Nintendo’s Fire Emblem Heroes (Free) is, thus far, proving to be something of a Jagen. That is to say, it started off really strong but is quickly falling behind its peers as time goes on. Now, it’s not all that surprising that it’s happening in North America and Europe, as no social RPG has been able to go the distance in the top rankings of those regions. Japan, on the other hand, typically eats these kinds of games up, but if anything, Fire Emblem Heroes is falling off even faster in its home country. Nintendo doesn’t seem to be even close to giving up the fight, though. They’ve been distributing a steady stream of content since the game’s release, and the latest event just hit today.
Following up on last week’s Family Bonds event that brought in family members from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, this week’s Sibling Bonds event introduces more brothers and sisters to the character pool. This time, they’re drawn from four prior Fire Emblem games, only one of which was released outside of Japan. From the 16-bit Super Famicom release Genealogy of the Holy War, we’ve got the Lionheart Eldigan and his sister, Lachesis. From its follow-up, Thracia 776, Reinhardt and Olwen are now in the summoning pool. From the Game Boy Advance’s Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, Klein arrives to join his sister Clarine. Finally, from the Nintendo Wii release Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, we’ve got little sister Sanaki. Who is she a little sister to? That would be spoiling.
As with the last event, these new characters bring a new Paralogue chapter with them. There are three missions in total that you can play on three different difficulty levels for rewards. Some new missions have been added to the game connected with this new content, so there are a lot of goodies up for grabs. Though it’s not connected, don’t forget to also check out the Launch Celebration Special Maps. The newest one is available, giving you two battles each good for a few summoning orbs. You can pretty much do a 20-orb summon off of today’s content alone!
Reaching back to the past games is a good way for Nintendo to breathe some life into Fire Emblem Heroes from time to time, though they’re obviously somewhat hamstrung by the fact that the first six games never saw release outside of Japan. Whether you know the characters or not, however, having new content to play, new characters to collect, and new rewards to reap certainly helps the game stick around in the front of the minds of players. With a new 3DS installment on the horizon, I’m sure Fire Emblem Heroes is just getting started, too.
