3.5/5 ★ – Bulky_Bob's review of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.

I’m not a very “technical” FE enjoyer, more so a casual one. Mainly looking for a good story with fun characters and interesting side quests/tasks. That being said, I played this on Hard Classic and it probably made my experience a little worse. I like a challenge! But I don’t enjoy a lot of grinding. So I set myself up pretty bad here — but I’m not letting that impact my score. With that out of the way, I had a lot of fun. Never got sick of Alm screaming “Celica!”, all of these voice actors killed it! Story was a kinda predictable but enjoyable experience, not spoiling anything here but it did give me some “Oh dang!” or “I knew it!” moments. Side characters were great and learning about their backstories and seeing relationships grow is always a nice world building treat. The gameplay was very polished, maps weren’t too bland, but the swamps were kinda trash. This one didn’t have the “triangle system” I was used to, so a bit of a learning curve there with finding out which units deal the best damage to each enemy. Even if this was transferable knowledge from earlier games, I couldn’t remember for the life of me. Leveling and classes were cool, although I knew nothing about which class to apply to what person so I referred to Googling and guides. I’m not sure this information is even available unless you study the stat growths and play the game again — I do not have that level of commitment. Also not as much side content as I hoped for, this is fine but you’re only really building relationships in battles and that’s kind meh. Story cut scenes were good, in engine scenes were OK. Definitely coulda used some pre-rendered ones at the end of the game but it is what it is. As for music, really well done WHEN it was switched up. I was getting kinda tired of the battle theme after a while, it was stuck in my head in a bad way. Those last few boss themes were mint tho, oh my Lord those choir boys were popping off. But yeah! Definitely not my favorite entry, used this game as a soft reboot back into the series for me. I’m going back to Three Houses after shelving it for years so I’m super excited to restart and play that again. I loved this for what it was but I don’t think I’ll be clamoring to come back.