If you're familiar with my love of series like Banner Saga and Shadow Run you'll know I have a passion for tactical RPGs. It wasn't that long ago that I did a completed a fairly enjoyable playthrough of Fire Emblem: Awakening. I have a friend that is a huge Fire Emblem fan and he recommend I play Echoes next. I was quite curious about Echoes because I knew it was a remake of the second Fire Emblem game originally released on the Gameboy Advance. Additionally, this has a more linear story compared to modern titles where you are trying to foster relationships between characters. Try factoring all these elements together and what exactly is it we end up with?
Well the game got off to a good start crafting a tale of two characters whose relationship is torn apart by war. Alm and Celica first meet as young kids growing up in a small village and they quickly become very close friends. Then one day after some trouble comes to their town Alm's grandfather is force to relocate Celica for her safety separating the two companions for years to come. The game constantly teases the idea that the two are going to have a tragic relationship sometime as they grow older. After you get through the intro you start to play as both characters as they each get tangled up in the coming war. Eventually they briefly reunite and at this point you can actively choose who you want to play as.
The story is quite well done but sadly there are quirks to the gameplay that killed the experience for me. So I started my playthrough on normal difficulty but with classic settings which meant if a character dies the are gone for good. I think the reason I play this way is so the battles actual have some tension and requires me to really be smart in my strategies. As I played through the first ten hours I felt like I was doing quite well for the most part. I should note the fact that characters reset to level one after you change their classes always seemed like an unnecessary complication when trying to determine long term stat optimization. My problem whoever comes in the unpredictability of the AI and the frustrating appearance of enemy scouting parties.
To call the AI completely unpredictable wouldn't be fair because you can see their attack range and if you place characters in that range the enemies will usually target the weakest one. That said I often had to play battles at least twice as the first time I wouldn't know how much damage the opposing forces where capable of doing till they pounded on one of my weaker party members. That is probably just a time investing element which I could have grinded through. The breaking point came when I exited out of a village and the enemy scouts intercepted me on the over map. The battles started with them taking the first turn and all my troops exposed in the middle of the map. I can't for the life of me determine why the feature was nessacary. If players wants to take their time to visit every location or grind up levels why not let them. This felt like completely arbitrary punishment for exploration.
So I didn't even get close to completing Fire Emblem Awakening but at about 10-12 hours in I knew I wanted to use my time to find more enjoyable experiences. The story seemed fascinating enough that I wish I could have seen how it unfolded as I'm sure their would have been some fun plot twists. The combat system is generally pretty satisfying but it can be hard to gauge the threat level of any particular unit. Why the developers would punish players for exploring and grinding in what is an already fairly challenging game just astounds me. If you have infinite patience for replaying battles or want a completely different experience playing without permadeath you may be able to enjoy this title. However there are honestly much more balance tactical rpgs out there like the ones mentioned in the intro that I believe would be a better use of time.