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Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia Review Thread
- Thread starter Chrom
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I'm someone who generally isn't buying FE games for their story, even if it's nice when one manages to be interesting. So when I saw the explanation for children in Fates, I laughed and moved on.
Honestly, I think Fates has the best use of the children mechanic, they fixed up the balancing from Awakening so that the children don't really outclass normal units, and while it's also a part of Awakening I really like that the children don't mess with existing playable units like in FE4(I'm not a fan of the game deciding if I can keep using a character or not). The only real downside gameplay-wise for me is that getting all of them without grinding isn't really practical, which messes with the OCD side of me, haha.
Tieing marriage to supports fixes the issue of they system being kind of invisible in FE4. Some complain about the sudden marriage at S rank, but that's more on the poor writing of the two games than anything else(and also not really any different from many supports that end in marriage in the old games). So the whole thing feels properly fleshed in the gameplay side of things.
Since I'm playing FE for the gameplay first, I can overlook the story issues for the improvements as a gameplay mechanic, but hopefully they can do better with the story if the mechanic shows up again
(and it probably will)
Lol
I can agree with most of this, except that I'm pretty tired of children units at this point. Marriage is fine and can stay, but I'd like the benefits of an S rank to go to the units I already invested a lot of time in and actually care about as characters. While some children units manage to be pretty memorable on their own, I always feel like they could've been even better if they were integrated within the main narrative as "1st gen" characters. Maybe that's just me, but I'm usually much more invested in the parents to really care about the children units, which sucks since for the most part they're the superior choice concerning stats/skills. Besides, children units can only interact with themselves, the MC and their parents which creates this weird divide between your army.
Ideally, I'd like the S ranks to give each unit the ability to reclass into each other's available classes (like the lover's seal), make them learn a skill from one another, open up a paralogue/gaiden chapter of some sort to expand on their relationship while also giving some unique prizes for beating it, things like that. I'd prefer that from both a gameplay and narrative perspective. Children units (and avatars, while we're at it) should only return periodically as they do have positive aspects but also bring a few design limitations themselves.
Blackquill
Member
To be fair, it was handled in a far better way than both Awakening and Fates
Yeah VA is amazing but what scene (spoilers tag of course)
This is the sober take I get from folks outside of GAF.
As an ardent fan of the older games, I can't disagree. In fact, I'd say that the newer casts have MORE personality, which is where the friction comes from. Older games had light characterization and fans filled in blanks. We were all younger back then and imaginaton played a bigger part.
Newer games have jacked it up a bit and that's what ruffles feathers.
But this is a digression from the main topic, which is Echoes. I know virtually nothing about the original game, so I'm curious to dive in. I've been expecting a rather dry plot, but it seems like this one might be fun enough.
Yeah this is what I am worried about, I always thought the marriage system and units were shoehorned, but at least I could ignore that and the terrible stories in Fates cause the gameplay in Conquest was really good.
However my friend who is a big FE Fan and played Gaiden has told me all the ways Gaiden is very different from the rest of the games that followed and some of the issues he has with it. From what I have seen it seems they kept a lot of the mechanics and maps from the original which is what I am mostly concerned about.
Yeah, while I think children characters are an interesting way to add new characters, I wouldn't be sad at all if they didn't show up in the next game. Though I think the narrative divide between the two groups is only on the poor writing of FE13 and FE14, it's probably just easier to keep everyone connected without children. Keeping marriage around and adding more bonuses to the married pair would be great too. I'm also indifferent to avatars staying or leaving, since I don't really see any difference between them and past main characters as far as their role in the narrative(I think the lord not being the real main character in FE13 just threw everyone).
But I'll be honest, I don't think FE going in a different direction than the past two is as crazy as some might think. Let's be real, no one expected a Gaiden remake of all things, so maybe FE Switch will still follow what Awakening built, but I also wouldn't be surprised in the least if it turns out IS wants to shake things up. For now, I'll just look forward to trying out the odd experiment that is Echoes.
Yeah, it's nice to hear the story is actually competent in this one. I expect the quality of 8-4s writing and voice direction to do a lot for it, too. That actually outweighs my concern for the map design.
The problem with Awakening's characters has less to do with the characters themselves (though the almost fetishistic anime caricatures and one note characterization are certainly an issue) and more with the anemic, almost non-existent world building. Like a number of Jill's supports in FE9 are used to describe the common Daein perspective and provide some further context for the Beorc-Laguz animosity, but that shit is kind of hard to do when you don't have a setting that's been given the time and effort to be worth pontificating over.
JumpJeff84
Member
So this is like a FE game with the romance stuff removed and also without the ability to team up during battle?
That actually sounds alright; I think I'd be okay with a slightly more streamlined game
That actually sounds alright; I think I'd be okay with a slightly more streamlined game
I don't really see using a characters moments to flesh out a world and not the character themselves as a much better alternative to what we're getting currently.
You say they're caricatures, but I see Awakening as more recognizing limitations and working within them. It's a strategy game where maps have intro and outro cutscenes and supports are over three/four levels. Can't really tell a strong narrative or develop characters like that, so they embellish the personalities on display.
And to their credit - as curmudgeonly as places like GAF are, while they complain about shipping - it's ultimately those embellished personalities that have been leaving their mark on people and getting these games to sell well.
Real talk: It's funny to read the "Make FE Great Again" posts in this thread in that while no, this game doesn't have kids or marriage, it also kinda bombed in Japan with sales resembling those of the games released pre-Awakening. And I have half a mind to think most of the people posting know that. I'm not sure if that makes it's more funny or more sad.
What "saved" the franchise is more the amount of polish and content in the modern games than the people fighting online about who to match every character with. With Awakening they went with a different artist that made high quality art that made the characters looks appealing, added good looking CG and movies to the game, made an easy mode for people turned off by permadeath, added a world map with the possibility to do grinding, added both free and paid DLC content to extend the life of the game. Adding support conversations and children is just an additional part of the success formula. Fates also added base building. The high quality look and easier difficulties lead it out of "the funny looking hardcore SRPG where you have to reset all the time when a character dies" niche it was stuck in.
Velcro Fly
Member
Not having to worry about pairing people off with the wrong person relieves a ton of stress and anxiety about playing a modern FE game.
dreamlongdead
Member
You nailed it with this post.
psychowave
Member
Remember when Fates didn't even bother giving its continent a name (a first for the series)? lol
They did a lot of things and o find that old guard fans constantly complain about the vast majority of them.
Well apparently according to one of the Awakened just now, it's not possible to balance character and world building in support conversations and a good Fire Emblem story or character is impossible anyway so why even bother, so what's in a name I guess lol
theprodigy
Member
pretending that "old fans" are some unified voice is as silly as acting like FF or Pokemon fans can all be pinned in one or two groups
Lord of Ostia
Member
Eh, doubtful. Most of the updates they made to the series are great additions. There are only a few aspects people argue about, and it varies game to game because Awakening and Fates each have flaws the other doesn't. There is plenty to criticize but also plenty to love in all the games in the series.
NeonZ
Member
Echoes is fully voiced, improved the battle models again and generally has comparable presentation and accessibility features to Awakening and Fates, but in Japan its sales are actually on the lower end even compared to pre-Awakening FE portable titles, and the only big features missing compared to the modern games are the avatar and shipping.
I think the presentation features and accessibility helped getting the attention of an expanded audience, but besides attention you also need content, and at least at this point, unless IS can add some other big new feature, shipping, children and the customizable not-really-avatar seem to be a big part of the content people see in the games.
TBH, the game has insane amount of polish but sold less then the DS games in Japan, so who the fuck knows at this point.
Shipping has always been a very popular thing for the fanbase, and this game kinda introduced (its pretty much love triangle central the game).
It's called Fateslandia.
Linkstrikesback
Member
Why did you bother making the review thread if you weren't going to do the one thing that the thread actually exists for?
Here are all the ones posted after the topic was made that I could see. I'm sure there are many more by now.
This game is so weird in that they updated so many things that needed to be updated but they refused to change the maps.
When you made this thread, you took on the duty of keeping the OP up to date with reviews. Are you refusing to do that?
The polish is certainly important, but a lot of these were not new to Awakening.
FE11 and FE12 had really bad artstyles, but those were oddities. The series has had a lot of appealing artstyles over the years. The CGs were in FE9 and FE10, a world map that can be explored were in FE2 and FE8(games that are not the most popular), and we can grind in any game with an arena. Even Casual mode and the Avatar were added to FE12, a game NoA decided we didn't need.
Awakening was pretty lucky, being a game that brought all of this together into a well rounded package, but it also managed make a lot of noise before it was released. Fans constantly asking NoA where it is at, worried that it would be skipped over like FE12, until an accidental slip from Reggie after an E3. Nintendo ran with how quickly it's name spread on the internet after that, and finally gave the series a strong marketing push in the west. Awakening being a hit was more than any of it's gameplay changes, it's largely thanks to NoA finally putting some trust into the series.
BRSxIgnition
Member
Having watched about 20 minutes of the beginning I have to say I immediately prefer the localization and flow of SoV to Fates. (Though I kinda wish I hadn't seen that first cutscene before even having the game in my hands.)
Gaiden is notoriously unpopular among the fanbase though, and 3DS software in general is down for pretty much all the big IPs due to the system's waning popularity, so the lower sales aren't entirely due to the lack of shipping or avatars. It's also the third release (fifth depending on how you count Fates) in the same console cycle so at this point most people probably want something fresher and more exciting. Hopefully FE Switch will shake things up again.
Ryouji Gunblade
Member
I'm curious how the character's localized dialogue and the overall plot hold up compared to Awakening. Or even to Fire Emblem 3 (plot-wise).
AlexFlame116
Member
I'll gladly take over review duties if we need to change.
I guess at the end it doesn't matter whether or not you prefer the new or the old or what saved the franchise. All that matters now is that Fire Emblem is back on top and it looks like it's going to stay that way for a while. That's what makes me happy!
I guess at the end it doesn't matter whether or not you prefer the new or the old or what saved the franchise. All that matters now is that Fire Emblem is back on top and it looks like it's going to stay that way for a while. That's what makes me happy!
Which is why I said "a lot" and not "all". I just said on this very page I get more grounded takes from people outside of GAF.
I'm taking care not to paint with a broad brush here, but some fans do act like posturing elititists to an absolutely silly extent and I'll continue to criticize them for it.
That's really sad to hear. Could it being a remake of a game that was actually released in Japan be more of a factor? Or that many people have moved on to the Switch? I love the artstyle of this game so much more than in Awakening/Fates, so I really hope that isn't what's turning people away.
The bigger issue I had with characters in the Awakening/Fates era is that their supports are so much more...formulaic now. Each character has a gimmick that they express non-stop throughout. Take Gaius for example:
Support 1: I like sweets.
Support 2: Let's enjoy sweets together.
Support 3: I like you more than sweets. Here's a ring.
Obviously I'm exaggerating a little, but that's really how it felt to me while playing Awakening. When every male-female relationship has to end in marriage, they couldn't do what the older games did and play around with relationships as much.
NeonZ
Member
It's still an odd drop though. Sacred Stones was tracking better at this point and it shared several of those factors (third game in the same engine, and without even an overall asset change, unlike here, late into the GBA's life, many Gaiden throwbacks) and was coming from games with lower sales than Awakening and Fates.
It's not an exaggeration, it's flat out inaccurate. Gaius is super shallow and his gimmick is dumb, but his support chains definitely have more variance than what you're implying:
Contrast that with say, the GBA titles where support chains are almost always short and dry:
Folks tend to have this incredibly idealized idea of what supports were like in the older FE games. They usually don't compare to the newer titles, even at their worst. (Some obvious exceptions aside).
Riposte
Member
Awakening's real problem was the garbage map design and broken mechanics, quite the fall from grace from the unlocalized FE12. Basically, the marriage stuff or accessibility features are not so bad until they start the sell on the games solely on those in place of tactical depth and map creativity. What was worrisome was that Fire Emblem would become one of "those" series, not because it had anime tiddie, but rather "those" series are shallow as fuck because they can rely on other things. Why be worried about them adding an easy or no-death mode? Because maybe the next game (FE13 after 12) won't have much of a reason to try to please the players hungry for depth, which is exactly what happened to an astonishing degree.
But another way to look at it is that if it's adding insult to injury to pack in waifu pandering to one of the series's low-point as a "SRPG", then I still think the injury is worse than the insult. So, I'm a little perplexed by the notion the games become much better if they remove the anime fluff (or a part of it, anyway), but keep the crappy game design - that's "classic Fire Emblem"? I rather have a SRPG masterpiece full of pandering like Conquest, tbh.
But another way to look at it is that if it's adding insult to injury to pack in waifu pandering to one of the series's low-point as a "SRPG", then I still think the injury is worse than the insult. So, I'm a little perplexed by the notion the games become much better if they remove the anime fluff (or a part of it, anyway), but keep the crappy game design - that's "classic Fire Emblem"? I rather have a SRPG masterpiece full of pandering like Conquest, tbh.
Jonneh3003
Banned
Sure seems that way
WrenchNinja
Member
This is pretty disingenuous advice considering that maps are locked behind the mechanic
DecoReturns
Member
Finally watched some footage from a review.
Voice acting sounds good so far. Didn't like Alm's voice until I realized he's actually a kid (I'm dumb).
Cutscenes look nice, but also a bit weird, can't really described why tho, it's strange. Also the recent trailers are pretty good, it's weird that they are mostly posted on U.K. Nintendo only tho.
Voice acting sounds good so far. Didn't like Alm's voice until I realized he's actually a kid (I'm dumb).
Cutscenes look nice, but also a bit weird, can't really described why tho, it's strange. Also the recent trailers are pretty good, it's weird that they are mostly posted on U.K. Nintendo only tho.
Who hurt you? Let Wrys heal you.
Anyone who wants to read reviews about the game and share their insights about them are entirely capable of doing just that with what I posted. Like other review threads, I've shared a number of select publications with summaries and also linked to Metacritic/Gamerankings for everything else since I thought it'd be better not to bloat the OP with every review under the sun but still provide some convenience to find any others without needing to dig through this thread.
As far as I'm concerned, I haven't failed in providing a sufficient review thread, because there's been plenty of discussion and comments about the reviews here since this thread started and not one of you were complaining that I wasn't updating the OP until well after the fact and only after I openly denied one person here who had the gall to ask me to add their own review.
In fact, the only people I've noticed who have specifically requested that I add any additional reviews to the OP are the very journalists themselves, both in this thread and in unsolicited private messages. And to be frank, I'm not interested in spending my time doing people these kinds of favors, and I would hope that my interest or lack thereof should be respected.
Like I said, you can find pretty much any review of the game with what I already posted on top of the couple I highlighted to begin with, so I don't believe it's all that necessary to update the thread further or that not doing so would be a disservice to some arbitrary obligation you seem to think I have. It may be nice if I highlighted a few more, I could agree that much, but the need for that doesn't make itself apparent.
I stand by the fact that the reviews are right there for your perusal and have been from the start, and you may choose to read them or not. This is hardly any different from your average review thread, and I'd appreciate it if you try to treat it as such, even if you disagree with how it's being maintained.
Yeah I can't really hate Fates since the gameplay is so solid (even Birthright isn't terrible, though Revelations might be another story with its garbage maps). Writing wise outside of the suspect main stories, it also helps that the developers threw in a bunch of pre-established relationships between the cast to give the supports some desperately needed foundational support (though most of them do boil down to "we're related and/or grew up together!!!" or "we're retainers to royal x and/or grew up together!!!" which obviously can get a bit tiresome).
While personally I prefer Valentia, I think Awakening has the edge on being more newcomer friendly with an easier difficulty and more streamlined options, though you can't wrong with either really.
Valentia's quite odd in that it has a lot of options that other FE's don't, such as dungeon crawling, but drops a lot of the series staples too. I'm not sure how that would effect your playstyle going forward if you start Valentia first, but every FE has different bits and bats to them, and they're all built on the foundation of great gameplay, characters, art, and music.
FE7 ("Fire Emblem" in NA) has a heavy tutorial that tells you just about everything about the series' fundamental gameplay so ideally you'd either play that somehow or look up a screenshot let's play or video, but out of those options, probably the DS remake. It's pretty dry all things told but it is still technically the first one and both Valentia and Awakening have a lot of weird extraneous shit not found in most of the other games (or in each other) that might make it hard to go from game to game so if you have the capability to play it or get at a reasonable price (I would not pay a king's ransom for Shadow Dragon!!!) it wouldn't be a bad idea to dip into the DS game for at least a few chapters.
Your feelings are irrelevant. Either do it properly or next time don't do it at all
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