While I love good plots, I also love when developers take risks. Gaiden is considered the black sheep of the series for a reason, they introduced a lot of changes from the first game. I love this game for many reasons: SoV removes the weapon triangle, it introduced Casual mode which is HUGE as the classic mode was driving a lot of interested new players away. The introduction of Mila's Turnweel , a fantastic addition that made its comeback with Three Houses. The production values of SoV are above avarage, having a fantastic cast of VAs, beautiful artstyle and perhaps my favorite soundtrack in the entire series. The bad thing about this game are the maps, they are super bland but that was expected as a remake of Gaiden.

A desperately needed remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden. Shadows of Valentia resolves many of the issues of the original game, while arguably having some of the best aesthetics of any game in the series, with its fantastic soundtrack being the cherry on top.

I think my biggest gripe with this game has to do with the map design. Many, if not all of the maps are copy-pasted from Gaiden. While I can appreciate being faithful to the original game, I would also say that Gaiden didn't exactly have great map design to begin with. I think this is especially noticeable on Celica's route, where the maps can feel like a chore to get through more than anything.

I do also think some of the new additions to the narrative, like the characters Faye and Conrad, either don't help the story, or actively worsen it. Conrad especially feels like he reduces Celica to a damsel-in-distress during certain story beats, whereas in the original she was able to get out of those situations with her own strength. I think this unnecessarily diminishes her character to a degree, but I'm not sure if this largely held opinion or not.

The game does do a lot more for Alm and Celica as characters, and that is only enhanced by the fantastic voice acting for both of them, as well as the rest of the cast.

I would definitely recommend this game to anyone interested, but I will warn people about the map design possibly making it feel like a slog to play, especially for Celica's route.

P.S. If you're having issues with Celica's route, complete Alm's Act 3 before Celica's, fully forge up the Killer Bow, and use the Peddler NPC to send over the Killer Bow to Celica's side for Leon to use. Hunter's Volley Leon does so much to make Celica's route easier.

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.

my first fire emblem game and most likely the last i try in a while good god. the maps are so tedious to move on and i just couldn't care much about the writing overall. i wish i liked the characters more, they don't feel compelling enough for me to pull through the annoying maps and strategize my turns. not even my most useful units (saber, mae, leon, genny; notice how i'm not pointing out any of alm's units LMAO) make things fun.. but tbh maybe i'm not craving this right now. i might come back to complete it later though..

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.

Best presentation Fire Emblem has had, sad we'll never get it again. Beautiful character designs, wildly good music(that I was shocked to find was all just remixes of the dang NES tracks!), peak vibes. Just a joy to go through and see the story through to the end. The Fire Emblem I'd recommend most to people who simply want a nice JRPG/SRPG experience without particularly wanting to get into Fire Emblem, because it's both poorly representative of Fire Emblem gameplay as a whole, and not a very good Fire Emblem to play. On its on, though, as something on the outside - indeed, as a gaiden, it's great.

I think this is a really tough game to like. There's a lot of cool things it does (making magic cost health, the exploration elements, and the supports are pretty good), but the maps are pretty dull so it kind of drags on a bit. I think the story is, generally, pretty good. I know people complain about Celica, but I think she's a flawed character and the game does a pretty good job at showing why she makes flawed decision. I'm a fan of that, personally. I'm also a fan of Alm, who I think is really lovable. I think a lot of the cast is, honestly. I think, out of all the fire emblem games, this one consistently nails down good characterization for the majority of its cast. The dungeons are pretty cool too, and unique for the series. However, I feel like some of them drag on a bit too long, and, again, the normal maps are too boring to compensate. It's still unfortunately a product of its time as an NES game, even if they did so much to make every other part of it better.

I still think it's worth a shot for the characters, worldbuilding, and story alone.

Je n'ai pas joué à l'original mais très bon remake, la DA des personnages est la meilleure tous FE confondus, certaines mécaniques de gameplay se différencient des autres jeux tout en restant bonnes, même si le jeu devient très simple en late game si tu as fait certains choix de classe pour certains personnages.
L'histoire est sympathique même si il y a quelques éléments que je n'ai vraiment aimé. La majorité des personnages sont aussi vraiment cools.
J'aimerais beaucoup qu'ils remake d'autres jeux de la série comme ça mais à l'heure où j'écris (Janvier 2024), ce n'est pas arrivé depuis la sortie du jeu il y a plus de 6 ans !

fire emblem can be sick as hell when it's not wholly focused on making characters Fuck

story is great, some of the best voice acting i've seen, beautiful presentation and artstyle, but it gets bogged down by being a remake of a famicom game from the 90s. poison swamps, shit-ass desert levels that take up a good chunk of celica's route (which is the only reason to use pegagus knights at all)... plus they kept in stupid gimmicks like whatever the hell is going on with jedah.

yet somehow none of that ruins the game for me! i still think this is hands-down my favorite fire emblem, it just hits so differently than other FE games. nothing compares to getting a 60% crit rate on deen and just sweeping the whole damn game

Possibly the best story of modern FE alongside Three Houses. One of the most impressive 3DS titles visually and having every character conversation voiced was a first for the series and it adds even more emotion to the stories of characters. Unfortunately, the gameplay of later maps and some enemy units begin to suck the fun out of the game. Slow poisonous swamp levels and enemies that teleport to the player and one shot their units are not fun to fight and the start of the game is a bit slow before you get a full team. You do feel like you are truly building an army in this and it is very satisfying to show up to the final few levels with a massive amount of units you trained.

What this game has above Awakening is the insanely good art and voice direction. This was the only 3DS Fire Emblem to feature almost full voice acting. It kept things engaging all the way through. This game is a remake of an NES title, so it doesn't include the modern FE waifu shit. Some prefer that, but that was the stuff that got me interested in the series to begin with. The map designs are also super dated. All of that aside though, it was a very enjoyable experience and its one of the best looking games on the 3ds.