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CHARACTERS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY BE PROMOTED WHEN THEY CAN BE. NO EXCEPTIONS. "The earth split, the seas parted, and the heavens themselves threatened to come tumbling down. The battle transcended any that history had yet known." - The Book of Valentian Revelations, Chapter 15 Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is a remake of the second installment in the popular turn-based Strategy RPG series, Fire Emblem Gaiden, released exclusively in Japan in 1992. It will release May 19th in NA/EU and May 20th in AU. It's got a lot of new stuff, but also a lot of old stuff. New to the series? Check out the general Fire Emblem thread if you wanna know where to get started. The Story quote:Once, the gods themselves walked these lands. Our continent of Valentia was home to two of them: sibling gods named Duma and Mila. The Gameplay The classic Fire Emblem gameplay is still here with its permadeath (though Casual mode, which allows your units to return to your party after the fight is over is still in) but there are quite a few differences that makes it stand out compared to other games in the series:
And much more. Shadows of Valentia also features fully 3D, explorable dungeons with loot in treasure chests and boxes, guarded by monsters roaming the halls. Attacking an enemy (or being attacked by one) throws you directly into a normal FE-style skirmish with them. The Other Stuff Characters can get bonuses in battle through the Support system. By fighting near each other, characters can unlock conversations between each other that grant some insight into their character, as well as make them fight better when near each other. There is no marriage or child system, and each character has only 1-3 characters they can support with. There is no Avatar/My Unit system. The art is no longer done by Yusuke Kozaki, like in Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates, but is done by Hidari. He does good art, as you can tell. The localization is done by 8-4, who also did Awakening (Nintendo's own Treehouse did Fates). You might know them from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Nier, and other good localizations. It's like, 75% good jank and 25% bad jank. Reviews Endorph posted:wassup homies and homiettes (kill me), after 2 days of EXTREMELY IMPORTED AND NOT EMULATED echoes gameplay, im here to dish out some Endorph... endorph... e... ensights. Anyway I know JP unlike the rest of these fucks so I can actually give full thoughts. Help what do I class change the starting characters into Endorph posted:actually while im typing about it here is a big-rear end post that whoever makes the echoes op can feel free to copy/paste since i imagine this will get asked a ton Thank you for writing the majority of the OP, Endorph. Terper fucked around with this message at 16:26 on May 24, 2017 |
# ? May 16, 2017 17:19 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 17:35 |
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no myunit no buy!
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:22 |
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This will be a good game and I look forward to playing it. Thanks for putting those Endorph effortposts in the OP! I will definitely refer to them when it comes time to promote my dudes. And then still probably post about in here!
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:24 |
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I don't even know what the world is coming to when I can't make two fire emblems kiss and get a two sentence blurb in the epilogue about how they lived together happily forever. Nintendo is withholding crucial gameplay here.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:28 |
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Ah gently caress, I should have held off on the thread title, IGN gave it a 7.8 which is prime meme material.Zore posted:I don't even know what the world is coming to when I can't make two fire emblems kiss and get a two sentence blurb in the epilogue about how they lived together happily forever. IGN posted:My dreams of hooking up devil-may-care mercenary Saber with pious priestess Celica were dashed because there’s no marriage system. Terper fucked around with this message at 17:38 on May 16, 2017 |
# ? May 16, 2017 17:36 |
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Zore posted:I don't even know what the world is coming to when I can't make two fire emblems kiss and get a two sentence blurb in the epilogue about how they lived together happily forever. There's still sort of that in the endings.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:38 |
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to be fair the ign review was pretty positive overall, not just super enthused. which is fair.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:41 |
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Yeah I wasn't trying to dunk on them or anything, making characters fall in love through battle has been a thing since like, FE4 and I enjoy doing it.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:43 |
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A lot of the negative aspects of the reviews are the same things everyone else complained about: Bad maps, long tedious maps, lack of variety in maps, and the dungeon crawling is really underutilized. Basically anything Echoes is carrying its weight, anything OG Gaiden is what's bringing it down.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:45 |
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to be fair the heavily expanded dungeon crawling is an echoes thing, not a gaiden thing. and there are things that gaiden did that I see being praised, like how mages work or the lack of a weapon triangle.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:46 |
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No weapon triangle, guess that means you just whack away with the strongest thing you got?
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:48 |
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grind those weapon skills
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:49 |
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Avalerion posted:No weapon triangle, guess that means you just whack away with the strongest thing you got? No weapon triangle mostly just means you worry more about stats and terrain.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:49 |
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Avalerion posted:No weapon triangle, guess that means you just whack away with the strongest thing you got? There's no axes at all, so terrain is king because stuff like Tombs give +60 avoid (but magic negates terrain). And things generally die much, much slower. In most other FE games, you end a fight at 2 fights maximum. Echoes is more like 2 minimum outside of specific situations.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:50 |
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I will, however, dunk on My Nintendo Newsquote:It’s a real shame given the exceedingly good quality plotlines of recent 3DS series titles such as Awakening and Fates. In this case, it isn’t the oldest stories that make the best ones.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:51 |
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Real talk, there are a lot of things across all the reviews that give me a lot of pause. Like 1 item/unit seems like a really weird choice. Or fixed accuracy for spells. Or terrain with +60 goddamn avoid. Female units lacking tier 3 classes. The fatigue system. The maps. 1-5 range bows. I do think the way mages work is cool though, and it would be neat to see that expanded on in a future FE title. Things that make characters non-homogeneous is always cool.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:51 |
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I wish there were more Supports, but you take what you can get.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:52 |
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In order: 1 item/unit is kind of neat. Fixed accuracy for spells is interesting since hit rates are such a problem in the early game: it makes mages useful in a unique way. Terrain with +60 goddamn avoid can be countered by weapon skills you learn very early on or by mages. Female units are some of the best units in the game - the lack of tier 3 classes doesn't impact them at all. It's more like they start in tier 2 than anything, and the reason they function this way is probably just that in OG Gaiden Alm gets literally two female units for 90% of the game, and by the time you get to Celica's chapter some of Alm's guys have already promoted. It's not 'women don't get to promote!" it's just the female units working in a way that makes sense given the progression of the game. Dichotomy between the genders is actually a theme of Gaiden so at least there's a narrative reason for the guys and the girls to be slightly different in a mechanical sense. The fatigue system only comes up at the very, very end of the game, and you're drowning in food so much that it's hardly worth worrying about. The maps are kinda crap but there's no pair-up cocking up the game and you aren't drowning in reinforcements the way awakening and fates liked you to be. gently caress the desert though. Bows do barely any damage and are very inaccurate, and aren't effective against fliers.
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:55 |
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I swear I read the op and if I missed it, well I guess that's on me now, but does this game have Casual Mode and all that on it? I really prefer playing on Casual cause I don't like resetting if someone I like gets killed
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# ? May 16, 2017 17:59 |
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Which classes look coolest for which villagers? That is all I need to know.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:00 |
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it does but there's also a gimmick called mila's turnwheel where you can turn back time a turn or two which lets you do different moves and save someone from dying. it's got limited uses but it restores uses fairly often. so you can play casual, classic while using the turnwheel, or just pure classic.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:01 |
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marshmallow creep posted:Which classes look coolest for which villagers? That is all I need to know. Gray: Mercenary or Cavalier. Kliff: Mercenary or Mage. Faye: Pegasus Knight or Mage. Atlas: Archer or Cavalier.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:02 |
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Endorph posted:In order: I get its kind of neat, but doesn't it remove a lot of in-chapter tactical stuff? I dunno, I like having a variety of options with various tradeoffs which it looks like mages get and no one else does.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:02 |
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What I saw in some videos of people playing late game suggests non mages can learn skills that work a bit like spells to do certain tricks. Like an archer can learn some kind of super shot skill that lets him hit from even further away for the cost of a few hp.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:05 |
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mandatory lesbian posted:I swear I read the op and if I missed it, well I guess that's on me now, but does this game have Casual Mode and all that on it? I really prefer playing on Casual cause I don't like resetting if someone I like gets killed *cough* oh uh yeah it's alright, yeah it's there, hah, you stupid idiot how'd you miss it
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:07 |
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Endorph posted:it does but there's also a gimmick called mila's turnwheel where you can turn back time a turn or two which lets you do different moves and save someone from dying. it's got limited uses but it restores uses fairly often. so you can play casual, classic while using the turnwheel, or just pure classic. Interesting, but also leads me to wonder when they stopped doing the thing where the RNG seed stayed the same even if you reset the game. Probably since Awakening, I guess?
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:08 |
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Kind of? Realistically, you weren't really using those tradeoffs that much, mostly just switching to 1-2 range weapons when you needed them or equipping stuff that was effective against whatever you were hitting. Sometimes you'd switch to whatever was more accurate even if it did less damage, or fish for a crit, but there weren't really that many tactical considerations. Fates kind of changed that, but it kind of overcorrected imo, it had a huge floating numbers problem. Weapon Skills sort of make up for the lack of them, plus Echoes emphasizes positioning, terrain, and enemy prioritization over who to send to attack/what weapon to use to attack with/etc. And since you deploy every unit in every battle (except in dungeons) you can sort of think of your two cavaliers/three mercenaries as your different 'weapon' options.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:08 |
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Terper posted:*cough* oh uh yeah it's d-drat, how'd I miss that incredibly obvious bullet point that was definitely always there
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:10 |
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Mila's wheel thing sounds great, I think the games are more fun if you can't just sacrifice units recklessly but loosing someone to an unlucky crit in the last turn made me casual anyway.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:10 |
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marshmallow creep posted:What I saw in some videos of people playing late game suggests non mages can learn skills that work a bit like spells to do certain tricks. Like an archer can learn some kind of super shot skill that lets him hit from even further away for the cost of a few hp.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:10 |
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Endorph posted:Kind of? Realistically, you weren't really using those tradeoffs that much, mostly just switching to 1-2 range weapons when you needed them or equipping stuff that was effective against whatever you were hitting. Sometimes you'd switch to whatever was more accurate even if it did less damage, or fish for a crit, but there weren't really that many tactical considerations. Fates kind of changed that, but it kind of overcorrected imo, it had a huge floating numbers problem. I think you're underselling the tactical switching a bit, especially w/r/t effective weapons and juggling them across your party even in a pre-Fates world. Like you listed a whole bunch of situations where you'd use various weapons over another and arranging your limited inventory of weapons across your characters was always a fun little optimization game I liked to play. Fair enough on the weapon skills though, and the every unit deployment though. It looks like Echoes overall just doesn't have a ton of variety in classes/weapons anyways.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:11 |
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SoV (and Gaiden) leans more on the RPG side of the SRPG spectrum than other FE games do, so things that might make you go "Huh?" really do make more sense in-game
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:13 |
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Zore posted:Fair enough on the weapon skills though, and the every unit deployment though. It looks like Echoes overall just doesn't have a ton of variety in classes/weapons anyways.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:15 |
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the most tactical consideration was using trade as a way to switch what weapon a different character had equipped, but that was generally relevant because of weapon triangle and effective weaponry kind of stuff anyways
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:16 |
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Endorph posted:The player has access to maybe 6-7 classes total, yeah. Fortunately the small roster and split nature of the game means most everyone has a unique niche to fill anyway. For instance, Celica gets like 4 mercenaries, but Saber's unique niche is being an early game tank for an army of mages, Kamui's is being a pretty strong offensive unit that usually doubles, Dean's is being a lategame glasscannon, and Jesse's niche is being bad. Not to mention stuff like mages and clerics having personalized spell lists, which is something I adore. Yeah, personalized spell lists are rad as hell and easily the feature I'm most hoping makes it into a new FE game.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:16 |
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On the fence about this. Don't have any nostalgia for this game since I never played it. Kind of feel like if I went back to such an old janky game I'd just end up wishing I was playing Conquest instead.Terper posted:I will, however, dunk on My Nintendo News I'm struggling to think of any standard by which you could describe the Fates plot as "quality".
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:19 |
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Internet Kraken posted:On the fence about this. Don't have any nostalgia for this game since I never played it. Kind of feel like if I went back to such an old janky game I'd just end up wishing I was playing Conquest instead. Fates had a really good hook and in broad strokes Birthright is totally passable I guess. Conquest is absolutely insulting though.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:22 |
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Internet Kraken posted:On the fence about this. Don't have any nostalgia for this game since I never played it. Kind of feel like if I went back to such an old janky game I'd just end up wishing I was playing Conquest instead.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:25 |
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I dislike the normal FE promotion system so the one in this seems like a straight upgrade to me.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:47 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 17:35 |
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i havent soured on conquest but im real down for an offball/idiosyncratic entry
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:59 |