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Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia |OT|

Mcdohl

Member
Not really, she's more making fun of the fanbase if anything.

This

The writing behind her is actually pretty good, especially in comparison to other characters of her archetype

I see. Too meta for my taste I guess.

Me:
1355331549061.jpg

Anyways, game's still really enjoyable. I am liking this over Fates.

How is Faye catering to the fanservice crowd? She's not exactly Camilla.

Not via the sexiness factor, but more via the cute girl is hopelessly in love with the male protag who doesn't realize that, yet she still finds ways to point it out all the fucking time, no matter what situation they are going through, like you know, a war. I know FE is not Game of Thrones, but c'mon. Faye feels like she has 0 character depth, she's nothing but a trope.
 

PK Gaming

Member
I see. Too meta for my taste I guess.

Me:


Anyways, game's still really enjoyable. I am liking this over Fates.



Not via the sexiness factor, but more via the cute girl is hopelessly in love with the male protag who doesn't realize that, yet she still finds ways to point it out all the fucking time, no matter what situation they are going through, like you know, a war. I know FE is not Game of Thrones, but c'mon. Faye feels like she has 0 character depth, she's nothing but a trope.

Here's the problem with your read though:

1) Alm isn't oblivious to Faye's feelings
2) Her feelings towards Alm aren't played for laughs and they're decidedly not cute
3) Her depth comes from her obsession with Alm.

Her support with Silque makes this explicitly clear. She's so obsessed with Alm she can't even form normal relationships with other people. She's so obsessed with Alm, her parents are worried about her because all she does is send letters about him. She's so obsessed with Alm, she'll keep fighting for him, even after he rejects her, because she has nothing to live for. Faye is someone who defines herself by her love for Alm, and it's really and messed up. They took a basic ass trope and turned it on its head.

Faye is great. As an actually unit though she is straight trash!

She's pretty solid.
 
Finally got this game. I was surprised they still had Limited Editions here in gamestops in NYC.
Most of my level ups seem to be pretty bad. I'm only getting 1 or 2 stats most of the time.
Is that normal?
 

Xenoflare

Member
Finally got this game. I was surprised they still had Limited Editions here in gamestops in NYC.
Most of my level ups seem to be pretty bad. I'm only getting 1 or 2 stats most of the time.
Is that normal?

Yes.

Notice how characters make a positive remark when their level ups exceeds 2 points.

This also ties into the early promotion tips, as promoting brings the characters to the bases of the new classes instead of giving them a fixed amount of stat boosts, in other words promotion fixes all these bad level ups
 

Sadist

Member
Welp I gave up on that one particular Act 4 battle with Celica's army.

No Dracoshield from Jedah I guess. Now climbing the tower and all those enemies are just dogpiling me :( Stahp it.

I like the Falcon Knights in this game, as units I mean. They aren't as frail compared to other Fire Emblem titles.
 

Lynx_7

Member
YO that track that plays at Alm's final battle on Act 4 is straight fire, goddamn.
Just a great finale for the Rigelian conflict in general, too.
And I know it has been said before but Berkut's VA is amazing.

Shame Celica's side of the journey wasn't as good. Saber deserved to side with the superior protagonist.

Dragon Quest VIII or FE Echoes? I became a big FE fanboy but for some reason this one doesn't get my attention.

If it's your first time playing DQ VIII, then definitely DQ VIII.
Otherwise, give Echoes a try. I wasn't interested at first either but I've been really enjoying it aside from the uninspired skirmishes.
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
So I think my top five character rankings for this game are

1. Berkut
2. Fernand
3. Forsythe/Python duo (they work together)
4. Alm
5. Deen (just from attitude/victory quotes/design alone)

I think the villains stole the show. Which is interesting, as they didn't exist in Gaiden at all.
 
I was holding off on buying this until later on, but I was in Best Buy last week and I spotted the Limited Edition on the shelf behind customer service. I have GCU so I couldn't resist for 20% off.

I love this game so far. I'm only 5 hours in but I am fairly certain this will end up being my favorite game in the series. I love all the new stuff: the dungeons, town exploration and trading HP for arts. I'm also really liking the music and characters so far. I'm kind of sad that we'll probably never get another FE game quite like this one, so I am trying to enjoy it while it lasts.
 

GeekyDad

Member
Yes.

Notice how characters make a positive remark when their level ups exceeds 2 points.

This also ties into the early promotion tips, as promoting brings the characters to the bases of the new classes instead of giving them a fixed amount of stat boosts, in other words promotion fixes all these bad level ups

Had the game, haven't touched it yet.

So, are you saying, unlike Awakening, it encourages the player to promote asap, as opposed to maxing out lower-tier classes before promoting?
 

Dee Dee

Member
So I think my top five character rankings for this game are

1. Berkut
2. Fernand
3. Forsythe/Python duo (they work together)
4. Alm
5. Deen (just from attitude/victory quotes/design alone)

I think the villains stole the show. Which is interesting, as they didn't exist in Gaiden at all.

What is this sausage fest? And if anything, where's Lukas? Ha.

I agree on Fernand and Berkut being great additions by the way, much better villains than the usual "I'm so evil, I turned purple!" and "I'm not really evil, it's all part of the Human Instrumentality Project" weirdos.

I thought Faye was a stupid trope until the Silque / Faye supports, those were amazing. I liked spunky Delthea, and Silque for that random as all hell Memory Prism with Jesse too.
Clair was a trope well executed and fun in my eyes too. Also useful unit.
All the Pegasus sisters felt great and filled with life - never played any of the Archanea games, so only knew them from Fire Emblem Heroes, where Catria has just the most unfortunate design, oh dear.
I like here Voice Actress and design in Echoes so much though.
 

Lynx_7

Member
Finished the game a while ago, Act
6
included. I can safely say that despite getting very repetitive at times, the overall experience really resonated with me. It doesn't do anything particularly out of the ordinary, but it's well executed and sincere enough that I can't help but look back fondly on my time with the game. It also helps that I beat Shadow Dragon literally the same day I started this one and seeing the little and not-so-little nods to it was really neat. Also, I just can't get enough of this OST. It's easily my favorite soundtrack out of all the 3DS entries. As for the game itself, I can't tell if I like it better than Awakening or not because I need to replay the latter and see how I feel about it nowadays (which would be neat to revisit because now I have the proper context for Archanea/Ylisse and Valentia/Valm), but it's definitely much better than Birthright and what little I've played of Revelations.

Now, only New Mystery of the Emblem of the original "trilogy" remains, and from what I've heard it supposedly has some of the best gameplay in the entire series. However, having just played 3 FE games in quick succession (4, SD and Echoes), I think I'll go back to my Revelations file in order to finally put that behind me and then take a break. There's only so much FE I can take within such a short amount of time.
 

Anteo

Member
Had the game, haven't touched it yet.

So, are you saying, unlike Awakening, it encourages the player to promote asap, as opposed to maxing out lower-tier classes before promoting?

Awakening never really encouraged promoting late because there is infinite exp and infinite leveling. You can fix any character in the main campaing.

Also, if you abuse mila turnwheel you can justify waiting a few levels but even then there is no reason to go past level 10.
 

NeonZ

Member
Awakening never really encouraged promoting late because there is infinite exp and infinite leveling. You can fix any character in the main campaing.

Only if you waste a lot of time grinding though, since you still get less experience after promoting. I remember in my first playthrough of Awakening hearing people go "class change quickly since there's no level limit and you want to get skills as quickly as possible", but then the stats of most of my units were all very low by end game. I still finished the game without needing to grind because it's easy enough even on hard and I could rely on some units that had Aptitude, but I could have avoided some headaches there.
 
Only if you waste a lot of time grinding though, since you still get less experience after promoting. I remember in my first playthrough of Awakening hearing people go "class change quickly since there's no level limit and you want to get skills as quickly as possible", but then the stats of most of my units were all very low by end game. I still finished the game without needing to grind because it's easy enough even on hard and I could rely on some units that had Aptitude, but I could have avoided some headaches there.

It depends, if you're grabbing a Second Seal to an unpromoted class do it ASAP and you can early promote too.
 

NeonZ

Member
It depends, if you're grabbing a Second Seal to an unpromoted class do it ASAP and you can early promote too.

2nd seals work, and if you use a 2nd seal and afterwards promote at level 10 there's no issue either, but promoting immediately will hit eventual level gains which can add up by end game. I guess the avatar and his children can keep up due to his veteran skill too though - but at the time I didn't realize that, since I didn't expect the level issues in the first place, and wasn't using that skill.
 

Xenoflare

Member
Had the game, haven't touched it yet.

So, are you saying, unlike Awakening, it encourages the player to promote asap, as opposed to maxing out lower-tier classes before promoting?

Yes, compared to Fates and Awakening Echoes does encourage early promotion.

However if you really want to invest in time getting your units to level 20 still yields the "best" stat gain, but the anti grind penalty would be so strong that you might get peanuts for even going into the DLC exp maps.
 

Sciz

Member
However if you really want to invest in time getting your units to level 20 still yields the "best" stat gain, but the anti grind penalty would be so strong that you might get peanuts for even going into the DLC exp maps.

Having actually done an all 20s run, I can say that most of your units aren't even going to hit their final class by the final boss without some notable grinding*. If you do push them all the way, you'll get units with multiple capped stats that can one-shot most stuff even into the endgame.

*The high level DLC mitigates this significantly, as you would expect. Still gonna take a few hours if you want to get a team of 10-20 up to prime fighting shape. The upshot is that the exp and money maps are actually pretty engaging.
 

Xenoflare

Member
Having actually done an all 20s run, I can say that most of your units aren't even going to hit their final class by the final boss without some notable grinding*. If you do push them all the way, you'll get units with multiple capped stats that can one-shot most stuff even into the endgame.

*The high level DLC mitigates this significantly, as you would expect. Still gonna take a few hours if you want to get a team of 10-20 up to prime fighting shape. The upshot is that the exp and money maps are actually pretty engaging.

Yeah, the issue is even worse on Celica's route since her route is shorter.

I've find the RNG in this game is just pretty screwy in general when level up. My Alm ended up with a 21 STR in the end while by calculation he should be at 26. Python ended with 19 Skill at 7/10/10 with barely any speed. Now in this play through he hit 20 STR and 16 SPD at 7/10/1 and 8 skill.
 

Anbec7

Member
So I'm finally having some time to play the game, I got the pitchfork due to the free DLCs and everyone is saying that it makes "OP" units.
How exactly does it work and who do I use it on? Probably this has been explained a lot but I heard a lot of making Lucas a villager and then... what?
 
So I'm finally having some time to play the game, I got the pitchfork due to the free DLCs and everyone is saying that it makes "OP" units.
How exactly does it work and who do I use it on? Probably this has been explained a lot but I heard a lot of making Lucas a villager and then... what?
What the Pitchfork allows is of course as you stated turn any unit into the villager class. Then what you do is have the character go through the dread fighter loop which is Villager>>Mercenary>>Myrmidon>>Dread Fighter>>Then back to Villager. So in theory you can constantly level up your character increasing their stats more and more till they become OP.
 
So I'm finally having some time to play the game, I got the pitchfork due to the free DLCs and everyone is saying that it makes "OP" units.
How exactly does it work and who do I use it on? Probably this has been explained a lot but I heard a lot of making Lucas a villager and then... what?

As mentioned, the Pitchfork lets you Class Change to Villager at any point in time.

Even if you don't do the Dread Fighter loop, if you CC to Villager you can potentially get double the number of level ups.

Eg. Faye can go Villager -> Pegasus Knight -> Falcon Knight -> Villager using Pitchfork -> Pegasus Knight -> Falcon Knight.

Also, if you use the Pitchfork when your characters are strong, they can gain experience really quick by defeating weak enemies.

Hope that makes a semblance of sense.
 

vareon

Member
It ain't Fire Emblem until you miss a 83% hit and the enemy gets a 3% crit.

The Desert Stronghold battle suuucks, damn it. It took ages before my party can get in the stronghold, and inside my party and the enemy keep missing each other like newlyweds. Goddamn it.
 

Anbec7

Member
Thanks for the input!
Talking about DLC stuff is it really worth it to buy at least the money farming ones? Which ones did you guys get (unless someone here bought the season pass)?
 
Thanks for the input!
Talking about DLC stuff is it really worth it to buy at least the money farming ones? Which ones did you guys get (unless someone here bought the season pass)?

Season Pass was too pricey for me.

I got Astral Temple, Inner Sanctum, the Rise of the Deliverance Pack and the Cipher Companions Pack.

Astral Temple is unnecessary when you have Inner Sanctum as long as you're in Act 3 or so. But I bought it when Inner Sanctum wasn't available.

I don't really recommend the other farming DLC unless you really love forging and need Gold Marks from Wealth Before Health (because they are a pain in the butt to find normally).

Inner Sanctum is cool since you get a mini dungeon, decent item drops and exclusive access to the Astral Shards and the Star Jacinth (the latter boosts all non-Res growths by 30%).

Otherwise, I never needed Silver Marks or easy experience. Likewise, the Overclasses are over-kill. But I might get the Sorceress, Exemplar and Rigain when I'm really bored.
 

PK Gaming

Member
Trust in Falchion
is the single cheesiest and most poorly written moment in FE.

Come to think of it, the cutscenes in general seem pretty pointless. The banger of an opening, the scene the gives you a sense of what the entire story will be like is
a dream.
And they are ironically took many. The scene where Alm leads the army should have took place towards the very end during this huge climatic battle, haha.
 

Golnei

Member
It seemed like they were considered as marketing material first and additions to the actual game second. If they needed a dramatic pre-rendered action scene,
Alm and his army being overwhelmed and defeated by the unceasing onslaught of necrodragons at the Dragon's Maw would have been a much better use of their budget,
in order to build up a moment that's underplayed far too much in the game as it is.

Also, Reunion and then Oranges was a mistake.
 

Mcdohl

Member
True, after Fates and the whole story which was messy this has been really good for me.
I'm really enjoying the dialogue and I guess the quality of the personalities of the characters in their voices. I hope it doesn't drop!

Same. About to end chapter4 and I feel like the quality has kept up.

However, there's a bit less story (at least on Celica's path).
 

CazTGG

Member
Trust in Falchion
is the single cheesiest and most poorly written moment in FE.

Come to think of it, the cutscenes in general seem pretty pointless. The banger of an opening, the scene the gives you a sense of what the entire story will be like is
a dream.
And they are ironically took many. The scene where Alm leads the army should have took place towards the very end during this huge climatic battle, haha.

Honestly, i'm fully expecting these cold openings to be the standard for Fire Emblem going forward given that they did it with Awakening and Fates, and crammed a new opening into a remake of a Famicom game.
 

GeekyDad

Member
Pretty interesting so far. Went into my first shrine. Interesting approach to moving the story and battles along. Thinking of promoting Kaye and maybe the other kid, Kliff (?), since both of them are eligible for promotion. Not sure what, though. I'm guessing cleric for Kaye?
 
Pretty interesting so far. Went into my first shrine. Interesting approach to moving the story and battles along. Thinking of promoting Kaye and maybe the other kid, Kliff (?), since both of them are eligible for promotion. Not sure what, though. I'm guessing cleric for Kaye?

Kliff makes a decent Mage and Faye makes a great Cleric due to access to Rescue and eventually Renew.

You can't really go wrong to be honest.
 
Game started promising but went downhill after chapter 3. Maps are boring, dungeons are garbage tier, and there are too many skirmishes.
 
Pretty interesting so far. Went into my first shrine. Interesting approach to moving the story and battles along. Thinking of promoting Kaye and maybe the other kid, Kliff (?), since both of them are eligible for promotion. Not sure what, though. I'm guessing cleric for Kaye?

There are a few "ideal" classes for each villager but it's not super important in the sense that you won't make the game super hard for yourself if you don't pick the best class for each or anything. Cleric Faye is pretty damn good though, I made her a Pegasus Knight on my first playthrough but I really missed having another cleric, and have made her a cleric ever since.

You'll be fine as long as you have a balanced team (you'll want a mage, an archer, and a physical unit). Oh, and Gray is eligible for promotion from the start (he joins at level 5 and you can promote villagers from level 3), just pointing that out in case you didn't notice because the "eligible for promotion" message doesn't show up for him.
 

jay

Member
Were Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn as poorly written and chock full of anime stuff as the last few games in this series? I can't tell if they were actually less painful to read or if I just got a decade older. Well, the latter definitely happened.

Also, does Lukas always suck? I ground him to level 18 or so pre-promotion and he just got 6 speed. Almost everything hits him twice. Clive also sucks.
 

GeekyDad

Member
Kliff makes a decent Mage and Faye makes a great Cleric due to access to Rescue and eventually Renew.

You can't really go wrong to be honest.

There are a few "ideal" classes for each villager but it's not super important in the sense that you won't make the game super hard for yourself if you don't pick the best class for each or anything. Cleric Faye is pretty damn good though, I made her a Pegasus Knight on my first playthrough but I really missed having another cleric, and have made her a cleric ever since.

You'll be fine as long as you have a balanced team (you'll want a mage, an archer, and a physical unit). Oh, and Gray is eligible for promotion from the start (he joins at level 5 and you can promote villagers from level 3), just pointing that out in case you didn't notice because the "eligible for promotion" message doesn't show up for him.

Sounds good, thanks.
 

Golnei

Member
Were Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn as poorly written and chock full of anime stuff as the last few games in this series? I can't tell if they were actually less painful to read or if I just got a decade older. Well, the latter definitely happened.

Yes, definitely. Their scripts are probably a good deal more clunky than Echoes as well - I remember PoR in particular having heaps of really exaggerated onomatopoeia that just got in the way.
 
Were Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn as poorly written and chock full of anime stuff as the last few games in this series? I can't tell if they were actually less painful to read or if I just got a decade older. Well, the latter definitely happened.

Also, does Lukas always suck? I ground him to level 18 or so pre-promotion and he just got 6 speed. Almost everything hits him twice. Clive also sucks.

The scripts were always anime and I suppose barely above mediocre, but they were a lot more earnest and meaningful and made a lot more logical sense.

Awakening and Fates did away with all the heavy world-building in favour of character building, which is great for the characters, but causes the story to suffer. The pacing and development is also all over the place.

Lukas isn't supposed to double enemies, he's meant to tank hits. Yeah, Clive sucks.
 

Lunar15

Member
PoR and RD's scripts aren't anywhere near as elegant as Echoes, but they were more straightforward than Fates or Awakening. Fates and Awakening had a lot of personality in the writing, but sometimes it was a bit too much. At worst, PoR/RD's scripts were dry and bland, but I don't remember anything really bothering me.
 

vareon

Member
Okay I need to take a breathe before storming the Temple of Mila in Act 3.

Tried three time now, I had one very close chance of beating the boss, right positioning and all, but he just had to summon eight gargoyles out of the wazoo and basically killed anyone that is weak.

Tried to play defensively by luring the mages with Pegasus Sisters first, but I get swarmed by the gargoyles he summoned every other turn.

Edit: FINALLY BEAT THAT SHIT
 

jay

Member
The scripts were always anime and I suppose barely above mediocre, but they were a lot more earnest and meaningful and made a lot more logical sense.

Awakening and Fates did away with all the heavy world-building in favour of character building, which is great for the characters, but causes the story to suffer. The pacing and development is also all over the place.

Lukas isn't supposed to double enemies, he's meant to tank hits. Yeah, Clive sucks.

Thanks for the response. The problem with the character building is it is very poorly done. Almost all conversations between characters are them explaining their personalities to each other or proclaiming how they are or not as people. The remaining conversations are about who is in love with whom.
 
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