RPG Jamboree: Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (3DS)

With the Fire Emblem series not leaving Japan until its seventh entry, there was a good chunk of the history of the tactical role-playing game franchise essentially unavailable to new fans of the franchise the world over. Fire Emblem Gaiden, the second game in the series, seemed like it could be stuck on the Famicom, but a boost in the series’s popularity from titles like Fire Emblem Awakening made it more likely older Fire Emblem titles would find a receptive audience. Fire Emblem Gaiden did still stand out even from the older games though, embracing different mechanics and not including systems that the series would become known for. This is what makes Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia such a fascinating remake, the game from 1992 definitely getting tidied up and receiving a more modern presentation but it does not aim to abandon or alter the source material’s mechanics too much. Even if that meant leaving out what the series was becoming known for, no weapon triangle, weapon durability, or deeper relationship systems are to be found. It feels like that confidence in the original’s ideas paid off though, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia having its own character and not straying too far from the medieval army combat at the series’s heart.

 

The land of Valentia has been watched over by a pair of divine dragons since ancient times. Once battling for control of the continent and its people, eventually an accord was reached, Duma claiming the lands to the north and Mila the lands to the south. While Duma provided his people strength through conflict, Mila pampered her people with the gift of abundance, yet still a truce existed for years until the reign of King Rudolf. The emperor of the northern land of Rigel moved to claim the southern kingdom of Zofia, its king slain and the Zofians far less capable than their conquerors at the art of war. While a group of Zofians known as the Deliverance rise up to try and reclaim their land, the fate of Valentia truly rests at the feet of two people marked by a special Brand on their hand. Childhood friends Alm and Celica were separated at a young age and grew up humbly, one starting life in a quaint rural town and the other raised in a monastery. The attack on Zofia stirs them from their simple lives though, Alm finding his way into the Deliverance as Celica rallies her friends into joining her to prevent an awful prophetic dream from becoming reality.

 

One of the most interesting aspects of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia comes from this split focus, Alm and Celica both having their own half of the story to tell. While Alm does end up a bit more of the main character, both characters have an entire devoted chapter before the later half of the game instead has you managing both of their armies, the player actually able to decide who advances across the world map as they fight their own unique battles with their separate and gradually growing band of allies. Both Alm and Celica have different enemies in the Rigelian army and head to unique locations, Celica having to cross deserts and trudge through swamps while Alm finds himself more often fighting in open plains and tundra. There is a wide spread of locations to do battle in, from volcanic mountainsides to even having your army fight across ships at sea, but there also exist special dungeons that change up the rules of engagement and gameplay quite a bit.

In a typical conflict in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, you will be presented a battlefield divided into a grid, characters able to move a certain amount of spaces on your turn and attack enemies within range of their attacks. Usually, these battles often involve two armies of nearly equal size, Alm and Celica usually able to field all their allies while the number of units either side manages rarely rises above twenty to keep it feasible to weigh strategic options well. The terrain, specific capabilities of your units, and a little bit of luck in regards to things like powerful critical hits or the chance of missing comes into play, but these battles are often built to test your ability to weigh risks and utilize characters’ abilities properly. While the main missions can take a bit before they really start testing your decision making with some superbly challenging levels like a grueling climb up a hill to reach the witch Niubaba’s manor, the unique fight designs definitely succeed in creating intriguing battles where careful thought is the key to success. This is where the dungeons feel a little out of place though. Most maps in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia are presented as a field overview and only zoom into 3D action to show attacks unfolding automatically, but a dungeon has you explore in 3D and possibly encounter small battles. This medieval fantasy world will have you go against things like the undead and necromancers in these dungeons, but the skirmishes are much smaller, your units more limited, and the fights less tightly designed. They are quick ways to build up the strength of your forces though, experience gained from battle strengthening soldiers and eventually allowing them to advance their unit classes, but these fights can start to feel pretty basic, this also true of some other optional battles on the world map where occasionally a graveyard or unbeaten boss will use monsters or troops to block your advances briefly.

 

The swiftness of battles in the dungeons does make them easier to accept despite their simplicity, and there are plenty of treasures and other benefits to exploring dungeons for secrets and helpful resources like the fountains that increase the stats of your units. In some ways they are almost like the towns you drop by, the break from the more involved battles letting you regroup and start building up helpful reserves even though the dungeons do involve some violent conflict to acquire your goodies. Each unit in your army can carry a single item into battle, the choice not as straightforward as just giving them a powerful weapon. If they can use a weapon they will already have a generic one available for use, but the one you grant them can strengthen their attacks or help them unlock special techniques. However, some units may benefit more from having a shield on hand to up their defense or even a magical ring that can do things like provide passive healing in a game where healing is limited normally to a rare few units and death can be devastating. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia lets you choose whether you want a unit’s death to stick or not in its difficulty settings, permanent deaths definitely adding more weight if you enable them but even in Casual mode, losing a unit for only just the current battle can still dampen your plans and prevents you from using characters like expendable battering rams. Mila’s Turnwheel introduces an interesting system to both modes though, the player able to collect cogs in places like the dungeons that can be used to turn back time in a battle. This undo system is fairly smart, preventing players from agonizing over rotten luck and giving them a way to reverse a choice without having to reset the entire battle. Many Fire Emblem games could benefit from this small but limited form of forgiveness, but despite luck being a bit of a factor in battle, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia also manages a surprisingly fair battle system where you rarely feel like you’re the one on the bad side of a die roll.

 

Different units in your armies bring different options to the table. Archers can attack from much further than most units, cavalry can cover more ground in a turn, and knights in heavy armor can sometimes shrug off attacks that would nearly kill other combatants. Mages can get around physical defenses with their spells or heal others, and figuring out how to position your fighters and who should attack is the key to clearing Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia’s tougher maps or avoiding unnecessary losses. Depending on positioning and the type of attack though, sometimes units do have a chance of missing or dealing even greater damage with a critical hit, but usually these numbers are pretty straightforward. Many of your enemies don’t have much of a chance of landing a critical hit so you won’t often lose a unit to pure chance, and the ones with a decent chance of that random powerful strike you can learn to play around. Accuracy is similarly kept pretty clear, if you’re above an 80% chance of hitting it might as well be guaranteed but when you start getting to 60% and lower you know you’re taking a gamble. Controlled risk is key to satisfying victories and defeats that feel fair rather than crushing, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to have Mila’s Turnwheel there to help undo those rare moments where something atypical slips through. Since you can see the expected damage and the chances for actions unfolding before you order an attack, you are able to manage your group with clear intent, perhaps only the unpredictable teleportation of witch enemies feeling outside the smart borders of a system that is more interested in intelligent tactics than high stakes bets.

One interesting element of risk is the way special abilities and magic are handled. Rather than wearing down a weapon or using a limited resource, executing these powers involves using a unit’s life as fuel. Your mage may have a powerful spell guaranteed to hit, but it might leave them near death to pull it off, meaning you need to judge the likelihood they’ll survive the next round against the value of an attack. Most combat unfolds by both your unit and the attacking unit getting a chance to strike, so managing the life cost of your actions is also important to overcoming enemy forces that often like to target weak links or units they know they have an advantage against. Most battles do require you to completely wipe out the enemy’s forces or at least take out the group leader and some fights definitely feel designed to punish you for rushing in or not placing units cautiously, and with some enemies like the Cantors who summon in monsters to assist there’s also importance given to wiping out certain foes before they can whittle you down too much. Dungeons are often optional and you can sometimes rush past the enemies in them without starting a fight, but even if you take up every chance to battle, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is still mostly able to keep you engaged in battles of the mind rather than just running your forces in to overwhelm the opposition.

 

The characters you meet on your battles across Valentia do grow on you over time, many having clear but not overexaggerated personalities. Gray is from the same small village as Alm but approaches life in a more carefree way, the plot usually focused on the grand affairs of the war but able to provide levity through characters like him and Mae, a mage who grew up with Celica and has a rather strong and forceful personality whose bluntness contrasts with Celica’s proper behavior well. Some of your units can start to grow bonds with each other and can engage in small Support conversations on the battlefield, these often fairly small in what’s said but when positioned together, these units enhance each other’s abilities. Your units can endear themselves to you and they’re all valuable to have, but unlike some newer Fire Emblem games it doesn’t feel like entire arcs or relationships crumble if you do elect to play with Classic permadeath and continue on after someone falls in battle. It would be nice to have a deeper supporting cast of course and the game’s fairly plain subquests of delivering items you find in battle or dungeons to different villages around Valentia could have benefited from having some tie to you or your allies, but the characters feel like they were balanced well with potential expendability in mind so while you know things will be less rich and manageable without a certain character on your side, it’s still a sacrifice players looking for a tougher experience can justify.

THE VERDICT: Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia stands apart from many Fire Emblem games thanks to things like its rather simple dungeon combat, but many of its choices gel together well to make an excellent tactical RPG. How you equip your units, when you spend their health for stronger attacks, and how you position them on the battlefield involves deeper considerations than a weapon triangle and the elements of luck involved are clear when present and not always a death sentence when they arise thanks to things like Mila’s Turnwheel. The two separate armies and intertwining stories send you to many compelling and challenging battles where smart strategies become crucial to coming out on top, the battle for Valentia honing its component systems well for an entry in the Fire Emblem series that feels unique without sacrificing the compelling army combat that helped this remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden find a receptive audience.

 

And so, I give Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia for Nintendo 3DS…

A GREAT rating. Populate the dungeons with a bit more curated and complex combat and get things rolling a little faster on the more tactical and compelling battle designs and Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia would have had little to poke at. It is a divergence from the series’s normal way of handling things, but it explores its own systems well as conflict doesn’t boil down to trying to just exploit an easily understood weapon triangle or shuffling a bunch of weapons around. Your units have to commit to specific items they carry into battle and deciding if a unit would be better off with a stronger sword or one with more abilities is a weighty choice when you can’t just bring both. Forgoing a shield can leave certain units easy pickings, but the special rings can also help to make up for gaps in healing and allow for certain units to go further afield. These plans already inform a battle before it has even begun, but once Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia feels you’ve settled into its world some, it starts whipping out the kinds of conflict that really push you to think about when to be aggressive, when to let enemies come to you, and which units are safe to take risks with. Keeping the information fairly clear means risks are often built more on where you’re sending a unit and the whims of fate are easier to accept when you can use them to your benefit rather than finding a character died because of a random stroke of absurd luck. Some battles like scaling Niubaba’s mountain really stand out for how well composed they are, most every unit present on the other side picked because they are some obstacle that requires thought to overcome rather than running in your fastest and strongest units to clean up easily. With an interesting war story, a likeable cast, and some quality music plus creativity in the terrain, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia supports its battle systems well and even lets you progress at your own pace many times, swapping between Alm and Celica’s expeditions allowing you to sometimes step away if a certain battle is stonewalling you or seems too intimidating.

 

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia has some well animated cutscenes and some new characters sprinkled in to set it apart even further from the original Fire Emblem Gaiden, but sticking to the ideas that made that game an odd departure in design over in Japan was a bold but wise move. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia has some adventurous ideas that almost always benefit it, the concurrent campaigns helping to diversify action while giving you two casts to cultivate and become attached to. The dungeons aren’t even really a problem so much as they are weaker than the excellent battles fought elsewhere, and winding down between tough conflicts with lower stakes quick battles isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. While Fire Emblem sticking to ideas like the weapon triangle isn’t a bad thing, the ideas at play in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia could be the foundation for a series without it feeling hollow, strategic choices still key to clearing some excellent maps that truly test your understanding of this RPG’s battle system.