I had been quite excited for the game since it was announced, as I had heard how much of a black sheep Gaiden was and was curious about that game. I really liked the art style they used for the game immediately, but I'll talk more about that in a minute.
I got a chance to preorder the special edition of the game (the one in the nice huge box with the artbook, soundtrack, Alm, Celica, and Marth pins, etc.) I also got the Alm and Celica amiibo. I got it and played it and really enjoyed it. I got pretty far in, then some Switch games came out and those interrupted it for me, then I picked it back up again and tried to finish it before Metroid Samus Returns came out, but just got to the last dungeon and wasn't able to finish it in time. However I was distracted by Samus Returns, then decided to play Super Metroid on my 3DS again, and now I got back to SoV.
I finished Act 5 today, thus beating the game. For those that don't know, there are a total of six acts, but Act 6 is a bonus one that was not in the original game. I never played Gaiden myself. I knew some things about the game, and learned more talking to a friend that played it, comparing it to my experience in SoV.
First of all, let's start with the presentation. Hands down, Shadows of Valentia has THE BEST presentation in the entire franchise. Full stop. The art style has a neat look to it that kind of harkens back to the GBA FE games, but honestly even improved from that. It is a major departure from the Fire Emblem Fates characters, particularly in fates all of them had very poofy hair, and the women were all dressed up like "waifu" characters. Echoes has no romance and children mechanics, and honestly I think that was for the better. Granted it wouldn't have really worked here as the original was not made with it in mind. The character designs were really cool, and you can also see how they are a HUGE improvement on the originals. Granted, the original artwork wasn't particularly great, but here's an example:
The difference is quite jarring, and every other character has the same stark comparisions. I really hope that this art style is used on future FE games, because it was fantastic.
The music has also honestly set this game very high as far as soundtrack go. I had heard the Smash Bros. rendition of "With Mila's Divine Protection", and then hearing this game's....wow. It absolutely blew the Smash one out of the water. Alm's map 1 theme was excellent too, and quite memorable. I know I have found myself whistling both of those, as they're quite memorable. The skirmish music, which used the same tune, with different instrumentation whether you're on Alm's or Celica's side, was also extremely catchy. I have found myself whistling that one all the damn time. Even though it's so repetitive, it just works! Having the different instrumentation of it for Alm and Celica was neat though, and then having a kind of conglomerate of both renditions for Act 5 was a nice touch. Overall I really loved the music from this game, and after listening to some of these tunes in the original, I think Gaiden/SoV's soundtrack is criminally underrated.
Another aspect of the presentation I wanted to discuss was the localization and voice acting. I know Fates got a lot of crap for it's localization, and Awakening's was pretty good. Fates I did not play and cannot really speak for. However I felt like this one was really well done, and the voice acting was even pretty good! The full voice acting I was unsure of how that would go, and honestly it was pulled off quite well here. The anime cutscenes were also really pretty.
The combat animations were also really great and detailed. Definitely the best ones in the 3D games. When characters swing swords, blades of grass get cut, the critical hit animations are great, as well as the killing blow animations.
The storyline wasn't anything groundbreaking, and some of it kind of predictable, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. The support conversations were also pretty great, and felt more dignified in this game than the ones in Awakening did. There isn't any romance outside the canon romance, and that in this game was handled quite well. How they set up the romance between Gray and Clair was pretty neat, since it involved having him talk to different characters about it. There was one I particularly liked that was kind of an interesting snapshot of the modern FE games vs the old ones. In the support conversations between Alm and Faye (she is a new character apparently). Faye is absolutely obsessed with Alm, and confesses her love for him in the A rank support conversation with Alm, but Alm says something along the lines of how he doesn't really have time for that, and doesn't feel the same way about her. It kind of felt like "old_fe_vs_modern_fe.jpg" in a way. And even that was handled pretty well! Faye was presented as a character of that type, and then they did something different with her.
Gaiden is notorious for it's gameplay though. It made a lot of weird departures from what we know the series for today. No weapon triangle, many archers have more than 2 spaces of attack range, magic uses HP, one item that doesn't break, the list goes on. Some of these mechanics have come back to a degree later on, such as open maps and monsters, and others haven't and I would like to see come back. One I want to see again, and perhaps more fleshed out is dungeons. I really enjoyed the idea of them being a JRPG type of dungeon with the battles being FE style. The dungeon battles were typically pretty short, but the nice thing was that if you could sneak around an enemy or run away, you can just do that! Talking to my friend that played the original, he said that battles in dungeons were not avoidable, you just got into battles when you hit certain rooms. I think having characters persist with the same HP in a dungeon after battles wouldn't really work in Fire Emblem, so I think the fatigue system is pretty good. It gives you a reason to carry all the food/healing supplies around so you can keep your characters in good shape.
I felt like Archers/Snipers/Bow Knights were a lot more useful in this game than they have been in most of the series. My Python in particular was a god. Leon was good for a while too, but I'm not really sure what happened to him when I made him a Bow Knight, as he fell off hard then. The reusable weapons was a neat idea, having them being special effects, or ways to acquire skills. Early on I gave Celica the Blessed Sword and she was absolutely destroying fools with it. In fact I would say my Celica was probably one of my best characters. I thought the characters on both sides were good, Boey was a little disappointing, but Mae was very useful. Kliff was also pretty good (made him a Sage). Also from what I understood, most people made Faye a Cleric, I made her a Pegasus Knight and she was actually pretty good as that.
Probably the absolute worst aspect of this game, and I heard it was even worse in Gaiden too, were the map designs. This game has some downright bad map designs, and yet somehow, they didn't completely ruin the game for me. The absolute worst offenders were the maps with a ton of dead space between you and enemies (and having three of your units start away from the rest for some reason) where you couldn't see any combat in turn 1, and the ones that had a huge 1-space wide corridor. One of the worst ones I remember was the sluice gate map on Alm's side, as it was almost nothing but 1-space wide corridors, so you could only have 1, maybe 2 ranged units covering whoever was in front. The first time I attempted that chapter, Delthea ended up dying because I couldn't get away from her as there was nowhere to go. The second time I just used one unit as a decoy to chase while I finished the map with everyone else. I don't know what they were thinking with some of these maps.
From what I understand, Berkut was a new character, and his storyline was really neat! The way they played up the rivalry between him and Alm, having Alm face him mutliple times throughout the game, was nice, then the big showdown against him and Rinea at the end (on a much better designed map) was a challenge, but also a fair one. Speaking of challenges, I didn't hate Cantors and Witches as much as most people did. The first couple of maps I saw Witches in, they caught me off guard and killed someone, but I learned how to deal with them fairly quickly, and they were fairly weak and usually couldn't kill whoever they went after. They were annoying and unpredictable, no doubt, but for some reason they felt manageable. Cantors, I get the hate for, but honestly they were a lot more fair than reinforcements that were not telegraphed at all. Most of the enemies Cantors summoned were pretty easy to kill, but they took up a lot of space and slowed your progress. I'm in the minority on this, but I actually liked the poison swamp maps, as you really had to plan between Cantor summons so you could get your units through the swamp as quickly as possible. The mechanic of flyers being able to fly over castle walls and open gates was also neat, and I don't think that's been anywhere else in the series. Like I said before though, the worst ones were the dead space maps, and the 1-wide corridor maps.
One problem that the series has had ever since inception was the RNG and permadeath. Most people (myself included) restart the chapter if a character dies. Sometimes, that's due to getting critted by something with a 1% chance of Critical Hit. Maybe you fucked up and were so far into the chapter. Mila's Turnwheel was a nice solution to this problem. It's not to the point where it ruins the game like casual mode, and is actually balanced since it has the limited uses. If you're screwing up all the time, you're going to run out of cogs fast. I think it's the most useful on the absolute bullshit RNG crits that you couldn't really do anything to prepare for. Crits should still be in the game, as you would want to stay away from an enemy that has something like a 30% chance to crit you, but getting critted by a 1 or 2% chance is pretty bullshit. My only beef with Mila's Turnwheel is that it holds too many cogs (or uses). It allows you to hold up to 10, but I think that's overkill and it should be capped at 5. Also these cogs persist per map, so if you use a ton of them in one map, they're gone permanently.
Talking to my friend that played the original, he was telling me how he hated that the final boss had that Earthquake ability that damaged everyone on the whole map. I asked him if they telegraphed it, and he said that was the whole reason he hated it. Duma actually telegraphs it in this game, which was a neat change they made and makes it much more fair! I'm curious to learn what other changes like this were made to make the game better.
I finished Act 5, and am currently playing Act 6 (I like that it connects to Archanea). Overall I would actually put SoV in the upper tier of FE games. This game has some annoying stuff, no doubt, but don't sleep on this one, you're really missing out. Compared to Shadow Dragon as a remake, THIS is how you remake a Fire Emblem game, and I hope IntSys takes that into consideration if they remake more games. I still think the theory that "Echoes" means it's a series of remakes is going to hold true, and would expect more at some point.
I got a chance to preorder the special edition of the game (the one in the nice huge box with the artbook, soundtrack, Alm, Celica, and Marth pins, etc.) I also got the Alm and Celica amiibo. I got it and played it and really enjoyed it. I got pretty far in, then some Switch games came out and those interrupted it for me, then I picked it back up again and tried to finish it before Metroid Samus Returns came out, but just got to the last dungeon and wasn't able to finish it in time. However I was distracted by Samus Returns, then decided to play Super Metroid on my 3DS again, and now I got back to SoV.
I finished Act 5 today, thus beating the game. For those that don't know, there are a total of six acts, but Act 6 is a bonus one that was not in the original game. I never played Gaiden myself. I knew some things about the game, and learned more talking to a friend that played it, comparing it to my experience in SoV.
First of all, let's start with the presentation. Hands down, Shadows of Valentia has THE BEST presentation in the entire franchise. Full stop. The art style has a neat look to it that kind of harkens back to the GBA FE games, but honestly even improved from that. It is a major departure from the Fire Emblem Fates characters, particularly in fates all of them had very poofy hair, and the women were all dressed up like "waifu" characters. Echoes has no romance and children mechanics, and honestly I think that was for the better. Granted it wouldn't have really worked here as the original was not made with it in mind. The character designs were really cool, and you can also see how they are a HUGE improvement on the originals. Granted, the original artwork wasn't particularly great, but here's an example:
The difference is quite jarring, and every other character has the same stark comparisions. I really hope that this art style is used on future FE games, because it was fantastic.
The music has also honestly set this game very high as far as soundtrack go. I had heard the Smash Bros. rendition of "With Mila's Divine Protection", and then hearing this game's....wow. It absolutely blew the Smash one out of the water. Alm's map 1 theme was excellent too, and quite memorable. I know I have found myself whistling both of those, as they're quite memorable. The skirmish music, which used the same tune, with different instrumentation whether you're on Alm's or Celica's side, was also extremely catchy. I have found myself whistling that one all the damn time. Even though it's so repetitive, it just works! Having the different instrumentation of it for Alm and Celica was neat though, and then having a kind of conglomerate of both renditions for Act 5 was a nice touch. Overall I really loved the music from this game, and after listening to some of these tunes in the original, I think Gaiden/SoV's soundtrack is criminally underrated.
Another aspect of the presentation I wanted to discuss was the localization and voice acting. I know Fates got a lot of crap for it's localization, and Awakening's was pretty good. Fates I did not play and cannot really speak for. However I felt like this one was really well done, and the voice acting was even pretty good! The full voice acting I was unsure of how that would go, and honestly it was pulled off quite well here. The anime cutscenes were also really pretty.
The combat animations were also really great and detailed. Definitely the best ones in the 3D games. When characters swing swords, blades of grass get cut, the critical hit animations are great, as well as the killing blow animations.
The storyline wasn't anything groundbreaking, and some of it kind of predictable, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. The support conversations were also pretty great, and felt more dignified in this game than the ones in Awakening did. There isn't any romance outside the canon romance, and that in this game was handled quite well. How they set up the romance between Gray and Clair was pretty neat, since it involved having him talk to different characters about it. There was one I particularly liked that was kind of an interesting snapshot of the modern FE games vs the old ones. In the support conversations between Alm and Faye (she is a new character apparently). Faye is absolutely obsessed with Alm, and confesses her love for him in the A rank support conversation with Alm, but Alm says something along the lines of how he doesn't really have time for that, and doesn't feel the same way about her. It kind of felt like "old_fe_vs_modern_fe.jpg" in a way. And even that was handled pretty well! Faye was presented as a character of that type, and then they did something different with her.
Gaiden is notorious for it's gameplay though. It made a lot of weird departures from what we know the series for today. No weapon triangle, many archers have more than 2 spaces of attack range, magic uses HP, one item that doesn't break, the list goes on. Some of these mechanics have come back to a degree later on, such as open maps and monsters, and others haven't and I would like to see come back. One I want to see again, and perhaps more fleshed out is dungeons. I really enjoyed the idea of them being a JRPG type of dungeon with the battles being FE style. The dungeon battles were typically pretty short, but the nice thing was that if you could sneak around an enemy or run away, you can just do that! Talking to my friend that played the original, he said that battles in dungeons were not avoidable, you just got into battles when you hit certain rooms. I think having characters persist with the same HP in a dungeon after battles wouldn't really work in Fire Emblem, so I think the fatigue system is pretty good. It gives you a reason to carry all the food/healing supplies around so you can keep your characters in good shape.
I felt like Archers/Snipers/Bow Knights were a lot more useful in this game than they have been in most of the series. My Python in particular was a god. Leon was good for a while too, but I'm not really sure what happened to him when I made him a Bow Knight, as he fell off hard then. The reusable weapons was a neat idea, having them being special effects, or ways to acquire skills. Early on I gave Celica the Blessed Sword and she was absolutely destroying fools with it. In fact I would say my Celica was probably one of my best characters. I thought the characters on both sides were good, Boey was a little disappointing, but Mae was very useful. Kliff was also pretty good (made him a Sage). Also from what I understood, most people made Faye a Cleric, I made her a Pegasus Knight and she was actually pretty good as that.
Probably the absolute worst aspect of this game, and I heard it was even worse in Gaiden too, were the map designs. This game has some downright bad map designs, and yet somehow, they didn't completely ruin the game for me. The absolute worst offenders were the maps with a ton of dead space between you and enemies (and having three of your units start away from the rest for some reason) where you couldn't see any combat in turn 1, and the ones that had a huge 1-space wide corridor. One of the worst ones I remember was the sluice gate map on Alm's side, as it was almost nothing but 1-space wide corridors, so you could only have 1, maybe 2 ranged units covering whoever was in front. The first time I attempted that chapter, Delthea ended up dying because I couldn't get away from her as there was nowhere to go. The second time I just used one unit as a decoy to chase while I finished the map with everyone else. I don't know what they were thinking with some of these maps.
From what I understand, Berkut was a new character, and his storyline was really neat! The way they played up the rivalry between him and Alm, having Alm face him mutliple times throughout the game, was nice, then the big showdown against him and Rinea at the end (on a much better designed map) was a challenge, but also a fair one. Speaking of challenges, I didn't hate Cantors and Witches as much as most people did. The first couple of maps I saw Witches in, they caught me off guard and killed someone, but I learned how to deal with them fairly quickly, and they were fairly weak and usually couldn't kill whoever they went after. They were annoying and unpredictable, no doubt, but for some reason they felt manageable. Cantors, I get the hate for, but honestly they were a lot more fair than reinforcements that were not telegraphed at all. Most of the enemies Cantors summoned were pretty easy to kill, but they took up a lot of space and slowed your progress. I'm in the minority on this, but I actually liked the poison swamp maps, as you really had to plan between Cantor summons so you could get your units through the swamp as quickly as possible. The mechanic of flyers being able to fly over castle walls and open gates was also neat, and I don't think that's been anywhere else in the series. Like I said before though, the worst ones were the dead space maps, and the 1-wide corridor maps.
One problem that the series has had ever since inception was the RNG and permadeath. Most people (myself included) restart the chapter if a character dies. Sometimes, that's due to getting critted by something with a 1% chance of Critical Hit. Maybe you fucked up and were so far into the chapter. Mila's Turnwheel was a nice solution to this problem. It's not to the point where it ruins the game like casual mode, and is actually balanced since it has the limited uses. If you're screwing up all the time, you're going to run out of cogs fast. I think it's the most useful on the absolute bullshit RNG crits that you couldn't really do anything to prepare for. Crits should still be in the game, as you would want to stay away from an enemy that has something like a 30% chance to crit you, but getting critted by a 1 or 2% chance is pretty bullshit. My only beef with Mila's Turnwheel is that it holds too many cogs (or uses). It allows you to hold up to 10, but I think that's overkill and it should be capped at 5. Also these cogs persist per map, so if you use a ton of them in one map, they're gone permanently.
Talking to my friend that played the original, he was telling me how he hated that the final boss had that Earthquake ability that damaged everyone on the whole map. I asked him if they telegraphed it, and he said that was the whole reason he hated it. Duma actually telegraphs it in this game, which was a neat change they made and makes it much more fair! I'm curious to learn what other changes like this were made to make the game better.
I finished Act 5, and am currently playing Act 6 (I like that it connects to Archanea). Overall I would actually put SoV in the upper tier of FE games. This game has some annoying stuff, no doubt, but don't sleep on this one, you're really missing out. Compared to Shadow Dragon as a remake, THIS is how you remake a Fire Emblem game, and I hope IntSys takes that into consideration if they remake more games. I still think the theory that "Echoes" means it's a series of remakes is going to hold true, and would expect more at some point.
