To begin, am I the only person on Earth who doesn't like this game? For reference, you could argue that people never liked Gaiden to begin with considering how faithful this game was to it gameplay-wise, but as I said before: gameplay doesn't make Fire Emblem, even though it is interesting to talk about. What I meant by the opening question is that I actually prefer the ORIGINAL NES game over this Remake, which will be a very controversial statement for certain.

So, seeing as this game honestly sucks, what does it do well? For starters, it greatly refines the gameplay of Fire Emblem 2, mainly the dungeon sections which already felt so tactfully added to FE2 back in 1991/1992 (I know, Gaiden REALLY is a guilty pleasure for me). The FEEL of being inside a dungeon was nailed here, and I think FE15 should be credited for that, despite the fact this game came out nearly 25 years after the original. FE15 also perfects the 3DS Fire Emblem graphics, which makes sense considering it's the last FE on the 3DS, and is also the best 3DS Fire Emblem, which is a popular opinion for good reason. I'm not sure how anyone can prefer Fates or Awakening over this game besides the following two scenarios: Fates fans adore Conquest, and could easily make a case explaining why Conquest's a far better designed game than SoV, which is a good argument. However, the problem I have with this mindset is that the game claiming higher ground is Fire Emblem FATES. It has infinitely worse writing than SoV will ever have, and I don't care if Conquest has great maps or fixed Awakening's gameplay mechanics, it's still TERRIBLY WRITTEN. Regarding the Awakening fans, I guess people prefer brainless gameplay over a game where you actually have to think? Awakening too has no significant writing advantage over this game, so yeah, SoV's the best of them all.

Echoes is the first game in the series to implement full voice acting for the characters outside of cutscenes, which is a decision I don't like because I'd rather imagine the characters' voices on my own. Everyone praises the voice acting, but unless you're playing in Japanese, the voices are honestly horrendous, worse than a lot of bad anime dubs in my opinion. FE16 has infinitely better voice acting all across the board. That's how much worse this game is than its successor - FE16 does a lot more refining, even though it still sucks.

Normally, I just talk about the good and bad elements when reviewing a game, but this game is interesting in that, because it's a remake, it is bound to retain many things from Fire Emblem Gaiden. The story was barely changed at all, and I would say it's for the better, because it's the only good story post New Mystery of the Emblem. However, the problem is, the reason why the story is good is because it was ripped straight from Fire Emblem 2, which is a True Fire Emblem game. Same for the OST. Besides having one of the worst Fire Emblem Main Themes I've ever heard in my life (they made it sound incredibly anime, which is SO ANNOYINGLY disrespectful to Yuka Tsujiyoko's Fire Emblem Theme), the rest of the tracks are phenomenal, because they literally modernized an already fantastic NES OST. If you can see the problem, it's the fact this game is so critically dependent on Fire Emblem Gaiden, a game that's widely hated/seen as the black sheep of the Fire Emblem series, so to see FE15 get so much undeserved praise honestly aggravates me. Even Harvester of Eyes, the greatest YouTuber of all time who has left since last year, says Fire Emblem Gaiden is his least favorite True FE, which shows how unpopular of a game it is, and this shallow, solace remake does NOTHING to improve upon its writing. In fact, it does the exact OPPOSITE. It RUINS a solid game, impressing people who don't understand what makes Fire Emblem Fire Emblem, whilst throwing its source material under the bus in doing so. It's not a good remake unlike the DS Marth Duology, which did the single most important thing in being good remakes: they retained the tone of FE1 and 3, respectively. While it is true New Mystery of the Emblem added Kris, they were simply an addition that still managed to stay true to the tone of FE3, and not the "plague" that ruined FE3 like many people say it did. Fire Emblem 12 is amazing because it managed to retain the tone and amazing character writing that makes Fire Emblem so good in the first place. Not so for FE15, which turns all of its characters into anime characters, using the Kaga archetypes as a base, adding anime tropes on top of them, wrecking them in the process.

Now, anime characters are not always one dimensional. In fact, anime is beloved for the exact opposite reason: because anime characters often tend to be complex and multi dimensional. Take Goku from Dragon Ball Z as an example: he's a hero sure, but he's also kinda careless, he's power hungry as all heck, and he's a scumbag to King Kai. That's a compelling character for a show that feels more like a cartoon than an anime. However, I don't find Goku all that relatable, as are most of the Dragon Ball Z cast, which is shared across most anime. The exception would have to be FullMetal Alchemist franchise, which tend to write their characters more realistically, which I vastly prefer. Fire Emblem often avoids anime writing conventions, and their characters tend to be mostly realistic and relatable as a result. For example, I pity Micaiah from FE10 being shafted because I was so invested in her determination to restore Daein back to being a stable nation after Begnion captured it. I don't know why, I just find myself more comfortable being around Fire Emblem characters. They don't feel anime to me at all, and they're amazing because of it. Even Final Fantasy characters veer slightly away from anime writing, though not as thoroughly as Fire Emblem characters, which shows adding unrealistic character quirks can be detrimental if not kept at a minimum. However, that's just me, because I don't like anime where most people REALLY do. Clearly, their enjoyment from anime comes from the fantasy of seeing largely unrealistic characters interacting with a fantasy world. Ironically, part of why I love Fire Emblem so much is because while the worlds are entirely separate from Earth, the characters feel like real people, which is largely uncommon in anime for my experience.

So where does this leave this trash? Simple. FE15 shafts the one dimensional anime stereotypes from FE13 and 14 in favor of writing more complex characters, but the problem is they are handled with the tact and grace as that of a glass shard. Don't worry Glass from Fire Emblem 7, you are far more memorable than ANY of these badly reimagined characters. As stated prior, there wasn't much source material for the writers to work off of, so they kinda ruined a lot of characters in the transitioning process. Again, Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon successfully transitions NES characters, which shows that it CAN be done. You CAN modernize underwritten characters by simply taking the character's base and making them act as if they were real people. Look at Jake's genuinely subtle feelings for Anna, who was just as amazing. Look at Roger's smile inducing flirting with Caeda. They just FEEL more likable because the FE11 writers actually knew how to write Fire Emblem characters, not anime characters disguised as Fire Emblem characters.

Let's start with the positives. Judah is the only character to improve, and is always used to cite how good this game's character writing is, because he's now much less generically evil than he was in FE2. Berkut and Fernand whose characters at the very least, make sense, but they don't feel like Fire Emblem unlike with Judah. A few good characters cannot save a largely bland cast that somehow made the FE2 cast look as if they came from Citizen Kane. Alm and Celica feel more motivated by unrequited love than a desire to save their homeland.

The rest of the characters are simply normal anime characters that I can't care for no matter how much I tried. The character who stood out to me the most as the most blatant form of anime pandering was Nuibaba. This character easily had the worst transition, starting out as a cool cloaked alien monster with an unspecified gender, turned into a generic evil stripper woman with a massive anterior. This is disrespectfully annoying and is proof of this game's true intentions.

One strange thing to point out is the fact the NES game actually handled the Dragon Mountain act better than this game, which instead made it contingent on Celica's stupidity that Alm got stuck, so yeah, to again quote Harvester of Eyes: imagine being worse written and more contrived than an NES game. Even someone else agrees that this game just feels very off, and not at all faithful to its source material besides refining the gameplay and rehashing the same story. The anime-ness of this game muddies not just a solid game, but what is in my opinion, the BEST NES game of all time, tied with Super Mario Bros. 1.

In order to save room for meaningful rambling on my upcoming FE14 review, I decided to end this review by talking about a gameplay decision made by Fire Emblem: Fates. That decision was to basically foreshadow FE2 getting a remake, as FE14 removes weapon durability altogether. I'm not sure if this implies an FE2 remake was always slated for the late 2010s considering FE12 was already a remake of FE3 in 2010 itself, but it's very likely intentional. If that is not the case, I'm curious as to why that decision was even made. Weapon durability is something that Nintendo seems to adore using in recent years, but it has been misplaced. Weapon durability makes sense in Fire Emblem because you can strategize around them, knowing when you might need to buy more. In a game like Breath of the Wild however, it feels forced and out of place, dating the gameplay and hurting it immensely, because there are few things more annoying than fighting an enemy in real time only to have your weapon break in the middle of combat, leaving you defenseless so the only thing you can do is run away. It's very unfair to the player, if you ask me. It's strange that Fire Emblem became more lax and forgiving with weapons, with even Three Houses and Engage retaining infinitely durable weapons to show that they're here to stay. In FE2, the removal of weapon durability was clearly an experimental thing and worked well for that game. However, this feature's removal in Shadows of Valentia makes it feels more like a sequel to Fire Emblem: Fates than a remake to Fire Emblem: Gaiden. It's honestly quite humorous and sad to see how I managed to land that transition better than SoV transitioned an NES game to the 3DS. With all this, it is clear that Intelligent Systems have not learned their lesson, and I honestly hope they do not "remake" games like FE4 or 6, because they would ruin them by turning timeless human characters into generic anime characters.