Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

So, this game was released. Currently stuck on the final map, even though I could probably blitz through it and lose half of my team, but I'd rather not go that route.

Story is fantastic. Gripping characters that don't necessarily overstay their welcome, and plenty of twists that I didn't see coming, as I knew nothing about Gaiden. F:Censored:k Fernand and Berkut, though. I had no sympathy for them at all.

Gameplay is kind of mixed. Marked improvements in the mechanics make for a more interesting experience. Magic costs HP to cast, characters always take at least 1 HP of damage, and forging weapons is rather fun. Experiment with this. However, the maps are another story. Those stupid swamp/hazard tiles get really annoying really quickly. They practically hinder your progress, leaving you with no way around, and they hinder your movement drastically. Saints can avoid the damage, and flying units avoid the movement impediment as well. Warp and rescue tomes don't help much as the stat growths are rather low for all characters, so you won't get your characters very far with that.

Might post more whenever I beat this blasted game. I hear there's a bonus chapter that's not DLC.

I have to get back into this. I temporarily lost interest when you get the option to control both Alm and Celica separately. It's not that I don't like that, it's just where I happened to stop playing.

Out of curiosity, how'd you promote the village kids?

Prince Doebler wrote:

Out of curiosity, how'd you promote the village kids?

Gray - Cavalier
Kliff - Mercenary
Faye - Peg Knight
Tobin - Archer

Recommendation: If you do decide to resume, consider resetting.

Minor gameplay elements:

Prince Doebler wrote:

Recommendation: If you do decide to resume, consider resetting.

Minor gameplay elements:

I'll keep my party the way it is. I'm sure people had figured out the optimized route for each character before the remake even came out, but this is a blind playthrough for me. Kliff, by the way, has been an awesome Mercenary.

Kliff rocks in any class. But honestly, mercenary is the only good class for Gray. You'll find his 0% base resistance growth starting to have a nasty effect on the later maps, where witches can warp around and ORKO your characters, another annoying mechanic I failed to mention.

Anyway, beat the final story boss, which was incredible. I'm going to have that map theme stuck in my head for a long time. The bonus chapter isn't much, but a solid challenge. Some spoilers are in there, so I'll keep my mouth shut.

Well, I take back what I said about Luthier. Doing a hard mode run, and he has better stats than Kliff. Fire Emblem RNG, how I've missed you (not).

Prince Doebler wrote:

Well, I take back what I said about Luthier. Doing a hard mode run, and he has better stats than Kliff. Fire Emblem RNG, how I've missed you (not).

I've always enjoyed the RNG in Fire Emblem for one reason. People always talk about average stats as ironclad and say that personal experience means nothing. With RNG, that's definitely not true though. Certain discs may have different tendencies than other discs simply due to the fact that no two are going to be exactly the same. For example, I seem to get better stats on Sain and Eliwood than most people in my physical copy of FE7.

I would get it but I sold my 3ds and games (partly due to money, mostly due to me not wanting to have a system LITERALLY for Fire Emblem - I'm not a fan of the 3DS Pokemon games, always questioning "Where's the challenge" and couldn't find a copy of any SMT game on 3DS)