Fire Emblem Heroes

Fire Emblem Heroes (ファイアーエムブレム ヒーローズ, Faiā Emuburemu Hīrōzu), is a mobile phone app developed by Intelligent Systems. The game was launched on Android and iOS devices on February 2, 2017 in territories worldwide.

Development
A Fire Emblem mobile app was announced on April 27, 2016 as a part of Nintendo's effort to bring their content to the mobile phone market. Initially announced to release in the fall of 2016, it was later pushed back to an unspecified date within the March 2017 timeframe before its official release date of Febuary 2, 2017 was unveiled.

The game is one of the first titles developed internally by Nintendo for mobile phones. It is not a traditional Fire Emblem experience, but one tailored more toward the mobile market to help drive broader interest in the franchise and the core games on Nintendo platforms. It is also one of the first mobile apps, after the social app Miitomo and Super Mario Run, to make use of the universal Nintendo Account system created in collaboration with Nintendo's corporate partner DeNA.

The game was officially unveiled during a Fire Emblem-themed Nintendo Direct on January 18, 2017. During the Direct, the game's final title Fire Emblem Heroes was revealed, and its story and gameplay were both introduced. It was also revealed that the game is a free-to-play mobile app with microtransactions based on a "gacha" collection structure. All characters that appear in the game will receive new art and new voiced dialogue.

Plot
The game follows two protagonists, the royal siblings of the Kingdom of Askr, Prince Alfonse and Princess Sharena, as well as gathered heroes from other worlds. Together, they plan to fight against the opposing Emblian Empire and their leader, Princess Veronica.

Gameplay
Fire Emblem Heroes is a strategy game requiring a mixture of tactics and unit training.

Units and Team Building
Heroes revolves around using various Fire Emblem characters from numerous games, three of which are exclusive to Heroes. Heroes may be summoned either via completing special missions or Summoning them using Orbs. When Summoning, the player expends 5 Orbs for a board containing 5 Orbs. Each orb will have a random color assigned to it upon starting the board, with the color determining what equipment type the summoned Hero will have. After the player selects an orb, a Hero is summoned, with the rarity of the hero being fixed to a percentile chance, hence the player is not guaranteed a 5 Star Hero every board time. The player is then given the option to summon another Hero on the same board for a reduced cost of 4 Orbs. The player may summon up to three Heroes on the same board for 4 Orbs, where the fifth and final orb on the board will cost 3, making a complete board purchase cost 20 Orbs. Once summoned, that Hero becomes a permanent member of the player's army and can be trained to become stronger, fused with an ally for bonus stats and SP points, or dismissed for an amount of Feathers.

Orbs are a form of currency in the game which can be used for a variety of purposes including replenishing Stamina and Dueling Swords, Purchasing expanded barracks, or summoning new Heroes. Players are given Orbs the first time they complete any story map on any difficulty, gifted through missions, and through event gifts. Players may also buy Orbs through in-app purchases which a minimum of 3 Orbs cost roughly 2 USD. Orb bundles go up to 75 USD and offer more bonus orbs the more expensive the bundle is.

Heroes are unique and have different properties including different unit types, stats, preferred weapon, and bonus skills/abilities. Summoned heroes also has a rarity assigned; higher rarities allow stronger starting stats, better growth rates, and more available skills. Base stats of acquired heroes can vary slightly, but those base stats adhere to a consistent base stat total. Characters may be trained up to Level 40, upon which they reach a Level Cap and cannot obtain any more levels. Any 1 Star to 4 Star Hero can perform an Unlock Potential, raising their Rarity by 1, but also resetting their Level to 1 and reseting their stats to its original base total. Skill Points (SP) are the only stat that does not reset when Unlocking Potential. Unlock Potential costs Badges and Feathers to perform. 2 Star to 4 Star Unlock costs normal badges while 5 Star Unlock requires Great Badges and a substantial amount of Feathers. Heroes who are 5 Stars cannot perform any more Unlock Potentials. They can, however, fuse with any copies of themselves through Merge Allies. Merging any copy of a Hero will grant them additional Skill Points, with higher skill points the rarer the card is. However, if the merging Hero has the same rarity and name of the base Hero, the base Hero will receive a special bonus level that does not count towards the Level 40 cap (for example, at maximum level, the character will be listed as Level 40 + 1 if it has a bonus level through merging.)

As the characters are used in battle, they can level up after obtaining Experience Points, of which the gains scale based on the difference in Level between the player's character and the enemy's. EXP also scales depending if the player's character killed the enemy. Upon leveling up, their stats will increase randomly, though SP are always guaranteed and increase the amount gained every 10 levels. Heroes can expend SP to acquire new skills for the Heroes. The Skills available to learn are fixed to each character and require the Hero to be a certain rarity to learn. Skills come in 4 categories; Weapon, Attack/Heal Skill, Support Skill, and Passive Skill. Weapon Skills increase the Hero's weapon base damage and carries special effects the higher the weapon's Rarity are. Visually, the Hero's weapon in combat and on the battle map will also match. Attack/Heal skills provide bonuses when either attacking or healing. These skills require the Hero to attack, heal, or be attacked a certain number of times in order to activate. Support Skills are activated by having a Hero select an ally unit to give them a supportive effect. These includes Healing, Repositioning, Rally, and Dance commands. Passive Skills are a series of skills with various effects that can influence combat (such as Life and Death, self stat bonuses, adjacent allies bonus stats, and other various map skills (such as Obstruct).

As of March 16th, 2017, the Inherit Skills feature became available. Units are now allowed to acquire skills from other units to bolster their combat capabilities. The player selects a base unit to acquire the skills, then chooses another unit to sacrifice to teach the base unit new skills. The player then selects three skills that the sacrificed unit has acquired and transfers it to the base unit. The sacrificed unit is then removed permanently from the player's roster. Most skills can be universally transferred between units, however there are a few exceptions. First, several supportive skills are locked and cannot be transferred for any reason, such as the Dance skill that can only be used by Olivia and Ninian. Second, weapons can be transferred between units, however weapons can only be transferred between two units who utilize the same weapon type and color (thus Blue Tome users can only transfer their weapon to other Blue Tome users and Stave wielders can only transfer their weapon to other Stave wielders). Lastly, certain weapons are non-transferrable, mainly named weapons such as the Falchion or Armads can only be used by specific characters.

Special quests are available that also offer additional items, such as Hero Feathers, Orbs, Crystals and Shards, with various requirements such as using a specific hero for a certain fight.

Combat
Players expend stamina points to begin battle in Battle mode and each map has a set amount of stamina required to begin. All maps are on a 6x8 grid, though maps come in various terrains based on past Fire Emblem games. Maps features a plethora of terrain including forrest, mountains, lava fields, and oceans. Character's movement varies; Units riding mounts can move a maximum of three titles, basic foot units can move two spaces, and heavy knights are restricted to a single tile for movement. If the HP of the player's Hero is depleted, the character will retreat from battle, but can be used in subsequent battles, regardless if the player had lost all characters in a single duel, hence having more of a Casual Mode style of unit handling.

A unit's combat capabilities are set, restricting them to a single weapon, regardless if the class in the main series is able to use multiple weapon types. The Weapon Triangle and Anima Magic are used in a singular weapon effectiveness wheel to create Blue weapons (Lances, Thunder Magic), Red weapons (Swords, Fire/Dark Magic), and Green weapons (Axes, Wind Magic), with Breath attacks falling into all three categories depending on the hero. Blue weapons are strong against Red weapons, Red weapons are strong against Green weapons, and Green weapons are stronger than Blue weapons. There are also Colorless weapons (Bows, Shuriken, and Staves), but these are not factored into Heroes Weapon Triangle unless a specific weapon designates it so (for example, Male Robin's Blarraven, classified as Thunder Magic, a Blue weapon, grants a weapon advantage against colorless units as well as red ones.) Bows retain their special property of dealing effective damage against Flying Units, Shuriken can lower enemy stats, and Staves can still heal allies as well as attack enemies, but are weak in damage. All Sword, Lance, Axe, and Breath attacks are from one tile away while all Magic, Bow, Shuriken, and Staff attacks are from two spaces away.

Modes

 * Story Mode – Players play through the story of Heroes, following the adventures of Prince Alfonse and Princess Sharena as they battle the Embla empire lead by Princess Veronica. Currently there are Eleven playable chapters, each containing 5 battles each. Players encounter a series of Fire Emblem characters from different Fire Emblem games, though each chapter focuses on a specific game. Each map costs a varying amount of stamina, harder battles cost more stamina. Completing each individual battle rewards the player with an Orb upon its first completion. Completing a chapter unlocks the ability to battle the map on Hard and Lunatic with raised Stamina cost and enemy levels. In addition to the main story, there are also Paralogue stories that will release over time that are set outside the main narrative.
 * Training Tower– A tower with ten strata of increasingly strong enemies that awards more EXP than regular maps. This is also where players can obtain Shards and Crystals for EXP that can be distributed and Badges and Great Badges that are used to promote characters to higher Star ratings.
 * Special Maps – Players challenge a special team lead by a specific Fire Emblem character. Players must defeat the enemy team without losing a single unit on their team. Upon completion for the first time, the player recruits them into their army. The tier of the recruited Hero depends on the difficulty of their map. Other Maps (such as Launch Celebration map) are also occasionally available.
 * Arena Duel – A weekly battle for points where players challenge the teams of other players. The player's rank at the end of the week earns them Hero Feathers.
 * Voting Gauntlet - Every so often, eight Fire Emblem characters are selected to participate in a tournament based on popularity. Players select a unit to represent one of the eight character and they participate in battles to earn points for their candidate. The end results of the Gauntlet awards players with Feathers based on the represented unit's performance and final scores each round. Players earn bonus points based on if they utilize the hero they choose to represent (for example, players who represent Lucina earn bonus points for winning as her.)
 * Tempest Trials - A new mode where players play through the challenges with more than a team of 4 units. Tempest Trials consists of 1 Normal difficulty (2 Teams and 3 Battles), 2 Hard difficulties (3 Teams and 3 or 5 Battles), and 2 Lunatic difficulties (4 Teams and 5 or 7 Battles). This time, when the players clear a battle, the unit's HP will not recover back to full health (unless that unit took no damage). When the players reach to the final battle of this mode, they will fight Veronica and her team of randomized Heroes. However, permadeath is also added in this mode, and when the player's units is defeated in battle, those units will no longer battle again, until the players either win or lose the challenge. The end results of the Trials awards the players with Feathers based on the represented unit's performance and final scores each round.

Choose Your Legends Event
Prior to the launch of Fire Emblem Heroes, the game's official website went live with the Choose Your Legends event. From January 18 to January 31, 2017, visitors to the website could vote for one character per day. The top male and female characters to receive votes will receive recruitable "Choose Your Legends" variant designs with special outfits. The top ten male and female characters will also be featured in monthly calendar mobile phone wallpapers to be distributed from March 2017 to December 2017.

All playable characters, major villains, and select major NPCs from each entry in the franchise were eligible to receive votes. Characters that appeared in more than one game could also receive votes for each individual appearance.

On February 8, 2017, the top twenty male and female characters to receive votes were announced via Nintendo of America's Twitter account:

🇨🇴 Male:
 * 1) Ike (Path of Radiance)
 * 2) Roy (The Binding Blade)
 * 3) Hector (The Blazing Blade)
 * 4) Chrom (Awakening)
 * 5) Ike (Radiant Dawn)
 * 6) Marth (Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light/Shadow Dragon)
 * 7) Ephraim (The Sacred Stones)
 * 8) Robin (Awakening)
 * 9) Takumi (Fates)
 * 10) Leo (Fates)
 * 11) Henry (Awakening)
 * 12) Dorcas (The Blazing Blade)
 * 13) Donnel (Awakening)
 * 14) Lon'qu (Awakening)
 * 15) Gaius (Awakening)
 * 16) Niles (Fates)
 * 17) Marth (Mystery of the Emblem/New Mystery of the Emblem)
 * 18) Joshua (The Sacred Stones)
 * 19) Eliwood (The Blazing Blade)
 * 20) Owain (Awakening)

🇨🇴 Female:
 * 1) Lyn (The Blazing Blade)
 * 2) Lucina (Awakening)
 * 3) Tharja (Awakening)
 * 4) Camilla (Fates)
 * 5) Corrin (Fates)
 * 6) Eirika (The Sacred Stones)
 * 7) Cordelia (Awakening)
 * 8) Azura (Fates)
 * 9) Micaiah (Radiant Dawn)
 * 10) Nowi (Awakening)
 * 11) Robin (Awakening)
 * 12) Tiki (Awakening)
 * 13) Lute (The Sacred Stones)
 * 14) Felicia (Fates)
 * 15) Elise (Fates)
 * 16) Mia (Radiant Dawn)
 * 17) Anna (Awakening)
 * 18) Nephenee (Path of Radiance)
 * 19) Nino (The Blazing Blade)
 * 20) Sakura (Fates)

Characters
Fire Emblem Heroes includes a large roster of characters from across the full history of the franchise, along with some original characters. There are currently 130 playable units.
 * See main article: List of characters in Fire Emblem Heroes

Chapters

 * See main article: List of chapters in Fire Emblem Heroes

Voice cast

 * See main article: List of Voice Actors in Fire Emblem Heroes

Artists

 * See main article: List of Artists in Fire Emblem Heroes

Music

 * See main article: List of Music in Fire Emblem Heroes