Board 8 > How was Fire Emblem Echos: Shadows of Valencia Oranges

(+) Yeah! (+)

After playing through fire emblem fates, and hating almost every second of it, I thought "Gosh I'm really getting bored with the Awakening format" Then I played through Awakening for around the 500th time and loved every second of it, so maybe fates was just a really gosh darned bad game.

So whats the deal with Echos? Is the story ok? Is it closer to old school type fire emblems? Are there support conversations? Do those support conversations lead to babies sometimes?
---

It's pretty similar to Gaiden, which was pretty different from the rest.
---

It's a direct remake of FE Gaiden but with modern graphics and a few modern amenities. This includes the original map designs, which are complete ass, really unbalanced classes, and magic users having spells cast from HP instead of weapons in the traditional FE sense. The story is okay until the last part, but I don't want to give spoilers. There are support conversations, but there are no babies, they didn't retroactively include the marriage mechanic from FEA.
---

so it seems it might just be better the original game on my wii

unless my marth and ike amiibos do something cool
---

i enjoyed it more than the awakening formula games.

fates had some interesting new classes and class mechanics which were definitely a step up from awakening, and conquest was pretty darn good if you just straight up ignore the entirety of the plot and characters

echoes doesn't have the marriage/waifu shit, which is a huge boon. it has pretty bad map variety though. the characters and plot are pretty good, i would say a good bit better than the other 3ds games. and the art and everything looks really nice. the battle animations are the best of the 3ds games.

i'd say it's better than awakening by a good amount, arguably better than fates depending on how much you hate the waifu and class systems those games have that echoes doesn't (for me, not having those is a great thing)

it's not as good as a lot of the earlier games but definitely worth playing even if you hated/grew tired of the previous 3ds games. and gives hope that maybe future games won't always have the awakening formula that i despise
---

I'm a big fan of it, its gameplay style can get repetitive at times but it works for me
---

making babies and bloodlines has always been a pretty strong staple of the fire emblem series, and tbqh it's my absolute favorite part of fire emblem. Complaining about that is like complaining about the permadeath, like if you want to play the game without it, maybe you're in the wrong series?

Still, as much as I LOVE pairing up people to make kids to use later in the game, I would much rather have a nice middle ground where every character has three possible love interests and a few supports that aren't leading to romance (which were some of the best ones in 6/7/8)

Also I'd prefer just a two separate campaign idea for parents and kids like fire emblem 4. I don't like building up a parent for half the game only to be have to ditch them for their underleveled kid of a different class.
---

SantaRPidgey posted...

making babies and bloodlines has always been a pretty strong staple of the fire emblem series, and tbqh it's my absolute favorite part of fire emblem. Complaining about that is like complaining about the permadeath, like if you want to play the game without it, maybe you're in the wrong series?

Still, as much as I LOVE pairing up people to make kids to use later in the game, I would much rather have a nice middle ground where every character has three possible love interests and a few supports that aren't leading to romance (which were some of the best ones in 6/7/8)

Also I'd prefer just a two separate campaign idea for parents and kids like fire emblem 4. I don't like building up a parent for half the game only to be have to ditch them for their underleveled kid of a different class.

no it hasn't...

it was in one game before awakening
---

4/5 are both extentions of the theme

6/7 are definitely that theme (but reversed!)

9/10 and 1/3 have echos of the theme but are just a little too close together chronologically
---

that really isn't the same thing at all
---

---

shout out to SBAllen for letting us put a post with only an emoji and not registering it as an all caps message.
---

It's interesting. Gameplay is quite different; I liked that archers didn't feel like "crappy javelin/hand axe user" and I liked how the game handled magic. Sadly they kept the Gaiden map design which kinda sucks. Characters are pretty solid. Plot is possibly the worst Fire Emblem (I could go into why if you care, but spoilers and all that), and one of the most misogynist games I've played in recent memory to boot. It's low in replay value for a FE because you get to use everyone and its highest difficulty is pretty timid.

Overall I liked it less than most of the other non-remakes, but still enjoyed playing it overall because FE gameplay is that good, and I liked a different spin on it. If you're a bit fed up of the other 3DS games it'll be a welcome change, though I'll admit I'm a big fan of Conquest so I can't really say for sure.
---

nothing is worse than conquest's plot
---

shout out to SantaRPidgey for giving a shout out to SBAllen
---

NeoElfboy posted...

Plot is possibly the worst Fire Emblem (I could go into why if you care

sure, I'd be interested to read it
---

It's 100% a remake of Gaiden, down to the lack of weapon durability, somewhat questionable map design, use of HP to cast magic, and overpowered archers. Supports were added in since they weren't in the original version.

It's definitely closer to older FEs than the Awakening/Fates direction the series seems to be going. I prefer the older FEs anyway so it was pretty nice. I think 4 is still the only game that really did the marriage thing correctly anyway.
---

NeoElfboy posted...

Plot is possibly the worst Fire Emblem

are we talking about shadow dragon "so dull I can't possibly retain it" or pokemon RSE "why does the villain want to flood the earth" dumb because one is cool and the other is awful
---

MariaTaylor posted...

sure, I'd be interested to read it

Okay, here goes. Might have some details wrong, this is from memory.

Theme stuff:

The game has a couple major themes, one of which it actively pisses on and the other of which it mishandles.

Alm's route beats you with the theme that class differences are artificial. Alm is a commoner and has to fight the stigma that nobility have for him as he takes command based on merit. Further in the game, though, it's revealed that Alm is actually the emperor's son, so OF COURSE he's better than the nobles. In fact his actual commoner friends have scenes where they talk about how Alm is superior to them. So no, scratch that, the theme is actually that the divinely ordained royalty > nobles > commoners is correct.

The game's other theme is that humans need to stand up for themselves instead of relying on gods, which is fine except that it shows this by making the female lead act like a total idiot in defence of the "we need gods" stance. More on that later.

Setting stuff:

The game has this kind of neat setting idea where Zofia is a nation of kindness but also indolence, while Rigel is a nation of strength. Not a bad idea. It also never comes up in the plot as Alm'a ragtag band of Zofians outworks and outsmarts the Rigelian army at every turn.

Plot stuff:

The emperor's plot is absolutely insane. He starts a war with Zofia (the other country) so that Alm will become a great hero by opposing him, and then go on to defeat Duma, the evil god. This war costs, we can assume, tens of thousands of lives. His own army is decimated. The game seems to think this plan is perfectly reasonable and sane.

Meanwhile, Celica's path is almost entirely divorced from the game's actual plot until she meets Jeddah (the high priest of the enemy country and the game's main villain), who looks and acts like a Saturday morning cartoon villain (including lines where he cackles evilly about how Duma is going to bring suffering to the world). Jeddah tells her she should sacrifice her soul to Duma (the evil god) so that both he and the good god who Celica worships will be saved. Celica decides for some reason to trust him and goes along with this plan; she gets turned into a soulless witch who needs to be saved by Alm because she's a moron. This plot point could have worked if Jeddah were actually charismatic instead of an obvious baby-eater.

Gender stuff:

-Over half of the female PCs need to be rescued before they join the party, including ones who are supposed to be competent warriors in the plot.
-The aforementioned stuff with Celica's endgame plot.
-Despite being the rightful queen of Zofia, Celica abdicates her rule because the super-awesome male lead needs to become the ruler of the entire continent.
-One of the secondary villains has a wife who serves no purpose in the plot except for when he sacrifices her to the evil god against her will (since wives are possessions I guess?). Then after you kill him she appears to him and forgives him and they go up to heaven together because he really really loved her I guess. Words can't contain my contempt for this sequence.

I do have to emphasise that I actually like most of the playable characters though, which is basically what I expect out of Fire Emblem. I might even forgive the game all of its other writing trespasses if not for the gender stuff (goodness knows I've had to with other FEs).
---

ah yeah the theme related stuff does sound really dumb. I feel like it's pretty common for video games to present a theme but then contradict it by the plot they actually deliver. it's a major reason why I tend to have very low respect for video game writing in general.

some of the gender complaints sound kind of silly (you're upset about a villain doing things which you consider to be negative behavior??) but whatever.
---

Re: gender stuff
The biggest issue is that the game seems to imply that sacrificing his wife is a forgivable offense instead of a point of no return

I really enjoyed the game, but I agree with Elfboys gender-related complaints (and I guess the other stuff too, but I can ignore the other dumb plot points).
---

NeoElfboy posted...

-Despite being the rightful queen of Zofia, Celica abdicates her rule because the super-awesome male lead needs to become the ruler of the entire continent.

No? They get married and rule together. Them each being heir to one of the two kingdoms is kind of what lets the plot wrap itself up so conveniently
---

Didn't the guy already accept the dark powers into himself before he sacrificed his wife? At the very least he'd already had a complete mental breakdown, so I guess I can accept the wife for forgiving him in death as he "wasn't himself" when he did it and she was trying to reach out to the good in him or whatever.
---

Endgame spoilers
Berkut was in the middle of a complete mental breakdown and handed a blank cheque to Duma in exchange for power. Duma immediately filled the cheque in with Rinea's life. Due to the scene cutting away, we don't really know what Berkut's reaction was to finding out what he ended up sacrificing. Berkut is still not of sound mind when Fernand walks in on him and from then on Berkut has been corrupted by Duma.
---