It’s amazing what the 3DS has done for the Fire Emblem series.
What was once a niche strategy game has blossomed into one of Nintendo’s premiere franchises.
Awakening really did the save the series and Fates, despite its mixed fan reception, continued
that success.
Now we have plenty of Fire Emblem titles to look forward to, but there’s still one more
game for the 3DS before the series moves to the Switch, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of
Valentia, a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden on the Famicom.
And upon its reveal, I was incredibly excited for it.
Half the series has never been released worldwide so this was chance to see what we had missed
with some obvious updates to bring it in line with the modern idea of Fire Emblem.
Despite that though, Shadows of Valentia might feel more unique now than even when it was
first released.
So many of the staples that we’re familiar with are either gone or completely reworked,
which brings to question whether new fans will even enjoy it.
Shadows of Valentia’s story features dual protagonists, Alm and Celica, who became fast
childhood friends until they were forced to be separated.
Promising to one day reunite, the two grow up apart and are shuttered away from the world
at large.
The land of Valentia is ruled over by two gods, Duma and Mila, who battled endlessly
until a stalemate was reached and a tenuous peace accord was forged, represented by their
respective nations of Rigel and Zofia.
However, Rigel has broken that peace accord and invaded Zofia causing Alm to leave his
village in order to join the resistance forces while Celica leaves at the same time to discover
what has happened to Mila since Zofian land is beginning to rot.
While there is a bit of slow start, the story honestly kept me invested the entire time.
It’s a good setup and naturally allows you to experience both Alm and Celica’s stories
at the same time which also serves to give it a unique feel.
The plot itself and its twists and turns were pretty easy to see coming though.
Nothing caught me off guard, but that really wasn’t the focus in my opinion, especially
since this is ostensibly an adaptation of a NES story.
Instead, the true star here is the characters and their motivations.
These are some of the strongest written characters in the series with maybe the exception of
Celica who can come across a bit flat if only because I’ve seen her personality so many
times before.
Alm gets close to that as well, but there’s enough here to flesh him out that I stayed
invested.
It’s the supporting cast that truly stands above though.
Because of the split nature of the story and how certain gameplay elements are handled,
this might be the first time I truly felt like I got to know the cast of a Fire Emblem
game.
So many times in the past, a cool character would show up, join your army, and then basically
have nothing to do other than support conversations to try and flesh them out.
While Shadows of Valentia still has that, the changes to the formula provides many more
opportunities to talk to them and learn their stories as they’ll often appear to just
talk about their background or give their feelings about current events.
Outside of few characters here and there, I really feel like I got to know most of them.
And like I said, it all ties in to how Shadows of Valentia changes up the Fire Emblem formula.
In the past, many of the games would have one major battle per chapter with options
to manage your army in-between.
Fire Emblem Echoes features no chapters and instead focuses on Acts where lots of battles
can take place.
An Act doesn’t end until all of the battles in a section of the map are completed.
And later Acts allow you to freely choose between Alm and Celica’s armies, going in
whatever order you see fit which does help the variety since you’re often able to work
with different units.
It’s a bit similar to other Fire Emblem games with a map except there’s much more
to do beyond that.
You could move on to the next battle and continue the story, but opening up more of the map
also grants access to towns and dungeons.
Each town naturally contains villagers that provide more information on what’s going
on as well as the occasional quest.
These usually come in the form of providing certain items or completing a set task in
a dungeon and reward you with items for battle.
These items can also be found around towns or any place with the explore option, allowing
you to keep them for your provisions.
There’s no Vulneraries or healing potions of any kind this time around.
Instead it takes the form of food.
Food becomes important in the dungeons.
Enemy units wander the depths and an encounter with them will cause a traditional battle
to take place.
Thankfully, these are usually pretty short and don’t take up too much time.
But players can get the drop on these enemies with a well-timed swing to lower their health
and place your units closer to theirs in order to dish out the hurt quickly.
Of course, if they get the drop on you, then they’re given the advantage and allowed
to move first which could spell trouble for your more vulnerable units.
Where the food comes into play is in restoring your units’ stamina.
The more a unit battles, the more fatigued they’ll become, and if they become too tired,
their stats will decrease.
Food helps keep up their energy though in my experience this didn’t become something
to really monitor until the final third of the game.
Until that point, the dungeons tended to be small and contained, a nice way to break up
the action.
But later dungeons can be a grueling affair with battles wearing you down.
Thankfully, the rewards are worth it with new equipment and access to Mila’s Statue
which allows units who’ve reached a certain level to promote their class.
It’s an easy system to understand and the game always informed me when it was time to
promote.
All of this makes Shadows of Valentia feel closer to a traditional RPG, but it’s still
very much a strategy game even though there’s been many changes made there as well.
Right off the bat, the traditional Weapon Triangle is gone.
Swords aren’t more effective against axes or weaker to lances.
In fact, there are no axe wielders that join your party in the entire game.
I wasn’t sure how I would react to this change, but it never decreased the amount
of strategy necessary to win the day.
The same could be said of weapon degradation.
At no point can any of your weapons break causing some significant changes to how things
play out.
Instead of each character having a large inventory, they can only carry one item at a time.
This can either be food to heal or equipment that you find along the way which takes form
of classic items like Iron, Steel, or Silver weapons and shields.
The stronger the equipment, the bigger the boost to your character’s strength or defense
at the cost of less Speed.
And this applies to all units since there’s no weight stat.
So it becomes a question of how much speed you’re willing to sacrifice for the extra
power.
But as you use the equipment, you’ll also learn special Arts that sacrifice HP in exchange
for a stronger attack that may boost your power, accuracy, or even avoidance.
It leaves a lot of room for how each player wants to customize their army.
Arts are similar to how magic works in the game as well.
Since there are no Tomes, magic is exchanged for health.
The stronger the magic, the more health that’s drained.
Fortunately, there are ways to keep your Mages in good health, including rings that restore
a little HP at the start of each turn.
It felt like a great way to the balance the power but also the vulnerability of magic
units.
The other big change is with Archers who are now able to hit units next to them as well
as those from much farther away.
However, they don’t automatically have the ability to do extra damage to flying units
which helps balance things out.
In all, I like a lot of these changes because it made me think of how to handle each battle
in a different way.
Without the Weapon Triangle and these different ideas in play, other aspects of the gameplay
have a lot more focus.
Terrain bonuses became a bigger deal, but also character classes and their individual
stats.
The Attack stat applies to both magic and physical moves, and the difference only matters
of terms of defense.
I had to keep in mind which units could handle each situation.
Especially since the game loves to match Mages with Archers making them difficult to approach.
As much as I enjoyed these differences, it’s not always perfect.
While I loved that normal battles could often have every unit in each fight, something that’s
limited to ten in dungeons, the variety never really changes.
Almost every win condition is Routing the Enemy and while the enemies themselves are
often varied, it can get a little old.
The dungeons attempt to break this up, but each encounter there still features the same
kind of battle.
And while the early game is pretty easy, there’s a significant difficulty increase about halfway
through Act 3.
Thankfully, the game mitigates this difficulty spike through the use of Mila’s Turnwheel.
At any time during your turn, it can be activated in order to rewind time and fix any of your
mistakes.
You can go one move previously or even all the way back to the beginning of the battle.
It was such a relief playing on Classic Mode and not having to worry about restarting every
time I lost a unit.
Instead, I could back and try to fix the mistake even if this might take a few tries.
And that’s where it gets tricky since the Turnwheel only has so many uses per battle
in the overworld and the same amount of uses for an entire dungeon.
It can be very easy to run low on uses with bad play.
I find it to be an excellent compromise to those who don’t want to use Casual Mode.
And while the game does become harder, it’s at it’s most annoying when there are Cantor
enemies.
Cantors can summon monsters to fight your party nearly infinitely.
The act drains their health, but they always have a way to immediately restore it.
And it can be nightmarish at times trying to fight through these hordes just to reach
the Cantor, who is often pretty tough on his own.
It became a matter of slowly moving forward, mowing down the mobs, until I could rush the
Cantor, kill him, and dispel all the summoned creatures.
So many battles are extended way longer than they should be simply because of these enemy
types and they’re often there to ensure a much harder battle.
While they occasionally could be fun to fight, I eventually ended up groaning each time they
appeared.
Still, there’s a lot to enjoy about Shadows of Valentia.
For one, every single interaction is fully voiced with the small exception of some villagers.
It adds so much more personality to the characters and all of them are incredibly handled.
Some stand out more than others, such as Gray, Mae, Delthea, and Berkut, but this may be
some of the best voice acting I’ve ever encountered in a video game.
It all comes across so naturally that it’s easy to get sucked into the world.
And the music is just as good.
There are so many standout tracks here that really push the epic scale of the story and
the events that occur.
It is brilliantly handled.
It doesn’t hurt either that this is the best looking Fire Emblem game on the 3DS.
I love the updated artstyle for the characters and the battle sequences are gorgeous.
Each encounter reflects what’s going on in the map and has so many small touches like
swords cutting through the nearby grass during swings.
Beyond that though is the choreography of the battle animations.
They often flow into each other so seamlessly that I was even entertained during missed
attacks.
It’s not perfect though as some of the camera angles can be wonky and the characters can
sometimes pop in.
This never affected my enjoyment though because the animation was just so good.
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is a really good remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden.
Many of the ideas here originated in that Famicom title.
It updates and refines, keeping what works and not finding some way to implement the
newer ideas like Pair-Ups and child units.
It’s great to finally experience the game and I ended up liking it a lot.
Not everything works and there’s certainly annoyances to be found, but this is the new
gold standard as far as Fire Emblem’s presentation is concerned.
It is well worth picking up for a lengthy and fun strategy adventure.
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