How do you feel about Echoes: Shadows of Valentia in 2022?

[Etrurian emperor]

I still look very favorably on the game. It remains impressive how Echoes took a cast full of non entities and turned them into a great, lovably cast of characters. That the remake before Echoes downright refused to do any of that only makes me look more favorably on Echoes by comparison. In terms of tone and writing I'd call Echoes quality to be inconsistent, but the good outweighs the bad. The character designs, personalities, world building and (overly medieval) dialogue are all very charming, even if the story isn't always strictly good. 

In terms of gameplay Echoes is unique, for better and certainly also for worse. No other Fire Emblem game plays like it which gives me a soft spot for the game. I also think it ensures the game remains relevant because if you want a game like Echoes you only really have Echoes to play. Meanwhile some other Fire Emblem games are somewhat obsolete when compared to their peers. 

Echoes has its fair share of flaws but there's enough of good within the game that I'm willing to cut the game a lot of slack.

 

[ZeManaphy]

Of all the four games I have played, Awakening, Fates, Echoes, and Three Houses, this is easily my least favorite of the bunch. I find it’s story  themes atrocious, the gameplay miserably slow, and how contradictory themes are. Everyone has discussed the story and how it is flawed, with me agreeing on points on how Alm is a Mary Sue, Celica is preached as an equal but becomes a damsel in distress, and how merit is more important than birth falls apart when Alm is revealed to be a Prince by birth and has special privileges. Three Houses does the whole commoner vs Nobility theme 100 times better, as evidenced by all the debates on Edelgard’s actions. 
 

As for the gameplay, people mention that the maps are atrocious and I agree, especially Celica’s part 4 maps through swamps that have your movement and  cantors who some Garuda who are immune to terrain and thus slowly chip your units down. Nuibaba’s map was also painfully slow for the same reason. I also hated Dungeon exploring for two reasons: Walking is like driving a car that is going on breakneck pace: You can’t run and stop, you have to slowly come down and stop, which is a problem there is an obstacle in your way. Turning is also the same issue: You have to slow down and turn, not on the fly. The second reason is that whenever you enter a room in a dungeon and enter back to a previous hall, you have to fight all the enemies again. Not only is this time consuming, some of these enemies are super strong, especially in late game dungeons with no Mila Shrines, making it very daunting to collect treasure out of fear of falling from those beasts. 
 

That being said, there are some good things, like the animation being really smooth- they clearly mastered the 3DS engine. And the artistic direction being very solid in both illustration and music, though I prefer Three Houses and Fates over Echoes still. In the end however, Echoes is a cake with beautiful frosting, but in the end, the substance of the cake tasted awful. If anything, Echoes suffers from being a remake, which are my least favorite kind of game generally speaking. They try to update it to modern standards, but have to keep some things  in regardless if it is or good or bad, or else it would  ruin the point of a remake. This isn’t exclusive to FE, other series like FRLG  form Pokémon are examples of bad remakes. 
 

That being said, I do have slight bit of frustration towards people who claim Fates is terrible in writing but praise Echoes as being a gold standard for writing; if anything, for me, I find Birthright and Conquest fine by themselves: Revelation is where the writing starts to fall off for me and in Fates in General. 

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 7/24/2022 at 3:15 AM, Imuabicus said:

One does not simply hold an Orange AND an Iron Sword.

The most powerful character in Valentia:

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

On 8/18/2022 at 4:37 AM, AnonymousSpeed said:

The most powerful character in Valentia:

Dude.

That´s an apple.

Know your vegetables.

smh

Edited August 21, 2022 by Imuabicus

[AnonymousSpeed]

3 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

Dude.

That´s an apple.

Know your vegetables.

smh

oof

That's what my mom is always sayin'

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

Dude.

That´s an apple.

Know your vegetables.

smh

Looks like a holy hand grenade to me.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

17 hours ago, Jotari said:

Looks like a holy hand grenade to me.

Everything´s an apple if you are desperate enough to keep the doctor away.

- Fred III.

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 8/22/2022 at 12:42 PM, Imuabicus said:

Everything´s an apple if you are desperate enough to keep the doctor away.

- Fred III.

The Ultimate Apple:

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

7 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The Ultimate Apple:

Better hope them Landknechts don´t mistake that for a Zweihänder.

[emazur]

I just finished it for the first time on hard/casual.

I liked it a lot - gameplay, music (Sacrifice and the Saint & What Lies at the End are a couple of my favs), voice acting, character design, decent story. Rating: 9/10

Here are the things I didn't like:

• Chapter 1 & 2 are way too easy on hard difficulty
• So many maps rely very, very heavily on main enemies being holed inside a compound and the only way in is a pain in the ass (this is especially true if you do not have a unit with the rescue spell to help punch a hole in their defenses. I did not have such a unit since I classified Faye as a Pegasus knight)
• Some maps also rely too heavily on casting Invoke and hoping you get lucky that the enemies will attack the illusions instead of you. The first swamp battle on Celica chapter 4 was one example - once crossing onto land I had Genny cast invoke at a suitable time (some allies for sure would have died otherwise). I got unlucky in that one of the enemy archers decided to target her instead of an illusion which would have killed her, but also got lucky that he missed.
• The good thing is that grinding is not needed to beat hard. The bad thing is that grinding is replaced by very time consuming random encounters which you need to put up with in order to hunt down badly needed valuable resources, especially in the dungeons (which I wasn't too crazy about in the first place and also badly need a better map display, which you'd think they could do with a 2-screen system)
• The last stretch of the final battle on chapter 5 - the only time in the game I finished a battle that resulted in defeated allies (I think 5). One specific pain in the ass was that magic unit with the silver shield. Celica, who was rated 172 with an attack rating of 30, could take him out but the battle forecast showed she would also die in the encounter (even if equipped with something like the Hex shield). Saber, rated 134 with an attack of 17 + 5 (Brave Sword) could only forecast a whopping 2 points of damage and Kamui's rating was nearly identical. The only reason I was able to beat him was because Gray (Dread Fighter) was eligible for villager promotion prior to entering the door to the Temple of Duma at the beginning of Chapter 5. I decided to promote him (since I hadn't done this before) and then fairly quickly grinded him up to level 7 Myrmidon and he became re-eligible for Dread Fighter promotion during the Duma Dungeon battles. This brought his rating up to 181 (the highest in my game) with an attack stat of 31 + 5 (Brave Sword). So I won only because I made a lucky choice (I hate relying on lucky choices) and because I did some grinding (also hate but since it was just one character it wasn't so bad). And that lucky choice was built upon the lucky choice of putting him on the path to dread fighter at the beginning of the game. So maybe my previous point about not needing grinding isn't so accurate
• One final gripe (not unique to Echoes) - it's not 1985 anymore so how about more than 3 save slots on a console game? I would have tried another strategy for beating Duma that hopefully would end without losses but I didn't want to overwrite my other 2 saves. So I decided to overwrite my current save and not bother with a rematch

I suppose I could gripe about Thabes Labyrinth too (gave up after losing on 5th floor boss) but I'll let it slide since it's optional

[Neezy]

One of the best videogames of all time. I completed this game last week and damn. Is a MASTERPIECE. 

 

- The characters are amazing, Clair, Alm, Celica, Gray, Mae, Sonya, etctop top characters. (Not you Faye)

- The BSO is GREAT, best BSO of FE BY FAR. 

- The gameplay.. i don't know why the people say the gameplay is bad. The combat is the best of 3DS, the animations are pretty great, super smooth unlike Fates and Awakening.

- I really love the story, is super epic and entertaining, unlike Fates and Awakening (fates and awakening story feels like anime of 12 episodes, very cliche and generic) and the characters are mega cliche. 

 

My favorite maps: Nuibaba's abobe, desert stronghold and the great swamps! pretty fun maps, but people just want easy mode i guess. 

 

currently i'm trying to play Awakening but the game feels cheap, super generic, the design, the characters, the story... but 92 metacritic xD

 

 

 

Edited February 17, 2023 by Neezy

[Aedan7479]

I'm worried this is considered Necro posting, but considering there was a five month gap and the thread wasn't locked, I think I'm fine.

I finished this game a couple weeks ago (with DLC), and I loved it. I acknowledge the flaws, some of the map designs are pretty annoying, the Cantors should NOT have regenerating health, and I do miss the class variety from other games. But I think I love what the game does right so much that I can ignore it, though I understand if other's can't.

As others have mentioned, the presentation is top notch for a game of this scale on the 3ds, the music, the animation, and of course, the voice acting. I also wonder if the story would be as good without the voice acting, but I think they might’ve written the script knowing there'll be voice acting, because I can't see some lines being effective without it, such as "nothing but LIES!", and yes you could argue that's a flaw.

I do agree the story is also flawed; Celica's route compared to Alm's doesn't nearly have the same impact, Alm's royal blood underestimates the Nobility and commoners theme (which could've actually been an interesting plot point if they acknowledged it), and some characters, like Rinea, only get more character in supplementary material and heroes; Rudolf's brand and the fact he was forced to promise to Duma that he would conquer Zofia NEEDED to be mentioned. But again, I can ignore the faults because of what it does right, again, the voice acting is a big factor, but some of the writing is really good regardless, especially some of the supports.

Also, I REALLY want a switch port that adds some maps with Rigellian characters (and just do Awakening as well).