Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. This was honestly an amazing time, it's a unique entry in the series gameplay wise and I felt it was definitely the best game presentation wise.
I don't have huge things to talk about story or character wise, so I'll be a bit more general than usual. The main story is pretty good, the writing itself isn't anything particularly amazing, it feels like your standard zero to hero fantasy tale. That being said it was also pretty inoffensive, nothing I thought was stupid or convoluted. I think the way they deliver some of Alm's story is kind of weird, like obviously the player knows what's going on with him, it really isn't subtle. But also everyone else in the game knows too, so you're kinda just waiting for Alm to eventually figure out something that's kind of really obvious. Celica has the whole "I'm trusting this bad guy cause it's the only option and I'm also keeping it a secret from my friends" plot trope I'm not a fan of. I get why she did what she did, but they kinda just gloss over how her friends feel about it and resolve it quickly and easily. With that said though, that ends my complaints about the main story. Everything else is at worst average at times and great at others. This is all aided however by a phenomenal voice cast and soundtrack which definitely helps deliver a pretty simple story.
VOICE ACTING
Now, I'm no stranger to talking about and praising voice acting, Fire Emblem included. But holy shit, this game's cast was incredible, now I'm far from the first person to say this, I've been hearing this game's praises forever and it certainly lives up to the hype. Ian Sinclair as Berkut is absolutely phenomenal, with some of the best voice acted scenes I've ever seen in anything, and if you know me you know how big of a compliment that is. It doesn't end just with Berkut thought, Kyle McArley as Alm, while I felt for the first three acts he wasn't anything too special, definitely knocks it out of the park in the last few acts of the story. Taylor Henry, is one of my favorite voice actors, if you need someone to voice a big, bad and stern guy he's your man. And his performance as Rudolf wa great, wish he got more. But I love plenty of other cast members as well. Lukas is definitely Greg Chun's best role, Grant George as Clive is awesome, I love Cherami Leigh already so her as Mae was super fun. Delthea, Desaix, Slayde, Saber, so many amazing voices. As a huge fan of voice acting, this game was an absolute treat.
GAMEPLAY
Now this is where it'll get interesting, as overall I think I enjoyed this game's gameplay. I liked the dungeon elements, very unique by FE standards and while I think they could be better mechanically (fatigue never really felt like an actual issue, wish I could just promote normally, wish I could expand the map etc.) I think it was fun to clear them out and explore. I loved clearing a few of the dungeons. Now combat, I felt was good, yeah bows are strong but they didn't feel absolutely game breaking due to the enemies having similar range options and warping, and the busted range of bows made for some fun strategies as I played. I think dread fighters are a bit too strong and witches warping all over is quite irritating as their isn't really a clear way to handle them. And with how many battles you do, whether they be in a dungeon or overworld reinforcements (which are cool in concept but got old after a point), these factors started to wear down the experience a bit. Difficulty wise, I don't know, it's not too hard and not too easy. Low growth rates definitely hurt a bit, but you get to a point where on average you can handle whatever comes up, sure some enemies are annoying but nothing ever felt too challenging. A few maps were the fun kind of tough though, I liked finding different ways to approach them. Speaking of maps, definitely this games weakest element I feel, desert and swamps suck, so Celica's route gets boned hard. I never personally swamps we're anything egregious outside of the first one, as after that you have enough ways to heal and manage your units and delay the enemy to deal with them. But also overall the maps felt basic, like I said there were a few fun ones, but even those I wouldn't put with my favorite maps in FE. Still not something I would let weigh anything down, gameplay I'd say was fun overall. Jedah was annoying to fight, invoke is overpowered and there are no axe units :(. But like I said I enjoyed it overall, I appreciate that it stands out amongst the rest of the series.
CHARACTERS
Man, what a great cast, I honestly can't say I dislike any character. But that's probably because the characters have so few supports compared to other entries in the series. Now these supports were all good-great, but I definitely wish I could see more of certain characters. As some others don't leave too much of an impression with how little they have. You could argue a quality versus quantity thing here, but I think there's definitely a middle ground between the two sides they could have found.
SOUNDTRACK
Holey Moley. What an amazing soundtrack, yet another thing I've heard praised to no end before playing, and once again it's for a perfectly valid reason. I suffered from the minor issue of like half of this game's soundtrack being used in Fire Emblem Heroes, something I've been playing for years, so I thought lack of impact would be a big issue. But nope, it's all as amazing as if I'd never heard it before. Easily the best in the series.
Conclusion
This was an amazing experience, and it has its issues, but I feel this is a good outweighs the bad situation. But in this case it's the amazing outweighs the kinda average and kinda annoying. I plan to play gaiden eventually, to see how it stacks up, but this game seems pretty faithful. And I can tell cause the map design definitely feels three decades old at times. At the end of the day, I am happy this game was my final journey (in terms of mainline fire emblem and games that have remakes like FE1 and Gaiden, which I will play) in one of my favorite series of all time.
I don't have huge things to talk about story or character wise, so I'll be a bit more general than usual. The main story is pretty good, the writing itself isn't anything particularly amazing, it feels like your standard zero to hero fantasy tale. That being said it was also pretty inoffensive, nothing I thought was stupid or convoluted. I think the way they deliver some of Alm's story is kind of weird, like obviously the player knows what's going on with him, it really isn't subtle. But also everyone else in the game knows too, so you're kinda just waiting for Alm to eventually figure out something that's kind of really obvious. Celica has the whole "I'm trusting this bad guy cause it's the only option and I'm also keeping it a secret from my friends" plot trope I'm not a fan of. I get why she did what she did, but they kinda just gloss over how her friends feel about it and resolve it quickly and easily. With that said though, that ends my complaints about the main story. Everything else is at worst average at times and great at others. This is all aided however by a phenomenal voice cast and soundtrack which definitely helps deliver a pretty simple story.
VOICE ACTING
Now, I'm no stranger to talking about and praising voice acting, Fire Emblem included. But holy shit, this game's cast was incredible, now I'm far from the first person to say this, I've been hearing this game's praises forever and it certainly lives up to the hype. Ian Sinclair as Berkut is absolutely phenomenal, with some of the best voice acted scenes I've ever seen in anything, and if you know me you know how big of a compliment that is. It doesn't end just with Berkut thought, Kyle McArley as Alm, while I felt for the first three acts he wasn't anything too special, definitely knocks it out of the park in the last few acts of the story. Taylor Henry, is one of my favorite voice actors, if you need someone to voice a big, bad and stern guy he's your man. And his performance as Rudolf wa great, wish he got more. But I love plenty of other cast members as well. Lukas is definitely Greg Chun's best role, Grant George as Clive is awesome, I love Cherami Leigh already so her as Mae was super fun. Delthea, Desaix, Slayde, Saber, so many amazing voices. As a huge fan of voice acting, this game was an absolute treat.
GAMEPLAY
Now this is where it'll get interesting, as overall I think I enjoyed this game's gameplay. I liked the dungeon elements, very unique by FE standards and while I think they could be better mechanically (fatigue never really felt like an actual issue, wish I could just promote normally, wish I could expand the map etc.) I think it was fun to clear them out and explore. I loved clearing a few of the dungeons. Now combat, I felt was good, yeah bows are strong but they didn't feel absolutely game breaking due to the enemies having similar range options and warping, and the busted range of bows made for some fun strategies as I played. I think dread fighters are a bit too strong and witches warping all over is quite irritating as their isn't really a clear way to handle them. And with how many battles you do, whether they be in a dungeon or overworld reinforcements (which are cool in concept but got old after a point), these factors started to wear down the experience a bit. Difficulty wise, I don't know, it's not too hard and not too easy. Low growth rates definitely hurt a bit, but you get to a point where on average you can handle whatever comes up, sure some enemies are annoying but nothing ever felt too challenging. A few maps were the fun kind of tough though, I liked finding different ways to approach them. Speaking of maps, definitely this games weakest element I feel, desert and swamps suck, so Celica's route gets boned hard. I never personally swamps we're anything egregious outside of the first one, as after that you have enough ways to heal and manage your units and delay the enemy to deal with them. But also overall the maps felt basic, like I said there were a few fun ones, but even those I wouldn't put with my favorite maps in FE. Still not something I would let weigh anything down, gameplay I'd say was fun overall. Jedah was annoying to fight, invoke is overpowered and there are no axe units :(. But like I said I enjoyed it overall, I appreciate that it stands out amongst the rest of the series.
CHARACTERS
Man, what a great cast, I honestly can't say I dislike any character. But that's probably because the characters have so few supports compared to other entries in the series. Now these supports were all good-great, but I definitely wish I could see more of certain characters. As some others don't leave too much of an impression with how little they have. You could argue a quality versus quantity thing here, but I think there's definitely a middle ground between the two sides they could have found.
SOUNDTRACK
Holey Moley. What an amazing soundtrack, yet another thing I've heard praised to no end before playing, and once again it's for a perfectly valid reason. I suffered from the minor issue of like half of this game's soundtrack being used in Fire Emblem Heroes, something I've been playing for years, so I thought lack of impact would be a big issue. But nope, it's all as amazing as if I'd never heard it before. Easily the best in the series.
Conclusion
This was an amazing experience, and it has its issues, but I feel this is a good outweighs the bad situation. But in this case it's the amazing outweighs the kinda average and kinda annoying. I plan to play gaiden eventually, to see how it stacks up, but this game seems pretty faithful. And I can tell cause the map design definitely feels three decades old at times. At the end of the day, I am happy this game was my final journey (in terms of mainline fire emblem and games that have remakes like FE1 and Gaiden, which I will play) in one of my favorite series of all time.