This review contains spoilers
I will start this off by saying I was a very very big fan of the original Echoes. I remember when it was first announced(I was still in high school), it was one of those games I saved up money to get when it came out asap, and I played through the whole thing in a pretty fast timespan. I found certain maps really unpleasant and I didn’t even bother with the postgame due to burnout but for what it was I loved it. I replayed it during college a few years later, still mostly having fun but noticing the game’s flaws a little more, and then never gave it much thought after that. When I learned there was a gba fan demake made last year I was really interested but not sure when I’d give it a try.
I’m so glad I did, this game is incredible. This could actually be an official licensed FE game which is maybe the biggest praise you could give to a romhack of this sort. The adaptation of the 3DS graphics to spritework looks absolutely gorgeous, the remixes of the Echoes OST sound amazing, and the additional songs they added to pay homage to previous games was a very nice touch as well. It’s been almost 5 years since I last replayed Echoes so I can’t always tell what they changed from the original script unless it’s really explicit(I.E. the explicitly lgbt stuff which I found very sweet), but I thought a lot of the changes they made were very intelligent. A fair criticism you hear of the original script is how demeaning the later bits are to Celica’s character, where she’s basically made a damsel in distress and then briefly turned evil before Alm saves her. The rewrite they did here wasn’t perfect but did make Celica’s actions more organic. In terms of gameplay, I found the balancing mostly fair, though it does slog on a bit in a way I notice more now that I’m older. If I wanted to nitpick, I realize they would not be able to fully adapt the side dungeon exploration from the original, but having to go through entire maps to get to the Mila statue whenever you need to promote your units is a little annoying. In full fairness I think they recognized this because most of the later dungeons have the statues right next to where your units start off.
If you are a big Echoes fan like me, or somebody who found the original Echoes a little off putting but was otherwise intrigued, I’d definitely recommend this one. Really is a testament to the dedication of fans that something this good exists in the first place.
I’m so glad I did, this game is incredible. This could actually be an official licensed FE game which is maybe the biggest praise you could give to a romhack of this sort. The adaptation of the 3DS graphics to spritework looks absolutely gorgeous, the remixes of the Echoes OST sound amazing, and the additional songs they added to pay homage to previous games was a very nice touch as well. It’s been almost 5 years since I last replayed Echoes so I can’t always tell what they changed from the original script unless it’s really explicit(I.E. the explicitly lgbt stuff which I found very sweet), but I thought a lot of the changes they made were very intelligent. A fair criticism you hear of the original script is how demeaning the later bits are to Celica’s character, where she’s basically made a damsel in distress and then briefly turned evil before Alm saves her. The rewrite they did here wasn’t perfect but did make Celica’s actions more organic. In terms of gameplay, I found the balancing mostly fair, though it does slog on a bit in a way I notice more now that I’m older. If I wanted to nitpick, I realize they would not be able to fully adapt the side dungeon exploration from the original, but having to go through entire maps to get to the Mila statue whenever you need to promote your units is a little annoying. In full fairness I think they recognized this because most of the later dungeons have the statues right next to where your units start off.
If you are a big Echoes fan like me, or somebody who found the original Echoes a little off putting but was otherwise intrigued, I’d definitely recommend this one. Really is a testament to the dedication of fans that something this good exists in the first place.
Good! Liked all the writing changes, with the new supports and slight additions to Celica's being standouts. The new maps are a massive improvement from Gaidens/SoV, with the worst maps from the original game now a lot of fun.
The size of the cast can be an issue, with most maps allowing full deployment like the base games, but others forcing you to leave out 2-5 members of your army. This means that you'll inevitably have a few units not up to par with the rest. This isn't a major issue though, especially if you don't mind playing on casual mode.
The size of the cast can be an issue, with most maps allowing full deployment like the base games, but others forcing you to leave out 2-5 members of your army. This means that you'll inevitably have a few units not up to par with the rest. This isn't a major issue though, especially if you don't mind playing on casual mode.
Easily the most polished and technically impressive Fire Emblem hack currently to date. Depending on your outlook on what makes a game good, it might even be better than the original Echoes. Compared to the 3DS version, Sacred Echoes trades full voice work, higher resolution art, dungeon crawling (which may be a positive or negative, depending on how you like it), and many of the DLC features like pitchforks and the Fire Emblem Cipher units added in Echoes out of the game. In return, you have a redesigned version of Echoes in the GBA engine, with the classic GBA spritework, with a lot of custom animations to match the Echoes designs of a lot of classes. The dungeons are replaced with repeatable maps that contain the loot of the original dungeons, which tend to feel much better in my opinion. They're essentially grinding maps ala the Tower of Valni from Sacred Stones, but they contain Mila statues that you use to promote, just like in the original game, which tend to keep you on par with the enemies you face. Frankly the game is long but it also features casual mode if you don't want to be resetting when you miss a 95%. Which for some reason seems to happen a lot in this game with the changed RNG. Difficult is just fine as a normal difficulty here if you don't mind the game having a bit of bite back. The game is well balanced in general I'd say, though you're certainly expected to use the grinding maps to their purpose if you don't want to be relying on the same units for every combat. Where normal Echoes and Sacred Echoes majorly depart however, are in a few small aspects: normal Echoes very strictly adheres to Gaiden's map design, which is... unpleasant, to say the least. Large, sprawling, empty fields with no chokepoints, interesting set pieces, buildings, or much of anything... Sacred Echoes opts to do away with some of the original Gaiden map design of "being bad and boring" and decides to actually put things in its maps! Crazy! To this end, thieves are also added in as a class special to this game, with two units being given this class, one being a new unit on Alm's side, and Jesse on Celica's side being changed from a myrmidon to a thief. Another new unit was added on Celica's side, as Atlas was changed to an axe using class, new to the game and unique to him. In the place of him, where he is normally a villager, his brother Hyas has been added. The weapons system in Gaiden and Echoes has also been entirely changed, being more akin to the GBA games of having a 5 item inventory. You're forced to carry one generic, unbreakable weapon like the original, and you can equip an extra sub item like a ring or a shield. Then you can carry other weapons and items with you. The weapon triangle as it normally is is in place here, though your basic weapons have no affect on it. It's only when you upgrade to more specialized weapons that they start taking penalties or gaining boosts that it comes into play. In the place of the combat arts seen in Echoes normally, I find this to be a much more rewarding system and more in line with other Fire Emblem games as a whole. Magic still works like in Echoes - it costs HP to cast and doesn't take up any extra inventory slots but 1 to change or equip magic, but on enemy phase, you'll always just have whatever spell you have that can counter equipped. There's a small few changes and additions here and there that I think generally improve the experience. Overall, I really think your opinion on this vs Echoes will be which you value more: gameplay or presentation. Echoes is to date what I would call the Fire Emblem with the most production value behind it - it's absolutely divine how that game looks and sounds, I'd go as far as to call it one of the best looking 3DS games as a whole. Sacred Echoes doesn't have that, being a GBA game. While some of the original CGs and a few new ones are there, they're sadly compressed to fit the GBA's limitations. The music also took a hit, and while the composers for the remixed music had a heavy task to fit in the 3DS music into the GBA, they did their best and added where they could to make up for the lacking audio quality of the GBA.
Do you value your game having more enticing and entertaining gameplay? You might enjoy Sacred Echoes more than the original. Do you think the look of the game is more important than gameplay? Then I believe you'll find the original much more rewarding to play. Personally, I think the trimmed fat of this hack is more for me. There's less faffing about you have to do, it feels like. It can't be understated how technically impressive it is to make Echoes, improve the map design, and fit it all onto a GBA rom. The work of the team responsible can't be understated how much their work and effort paid off to make this happen. They have my utmost respect for being able to recreate the work of a professional development team and being able to spin off on it in a way that I prefer in many ways to the original product. I'd love to see this team back together and working on a fully original hack of their own, as they've definitely proven they have the coding and creative talents to do so.
Do you value your game having more enticing and entertaining gameplay? You might enjoy Sacred Echoes more than the original. Do you think the look of the game is more important than gameplay? Then I believe you'll find the original much more rewarding to play. Personally, I think the trimmed fat of this hack is more for me. There's less faffing about you have to do, it feels like. It can't be understated how technically impressive it is to make Echoes, improve the map design, and fit it all onto a GBA rom. The work of the team responsible can't be understated how much their work and effort paid off to make this happen. They have my utmost respect for being able to recreate the work of a professional development team and being able to spin off on it in a way that I prefer in many ways to the original product. I'd love to see this team back together and working on a fully original hack of their own, as they've definitely proven they have the coding and creative talents to do so.
first of all. i'm of the firm belief that you need to play OG echoes so you can truly appreciate this demake. i will spoil OG echoes in this review. i'll keep hush hush about some of the major story changes though
a good place to start would be some of the issues i had with OG echoes! here's how sacred echoes addresses them
- lack of supports: sacred echoes has supports coming out of its ass from a variety of writers :)! in a full playthrough i only got like a handful. luckily you can keep grinding for them in postgame, which is good because there are a few that are cross-army and can only even be accessed postgame. some characters have paired endings if you get them to max support, even! and not just the basic ones like clive/mathilda and mae/boey. even many supports from the original game were given more depth, like leon and valbar's!
- questionable misogynistic writing choices: unfortunately you still have a lot of women to rescue on alm's route. but celica's gets quite a few overhauls to preserve her agency, and conrad is still integrated in a fun way without stepping on her toes as much as he did in OG. the changes for act 4/5 in particular made my jaw drop.
alm's story has quite a few changes too! mostly with berkut, fernand and rinea. berkut and fernand's arcs are done a little more slowly and rinea is given a bit more of a role and a fun friendship with fernand :) i like it. good stuff
- map design: i actually. um. i actually don't have as much to say because i made the mistake of deciding "oh i played echoes already! let me try on hard this time". IT WAS A BAD IDEA. I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY FUCKING LIFE EVEN IF I WAS STILL ON CASUAL DUDE. but the maps give you a lot more to work with. even celica's hell is less hellish. for example in the desert maps they have some excuse as to why mages don't have their speed impeded by the sand and i was overjoyed
visitable villages are another big change. an incentive not to turtle for too long lest they be destroyed. some of them give you items some just offer flavor text but there's one village in alm's act 4 on one of the last maps that has this beautiful woman with a black veil over her face and you need to visit her with alm. Please. you get lore ported straight from the drama cds and an item too
- character integration: I FORGOT TO EVEN MENTION THIS IN OG ECHOES BUT the optional recruits actually have shit to say about the story instead of there just being a few characters with plot armor. i'm not sure how the reverse works though with plot-armor characters dying in the middle bc i was on casual
speaking of the drama CDs, the dev team incorporate extra lore and character backstories from a variety of sources! valentia accordion, drama CDs, even stuff from gaiden and its own adaptations that didn’t return in echoes. you can tell this was done with so much love and care because even the backstory changes make a good level of sense.
i'm using leon as an example because his support chain with valbar goes into his lost love (their relationship is altered here. it hurts so muchies) while his support chain with sonya puts forward a reason or two for leon to become a merchant in his ending. it's good. speaking of leon he's already pretty good gay rep in the OG but even minor additions like for example a joke about how he likes bears (THE GAY KIND) made me giggle like a little girl. i needed to mention this because i love him.
ok. continue. here are some stuff echoes did right that sacred echoes also does right
- the art is amazing. they look so good in the GBA style it's crazy!!! the CGs are ported well enough but there are a couple of upscales or originals because main dev is quite the skilled artist. the new characters (acantha and hyas) look SOOOOO GOOD DUDE. even minor NPCs have banger designs like this hot bald pirate lady from act 2 and whoever worked on those i wish you have the best lives ever. also the combat looks awesome because it's GBA of course it does.
- the music is also ported into the GBA style very masterfully. not every track makes it and i'm a little bitter about some of them (praise this despair... T_T) but that shit takes so much effort to transcribe that i can't be mad about it.
there are a couple of originals, namely act 3 gives alm and celica original battle tracks, and admittedly they're not as good as the ones they got from echoes and gaiden but they're alright.
the arrangement of the sacrifice and the saint is one of my favorites bc i didn't like that song very much before but i do now. main dev's music tastes really show in this but i don't mind i think it's great.
- SUPPORT FOR MULTIPLE LANGUAGES BABY!!!!! sacred echoes has translations in both chinese (up to act 5) and spanish (currently up to act 3), including all the original supports, with more to come in future patches ^_^
overall it's a wonderful experience. honestly the voice acting in OG echoes is the big plus it has over sacred echoes and that's not really sacred echoes' problem! it makes up for it with much better writing that doesn't need a good performance to sound believable. go play this game. don't make the same mistake i made. if you're sad about the lack of turnwheel get your own from home if you know what i mean. and when you are done with this review or even this game i suggest these next steps
- go follow the sacred echoes tumblr blog. you get dev updates for the next patch, character analysis, even soundtrack analysis for the Free Price of Free
- go sub to the unofficial sacred echoes support channel! or at least watch some of the supports they have posted. if you don't have the energy to obtain all of them (god knows i sure don't) this is a very good place to look.
a good place to start would be some of the issues i had with OG echoes! here's how sacred echoes addresses them
- lack of supports: sacred echoes has supports coming out of its ass from a variety of writers :)! in a full playthrough i only got like a handful. luckily you can keep grinding for them in postgame, which is good because there are a few that are cross-army and can only even be accessed postgame. some characters have paired endings if you get them to max support, even! and not just the basic ones like clive/mathilda and mae/boey. even many supports from the original game were given more depth, like leon and valbar's!
- questionable misogynistic writing choices: unfortunately you still have a lot of women to rescue on alm's route. but celica's gets quite a few overhauls to preserve her agency, and conrad is still integrated in a fun way without stepping on her toes as much as he did in OG. the changes for act 4/5 in particular made my jaw drop.
alm's story has quite a few changes too! mostly with berkut, fernand and rinea. berkut and fernand's arcs are done a little more slowly and rinea is given a bit more of a role and a fun friendship with fernand :) i like it. good stuff
- map design: i actually. um. i actually don't have as much to say because i made the mistake of deciding "oh i played echoes already! let me try on hard this time". IT WAS A BAD IDEA. I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY FUCKING LIFE EVEN IF I WAS STILL ON CASUAL DUDE. but the maps give you a lot more to work with. even celica's hell is less hellish. for example in the desert maps they have some excuse as to why mages don't have their speed impeded by the sand and i was overjoyed
visitable villages are another big change. an incentive not to turtle for too long lest they be destroyed. some of them give you items some just offer flavor text but there's one village in alm's act 4 on one of the last maps that has this beautiful woman with a black veil over her face and you need to visit her with alm. Please. you get lore ported straight from the drama cds and an item too
- character integration: I FORGOT TO EVEN MENTION THIS IN OG ECHOES BUT the optional recruits actually have shit to say about the story instead of there just being a few characters with plot armor. i'm not sure how the reverse works though with plot-armor characters dying in the middle bc i was on casual
speaking of the drama CDs, the dev team incorporate extra lore and character backstories from a variety of sources! valentia accordion, drama CDs, even stuff from gaiden and its own adaptations that didn’t return in echoes. you can tell this was done with so much love and care because even the backstory changes make a good level of sense.
i'm using leon as an example because his support chain with valbar goes into his lost love (their relationship is altered here. it hurts so muchies) while his support chain with sonya puts forward a reason or two for leon to become a merchant in his ending. it's good. speaking of leon he's already pretty good gay rep in the OG but even minor additions like for example a joke about how he likes bears (THE GAY KIND) made me giggle like a little girl. i needed to mention this because i love him.
ok. continue. here are some stuff echoes did right that sacred echoes also does right
- the art is amazing. they look so good in the GBA style it's crazy!!! the CGs are ported well enough but there are a couple of upscales or originals because main dev is quite the skilled artist. the new characters (acantha and hyas) look SOOOOO GOOD DUDE. even minor NPCs have banger designs like this hot bald pirate lady from act 2 and whoever worked on those i wish you have the best lives ever. also the combat looks awesome because it's GBA of course it does.
- the music is also ported into the GBA style very masterfully. not every track makes it and i'm a little bitter about some of them (praise this despair... T_T) but that shit takes so much effort to transcribe that i can't be mad about it.
there are a couple of originals, namely act 3 gives alm and celica original battle tracks, and admittedly they're not as good as the ones they got from echoes and gaiden but they're alright.
the arrangement of the sacrifice and the saint is one of my favorites bc i didn't like that song very much before but i do now. main dev's music tastes really show in this but i don't mind i think it's great.
- SUPPORT FOR MULTIPLE LANGUAGES BABY!!!!! sacred echoes has translations in both chinese (up to act 5) and spanish (currently up to act 3), including all the original supports, with more to come in future patches ^_^
overall it's a wonderful experience. honestly the voice acting in OG echoes is the big plus it has over sacred echoes and that's not really sacred echoes' problem! it makes up for it with much better writing that doesn't need a good performance to sound believable. go play this game. don't make the same mistake i made. if you're sad about the lack of turnwheel get your own from home if you know what i mean. and when you are done with this review or even this game i suggest these next steps
- go follow the sacred echoes tumblr blog. you get dev updates for the next patch, character analysis, even soundtrack analysis for the Free Price of Free
- go sub to the unofficial sacred echoes support channel! or at least watch some of the supports they have posted. if you don't have the energy to obtain all of them (god knows i sure don't) this is a very good place to look.
A neat demake that addressed the two big issues I had with the 3DS game. Namely the map design, where most of the egregiously designed maps are changed to be less bad. It's not all roses on this front but some of the maps of the 3DS game were extraordinarily terrible and there's less of that here. Another big peeve I had with the original release was the glaring lack of supports for most characters, which is addressed in spades here. Characters like Kliff, Silque, Sonya and Leon now have more than one support option and the made up supports for the game are written pretty well.
On top of that, the general spritework is great. The character portraits are excellent and the small touches like the little animation flourishes when entering combat don't go unnoticed. Brushing up against the limitations are fun, there's no equipment slot so having shield and ring bonuses is pretty good. Sadly there's no combat arts so you can't Hunter's Volley with impunity but magic works the same. Requirements for getting warp are still easy so you can do plenty of horseshit with it. Dungeons are replaced with tower of valni esque maps where you promote by visiting Mila statues and gain stats by visiting wells on the map in combat. Definitely worth a play through if you like SoV and want to fuck around with GBA mechanics.
On top of that, the general spritework is great. The character portraits are excellent and the small touches like the little animation flourishes when entering combat don't go unnoticed. Brushing up against the limitations are fun, there's no equipment slot so having shield and ring bonuses is pretty good. Sadly there's no combat arts so you can't Hunter's Volley with impunity but magic works the same. Requirements for getting warp are still easy so you can do plenty of horseshit with it. Dungeons are replaced with tower of valni esque maps where you promote by visiting Mila statues and gain stats by visiting wells on the map in combat. Definitely worth a play through if you like SoV and want to fuck around with GBA mechanics.
A game that recognizes the one thing SoV was missing this whole time: more corny Gaiden references. Or was it level design, I forget.
What if FE15 had good gameplay?
You can tell a lot of love went into this
This game should honestly not be thought of as a demake of the 3DS version of shadows of valentia. It is frankly superior. I felt like the 3DS version was severely held back by being true to the level design of the original game for the NES. This fan game offers redesigned maps that exceeded my expectations. I would recommend this game to any fan of fire emblem. This game is better than many of the official ones.
Sacred Echoes is a really cool concept which i will not finish because i've already played Echoes 4 times and, if i wanted to re-play Echoes, i could simply go and play it again in my 3DS, but i still played a good bunch (around 10 chapters, give or take)
The game is cleverly done in various ways, howver it is very easy to lose some cool conversations (like recruitment conversations, unless you savestate before recruiting with a certain unit and then doing it with another so you can read every dialogue) and the invented dialogue doesn't really feel invented, it trully fits the characters. The dungeons are cleverly introduced into the chapter maps (i don't like this but there is literally no other way to do it, and they did it REALLY good, so even tho i'm biased here i will say the truth that it's well done) however i do feel like Dungeons were such a key part of Echoes that you can't really FEEL like you played Echoes if you aren't exploring the dungeons, going back and forth and etc, so it doesn't really feel like Echoes.
It's a really ambicious project, with a lot of good things, and a lot of things that don't really feel liketEchoes because it's extremely hard to do so as a Sacred Stones romhack, it's limited, to say the least. They did what they could with what they had and that's enough for me, it's good. Would i recommend this to ANYONE? Without playing Echoes? no, i wouldn't. If you have already played Echoes then yes, go ahead, you will have a good time if you want to revisit the Echoes universe in a slightly different way. Really neat and props to the creator for doing this.
The game is cleverly done in various ways, howver it is very easy to lose some cool conversations (like recruitment conversations, unless you savestate before recruiting with a certain unit and then doing it with another so you can read every dialogue) and the invented dialogue doesn't really feel invented, it trully fits the characters. The dungeons are cleverly introduced into the chapter maps (i don't like this but there is literally no other way to do it, and they did it REALLY good, so even tho i'm biased here i will say the truth that it's well done) however i do feel like Dungeons were such a key part of Echoes that you can't really FEEL like you played Echoes if you aren't exploring the dungeons, going back and forth and etc, so it doesn't really feel like Echoes.
It's a really ambicious project, with a lot of good things, and a lot of things that don't really feel liketEchoes because it's extremely hard to do so as a Sacred Stones romhack, it's limited, to say the least. They did what they could with what they had and that's enough for me, it's good. Would i recommend this to ANYONE? Without playing Echoes? no, i wouldn't. If you have already played Echoes then yes, go ahead, you will have a good time if you want to revisit the Echoes universe in a slightly different way. Really neat and props to the creator for doing this.