#legendary Alear | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gascon-en-exil · 29 days ago

Text

Fire Emblem Heroes: 2024 Year in Review

Now that we've gotten the trailer for the year's last new unit, I wanted to take some time to look back on the additions to FEH's roster in 2024. Rather than focusing on the ever-increasing deluge of powercreep, I'll instead be tallying up how each of the contributing games performed in Heroes appearances this year and using that information to make observations on trends in the mobile game. I keep spreadsheets of this stuff, because reasons.

Note that I'll be counting units as FEH itself does - so the backpack characters in Duo/Harmonic units aren't factored in, and characters who appear in multiple titles will be grouped with whichever game they're listed under in the catalogue.

The Year of Engage

Even in spite of its disappointing performance in the year's Choose Your Legends, FE17 took the prize for the game with the most number of new additions to the roster in 2024, at 27. This isn't the highest end-of-year total ever - Houses hit 31 in 2021, and Fates (48), Awakening (36), and even Archanea (30) surpassed that in FEH's launch year - but that's nonetheless an impressive showing. This number encompassed two New Heroes banners, appearances on multiple seasonal banners as well as the Fallen banner, a Legendary (m!Alear), and 2024's sole non-FEH Mythic (Lumera).

Now that all the major non-DLC characters are in Heroes, I expect that Engage will be quietly shuffled down to getting just one New Heroes banner per year from here on out. There are still some big ticket options left to add - base Yunaka and Goldmary, most notably - but IS isn't going to want to race through those too quickly especially with no new games currently on the horizon. Engage is doing very well with regular seasonal appearances though, and with the DLC taken into account it could easily supply literal years' worth of Fallen units, so unlike just about every other mainline game it's still got plenty of options. Most notably it appears to be slowly taking over Houses's previously solid dominance of the summer and winter banners.

This isn't even mentioning the Emblem units, which are counted for their respective games but nonetheless owe credit to Engage as the first ever game to introduce a distinct unit type. Emblems have saved the flagging prospects of the end-of-month 8% banners, providing an excuse for broken alts of already popular characters and filling in for the greatly-depleted mainline options for Legendary and Mythic units. The only new Legendaries this year were male Avatars - Alear, Corrin, and Shez - and as mentioned only one of 2024's Mythics didn't come from FEH itself, so you know they're getting to the bottom of the barrel. Also, Emblems Celica and Sigurd just so happen to be the sole additions from their respective games this year...which is disappointing, but not terribly surprising. At the rate IS is going it'll be late 2026 before they even have to consider adding DLC Emblems or "backpack" Emblems (ex. Ephraim), much less having to come up with anything genuinely original. Although they've got plenty of that going on as well...

Gacha Waifus Galore (Also Men Sometimes)

Second place this year went to Heroes's own characters, adding 24 new units. FEH has been gradually subsidizing more and more of its roster with its OCs, with each year adding more reasons to showcase them whenever possible. Each main story book now brings with it multiple new characters that predominantly take up Mythic slots, there are the Tempest Trial stories bringing in a new type of premium alt every year, around half of the year's New Heroes banners get supplemented with an OC, and certain seasonal themes like New Year's and summer are all but guaranteed to feature Heroes units. FEH units actually had an even wider spread in 2024 than Engage, appearing in every month of the year except February.

Perhaps the most noteworthy new Heroes character this year was Eikþyrnir - arguably the closest we've ever gotten to a straightforward male fanservice character, even if he still pales in comparison to the likes of most FEH waifus like the notoriously censored-on-YouTube Mythic Loki also released this year. December brought further surprises on that score, with the bara deer guy getting a seasonal alt less than half a year after his initial release (a Tempest Trial reward, granted, but it's still something) and, even more shockingly, the first ever male new book character unless you count Alfonse for Book I. Rune may be a prepubescent boy obviously voiced by a woman, but...baby steps, I guess. IS still sucks at male fanservice, just to be clear, but at least it's a tiny bit of variety.

Of course, as the mainline games' available rosters continue to dwindle and as IS continues to drag its feet on announcing any new games, they're naturally going to rely on FEH OCs more and more. The other games have a fixed number of fanservice options, but Heroes waifus are theoretically infinite in number.

The Old Titans, Neck and Neck

Tied at a distant third were Awakening and Three Houses/Hopes, at 13 new units apiece, with Fates just behind them at 12. Despite the similar totals, each of these three formerly overrepresented games came out of 2024 in a very different position:

With the addition of summer Vaike, FE13 is the first game in the series to have its entire playable roster available in FEH in some form. That naturally bodes ill for its New Heroes prospects, but between Vaike, Kellam, Noire, and assorted premium alts IS should still be able to squeeze out two or three more over the coming years. Of these three games Awakening is the one up for a reappearance the soonest, so I'd expect some real blood-from-a-stone shenanigans sometime in the first half of 2025. On an unrelated but quite ridiculous note, Chrom showed up as a Duo backpack twice this year, once for child f!Robin and once for ninja Lucina. The Awakening child banner was also notable as the first time that seasonal theme was given to a modern game, so anticipate more of those in the future.

Fates hit 150 units in 2024, solidifying its spot at the top of the FEH heap yet again. Its roster is by far the largest of these three games and is in a sense the largest of any mainline game (Radiant Dawn and New Mystery are bigger, but each of them shares a significant number of characters with another game), so it can field a fair number of new offerings even after all this time. Since FE14 is one of several games that typically alternates generations, look out for a Gen 2 banner in the middle of 2025 sporting Sophie and/or Mitama along with a premium alt and a random guy or two. Fates doesn't have much to worry about, all things considered.

Controversially, 2024 was Three Houses's worst year since its release. It also got 13 units when it debuted in 2019 - but bear in mind that those all came out within the last six months of that year, and that two of the units it got in 2024 were player-chosen. It's easy to understand why; after years of getting pushed hard in seasonals and multiple years of double New Heroes banners, Fódlan has very little left to give. In terms of base units it's just the unpopular half of the Golden Deer plus various non-student characters, and of those only Leonie, Manuela, and (if we care to count her) Houses Anna are female. Of course there will be premium units - I fully expect we'll get lazy Hopes alts of the house leaders at some point - and the occasional smattering of seasonal alts that haven't been done yet, but the pickings are getting increasingly slim. Also worth noting is that Houses last got a New Heroes banner in October, so it's possible that its next one may get bumped back to 2026. The scandal!

Tellius Got a Surprise Upset

In years past the Tellius games, which have substantial roster overlap between them, have alternated annual appearances. Not so in June of 2024, where we not only got a Radiant Dawn banner for the second year in a row but further got a book midpoint banner without a Heroes OC on it - but with two premium alts in Micaiah and Sothe, lest you think IS missed out on an opportunity to attract whales. Technically FE9 got only three new units this year, all of them on the Hoshidan festival seasonal in August. FE10 even poached Emblem Ike somehow!

All told, the Tellius games claimed 12 new units. Will Path of Radiance finally get a chance to shine again in 2025? Seeing as laguz characters are universally grouped in with Radiant Dawn, the game only has Calill left for female characters...along with a predictably large number of male characters most of which will be extremely lucky to ever see the light of day. FE10 has significantly more female options available (including Calill as well) even now, so how Tellius will be handled going forward seems like a tossup.

Archanea and the GBA Games Have Almost Played Out Their Hands

FE7 and FE8 came in just behind with 11, while FE6 trailed with 8 and Archanea collectively with 7. Again, it's the dearth of female units that impedes these titles the most, because those are the only ones that IS believes sells once all the plot-relevant male characters have been exhausted. Archanea has three spread across its two stories, while each of the GBA games went into 2024 with only a single female unit left. Binding Blade and Sacred Stones held theirs (Elen and Ismaire, respectively), but Blazing Blade turned Vaida into a Grand Hero Battle unit of all things presumably because she's too butch to be a target for whales.

At least the structure of future New Heroes banners for all these games is fairly clear: counterbalance the random male units almost no one cares about with Heroes OCs and premium alts, most of which can be busty waifus. Archanea will come up in the order by the summer, but it'll probably be a while before we see the GBA games again. At least Sacred Stones remained a seasonal darling even after blowing through its entire popular roster over successive summer banners, taking 2024's Valentine's banner and in general showing no signs of slowing down with relentlessly pushing alts for the same half dozen units over and over and over and...

IS Remembered that Thracia Exists!

It's a testament to how used to disappointment Jugdral fans are that I'm still satisfied by the setting's turnout in 2024. FE5 got its first New Heroes banner in nearly two years last January, which still delights me just because it means that IS hasn't completely forgotten about the game. Good thing too, because on account of being chronically neglected Thracia and to a lesser extent Genealogy are relatively well-positioned with new unit options. FE5 still has six unused female characters!

I fully expect not to see Thracia in 2025, but Genealogy is up for a New Heroes banner soon - probably Gen 1, given alternating patterns. Thus there's little chance of my underrated fave Diarmuid making an appearance next year, but one solid showing from FE4 would be enough for me. (Also a few seasonal units wouldn't kill them?)

So there you have it. Most games not named Thracia or Engage are running on fumes, but between the handful of remaining gaps in the roster and the ever-present Heroes OCs I have every confidence that IS will be able to soldier on through at least one more year without a new FE release. After that...I'd imagine things will start getting dicey.

#Fire Emblem #FEH #Fire Emblem Heroes

10 notes · View notes