Since its launch, Fire Emblem Heroes has quite a lot of old content that were either only ever introduced in older versions of the game or were altered later on in the game's life.
open/close all folders
Summons and Hero Banners
- 1* and 2* heroes were common for players to be gifted, with Hero Battles being the main source. However, a few months later after launch, all rewarded heroes are now 3* and above.
- The banner for the first Bound Hero Battle doesn't have either of the Bound Heroesnote as focus units. Bound Hero Battle banners since then would typically include the Bound Heroes in addition to a third hero who has a connection to the Bound Heroes.
- In 2018, a good number of non-fallen/CYL regular banners had at least one new variant of a character already in the game. The Adrift banner was especially notable for having almost all but onenote be variants of characters that were already in the game at the time. The only glaring exceptions that year are two banner based on Genealogy of the Holy War, as they mostly consist of then-new additions to the game. What makes these heroes from the 2018 regular banners odd is that most either lack a Secret Art aside from a unique weapon, just simply don't have a unique asset gimmick like how the Ascended, Rearmed, and Attuned ones have many years later, or both. All banners from 2019 onward do not include such heroes anymore, and since 2021, Ascended, Rearmed, and Attuned variants of existing heroes seem to fill that niche of being included alongside then-completely new additions.
- 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 have been no new non-seasonal Duo Heroes since.
- Legendary Female Fallen 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.
- Speaking of Legendary Heroes, several Legendary Hero Banners had Seasonal Variants mixed into the summoning. However, as Legendary and Mythic Heroes started populating the summoning pool, such Seasonals have been axed out and instead being featured in Double Special Heroes Banners, and the only non-Legendary/Mythic heroes are generally 2-3 5 star exclusive heroes from most recent chapters.
- Starting with Book III almost every Heroes original character is a Mythic Hero, or, starting from Book VI, a Rearmed Hero. This makes the Book II OCs 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 Big Bad 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 OCs to not follow this are Eitri, who was released as a Legendary Hero instead, Letizia, who is just a regular Hero, and Nifl, Múspell and Ymir, who were also released as regular Heroes even though they are considered gods of their realm and therefore were candidates for Mythic Heroes.
- Ganglöt and Rearmed Ophelia are the third and fourth Rearmed Hero to be released, respectively, and are so far the only ones that do not have a Secret Art.
- Compared to later Fallen Hero banners, the first one had none of them receiving any Secret Arts, while also having one of the Fallen Heroes released at the time be a Legendary Hero instead with Female Robin, as well as being released in February whereas the latter Fallen Heroes banners are released in May.
- The early designs of Ascended Heroes suggested the intent was to be Mechanically Unusual Fighter like characters, at least in relation to previously existing versions. Their designs also suggested they were closer to Mid-Season Upgrade forms for the character, taking place later in the story of the character. Ascended Fjorm, Laegjarn, Joshua, and Idunn all fit this original theme, but after those four, every Ascended Hero is closer to a pseudo-Legendary Hero instead, with them being instead used to include unique forms of characters, such as Three Hopes versions of Three Houses characters.
Leveling, Abilities and Hero Equipment
- Prior to an update, stamina was required to equip skills on heroes. Also prior to an update, the stamina Cap was 50 before it was changed to 99.
- In order to ascend a hero up to the next rarity level, in addition to the required amount of Hero Feathers and Charms/Badges, they initially had to be at least Lv. 20, resulting in many players burning through their crystals just to get a specific skill from a lower rarity unit. This was changed in Book III.
- Some of the units that have been available since launch have rather bizarre kits that don't make sense, like Regular Hana with Obstruct or Regular Oboro with Threaten Resistance.
- Initially, Staff units only had one passive skill by default, with the tier 3 skills only being available at 5 stars. Starting with Nanna in 2018, any new Staff units added to the game come with two passive skills, with a tier 3 skill available at 4 stars.
- Many weapons released before 2.0.0 did not have unique effects or gain more powerful ones like the ones released afterwards, but have access to them through refinements. The only exceptions to this are the Poison Dagger+ and Kitty Paddle+, where they did not gain the Smoke-like debuff effect, as well as the Might increases like other daggers gain, due to these two weapons not having access to any refinements at all.
- 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 Ephraim can gain his Legendary variant's Flame Siegmund.
- 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 Swaps 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 inheritable 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.
- Early on, Inheritable Weapons were given lower Mt if they had a special effect, with Silver weapons being on par with most other weapons to make up for the lack of an effect. For example: Killer weapons used to have lower Mt to balance out them charging specials faster. 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.
- Regular Berkut, Clarisse, and Legion, all Grand Hero Battle units, all came with inheritable weapons that all had their names, i.e. Berkut's Lance+ for Regular Berkut, Clarisse's Bow+ for Clarisse, and Legion's Axe+ for Legion. While these weapons are named after certain characters, there's nothing stopping the player from inheriting said weapons onto other characters that can equip said weapons. As the game went on, many older units received unique weapons that are usually named after themselves, like Camilla's Axe or Hinoka's Spear, making the aforementioned three units stand out in that regard, at least until they also received their own unique weapons.
- Distant Counter weapons were originally designed to have no other effects to compensate for the ability to counterattack 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 it conditionally. For example, Dorcas' Stout Tomahawk was just a plain Distant Counter axe, while the later released Osian has the Vouge, which unrefined has Distant Counter if at least 50% HP 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 Legendary Heroes simply had the same weapons as other alts released, such as Legendary Female Robin having Fallen Male Robin's Expiration, Legendary Ike having the same Ragnell as regular Ike, and Legendary Ryoma having the same Raijinto as his launch self. Legendary Ephraim was the sole exception for this, but eventually all Legendary Heroes were given unique weapons.
- 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 her to gain +1 special buildup per attack if she 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 she is within 2 spaces of an ally.
- 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 Posture. 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, Catch, Ideal and Finish 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.
- Linus joined the game as a Grand Hero Battle unit wielding Basilikos, which is a weapon that already belonged to another hero, Raven. Since the weapon is the same, he can also get it refined like Raven can. No other Grand Hero Battle unit since has done this, as they either come with inheritable weapons or their own exclusive weapon instead.
- From update 5.2.0 to 6.0.0, Legendary Hero Remixes often have Legendary Heroes receive their weapon refines after their updated Secret Art and new skill, whereas Legendary Hero Remixes from 6.1.0 onwards have their refines and updated skills be released at the same time. This disparity later caused an issue with Regular Fjorm's refined Leiptr in update 5.7.0 not synergizing with her Atk/Def Unity she received in update 5.2.0, later receiving Mirror Stance 3 in update 5.8.0 as well to compensate for the error.
Maps and Gameplay Modes
- 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. - Many of the monthly quests early on in the game's life required all of them to be completed before the next difficulty line would unlock, which also did not count the previous ones which fitted the matching quest beforehand. Some quests also required using a specific unit, some from the matching banner at the time, which required summoning them from the gacha in the first place to be able to complete it, and with some of them being used in a specific story chapter as well. These quests were all but completely phased out in May 2017—quest difficulty still lives on in the occasional set of Coliseum quests.
- Grand Hero Battles released just after launch only had Normal and Hard difficulties—until Ursula's debut, which introduced Lunatic difficulty to Grand Hero Battles, and phased Normal out. Grand Hero Battles up until and including Camus' (but excluding Narcian's) also had their own focus banners with units who can counter a lot of the enemies within the respective maps.
- Michalis's Grand Hero Battle map has Pegasus Knights as his Mooks instead of Wyvern Riders, which weren't introduced until Version 2.0.0.
- In the Training Tower, Tempest Trials and sometimes in Hero Battles, enemy heroes will use weapons they had at their release and not update their loadout like they do in Rival Domains, Forging Bonds, and Hall of Forms. For example, Clair gained her Rhomphaia in May 2018, but she is still seen with a Silver Lance+ in Training Tower and Tempest Trials, and Regular Navarre gained his Scarlet Sword in December 2018, but is still seen with the Killing/Slaying Edge+ in his Grand Hero Battle.
- There were some elements from the Story Maps that were either previously recurring elements, were added much later, or were a one-time thing.
- 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 Demoted to Extra 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. As the paralogues are noncanon, this didn't affect their involvement in the main story.
- The Xenologue maps are an interesting case of this, as in the first three books, there would always be a new one introduced at least once. While these maps remained, the game stopped introducing new ones as of Book IV.
- Book I is currently the only book to have Intermission chapters, and these chapters mainly exist to unlock certain mechanics; those being Sacred Seals and Weapon Refinery. All other books that followed don't have any of this. It is also the only one with a Prologue chapter, which can only be played in Normal difficulty.
- Book I Chapter 9 "Heroes Invade", which was the last chapter included on the game's launch, features exclusively Grand Hero Battle bosses as the assisting heroes alongside Veronica and Bruno, who were the main antagonists of Book I. For climax chapters in later books, they would just be treated as a banner like every other chapter.
- Books I and II did not have proper ending cutscenes that can be watched on YouTube, an element that became a mainstay since Book III.
- The "contracts" were an Excuse Plot 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 Veronica's role as an antagonist started diminishing (even helping out the Order of Heroes on multiple occasions) and other eviler villains started taking the spotlight. In Book III, the role of "contracts" had a mention by Reyson in the third chapter, but it dropped out entirely otherwise. Instead, characters you fight just say unrelated lines.
- The Blessed Gardens, which was introduced in Book II, serves as a way for players to bring units with the appropriate blessing to blessing-specific maps, and use old paralogue maps as a basis for all of these maps. It would get updated every Sunday to add more maps, and even had a Squad Assault-styled mode (Called Blessed Grounds), which also required units with the appropriate blessing. As of 2019, the mode stopped getting new updates, and, as a result, caused it to grow dated overtime due to new paralogue maps having been released since then.
- Some of the Paralogues were similar to the regular chapters, focusing on new non-seasonal characters, with only about half of the paralogues being seasonal. Starting with Book III, the paralogues became exclusively seasonal (with exception of Brave Heroes, which was truly the last non-seasonal paralogue).
- Speaking of Brave heroes, initially the chapters that focused on them were paralogues. Starting with Book IV, the chapters focusing on Brave heroes are regular chapters (and usually they are Wham Episodes).
- 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 Trial 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 Trial-featured banner, as the Paralogue that was bundled with it was completely different.
- Most later paralogues had a standard format- three of the banner's heroes in the first part and the other two (usually including the duo unit) in the second part, with all five coming together in the third part. Earlier paralogues, however, had less of a standard format- for example, Greil only appears in the third part of the "Greil's Beloved" paralogue.
- 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: Regular and Halloween 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 three are the only units that aren't Harmonized Heroes that do this.
- The first two Chosen Your Legends poll treated the results a bit differently. Different game versions of the same character would have different placements on the final banner (resulting in both Path of Radiance Ike and Radiant Dawn Ike having different placements in the top 5 for the first poll). Starting with the third poll, multiple versions of the same character would be compiled together, with the differing votes instead choosing which version would be used if they won.
Art and Battle Animation
- 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 became 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.
- In battle animations, units used to flinch even if they took no damage upon being attacked. It also took a while before the game had a "no damage" sound.
- Light magic wasn't represented at launch, with the magic being introduced with Micaiah and Oliver in Book II 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, which 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.
- 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 Lukas with Arthur, which were added about two months apart. Today the art style is much more consistent, with some characters having the same artist for their alts.
- 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 or attacking art, with every hero released from the middle of Book III onwards having a unique ready and sometimes idle animation.
