Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Monthly pass to push Fire Emblem Heroes dangerously into pay-to-win territory

By

Fire Emblem Heroes will launch a monthly subscription service named the Feh Pass, a move that has already drawn criticism from the Nintendo mobile game’s community.

Sensor Tower recently revealed that Fire Emblem Heroes has earned $656 million for Nintendo, out of the company’s $1 billion in total revenue from its mobile games. The strategy RPG takes advantage of the gacha system, in which players spend items that may be earned within the game or purchased with real-world money to randomly acquire characters.

Recommended Videos

In celebration of the game’s anniversary, developer Intelligent Systems revealed special Valentine’s Day characters, the start of a fan vote to determine the next major addition, and a revised gacha rarity system that benefits players.

Fire Emblem Heroes - Feh Channel (Feb. 1, 2020)

However, the announcement video also revealed the Feh Pass, a monthly subscription that will launch on February 5 after the Fire Emblem Heroes‘ version 4.2 update. For $9.50 per month, subscribers will be able to enjoy five benefits.

Related

The main benefit is exclusive access to Resplendent Heroes, two of which will be distributed per month. These are characters with new visuals and voices, plus a +2 boost to all stats. The first two Resplendent Heroes are Lyn: Lady of the Plains, who will be distributed starting February 5, and Cordelia: Knight Paragon, who will be distributed starting February 24.

Feh Pass subscribers will also gain the option to take special quests, through which players may acquire valuable in-game items, as well as expanded summoner support that will enable bonds with three heroes, instead of just one. A subscription also activates the Re-Act perk, which allows players to return to the start of their previous turn if their heroes have not yet acted, or the start of the current turn if a hero has already acted, as many times as they want. Lastly, the Feh Pass adds the Auto-Start option, which allows players to automatically repeat a chosen map until their stamina runs out.

The feedback from the Fire Emblem Heroes community on Reddit, however, has mostly been negative, particularly against the Resplendent Heroes. The gacha game has previously only relied on the randomness factor in acquiring powerful characters, regardless of whether players spend real-world money or not. However, the Feh Pass limits access to the upgraded heroes to subscribers, which will push Fire Emblem Heroes into pay-to-win territory.

It remains to be seen if Intelligent Systems will listen to the negative feedback against the Feh Pass.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Aaron Mamiit
Aaron Mamiit
Contributor
Aaron received a NES and a copy of Super Mario Bros. for Christmas when he was 4 years old, and he has been fascinated with…
Nintendo’s mobile games are more influential than you might think
Alear and Marth open a door in Fire Emblem Engage.

Nintendo’s mobile games don’t get enough credit. While Nintendo had some undeniable hits like Pokémon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes, many consider the rest of its mobile efforts fairly underwhelming and even somewhat disappointing for a video game company of Nintendo’s stature. While nothing ever quite reached the high bar Pokémon Go set in 2016, Nintendo’s mobile games are a bit more influential than they get credit for.
Over the past few years, games like Pokémon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have built upon their mobile counterparts. Then, during the September 13 Nintendo Direct, Fire Emblem Engage’s announcement and main gimmick cemented that Nintendo isn’t just viewing mobile games as a mostly failed side experiment. While they might not be the most successful games out there, their DNA is creeping into the Nintendo Switch’s bestselling titles.
Mediocre mobile returns
Nintendo’s mobile gaming efforts kicked off in the mid-2010s. Niantic created the AR game Pokemon Go, which quickly became a smashing success in 2016. In the six years since, the game has generated around 678 million installs and $6 billion in player spending, according to data from Sensor Tower.
While working with Niantic proved fruitful for The Pokemon Company, Nintendo partnered with DeNA for most of its initial mobile games. Unfortunately, none of these quite reached the heights analysts and Nintendo expected. Super Mario Run was a smash hit at launch but failed to sustain much interest and consistent revenue, so it’s considered a disappointment by Nintendo.
Meanwhile, other games like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Mario Kart Tour, Dr. Mario World, and Dragalia Lost launched, and while they’ve still made lots of money for Nintendo, most haven't matched the success of the most popular mobile titles. The biggest exception to this is Fire Emblem Heroes, a gacha game where players can summon classic Fire Emblem characters. It’s had over $1 billion in player spending alone as of June 2022 and is Nintendo’s “flagship title on the [mobile} platform,” according to Sensor Tower.
More recently, Nintendo tried to recapture the success of Pokemon Go with Niantic’s Pikmin Bloom, although that game has reportedly disappointed as well. Overall, it’s understandable why some people are surprised to see only a couple of surefire mobile hits from a company with the pedigree of Nintendo and consider it a side venture that never realized its full potential. If you look closely at the console games in these series that Nintendo put out since, though, it isn’t ignoring everything learned while making mobile games.
Mobile's monumental impact
Nintendo has the masterful ability to find the strongest elements of an idea, draw those out, and then expand upon them to create something uniquely memorable. We’ve seen it do this time and time again with subsequent entries of its flagship series, but it’s a mindset it has applied to its mobile games upon closer inspection.
As far back as 2018, Pokemon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee recognized the charm of not needing to battle a Pokemon to capture it, and incorporated that into a traditional RPG experience. More recently, items and mechanics like gardening and cooking from Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp made their way into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was able to revive its live service offerings by repurposing the best tracks and assets from Mario Kart Tour.
Fire Emblem Engage – Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch
The legacy of Nintendo’s mobile games could also be felt in the September 13 Nintendo Direct. The showcase’s first announcement was Fire Emblem Engage, which is turn-based strategy game where the main gimmick is being able to summon classic Fire Emblem characters with a ring. While it doesn’t look like Fire Emblem Engage goes full gacha, it’s clear that Nintendo recognized how people liked collecting and using classic Fire Emblem characters in a new adventure, so the developers drew and expanded upon that idea for Fire Emblem Engage.
Before the announcement of Pikmin 4, Shigeru Miyamoto also took a lot of time to highlight Pikmin Bloom. While we don’t know much about Pikmin 4’s gameplay, Nintendo could find some aspects of that game’s exploratory experience, weekly challenges, or something I’m not even thinking of to freshen up the next mainline game. The same could even happen with Super Mario Run the next time Nintendo decides to make a 2D Mario game.
While watching Fire Emblem Engage’s reveal during the latest Nintendo Direct, it became clear that Nintendo’s mobile games have quietly become influential forces in the company's console games. Nintendo has slowly plucked the best ideas out of them and brought them into Switch games without extra monetization. While the future is cloudy for Nintendo's seemingly stalled mobile push, I hope the company can still find a place for its games on mobile, using the platform as a space to experiment with its beloved series.

Read more
Fire Emblem Engage is coming in January and bringing back Marth
Marth glowing blue.

Nintendo has announced a new entry into the ever-expanding Fire Emblem series during today's Nintendo Direct: Fire Emblem Engage. It's set to release on January 20, 2023, and it's bringing back iconic heroes from the franchise, like Marth as summons.

https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/1569689174109995008

Read more
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes: All document locations
A knight smashes enemies in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Houses.

In between hacking and slashing your way through wave upon wave of enemies in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, there's no shortage of things to do back at your base. Most of the time, you'll be spending this downtime interacting with the other members of your chosen house, upgrading your facilities, or generally preparing for your next mission. While all of these are important, there are some optional tasks that you can do that may not give you a material reward but certainly help you better understand the world of Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes.

Documents are a special collectible that is unique depending on which house you pick: Black Eagles, Blue Lions, or Golden Deer. There's a set of three or four per house, and each of them gives you a deeper look into the lore of the game. For anyone who fell in love with the world and characters back in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, these documents will certainly be an interesting read. First, you need to find them, though, so here's the location for each one in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes.

Read more