Echoes is strange. I wonder what made them choose gaiden to remake over fan favorites like thracia or GoHW. Echoes is remade and even features new segments which is nice! Unfortunately, it shows its age as a nes game.
The bad.
- Maps are very simplistic. Terrain effects are barely relevant on hard difficulty and most of them are empty spaces with nothing happening. The fault lies with the fact that levels aren't built with as much care as fates or awakening, because a lot of them are little grunt fights.
-The dungeons are neat the first time but you quickly realize how tedious and boring these environments are. The fatigue system is annoying, and the random encounters take forever. Imagine playing Final Fantasy but ever random encounter took 3-4 minutes and didn't give you anything of value and little EXP. These dungeons may hide permanant stat buffs, which does promote actually exploring, sadly it is very bare bones.
-The story is boring, plain and simple. Some characters are interesting and overall better written than fates ever was, but its not enough to carry the nes era story. Also, it has some weird brother sister love thing happening that I did not jive with. With how much alm and celica simp over each other too, it was naseuating at some moments.
The Good.
-Weapons have no durability now and they are function more as stat buffs than required tools. I like this because they also give skills if you use them enough, which makes weapons unique even to non-main characters.
-The music is pretty good. I don't have much else to say on this point, they just took the old composition and remade it with actual instruments this time and not nes boops.
-Again, characters are better here than they were in fates, some are kind of one note like alm's femcel childhood friend whos name I already forgot. But the characters that are required to come with you are actually the best ones and enjoyable.
-The turnwheel is great for the health of the game and the franchise. This isn't xcom, every unit has character and importance so losing them would be annoying, or getting hit by a 5% crit and losing a unit is also annoying. It doesn't happen too often but my units also can't seem to land a attack ever at 90% hit rate so who knows? I do wish that, like in three houses, if main character dies, you could use turnwheel instead of being forced to restart. One level I played, celica got crit off 7% and I had to restart the whole thing.
I do like some of the changes but they changed so much I hesitate to call this a "remake". If you were to change so much of the game, why not just change the whole thing? Modernize the gameplay, touch up the story. Maybe they did do these things, I haven't played the nes game so I can't say, but the old nes game still feels like an old nes game but now theres monotonous dungeons.
The bad.
- Maps are very simplistic. Terrain effects are barely relevant on hard difficulty and most of them are empty spaces with nothing happening. The fault lies with the fact that levels aren't built with as much care as fates or awakening, because a lot of them are little grunt fights.
-The dungeons are neat the first time but you quickly realize how tedious and boring these environments are. The fatigue system is annoying, and the random encounters take forever. Imagine playing Final Fantasy but ever random encounter took 3-4 minutes and didn't give you anything of value and little EXP. These dungeons may hide permanant stat buffs, which does promote actually exploring, sadly it is very bare bones.
-The story is boring, plain and simple. Some characters are interesting and overall better written than fates ever was, but its not enough to carry the nes era story. Also, it has some weird brother sister love thing happening that I did not jive with. With how much alm and celica simp over each other too, it was naseuating at some moments.
The Good.
-Weapons have no durability now and they are function more as stat buffs than required tools. I like this because they also give skills if you use them enough, which makes weapons unique even to non-main characters.
-The music is pretty good. I don't have much else to say on this point, they just took the old composition and remade it with actual instruments this time and not nes boops.
-Again, characters are better here than they were in fates, some are kind of one note like alm's femcel childhood friend whos name I already forgot. But the characters that are required to come with you are actually the best ones and enjoyable.
-The turnwheel is great for the health of the game and the franchise. This isn't xcom, every unit has character and importance so losing them would be annoying, or getting hit by a 5% crit and losing a unit is also annoying. It doesn't happen too often but my units also can't seem to land a attack ever at 90% hit rate so who knows? I do wish that, like in three houses, if main character dies, you could use turnwheel instead of being forced to restart. One level I played, celica got crit off 7% and I had to restart the whole thing.
I do like some of the changes but they changed so much I hesitate to call this a "remake". If you were to change so much of the game, why not just change the whole thing? Modernize the gameplay, touch up the story. Maybe they did do these things, I haven't played the nes game so I can't say, but the old nes game still feels like an old nes game but now theres monotonous dungeons.