Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

Fire Emblem Echoes is a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, which is an odd Fire Emblem game that just refuses to follow a lot of rules that the rest of the games did. In this remake that feeling is preserved, both mechanically as well as story wise. There is things like archers being able to retaliated melee units, the campaign being divided between two protagonists, and these awkward attempts at dungeon crawling. It does get some time to get used to these differences for people who have already played a few other Fire Emblem games, but it eventually clicks and ultimately i feel like its one of the best entries in the series so far.

The game's story is rather cliched, but it works well enough due to the strength of the characters involved. There isn't a lot of suspense as you really know how things will unravel at the end, but its effective at keeping you invested in the characters. Support conversations are wholesome with degrading themselves into anime fantasy. It works really well into the gameplay as support buffs have a wider range than the typical 1 square that other fire emblem have.

Gameplaywise the game really feels different right from the start. Strikes hit for much lesser damage unless the unit grows into completely overpowered unit. This forces the player to really use the entire team to their advantage and not just really on the handful more over leveled units. You have the option to assign 1 item to each character, which can be a weapon (increasing their damage) or a defensive focused item (shields, rings). This adds a lot of depth and build diversity to the game, and its genuinely fun to see what works best with whom. Your units also have the possibility to use health consuming skills in battle, again adding to the complexity of the tactics that can be employed.

In terms of enemy unit i must say that the enemy spawning Cantor is a weak point, as they often cower in the corner of the map spawning endlessly weak units, that just make the maps take way too long to beat.
Maps are generally very linear and feel designed to be an uphill fight for the player. Some are just way too simple, and offer an open field with little interactivity. There are no houses or armories to interact with these maps, and some enemy units can be recruited by talking to them.

Besides more regular battles, the game also features these explorable dungeons, in which enemies roam and triggering a fight goes into combat mode. These feel a bit awkward, but exploring them is still fun and a decent way to implement grinding for those that want to engage in that. Unfortunately the last chapter of the game is mostly a huge dungeon, and that makes the ending of the game feel a bit weaker than what came before.

Overall though i had a blast with this game. Its challenging without being overwhelming, its really enjoyable to see the weak-ass villagers at the start evolving into formidable fighters at the end, and the slight differences to its formula gives it a more distinct personality within the series.