About FE Gaiden...

[Harvey]

Ok so I heard that Echoes is a remake of Gaiden a game that is probably not known to many....

So I like to know just what is it about Gaiden that is different about the other games before getting into Echoes. Was gaiden at the time a good game or was it something that was a black sheep to the FE series?

I'd like to know what was introduced in FE Gaiden as well if possible. The reason for this is that I want to know of the game's difficulty, its gameplay before getting into Echoes.

 

[Konnor97]

It's the black sheep of the series. Considering it was only the second game, things weren't fully set in what a Fire Emblem game should be like, so Gaiden tried some stuff that nowadays is not used. There's towns, dungeons, a single equipment slot, designation between black magic (offensive spells) and white magic (healing spells plus Warp, Dear (removed monsters), and Illusion(summons NPCs of a certain class)), etc.

Other notable things introduced in Gaiden are:
 

Spoiler

Magic using HP to cast
Characters have a base weapon with 0 mt if nothing is equipped
Weapons are infinite use
There are no consumable items, only equipment
The Bow has 1-3 range, but Steel Bows, Silver Bows, and Holy Bows have 1-5 range
Bow Knights have 1-5 range with the normal Bow
Shields and Rings exist as equippable items, but you can't have multiple things equipped at once
World Map (with side destinations)
Branched promotion for Villagers
Paladins, Armor Knights, Snipers, and Swordfighters have 3rd tier promotions
Dread Fighters can 'promote' back into Villagers
You can only promote once a character has reached at least a certain level (3 for Villagers, 7 for most tier one, 10 for most tier 2, and some more)
Characters promote at shrines, which are typically found at the ends of dungeons
Also in shrines are lion heads, which each one in a shrine offering a different stat up, which can be distributed in any way you want, but you are given a limit of typically 3 points per shrine
There are monsters, such as Zombies, Skeletons, Gargoyles, Bigls, and Dracozombies
They are usually fought in dungeons, but some appear in battles on Cellica's side
Chapters are like the Parts in Radiant Dawn
You control Alm in Chapter 1, Cellica in Chapter 2, and both for Chapter 3 on
They don't fight in the same army though, and so you control both on each of their respective ends of the world map, doing their own battles

And probably other things that I can't think of at the moment. But yeah, Gaiden isn't a bad game, but it is an old game. There are definitely some things that you can see were reused in later games, especially FE8.

Edited January 19, 2017 by Konnor97

[CappnRob]

Gaiden introduced a lot of stuff actually, like branched promotions, a traversable overworld, monster battles, multiple main characters, branching storylines, and the like. FE8 was the big one that reused a lot of this content, but some of its trickled throughout the series.

[Harvey]

1 hour ago, Konnor97 said:

It's the black sheep of the series. Considering it was only the second game, things weren't fully set in what a Fire Emblem game should be like, so Gaiden tried some stuff that nowadays is not used. There's towns, dungeons, a single equipment slot, designation between black magic (offensive spells) and white magic (healing spells plus Warp, Dear (removed monsters), and Illusion(summons NPCs of a certain class)), etc.

Other notable things introduced in Gaiden are:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Magic using HP to cast

Characters have a base weapon with 0 mt if nothing is equipped

Weapons are infinite use

There are no consumable items, only equipment

The Bow has 1-3 range, but Steel Bows, Silver Bows, and Holy Bows have 1-5 range

Bow Knights have 1-5 range with the normal Bow

Shields and Rings exist as equippable items, but you can't have multiple things equipped at once

World Map (with side destinations)

Branched promotion for Villagers

Paladins, Armor Knights, Snipers, and Swordfighters have 3rd tier promotions

Dread Fighters can 'promote' back into Villagers

You can only promote once a character has reached at least a certain level (3 for Villagers, 7 for most tier one, 10 for most tier 2, and some more)

Characters promote at shrines, which are typically found at the ends of dungeons

Also in shrines are lion heads, which each one in a shrine offering a different stat up, which can be distributed in any way you want, but you are given a limit of typically 3 points per shrine

There are monsters, such as Zombies, Skeletons, Gargoyles, Bigls, and Dracozombies

They are usually fought in dungeons, but some appear in battles on Cellica's side

Chapters are like the Parts in Radiant Dawn

You control Alm in Chapter 1, Cellica in Chapter 2, and both for Chapter 3 on

They don't fight in the same army though, and so you control both on each of their respective ends of the world map, doing their own battles

And probably other things that I can't think of at the moment. But yeah, Gaiden isn't a bad game, but it is an old game. There are definitely some things that you can see were reused in later games, especially FE8.

 

Ok so may I know why is it a black sheep exactly since you say its not a bad game?

If the game is that bad, I just don't understand why Nintendo would want to remake that game instead of something else....

 

Again, I just want to know a little about Gaiden's history before getting into its remake.

 

 

Edited January 19, 2017 by Harvey

[Tryhard]

It's a black sheep in as much as Zelda II is - the fact that it was the second game that had wildly different mechanics for a series that had not yet found the archetype it was trying to be. Just because it does things differently doesn't mean it's bad, the issues are more that it's an old NES game and so has that archaic value.

[Tetragrammaton]

1 hour ago, Harvey said:

If the game is that bad, I just don't understand why Nintendo would want to remake that game instead of something else....

They used up all the new ideas for other games (2 other FE this year), so it is a safe bet to remake FE2 after FE1 and FE3 were remade, before they move on to remake 4 or 5.