Fire Emblem Heroes - 1 hour hands-on impressions, new details

- each character has battle damage illustrations
- each character has multiple illustrations
- view all these pieces of art from any unit's status screen
- listen to character voices here as well
- option to turn off battle animations, character art cut-ins and voices
- all characters have a biography on their character traits and the series entry they are from
- Heroes' battles are 4-on-4 skirmishes
- battles only take a few minutes
- units have support skills when placed next to other units
- weapons triangle returns, but is simplified
- has a story, but it's not a major focus like it was in previous installments
- there are grey units that specialize in ranged attacks and do big damage to flying units
- drag and drop units where you want them to go
- you can still do all this via menu selections as well
- you play as a Summoner that can call on other Fire Emblem Heroes from throughout the series
- you can get these from winning battles/completing missions or by using real money to purchase them
- more ways to get orbs outside of using real money will be present as well
- you need 5 orbs to summon a Hero
- you also need to select a Focus, which is the pool of characters your orbs will bring in a Hero from
- you won't know who you're going to get when you use the orbs, just the Focus they come from
- this includes characters and their levels/abilities
- orb cost per character will drop if you summon multiple characters in the same session
- your chance of getting a higher ranked character will increase slightly as you get lower ranked ones
- low rank Heroes can eventually rank into 5 star Heroes if you put in a lot of work
- a unit can rank up at level 20, but ranking up resets them at level 1 for the new rank and you have to start over
- those characters will still have improved stats and skills when you start over at the new level
- features a stamina-based system, with early story missions requiring 2 stamina each for normal difficulty
- stamina expenditure will increase as you get deeper into the game
- hard and lunatic require more stamina per mission
- you can spend an orb to continue if you get a game over
- you have the option to spend one orb at any time to heal/revive your units
- the first limited-time event focuses on Lissa
- special skills require multiple turns to charge and are used automatically the next time the character attacks
- auto battle option
- when in the Arena, the stamina mechanic is replaced by Dueling Swords
- you get 3 Dueling Swords per day, and one is required to fight in the Arena
- you can use orbs to refill your Dueling Swords
- you can also use orbs to upgrade your Castle, where the first upgrade costs 1 orb
- this first upgrade will increase all experience gained by 20%
- you can change the look of your castle
- Nintendo's treehouse team localized the title