Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - Trash or Treasure? | Highly Overlooked
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 มิ.ย. 2024
- What Shadow Dragon for the DS did for the original Fire Emblem for the Famicom, is what Shadows of Valentia does for the second game, Fire Emblem: Gaiden. As of right now, I have no knowledge or experience with Gaiden, but is Shadows of Valentia a decent game just on its own regardless filled with love and war?
#fireemblem #fireemblemechoes #3ds
00:00 Intro
4:20 Story & Thoughts (Spoilers)
26:09 Final Thoughts On Story, Characters and Presentation
32:49 Gameplay
46:15 Conclusion
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is a remake of the second game for the Famicom, Fire Emblem Gaiden. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia was released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2017. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia stars Alm and Celica in this underrated classic filled with love and war. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia was created by Intelligent Systems and is often highly overlooked. This is my Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valentia review, my Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valentia retrospective, my Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia analysis, my Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valentia critique, my Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia thoughts, my Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia feelings, my Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valentia opinions. These are things I wanna share about it in Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valentia - Trash or Treasure? | Highly Overlooked. Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valentia wasn't as well received as others, but Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valentia is still well loved by some. This is my Fire Emblem Echoes review on the highly overlooked Fire Emblem Echoes, in Fire Emblem Echoes - Trash or Treasure? | Highly Overlooked. - เกม
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This was my first Fire Emblem game. I enjoyed it and picked up Awakening afterwards. But I still question the motivation of Rudolf given all the bloodshed.
Rudolph’s goal was to slay the dragon gods and unite the continent. Rigel was ready to live without Duma. Since Duma’s tough love stance made Rigel what it was, but Duma gave no blessings to the Northern country. However, Zofia wasn’t ready to live without Mila. Mila who was being taken by the madness all dragons face with old age. Zofia had Mila give humanity every comfort they could ask for. Bountiful harvests, better climate, safety from attackers. Leading to the people not working for themselves and leading a hedonistic lifestyle.
Rudolph used the Valentian Falchion to slay Mila first. As a kick in the pants to light a fire under Zofia’s ass for change. Duma was next on Rudolph’s list but Mila sealed Falchion when she died. Even though she knew Duma was behind her death, she sealed the sword to protect him from dying.
This left Rudolph unable to complete his plan to unite the continent. So he had to trust that his son Alm, would succeed where he failed.
My take on Rudolf was that although his plan ultimately worked to the benefit of Valentia, he himself was evil/mad at least in part as a result of Duma's influence. He reminds in this way of Tolkien's Feanor, a bitter enemy of Morgoth who nevertheless wrought evil inspired by Morgoth(most especially in the Kinslaying).
My strongest evidence for Rudolf's underlying rot is in how terrible his subordinates were (not even counting Jedah and the Faithful), especially his surrogate son Berkut. If Rudolf had remained the man Micah remembered, he could not have inspired or even tolerated such malice and corruption for so many years. We become what we pretend to be, but Rudolf was still able to hold on to his goal.
@@joelpartee594 I’ve got to disagree there’s multiple issues at play I’ll unpack each:
Rudolf needs to slay the gods.
Rudolf needs to send away Alm.
Rudolf has terrible people surrounding him.
So Rudolf knows that the gods need to be slain because Alm was born with the brand. 2 children born with the brand means that Valentia is approaching its end if they do not save it. The obvious issue is Duma’s madness & you see traces of Mila’s madness in the Rudolf entering the temple scene & her sealing away Falchion since she wishes to remain with the status quo.
Rudolf needs to send away Alm for 2 reasons 1: the attempts on Alm’s life. The Duma faithful are not weak and as said by Nuibaba, they really want to see what they’d be able to do with the soul of one of the people with the brand. 2: And even if they did protect him from the attempts against his life, just like Berkut, the Duma faithful would still tempt him.
Rudolf chooses to surround himself with terrible people for 2 reasons: the closer they are to him the more he controls what damage they’ll cause, and he intends to lose the war, getting them killed.
So why not wage war directly on the Duma Faithful?
1.) They’re very strong and could likely have him killed out of nowhere or corrupted very easily (he actually would be corrupted if celica didn’t start her pilgrimage to distract Jedah that’s the cutscene you see with celica as a ghost.)
2.) he likely figured a war on the Duma faithful, even if successfully won would’ve killed more Rigellian civilians than the war did.
Just my 2 cents.
Celica argued against Alm in that scene because of her "dream" we see in Act 2 (what she described to be a vision of Alm dying in Gaiden). Her big reason is specifically trying to get Alm from throwing his life away. It's why she tries to single him out specifically and ask why he needs to be the one leading.
Makes sense, though I think Celica could’ve found another way to prevent Alm from fighting without blowing up at his face. Not that I’m questioning Nuibaba herself though!
@@TrashorTreasure They were both caught very much by surprise. They had each been singularly focused on their reunion as a way to "rescue" the other, and they each saw the other as having an insane plan that threw away all the work that had been done to get to that point. Plus, Alm hurt Celica a lot with his comments about royalty, in part because he was more right than he knew.
@@joelpartee594 It's a love story. Cannot have a love story without one of them stomping out in a huff after a quarrel. (Besides, the story had to fit the game it is propelling, which game is built around chopping and changing between two protagonists advancing in parallel.)
Personally Shadows Of Valentia is one of my favorite 3ds games
Same
So, the way promotion stat gains is also old-school. In FEs 1-3, when promoting you gain stats to match the promoted class' base stats, unless you're at/surpass them. This is brought back in Echoes, with the exception of HP, where you gain 1 to your max if you exceed the promotion's base.
If you ever play the fan translations of OG Gaiden and Mystery, keep this in mind. Promoting early is oftentimes FAR more valuable than maxing to 20.
Having recently finished Echoes, I have to say that by contrast I had much fun with the final map with Duma. It felt fulfilling to me to reach a climax where the entirety of the two factions had united. (It might have been better in terms of narrative to kill off Celica, but in terms of gameplay it became rewarding to finally employ both Alm and Celica on the map simultaneously.) Though, I will say that it was anti-climatic that I skipped over killing Jedah entirely. I suspected that it was possible to kill him, but since he does not chase after any player units I found it easier to just give him space and just kill all the regular units on the way to Duma.
I also did not mind the witches and especially the cantors. They help to make the gameplay stand out from other Fire Emblem titles and help stop progression from being too easy. And I enjoy being able to use the same illusion-unit-summon mechanic on the player's own side, which can really help to protect player units from being killed.
Personally, I think it would have been a mistake for the narrative to kill off Celica. Duality and balance were the game’s major themes throughout, and in particular the balance between Alm and Celica’s perspectives vs. the two Dragons. The reason Valentia is thrown into chaos is because Duma and Mila reached points where they couldn’t reconcile their differences. The continent needed Duma’s power and Mila’s compassion. But when they split away from each other, war was inevitable. Meanwhile, Alm and Celica have different viewpoints and methods, but they are able to reconcile these and work together to benefit all of Valentia. If Celica stays dead, Alm loses that counterbalance. It destroys the yin and yang of the story, which is what it’s about in the first place.
Just coming to the end of act 4. Been quite fun. I have been playing the game poorly for a fire emblem game because Casual mode and feeding my characters into the meat grinder
And now I beat it, fun was had. I agree with your opinion on the game. Mostly good, few rough spots and the story is a well beaten path by today’s measure
I wish you the best of luck with three houses! That game will give you a lot of problems on many levels! Whether it be your choice of difficulty, or in my case serious mental health issues from the different paths. I wish you all the best with three houses!
My first fire emblem game and still my favorite many years later
Probably one of my favourite 3ds games of all time which is something to say because the 3ds is my favourite console of all time
This is my favorite fire emblem. One issue I had with birthright and awakening was there were to many characters. When the game gave you 30 characters and you can only deploy 10 of em bugged me. This game and 3 houses really didn’t have that issue.
Of all the FE games I’ve played I’ll rank them like this.
4. Birthright (I really disliked Corrin and a lot of other characters)
3. Three Houses
2. Awakening
1. Echoes
First fire emblem game I played! (And probably the only one for a little while haha) I've got around 30 hours on this and got a little stuck on the Berkut level act 5. Mainly stopped because of grinding which this game makes you do A LOT
Great job dude, hopefully you upload three houses and three hopes 😂
Many thanks, man! Yeeeeeah, definitely gonna take my time doing both of those other videos in the future!
@@TrashorTreasure Cool, hopefully you upload them soon 😂
Bro didn't even talk about the divine music
FE:Echoes sure is one of the weirdest FE games of the series but it's still one of my favorite games of all time for some reason.
The first Fire Emblem game I've played was 3H, O regret never having played any Fire Emblem games, after 3H I went back and played the GBA ones, then the 3DS ones, and then Engage, and I'm angry at myself that i didn't play these games earlier, such a great franchise and my new top 3 in Nintendo and top 10 all time
Personally one of, if not my favorite FE. I love that it does have some sort of difficulty, which the new fire emblem lacks of at times.
I think engage on hard mode is pretty hard, Infact I wasn’t able to play hard mode without doing hard mode casual. Awakening is also pretty hard because enemies rush at you and bombard your units till they die.
I'd kinda have to disagree fire emblem three houses maddening was hard but like overwhelming since reinforcements were infinite and they packed the maps with units
Fire emblem engage is actually similar to echoes its challenging it makes you think about every ability your unit has and how you can use it they are different types of hard
@@Ir0Mist I have never been a maddening enjoyer as I get the challenge, but just not my ideal game play. Hard-Classic always though.
That’s why I say, specially in Modern Fire Emblem I feel echoes in particular is the only one that even in hard can actually be hard.
I do agree with you that Engage had its moments, but we get so many stupid skills, and the moment you touch the DLC it becomes easy mode 😅
@jesusmenjibar8716 I guess but I still think echoes is the second easiest game of the "new gen" fire emblem, only engage was an easier hard mode run(with dlc) and also echoes got ridiculously easy with dlc when you play with the overclasses and dlc weapons
@@Ir0Mist I mean, depends what we call “New Gen”, personally I see it after awakening. Easiest to hardest:
-Birthright
-Awakening
-Revelations
-Engage
-Three Houses
-Echoes
-Conquest
😅
You cheat! 41:59 and 42:05 we see witches teleporting to attack outlying units, as they do (randomly, so seldom all on the same turn). 42:07 when we see a witch attacking past one unit to kill the one behind (Atlas), I have never seen one TELEPORTING to do that; I believe the teleport AI disallows it. No, she had moved and attacked then as a normal mage. Nor could one have teleported to attack him from the right, the direction from which he is exposed, because teleporting onto sand, or any other movement-slowing terrain, also seems to be barred. Restrictions like this make witches a manageable and hence fair challenge.
As for cantors (including Jedah), they NEVER enemy-phase attack with their personal spells, those are for player-phase retaliation only. Cantors are EXP on tap, as much as we might want.
Another correction: the turnwheel can make an enemy phase work out differently. I once lost Genny, attacked by several weak enemies, when she missed her 60%-hit-chance nosferatu spell five times in a row. Using the turnwheel, the same enemies attacked, but she made some of her hits and won out. It is player-phase attack results that sometimes seem to be locked in, so when turn-wheeling a player phase, if wanting to make the same attacks again, better to do so in a different order.
Imagine watching this on a new 3ds
jedah is never a map objective, so you dont have to even fight him
Echoes is so good in everything besides the maps, cuz the mechanics are fine like the combat arts and class system it's just... Goddamn those maps. I'd say out of the modern games this definitely has the best story imo.
nein maps are fine
Ehh, I think it has the most impressive story for a remake and a modern title, however I think fire emblem geneaology of the holy war, Thracia 776, path of radiance and radiant dawn all have better stories. Either way it’s pretty subjective as to which story people would prefer the most, even though I think the writing in geneaology of the holy war, thracia, path of radiance and radiant dawn is better then shadows of Valentia I personally did enjoy and really like shadows Valentia and it’s my personal favorite story out of any of the mainline fire emblem games with my personal second favorite game with my second personal favorite story being geneaology, with that being said I do believe there are better fire emblem games with better stories and better map design and gameplay then fire emblem echoes shadows of Valentia so objectively I think shadows of valentia would go in A tier while geneaology of the holy war/path of radiance and radiant dawn go in S. I think three houses is a B tier game, besides it’s incredible story it suffered from pacing issues, a monastery system that gets tiresome, and the first 11-12 chapters are completely identicle ruining its replay value and one out of three routes being the best aka blue lions while the rest of other routes being poorly executed. Three houses suffered from being a lower quality game. Fire emblem engage and conquest goes in B Tier. With that being said I think shadows of Valentia hands down has my most favorite story in a single fire emblem game even though I think there are other fire emblem games with a combination of better writing,plot and characters and Better gameplay.
@@sorryyourenotawinner2506 the only reason I think the maps are fine the way they are is because this was to be expected considering the fact that shadows of Valentia is quite literrally a remake so it was to be expected that it’s map design would not be as great and I give it a pass for that, if shadows of Valentia was a newer title and not a remake then it would have been drastically less excusable but considering the fact that it’s remaking the original I give it a pass.
@@GodSlayer330 genealogy is way too slow imo, however it is a very good games still. I think from a thematic perspective this game is the strongest with it's whole love and power dynamic that the protags represent but also the gods of the game
@@Luna-pk7gz even so I think geneaology was a game that was not only really ahead of it’s time but has by far the best writing and best characters, although the writing in the second half of the game is lacking I think that can easily be fixed in a remake and I am very sure it would be one of the first things that gets fixed in a remake.
No.
I don't think that bringing someone back to life is a "cop out" in of itself.
Bringing a loved one back can be good if it's not an ass pull, while killing a loved one can be bad if it's there for drama or shock value. Crono comes back to life in Chrono Trigger and no one complains about that (in fact doing it is completely optional and you can defeat Lavos without him). Galuf and Tellah die in thier respective FF games and at least Galuf and Tellah and it actually makes since why they are beyond recovery, where as they don't even attempt to revive/heal Aeris when Sepiroth stabs her. Like Sepi just raises his sword and gives a "I won" monologue and doesn't even attack the party, then summons a boss that can do nothing but water attacks (like it has no normal attacks at all, so it's defenseless once it''s MP gets used up), and and no point does Cloud and co. try to heal her. AT ALL. Alys from PS4's death makes sense also.
Killing people to promote "character development" is pointless because you are essentially cannibalizing one persons existence to benefit another because... why? It makes no sense to leave Celica dead at this point in the game. Even permadeath games give you a Revival Grass or Amulet of Lifesaving or an Alm Staff, and I think Celica dying after all the stuff that Alm had to put up with is a *bit* much.
Fire emblem echoes Shadows of valentia was my first fire emblem game after having watched fire emblem videos for a few years. But echoes just didnt feel like what i watched so i could never get into it and finish it
Shadows of Valencia is definitely a treasure
Echoes is a very fun game. My only gripe is the almost non-existent RES growth....
I had forgotten about that! That was so annoying!
@@TrashorTreasure Indeed, all of them are in the 0-10% range.. That's just crazy.😂
I actually enjoyed Fe Echoes SOV. It was just promoted and released at such a bad timing
Still my fav Fire Emblem. This is very diff from Three Houses. Maybe the reason I am one kf the 2 people, who did not enjoy 3H (I also did the mistake of picking Golden Deer first and after that my exctiment for the other routes faded. Sold it)
3 houses is too much for me. I absolutely hate the hub world. The persona friendship system is a waste of time. Menus galore. Loading screens on top of loading screens trying to navigate the menus and hub. Very slow. Very long. Very confusing. Very unnecessarily overcomplicated
Faye feels so pointless, she only likes talking about Alm that its disturbing
The art style is gorgeous, I hope they use this kind of art style again someday
There's one support convo between her and Silque where she says she'd rather chase after Alm than having a girl's talk with Silque. I respect the hustle but God damn does that girl need therapy to stop her from being that awfully down bad.
trash or treasure can I ask you a question?
Of course you can! All part of the job, haha. Ask away!
@@TrashorTreasure ok two things one is shadow of valenia the only fe game that is a love story because non of the games do that hey awakaing fates and three houses have romance options but those where optional and where never a main part of the story like this game dose. two is fe warrior considered can to the games they taking charaters from like awakening and fates. also are all fe games canon to each other or are most of them stand alone because i know altest one is a direct sequel.
@@sueflewelling3657 I haven’t played the Japanese exclusives yet, but in terms of western releases, yes, Echoes’s story’s so far the only one that really focuses on the love between two protagonists. One of the things that makes it unique in that aspect.
I don’t believe FE Warriors is canon, especially since certain moments of Awakening and Fates are basically retold throughout that game’s story. As for the other games, you can play them without having to worry that much about the continuity, though some games like Fates and Echoes do have callbacks (mostly to Awakening). It doesn’t matter too much though and you don’t need to play one game to understand another, except when going from Path of Radiance to Radiant Dawn, or Shadow Dragon to New Mystery of the Emblem.
@@TrashorTreasure ok thank you. few things one I agree its one of the aspects of the game that make it stand out the only game I can think of that comes close is three houses but before I give example i need to know if you beast one of the routes pecifically the black eagles? two i think your right since something like the newest fe game three hopes is not sequel to three houses as its a what if scenario so I think the same be said to fe warrior. now that i think the whole game of three houses can be somerise as a what if as far as choices for your charater go atlest non of them are canon like what route right?
@@sueflewelling3657 I have actually just completed all of the story routes, including the DLC just recently for the video. Figuring out which path is canon for Three Houses is very tricky, since they each reveal different parts of the story from the perspectives of three different parties. You can get away with choosing any of them, I would say, though personally I found the Blue Lions storyline to be the most interesting.
You're right about Three Hopes, it sort of takes place in its own continuity and ignores what happens in Three Houses, aside from a few basic plot details. Much like playing Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, you don't need to play its source material to understand what's going on.
If i had to make a top 5 of the series it would be
5.Shadow dragon
4. Echos
3. Fates
2. Awaking
1. Three Houses
hahaha xDDDDDD
Genny is better than Clair by virtue of everything she says being the definition of cute.
General review of fire emblem warriors, i like fire emblem but i hate dynasty warrior. So for some reason everyone bought the game because it has name of thing i recognize on. Played it once. Sits in a drawer now
I think the game is ok, except f*** Faye in particular.
but faye is better than any fates char
Better than fates and engage thats for sure, fates and engage are good but shadows is incredible
This game was a victim of coming out after the Switch had launched. The lack of any advertising for the game has lead to casual FE fans I've met still not even knowing about this game.
Also not having a Smash rep doesn't help. I know that might sound weird but existing on Smash makes a character/game more known. Just look at Captain Falcon without Smash I doubt many would even know his name or franchise.
this game isn't highly overlooked lol