History EarlyInstallmentWeirdness / FireEmblemHeroes

** Alfonse, Sharena, and Zenith's Anna used to have a prominent role in all paralogues up to Book III. However, starting with Book IV, they were all DemotedToExtra in these paralogues, with the final time the trio had a major role in them together was in Paralogue 41. Alfonse and Sharena last appeared in Paralogue 56, and Anna last appeared in Paralogue 90 respectively. As the paralogues are noncanon, this didn't affect their involvement in the main story.

** Alfonse, Sharena, and Zenith's Anna used to have a prominent role in all paralogues up to Book III. However, starting with Book IV, they were all DemotedToExtra in these paralogues, with the final time the trio had a major role in them together was in Paralogue 41. Alfonse and Sharena last appeared in Paralogue 56, and Anna last appeared Paralogue 90 respectively. As the paralogues are noncanon, this didn't affect their involvement in the main story.

** Alfonse, Sharena, and Zenith's Anna used to have a prominent role in all paralogues up to Book III. However, starting with Book IV, they were all DemotedToExtra in these paralogues, with the final time the trio had a major role in them together was in Paralogue 41. While Alfonse and Zenith Anna made one more appearance in Paralogue 56 (only because Alfonse's a unit featured in that banner) and Paralogue 90 respectively, Sharena hasn't appeared in a paralogue since 2020. As the paralogues are noncanon, this didn't affect their involvement in the main story.

** Alfonse, Sharena, and Zenith's Anna used to have a prominent role in all paralogues up to Book III. However, starting with Book IV, they were all DemotedToExtra in these paralogues, with the final time the trio had a major role in them together was in Paralogue 41, while Alfonse had made one more appearance in Paralogue 56 (and that's only because he's a unit featured in that banner). As the paralogues are noncanon, this didn't affect their involvement in the main story.

* Light magic wasn't represented at launched, with the magic being introduced with Micaiah and Oliver in Book 2 as blue magic. As a result, it led to oddities like Lucius wielding staves when he started as a light magic-wielding Monk, and the light tomes Naga and Divine Naga classified as Green Tomes when they were introduced. It also means that the Naga tomes is weak against Loptous, a Red tome, even though Naga was strong against Loptous in ''Genealogy of the Holy War''. Legendary Julia remedies this as she is a Blue Mage, making her a hard counter against Julius and his Loptous, like in the original game.

* The light tomes Naga and Divine Naga were classified as Green Tomes when they were introduced, since Light magic wasn't in the game yet. When regular Light magic was added to the game as Blue Tomes, the Naga tomes stood out as the only Light tomes that are Green instead of Blue. This results in the Naga tomes being weak against Loptous, a Red tome, even though Naga was strong against Loptous in ''Genealogy of the Holy War''. Legendary Julia remedies this as she is a Blue Mage, making her a hard counter against Julius and his Loptous, like in the original game.

* Some of the units that have been available since launch have rather bizarre kits that don't make sense, like [[GlassCannon Regular Hana]] with Obstruct or [[BladeOnAStick Regular Oboro]] with Threaten Resistance.

* Compared to latter released FallenHero banners, the first one had none of them receiving any {{Secret Art}}s, while also having one of the Fallen Heroes released at the time be a Legendary Hero instead with Female Robin.

* The early designs of Ascended Heroes suggested the intent was to be MechanicallyUnusualFighter like characters, at least in relation to previously existing versions. Their designs also suggested they were closer to MidSeasonUpgrade forms for the character, taking place later in the story of the character. Ascended Fjorm, Laegjarn, and Joshua all fit this original concept, but after those three, every Ascended Hero is closer to a pseudo-Legendary Hero instead.

* Starting with Book III almost every ''Heroes'' original character is a Mythic Hero. This makes the Book II [=OC=]s look like an odd bunch because they are Legendaries at best and unblessed at worst. The latter category notably includes all the Múspell characters whom are available through the general summoning pool at all times... including Regular Surtr, whom as the BigBad of Book II, with a powerful unique weapon ''and'' C-skill, would have been a shoe-in for Mythic status had he been introduced in Book III onward. As of writing, the only post-Book II playable [=OC=] to not follow this is Eitri, who was released as a Legendary Hero instead, Letizia, who is just a regular Hero, and Nifl, M&uacutelspell and Ymir, who are also released as regular Heroes even though they are considered gods of their realm and therefore were candidates for Mythic Heroes.

* Starting with Book III almost every ''Heroes'' original character is a Mythic Hero. This makes the Book II [=OC=]s look like an odd bunch because they are Legendaries at best and unblessed at worst. The latter category notably includes all the Múspell characters whom are available through the general summoning pool at all times... including Regular Surtr, whom as the BigBad of Book II, with a powerful unique weapon ''and'' C-skill, would have been a shoe-in for Mythic status had he been introduced in Book III onward. As of writing, the only post-Book II playable [=OC=] to not follow this is Eitri, who was released as a Legendary Hero instead.
* Some game modes only allow the player to use units that hail from a specific game. Harmonized Heroes are supposed to help with this, as they count for two games. There are two units that aren't Harmonized Heroes that do this as well, however: Naga, who hails from ''(New) Mystery of the Emblem'' and ''Awakening'', and Legendary Leif, who hails from ''Genealogy of the Holy War'' and ''Thracia 776''. These two are the only units that aren't Harmonized Heroes that do this.
* Staff units early in the game's life cannot inherit certain A skills that either increase Atk, Spd, or two stats during combat, such as Death Blow and Steady Stance. However, new A skills released later on allowed them to be able to inherit and still increase Atk, Spd, or two stats during combat, such as the Push and Ideal skills, making those early skills odd for those Staff units unable to inherit. Even more odd, starting with the release of Brave Camilla and her Sanngriðr, most Staff units with exclusive weapons are able to increase their Atk and one other stat during combat, especially if they initiate combat, where they cannot even inherit skills such as Swift Sparrow 2/3.

** The "contracts" were an ExcusePlot that tried to justify heroes from other worlds attacking. While it made perfect sense in Book I as it was Veronica's doing, it stopped making sense during Book II once [[EvilerThanThou Veronica's role as an antagonist started diminishing and other eviler villains started taking the spotlight]]. In Book III, the role of "contracts" had a few idle mentions, but it dropped out entirely otherwise, with featured characters just spouting different lines instead of being contracted to fight.

** Alfonse, Sharena, and Zenith's Anna used to have a prominent role in all paralogues up to Book III. However, starting with Book IV, they were all DemotedToExtra in these paralogues, with the final time the trio had a major role in them together was in Paralogue 41, while Alfonse had made one more appearance in Paralogue 56. As the paralogues are noncanon, this didn't affect their involvement in the main story.

* Duo Heroes were first introduced within the final two months of Book III, and almost all of them released since then are seasonal-only. The only Duo Hero that doesn't quite fit the bill at all was Duo Ephraim & Lyon, who first appeared in a New Heroes Banner (and was the second released Duo Hero) albeit excluded from the General Summoning Pool before August 2022. There has been no new non-seasonal Duo Heroes since.

* The eight Heroes featured on the first ever focus banners were given special summoning movies (Marth, Young Tiki, Robin, Lucina, Camilla, Roy, Takumi, and Lyn) and were shown on the downloading screen alongside the Askr trio. As of the 2.5.0 update, they were replaced on the downloading screen, and as their focus banners are out of rotation, new players may wonder why only those characters got special animations, especially since they continued to play at any time any of them were summoned, even when units like Robin and Marth beame common pulls until eventually being disabled entirely. According to devs, they realized almost immediately the game's file size would become severely bloated almost immediately had they kept doing summoning movies for new hero banners.

* With Performing Arts Azura and Halloween Nowi being exceptions, all units in the Seasonal banners have inheritable weapons in the year of 2017, the most notable being Winter Chrom and Winter Lissa, who basically wielded {{Palette Swap}}s of the same weapon. Starting from Love Abounds in February 2018 onwards, at least one unit from Seasonal banners have an exclusive weapon, with the odd ones out being the Hostile Springs and Greil's Devoted banners in 2019, and all heroes that share the same weapon class and have inhertiable weapons in the same banner have different effects from each other, where for example Dancing Lachesis's Courtly Mask+ and Dancing Ethlyn's Courtly Mask+, both daggers, have different effects, and Summer Ogma's Trident+ and Summer Norne's Shellpoint Lance+, while having the same +5 Atk/Def during combat if the user is within 3 spaces of an ally, has the Trident+ give +6 Atk to the user if there is an ally within 3 spaces of the user at the start of the user's turn, while Shellpoint Lance+ gives +6 Def instead.

* Duo Heroes were first introduced within the final two months of Book III, and almost all of them released since then are seasonal-only. The only Duo Hero that doesn't quite fit the bill at all was Duo Ephraim and Lyon, who first appeared in a New Heroes Banner albeit excluded from the General Summoning Pool. There has been no new non-seasonal Duo Heroes since.

* Early character artwork was very diverse and varied a lot from unit to unit, to the point that it could fool you into thinking you were playing two different games. Compare [[https://www.fireemblemwod.com/gallery/albums/heroes/full_wbp/Luka_Face.webp Lukas]] with [[https://www.fireemblemwod.com/gallery/albums/heroes/full_wbp/Harold_Face.webp Arthur]], which were added about two months apart. Today the art style is much more consistent, with some characters having the same artist consistently being the same artist for their alts.

* Early character artwork was very diverse and varied a lot from unit to unit, to the point that it could fool you into thinking you were playing two different games. Compare [[https://www.fireemblemwod.com/gallery/albums/heroes/full_wbp/Luka_Face.webp Lukas]] with [[https://www.fireemblemwod.com/gallery/albums/heroes/full_wbp/Harold_Face.webp Arthur]], which were added about two months apart. Today the art style is much more consistent, with some characters having the same artist consistently being the same artist for their alts.

* Early character artwork was very diverse and varied a lot from unit to unit, to the point that it could fool you into thinking you were playing two different games. Compare [[https://www.fireemblemwod.com/gallery/albums/heroes/full_wbp/Luka_Face.webp Lukas]] with [[https://www.fireemblemwod.com/gallery/albums/heroes/full_wbp/Harold_Face.webp Arthur]], which were added about two months apart. Today the art style is much more consistent.

* Early character artwork was very diverse and varied a lot from unit to unit, to the point that it could fool you into thinking you were playing two different games. Today the art style is much more consistent.

* Staff units early in the game's life cannot inherit certain A skills that either increase Atk, Spd, or two stats during combat, such as Death Blow and Steady Stance. However, new A skills released later on allowed them to be able to inherit and still increase Atk, Spd, or two stats during combat, such as the Push and Ideal skills, making those early skills odd for those Staff units unable to inherit. Even more odd, starting with the release of Brave Camilla and her Sanngriðr, most Staff units with exclusive weapons are able to increase their Atk and one other stat during combat, especially if they initiate combat, where they cannot even inherit skills such as Swift Sparrow 2/3.

* The eight Heroes featured on the first ever focus banners were given special summoning movies (Marth, Young Tiki, Robin, Lucina, Camilla, Roy, Takumi, and Lyn) and were shown on the downloading screen alongside the Askr trio. As of the 2.5.0 update, they were replaced on the downloading screen, and as their focus banners are out of rotation, new players may wonder why only those characters got special animations, especially since they continued to play at any time any of them were summoned, even when units like Robin and Marth beame common pulls until eventually being disabled entirely. According to devs, they realized almost immedeiately the game's file size would become severely bloated almost immediately had they kept doing summoning movies for new hero banners.

* Inheritable weapons used to be balanced around the use of the weapon. Silver weapons had the highest base might but no effects, Killer weapons had lower damage but helped get specials out sooner, Armor and Horse Slayer weapons were just below Silver weapons in power and did extra damage to the Slayer's intended target, and Brave weapons did the lowest amount of damage in exchange for doubling. Nowadays, many inheritable weapons are now on par with Silver weapons in damage, and still have special effects, while Killer and Slayer weapons were buffed to have higher damage values to make them compare. Even some Brave weapons now have higher damage values compared to the base amount.

* Certain story maps at launch, such as Chapter 7-3: Baffling Labyrinth and Chapter 6-5: Prince of Birthright, were part of the rotation for the Training Tower, but were later removed due to them being gimmicky, tedious, or frustrating to train in, especially before swapping unit positions before battle was added in a later update.
* The 8 Heroes featured on the first ever focus banners were given special summoning movies (Marth, Young Tiki, Robin, Lucina, Camilla, Roy, Takumi, and Lyn) and were shown on the downloading screen alongside the Askr trio. As of the 2.5.0 update, they were replaced on the downloading screen, and as their focus banners are out of rotation, new players may wonder why only those characters got special animations, especially since they continued to play at any time any of them were summoned, even when units like Robin and Marth beame common pulls until eventually being disabled entirely. According to devs, they realized almost immedeiately the game's file size would become severely bloated almost immediately had they kept doing summoning movies for new hero banners.

* Legendary Female Robin introduced Legendary Hero Battles, featuring the newly introduced Legendary Hero in question in an incredibly difficult map that yields some good rewards. However, the four Legendary Heroes that preceded her (Fjorm, Gunnthrá, Ike, and Ephraim) didn't have such maps, and even when they returned on other banners, they still have not had any, making them stand out. Additionally, it wasn't until every Legendary Hero afterwards (starting from Lyn and onwards) that the maps used special boss music, whereas Robin just had the generic boss music.

* Some heroes were allowed to evolve their weapons into other ones in Weapon Refinements, such as Regular Hector evolving his Armads into Berserk Armads wielded by his Valentine variant and Regular Eliwood evolving his Durandal into Blazing Durandal wielded by the Brave variant of his son Roy, but after Eldigan received an option to evolve his Mystletainn into Dark Mystletainn in 2.7.0 in August 2018, no other heroes since gained any option for evolving their weapons since then, even when later variants of heroes gained new exclusive weapons, such as Legendary Eirika's Storm Sieglinde not being available for her regular variant, even though her brother Ephiraim can gain his Legendary variant's Flame Siegmund.
* Before Book III, summoning banners didn't really follow any rules on what they would include with their events. Some would have a Tempest Trials while some would have a Grand Hero Battle (or sometimes, even both). Then come the Forging Bonds event, where random Story Chapters and Paralogue heroes would get Forging Bonds featured with them - but not every Story Chapter got bundled with one. Cue Book III, which started a formula where all Story Chapters with new units would come with four summonable units (and with the start of Book III Chapter 11, an extra 3-4 Star Hero) and a Grand Hero Battle, while the Paralogue chapters would have a Tempest Trials featured with them. There have been strange exceptions since, where for example Book IV Chapter 2 broke the rule a bit, as since Peony was featured on the banner, the 3-4 Star Hero, Tanya, was featured in the Forging Bonds instead. Also, the "Guardians of Peace" banner was only a Tempest Trials featured banner, as the Paralogue that was bundled with it was completely different.

* Distant Counter weapons were originally designed to have no other effects to compensate for the ability to counter attack without the need for the Distant Counter skill. Starting from Legendary Tiki onwards, weapons with Distant Counter built in started gaining new effects alongside it, or providing conditional Distant Counter. For example, Dorcas' Stout Tomahawk was just a plain Distant Counter axe, while the later released Osian has the Vogue, which has Distant Counter if at 50% HP or above at the start of combat, while also giving him quicker means of throwing out specials. As part of this change, all year one units with Distant Counter in their weapons were buffed from updates from May 2021 to July 2021 to now have additional effects, bringing them up to date with the new meta of weapon effects being more powerful.

* Several personal weapons which were released alongside their connected hero, instead of through an update, have their refine usually change effects on the weapon or update it to match with similar skills, such as Regular Ephraim's Siegmund going from Hone Atk 2 to Hone Atk 3. Starting from update 4.9.0 in September 2020, weapons often now will gain either new effects or add an extra condition to activate their base effects on top of their unique refine, such as Brave Celica's refined Royal Sword allowing the user to gain +1 special buildup per user's attack if the user either is within 2 spaces of an ally or initiates combat, whereas the unrefined version only gives +1 special buildup per user's attack if the user is within 2 spaces of an ally.
* Most of the heroes released outside of seasonal banners early in the game's life use the same pool of idle and ready animations, such as the two handed grip with the blade forward and sword aside and left palm out for Infantry Swords, with a few exceptions, such as Regular Takumi, Masked Marth, and Regular Celica. Starting from the middle of Book II, most heroes now have their ready animations be unique and most of them being based on their idle art, with every hero released from the middle of Book III onwards having a unique ready and sometimes idle animation.

* Staff unit early in the game's life cannot inherit certain A skills that either increase Atk, Spd, or two stats during combat, such as Death Blow and Steady Stance. However, new A skills released later on allowed Staff units to be able to inherit and still increase Atk, Spd, or two stats during combat, such as the Push and Ideal skills, making those early skills odd for those Staff units unable to inherit. Even more odd, starting with the release of Brave Camilla and her Sanngriðr, most Staff units with exclusive weapons are able to increase their Atk and one other stat during combat, especially if they initiate combat, where they cannot even inherit skills such as Swift Sparrow 2/3.