A Completely Separate Side Story
Before Cindered Shadows was officially unveiled, there was speculation that the new story expansion would probably arrive in the form of a Paralogue battle like in past Fire Emblem games on the 3DS. However, that isn’t the case.
The good news is that you don’t need to have progressed through the story and reached a certain point to access the DLC, which is great for players who might have just started a fresh file on new game plus. Cindered Shadows is available as a side story separate from the main campaign itself, and you’ll essentially be starting fresh with set characters as listed above.
The somewhat bad news is that this also means you can’t carry over anything from your original save file. Though if we’re being honest, this isn’t really much of an issue, as Cindered Shadows is supposedly meant to be a little more challenging than the main story. It’s a good change, as the main game didn’t really start to get really tricky until the last few stages on the default difficulty.
