Considering Gaiden isn't all that good, Shadows of Valentia does a decent job

The artstyle, voice acting, and soundtrack are all amazing. This really elevates an otherwise basic story, and made me invested.

Maps are quite bad. Alm's are just open fields, and Celica's were designed by a masochist. This is largely due to Gaiden rather than Echoes, but it's still a negative.

The character writing and story is okay? Alm is weird. A common farm boy who fights back against Rigel to liberate Zofia. Seems endearing enough, but he doesn't face any issues. He's immediately handed the deliverance despite his age and inexperience, he steamrolls the Rigelian army, marches up to Rigel Castle, destroys them, and then kills god.
Seems unrealistic for a farmboy, until you realize he's the chosen one with a special brand, special sword, and ability to make the right choice at every given turn, while Celica struggles. Him secretly being the heir to the throne of Rigel just magnifies his writing issues more.

Celica is the opposite, she spends the whole game running around and failing at everything. She sacrifices herself for nothing because she trusted a purple gremlin, and needs Alm to save her. Her character is also hard to describe, she's cold and distant, but also empathetic and kind? She's just kind of boring to me on top her bad writing.

Anyways, I've done enough to piss of the SoV fans now. Despite the characters getting nerfed, all other aspects are done really well, so the game was enjoyable overall.

Some well designed maps and decent story. Having the two different parties allowed for more characters to get their chance to shine on the battlefield. The actual unit types didn’t seem very balanced and I eventually benched a chunk of the cast and started wrecking enemies. Despite some parts of the map being too vulnerable to repetitive random battles, I liked the game. All complaints are minor. I’d like to see an expansion of some ideas here, with more fleshed out dungeons being a main one. Simplistic story is a strong point.

This is a pretty decent entry for what seemed to be a series dedicated to Fire Emblem remakes.

My favorite part about this game is the art style. The game looks very beautiful and has my favorite character portraits of any Fire Emblem game. The character designs look amazing, especially considering how newer Fire Emblem games have been lacking in this department in my opinion.

I also find the writing pretty solid. The kingdoms of Rigel and Zofia are very fascinating, and having you switch between Alm and Celica throughout the game truly compares and contrasts not only their characters, but the nations they personify.

I find the characters' writing themselves to be a mixed bag. Without spoiling anything, some major plot details made me much more disappointed in how some characters were developed. The female characters in particular struggle from a damsel-in-distress syndrome that the original game had. I wish that the writers had polished a lot of the character endings. Being a remake of an older game, this would've given the developers an opportunity to improve upon some of the original game's weaker writing. We already see it with Leon now being written as a gay character to improve portrayal of LGBT+ characters in the series, so I don't understand why the remake retains the original game's poor portrayal of female characters.

I found the maps in this game to be so-so, and none of them were truly memorable for me. I did enjoy traversing through dungeons however.

And so there's Shadows of Valentia, the first and only entry in the Echoes series so far. Unfortunately, some people theorize that due to poor sales, we've never had another Echoes game since. It's a shame, as it's a solid game in spite of its flaws and can be enjoyed by newer and older fans alike.