Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia - Hype Thread! 9/10 AAA GS

What is Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia?

It's a new 3DS title, fully built from the ground up, based on the old Famicom game that never came to the West that was known as Fire Emblem Gaiden. The plot is in tact from the classic game, but new features and characters have been implemented.

Above: Note that this is a fan translation of the title, which is no way endorsed by Nintendo.

What is the plot and setting of this Fire Emblem game?

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia takes place in the same Universe as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon in the Continent of Valentia which is west of Archanea. If you have played Fire Emblem: Awakening, then you'll know that Valentia has become the Empire Valm where Walhart has conquered. This game, you will finally uncover the history of Valm, its heroes, myths, and legends.

The Reveal trailer above shows the history of Valentia

Why Should I buy this game?

If you're a fan of the Fire Emblem games, whether being a hardcore fan or just getting into the series, this is a start. Especially for the "Core" fans that played Gaiden, this remake has a tons of new additions that will help dig deep to the lore of Valentia.

What makes this different from Awakening and Fates?

The game-play is completely different. Expect many changes when on your journey. Here is a list of changes.

• No Weapon Triangles
• No characters on your army wields axes
• Thieves are Axe wielders and are restrictively only enemy units
• Magic and Healers now have to use their HP in order to perform a spell or heal units
• You can promote villagers or any or you characters to different classes, but only when you're at Mila's Shrine
• Archers can finally fight close combat, as well as attacking 3 spaces ahead
• Redesign dungeons to explore
• Fight hoards of nightmarish creatures that are haunting the land
• No pairing up fighters together this time

Why did you put that Celica is a Waifu, FireEmblem_Man? I thought you hate Weeaboo stuff!

That's because Fire Emblem Gaiden was my first Fire Emblem game I ever played back when I was starting my freshman year of Highschool. I was getting into Anime and stuff. I liked Celica back then, and I LOVE her redesign now. Loved to play her half of the story and back then, wished she was real. Fast forward today, when they made Fates into a Waifu simulator, I was disappointed because it was a pointless add on. /confessions.......

Hype Counts

AAAA

AAA - FireEmblem_Man

AA - Aigis, Superbuuman, logicallizard07, kingjazziephiz

A - Charizard1605, mmmwksil, LegatoSkyheart

Less than A - Maroxad, Gamerno6666

Gamespot - Review 9/10

@FireEmblem_Man: Congratulations on accepting the weeb into your life

8spot for this one

I'm no weeb, dammit! I just liked Celica in high school and like her redesign for the game.

one of us. one of us.

7/10

Party pooper!

8/10 .. :P

You're cooler than Chaz anyways

Gonna go with an 8/10. Not sure how people will respond to the changes in this one

8 cause too hard for casuals

6/10

None of the things that makes Fire Emblem tick are in this game. There is little long term resource management since you can grind, and hte map design is bad.

On a side note, how old are you? And how old were you when you began junior high school? FE2 seems like an odd place to start if you would be at or near my age.

I'm not disclosing my age for personal reasons. I heard of Fire Emblem when Smash Bros. Melee came and when I unlocked Marth and Roy. Didn't know who they were, and then was introduced to emulators which we can't discuss here. I was out of Middle School and began High School when the Gamecube was released.

Put me down for (single) A hype. Word is the game isn't good according to the Japanese audience, so it might seem like a 7 is too high, but we have to account for score inflation.

Really? I heard that it's the better Fire Emblem Remake compared to Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem.

Suppose it depends on who you're getting your info from. I happen to trust the word of my source, so I'll bet based on that.

In any case, I'm not buying this one. As I've said before: Fire Emblem is dead to me.

You're dead to me :P

5/10

Okay, I'll just ignore your posts from this point forward.

It was a joke :<

Anyways, this game is way different than the other incarnations which is why it's a black sheep. It suffered from the same changes from Zelda II and Super Mario Bros 2. Of course some people who may have not played Gaiden will give it a negative review. But it sure grows on you long term.

Mechanically, Fire Emblem has always been a bit too basic for its own good.

Fire Emblem Conquest was carried by some amazing mission design. What does this game have?

Classic Fire Emblem Gaiden gameplay

I would rather just play Tactics Ogre SNES in that case. Which much like Fire Emblem Gaiden, comes with an overworld, random encounters and similar class system beginning as Soldiers or Amazon (depending on sex), then promoting to various classes along the way. Only difference is that the mechanics and writing is better.

Isn't that right @mmmwksil?

The only FE games I'll still gladly play today are the GBA ones. Heck, I'd give Genealogy or Thracia 776 a chance before I give this one the time of day. The modern FE isn't to my liking anymore, not least of which is because they've moved away from the adorable sprites to plain ugly 3D models.

This is true. On top of Tactics Ogre being a more complex game because it factors in a unit's facing direction and height of the field.

I had to wonder why the series is moving to handhelds and not to home consoles.

@FireEmblem_Man: No weapon triangle seems very strange as this is the pinnacle of the series. But oh well I don't think this even came into play until later in the series.

Still, they can't add it in but can add in new characters? Very strange. I guess if there are no new "main" characters it wouldn't affect the story.

Yup, hence the better mechanics ;)

On a side note, I never played the SNES version of Tactics Ogre but I did play Ogre Battle, the GBA game and the PSP remake. And I did hear about its mechanics. Still no expert on the game. But if Tactics Ogre SNES is anything to go by the mechanics are better than Gaiden could ever hope for, and the PSP game is anything to go by the story is much better.

I dont know how important facing is though in the SNES game, in the PSP game it didnt really matter, Truestrike would allow even your Terror knight to hit most enemies with 100% accuracy even when they are facing him/her.

Thracia 776 is a great game though. But then again, I also said that I liked Fire Emblem Conquest, so you will probably take my opinion with a grain of salt :P

I am looking forward to this game. :)

Although I have heard the map design has left Fire Emblem fanatics wanting, the general game loop of Fire Emblem is fun enough for me to look past that. I am not expecting it to go toe to toe with the best of the franchise but that's okay. Fire Emblem is inherently fun for me.

To be perfectly fair, my hatred of Fates stems mostly from my experience with Birthright, as it was the version I played the most before I got fed up with it and sold my special edition. Perhaps if I had played Conquest or even Revelations first, I would have suffered more of the game before throwing it out.

Perfectly understandable.

When people tend to rank each Fire Emblem game, both Birthright and Revelations usually are near the bottom. Conquest is usually ranked very favorably. If one can get past the atrocious writing, Fates is really good. It doesnt have the charming animations of the GBA games, either but hey, its missions and encounter design made more than up for that.

Hard to justify even getting this when the few people I know that have played the Japanese version have all unanimously told me it sucks. And I value their opinion, because they're big enough fans of the games to make the effort of importing a copy and play it in their non native language.

It's also coming out the same day that Endless Space 2 comes out of early access where the reception is incredibly positive and also being ~$15 cheaper, let alone being a Western Strategy game, so it's pretty much going to be better by default.

Edit: also no romance

Dont care about the score. This place gave Revelations a 9.

This game sold pretty poorly in Japan, its opening week was worse than New Mystery of the Emblem and Heroes of Light and Shadows. Unless its western performance is much better. I doubt we will be seeing incest simulator remake or best fire emblem remake any time soon :(

At the end of the day, the fact that you consistently say Conquest had the best mission design makes me want to give it another chance. But I refuse to pay anything more than $10 for it, so it's highly unlikely I ever will.

It gave Revelations an 8. Birthright got the 9

And does it change the how I thought Revelations was nothing more than a game that featured gimmicks that were more tedious than they were strategically interesting?

Not that I was wrong anyway. Like Jesus charizard lol. I dont care about sales or scores as much as you do, but at least get your info right before doing nothing more than another fruitless "you're wrong" correction post about 1 point of a review score.

Awakening, Birthright and Revelations suck.

And it has nothing to do with ideas and all to do with execution of ideas.

Bruh, I wasn't arguing, chill. I was just adding what I remembered about the scores to the discussion (since I think Birthright is the worst of the three, so it getting a 9 makes Gamespot's Fire Emblem reviews even less reliable for me). I was wrong, fine. No need to bite my head off.

How much a game sells depends on how marketable it is.

Unless you are trying to use an argumentum ad populum.

Actually it is.

Doing what you did, Equating quality to popularity is an argumentum ad populum, a logical fallacy. What I did, arguing on the merits of the game... is not fallacious.

All high sales means is that it sold well. Not that it is good.

Probably a 7. 8 if Gamespot is generous.

Ok...

Awakening,

• Zero effort put into level design. Every mission is just a routing mission. Barring a few side missions.
• Big Open fields in a franchise that has never done those particulary well
• Poorly balanced reclassing system
• Poorly balanced duo system
• Weak story
• Infinite grinding completely makes the whole resource management null and void
• Reinforcements poorly thought out. While most Fire Emblems gave you good queues where they would come from and when, Awakening could often throw reinforcements at you from a random edge of the map, massacring your healers while you could do nothing about it outside of omnipresence.

Birthright

• Zero effort put into level design. Every mission is just a routing mission. Barring a few side missions.
• Big Open fields in a franchise that has never done those particulary well
• Terrible story
• Infinite grinding completely makes the whole resource management null and void

Revelations

• Gimmicky maps
• Mission designers thinking that gimmicks > threats.
• Seriously who the hell designed those maps? They threw shit on a wall and waited to see what stuck.
• Terrible Story
• Infinite grinding completely makes the whole resource management null and void

It is not just me. That is a good chunk of the Fire Emblem audience they alienated with those games. Short term profit is nice, but if it comes at the company or brand's goodwill. It can in fact be costly in the long run.

The Waifu audience is in Fire Emblem now, but what happens when they leave? How much of their old fanbase is getting disgruntled by the direction Fire Emblem took following Awakening?

Thracia 776 has some of the best mission design in SRPG history. Both Sacred Stones and Radiant Dawn are better than awakening and 2/3rds of Fates. Sacred Stones had plenty of replay value due to its branching promotions and multiple paths, and its attack animations carried a lot of charm. Radiant Dawn was meant for veterans of the franchise.

Unbending difficulty? No idea what you are talking about there.

What great improvements did Awakening add? Cheesy Romances? A broken pair up mechanic? Shitty art style from some porn artist? Uninspired 3d combat animatoins? Too many support options per character (to appeal to the shipping element) which ultimately dragged dwon the quality of the support conversations to something you would just want to skip instead of actually read?

As a fan of the franchise, I want what is best for the franchise. This waifu new model is not sustainable. Of course, the old model was not exactly sustainable either as the numbers showed. But that is why innovation was necessary, following Thracia 776, the franchise stagnated. But Awakening's innovation, was not really a step in the right direction. Awakening was a fairly fresh take on the franchise and as an added bonus, it launched at the right time.

Of course you wont understand the complaints people have with the 2 latest Fire Emblems it if you are unwilling to. Instead dismissing old fans as "xenophobic losers who can't accept change and live in nostalgia". I guess it is easier to make assertions like that than to actually understand what people don't like.

I like Conquest, in fact, I like it a lot. That is despite all the baggage that came with Awakening and Fates. But what made Conquest tick and Awakening and the other 2 Fates campaign blunder so hard was that Conquest was a tight, well paced, and ultimately well executed game.

System Shock 2 is widely considered to be a better game than BioShock, yet Bioshock sold much better. Why, because timing and marketing is everything.

Well, those people are cranks.

Your second thing makes little sense, if they hated all things japanese, why would they be fans of a japanese franchise exclusive to a japanese console brand. That has always employed a Japanese art style. The difference is that the anime artstyles used in the past were actually good, compared to this new one that was as generic as it could get. Hell, I dont see any fans complain about the art in Echoes, more praise than anything. As for those new western fans who would make games inspired by Fire Emblem, they would use the new direction fire emblem awakening took, not the older ones. So that wont matter to the fans.