the game’s name) tells you all about everything you want to know about the future of Fire Emblem Heroes.
The channel series, if it’s a continual venture and not just a one-off clever way to do what is essentially a Nintendo Direct, will be nice and informative going forward. Just the first video that has been done really gives us a solid low down on everything that’s going on over the next month or so.
I’d check it out for yourself here, as there really is a lot of interesting information about things like the upcoming voting gauntlet, tempest trials updates, summoning appearance rate changes, a new game mode, the mobile app’s sixth month anniversary (can’t believe its already been that long, personally) and more.
The format they use with the owl is a little bit strange and admittedly annoying to an extent, but it’s still great if you want to get a look ahead of time at what I’ll likely be talking about here. If you don’t want to sit through the long-winded approach – which I can’t imagine why not if you’ve read up to this point in a post like this on my blog – everything boils down to this:
I’d say the Grand Hero Battle against Valter at the end of August has me most excited in terms of looking ahead. Seeing another Sacred Stones character appear suggest that perhaps the game will be in the limelight soon enough… With Neimi hopefully riding the coattails. I’ll never stop being excited for her.
All in all it’s going to be a nice distraction from school starting up again, since at this point I’ve got Daily Titan orientation coming up soon alongside preparations for a new work opportunity I’ve been invited to take part in. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on that soon enough, but for now just know that I’ll be stressing myself out well before classes even begin for the semester.
Though I suppose relieving that stress is what video games are best for.
How do you feel about the new summoning focus? Or about any of the upcoming updates we’ll be seeing in Fire Emblem Heroes? Let me know in the comments below, as I just love discussing all of this stuff if that wasn’t obvious enough already.
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 