I was itching to get back into playing Fire Emblem for a while, and a friend's strong recommendation of this one in particular made me cave in. For context, the only ones I'd played beforehand were Awakening and Fates: Birthright (of which I only beat Awakening). And while I sunk a solid...180ish hours into Awakening between 2015 and 2016, beat it, and did as much postgame as I thought possible, I don't really have many memories with it. It stuck with me as a game I liked but with a lot of annoyances to it still. Everything about it and Birthright was...yknow, fine, from what I remember. Satisfactory enough. But I always kind of longed for that kind of strategic joy that was hailed by the fans of the series I'd talk to. I enjoyed Awakening for what it was but it didnt really make me a fan
Its because of all this that I'm so, so, so happy that I gave Echoes a chance. So far its easily my favorite game of the year and while I'm not sure if it'll be "difficult" to top, its a damn fine game and among my favorites. The most appealing aspects of Awakening and Fates have carried over seamlessly despite a clearly different direction elsewhere. The character art is incredibly charming, the UI is one of the best and cleanest I've ever used, and the music is absolute captivating. And, sure, it doesn't have the musical variety of most big-budget AAA games (persona 5 not included), you'll hear the same music play for a variety of battles on both paths, but the usage of tracks still feels extremely well paced out across the game. I'd be remiss to not mention whats probably the biggest achievement of Echoes: Full voice acting for nearly every piece of dialogue in the game. As far as I can tell the only dialogue in the whole game that isn't voiced is when you're inspecting items in the point-and-click view. Maybe my unhealthy love for Kid Icarus Uprising has just made me biased toward charming, extensive and consistently applied voiceover, dubbed or no. But the same level of quality carries over here. Characters like Kliff, Saber and Forsynth became ever more charming thanks to this
And it really warms my heart that the presentational quality of Awakening and Fates could be carried over almost entirely without sacrificing the brutality of old-school Fire Emblem. Because as early as two or three maps in I was immediately noticing the difference in design here
Just about every aspect of the game has been changed in some way and somehow it all clicks into place magically. Magic doesn't have durability like in Awakening, so instead it costs health to use. Units don't have individual Skills a la Fates, but instead Equipment does. I couldn't win in a chess game against a Fire Emblem professional and I'm not gonna try and argue that all of these changes to the formula make the game "more strategic", but to me they made the core aspects of Fire Emblem gameplay shine a lot brighter than they had before. I could describe the map design in a similar vein. I'm playing through Fates Conquest right now to compare, and while the maps in that game are deviously complex and multi-layered in how you can approach them, I do still really enjoy the polar opposite of that, as seen in Echoes
With a lot of the maps in Echoes, the focus is placed more on the enemy and your units' positions relative to each other instead of like, what walls and corridors they can go hiding in. It works really well with the added focus on long-range attacks and a lot of other aspects. I also feel like this works pretty well narratively since it creates a super cool distinction between the everyday map and the shit-gets-real map. Often times its when the story hits a more intense beat that the layout of the map becomes more considered.
Call it me excusing badly designed maps if you want, but I found the game to be really really well paced out and I can't help but wonder if this subtle sense of variety was part of it. At almost no point in the game did I feel exhausted or overwhelmed. This is raw, pure Fire Emblem condensed to the core of what makes its gameplay so fun, streamlined to such a perfect degree with such perfect presentation...it pains me that it still isn't really perfect on the whole. Its all small things, but still. The visual variety is probably my biggest gripe with the game, which I guess is a little unfair considering its a remake of a Famicom game. Compared to the fantastical nature of a game like Fates, this game stays very tride-and-true to its plains, castles, swamps and so forth. To be fair, it helps sell the world as a pretty grounded place, especially helped by the surprisingly fantastic 3D dungeon-crawling bits, but it still kinda leaves me wanting a bit more, yknow? Parts like when Celica does 3 Pirate Ship battles in a row especially stuck out as odd
I also think the whole weapon forging system is a bit too obtuse to make me want to use it, mainly with how weapons can't be purchased in any way and that you can drastically alter weapons into entirely different ones without any way of knowing which beforehand. It just kind of felt like prime "look up a guide for this" material and was too much of an investment for me to really care about it, and playing on Hard I was still able to beat the game more or less problem-free without bothering with it too much. A big part of why I was able to get through Hard mode as comfortably as I did was due to Mila's Turnwheel, which is in my opinion a FANTASTIC addition for saving tedium, but could've probably been balanced a bit more. There were a lot of times where I just casually used it as-
-an "Undo" button because I misplaced someone before my turn ended, and when I'm able to just do that without feeling like I'm losing anything I feel like the value of the turnwheel's uses are a bit diminished. I would've preferred if, for instance, each map had a-
-predetermined amount of Turnwheel uses to it, that you could maybe increase per map by choosing to not include a Unit in battle or something along those lines. As is I think the current Turnwheel is great in concept but I felt like I was allowed to use it a bit too carefreely. (After playing Conquest Hard Mode for 3 maps and resetting each one a dozen times, a lot of them for simple misclicks, I can say that any kind of Undo feature in general really needs to be a mainstay for the series)
On the whole I really don't know what else to tell you about Echoes to help sell you on it more. Its old-school Fire Emblem: Pair-ups, Skills, Dragon Veins, S-supports, Team-up Attacks, Durability, etc is all out the window, and the game is refined to a tee to work without them
I would almost say that this is the perfect starting point for a Fire Emblem newcomer, moreso than Awakening and Birthright. While those games are easier, I don't think they do quite as good of a job as nailing the core fun of Fire Emblem as Echoes does. And sure, the story wasn't really anything to write home about on the whole, but the dynamics between the characters and how lovable the characters were in general made it all so worth it. Berkut is probably a new favorite character of all time for me and I will KISS Leon
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia hooked me in every way I was and wasn't expecting it to, and despite its flaws, is one of the most tightly paced and fun games of its genre I can think of. PLEASE play it.
[Playtime: 95 Hours]
[Difficulty: Hard]
[Key Word: Focused]
Its because of all this that I'm so, so, so happy that I gave Echoes a chance. So far its easily my favorite game of the year and while I'm not sure if it'll be "difficult" to top, its a damn fine game and among my favorites. The most appealing aspects of Awakening and Fates have carried over seamlessly despite a clearly different direction elsewhere. The character art is incredibly charming, the UI is one of the best and cleanest I've ever used, and the music is absolute captivating. And, sure, it doesn't have the musical variety of most big-budget AAA games (persona 5 not included), you'll hear the same music play for a variety of battles on both paths, but the usage of tracks still feels extremely well paced out across the game. I'd be remiss to not mention whats probably the biggest achievement of Echoes: Full voice acting for nearly every piece of dialogue in the game. As far as I can tell the only dialogue in the whole game that isn't voiced is when you're inspecting items in the point-and-click view. Maybe my unhealthy love for Kid Icarus Uprising has just made me biased toward charming, extensive and consistently applied voiceover, dubbed or no. But the same level of quality carries over here. Characters like Kliff, Saber and Forsynth became ever more charming thanks to this
And it really warms my heart that the presentational quality of Awakening and Fates could be carried over almost entirely without sacrificing the brutality of old-school Fire Emblem. Because as early as two or three maps in I was immediately noticing the difference in design here
Just about every aspect of the game has been changed in some way and somehow it all clicks into place magically. Magic doesn't have durability like in Awakening, so instead it costs health to use. Units don't have individual Skills a la Fates, but instead Equipment does. I couldn't win in a chess game against a Fire Emblem professional and I'm not gonna try and argue that all of these changes to the formula make the game "more strategic", but to me they made the core aspects of Fire Emblem gameplay shine a lot brighter than they had before. I could describe the map design in a similar vein. I'm playing through Fates Conquest right now to compare, and while the maps in that game are deviously complex and multi-layered in how you can approach them, I do still really enjoy the polar opposite of that, as seen in Echoes
With a lot of the maps in Echoes, the focus is placed more on the enemy and your units' positions relative to each other instead of like, what walls and corridors they can go hiding in. It works really well with the added focus on long-range attacks and a lot of other aspects. I also feel like this works pretty well narratively since it creates a super cool distinction between the everyday map and the shit-gets-real map. Often times its when the story hits a more intense beat that the layout of the map becomes more considered.
Call it me excusing badly designed maps if you want, but I found the game to be really really well paced out and I can't help but wonder if this subtle sense of variety was part of it. At almost no point in the game did I feel exhausted or overwhelmed. This is raw, pure Fire Emblem condensed to the core of what makes its gameplay so fun, streamlined to such a perfect degree with such perfect presentation...it pains me that it still isn't really perfect on the whole. Its all small things, but still. The visual variety is probably my biggest gripe with the game, which I guess is a little unfair considering its a remake of a Famicom game. Compared to the fantastical nature of a game like Fates, this game stays very tride-and-true to its plains, castles, swamps and so forth. To be fair, it helps sell the world as a pretty grounded place, especially helped by the surprisingly fantastic 3D dungeon-crawling bits, but it still kinda leaves me wanting a bit more, yknow? Parts like when Celica does 3 Pirate Ship battles in a row especially stuck out as odd
I also think the whole weapon forging system is a bit too obtuse to make me want to use it, mainly with how weapons can't be purchased in any way and that you can drastically alter weapons into entirely different ones without any way of knowing which beforehand. It just kind of felt like prime "look up a guide for this" material and was too much of an investment for me to really care about it, and playing on Hard I was still able to beat the game more or less problem-free without bothering with it too much. A big part of why I was able to get through Hard mode as comfortably as I did was due to Mila's Turnwheel, which is in my opinion a FANTASTIC addition for saving tedium, but could've probably been balanced a bit more. There were a lot of times where I just casually used it as-
-an "Undo" button because I misplaced someone before my turn ended, and when I'm able to just do that without feeling like I'm losing anything I feel like the value of the turnwheel's uses are a bit diminished. I would've preferred if, for instance, each map had a-
-predetermined amount of Turnwheel uses to it, that you could maybe increase per map by choosing to not include a Unit in battle or something along those lines. As is I think the current Turnwheel is great in concept but I felt like I was allowed to use it a bit too carefreely. (After playing Conquest Hard Mode for 3 maps and resetting each one a dozen times, a lot of them for simple misclicks, I can say that any kind of Undo feature in general really needs to be a mainstay for the series)
On the whole I really don't know what else to tell you about Echoes to help sell you on it more. Its old-school Fire Emblem: Pair-ups, Skills, Dragon Veins, S-supports, Team-up Attacks, Durability, etc is all out the window, and the game is refined to a tee to work without them
I would almost say that this is the perfect starting point for a Fire Emblem newcomer, moreso than Awakening and Birthright. While those games are easier, I don't think they do quite as good of a job as nailing the core fun of Fire Emblem as Echoes does. And sure, the story wasn't really anything to write home about on the whole, but the dynamics between the characters and how lovable the characters were in general made it all so worth it. Berkut is probably a new favorite character of all time for me and I will KISS Leon
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia hooked me in every way I was and wasn't expecting it to, and despite its flaws, is one of the most tightly paced and fun games of its genre I can think of. PLEASE play it.
[Playtime: 95 Hours]
[Difficulty: Hard]
[Key Word: Focused]