Fire Emblem Echoes – Shadows of Valentia

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is a tactical role-playing video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS in 2017. It is the fifteenth installment in the Fire Emblem series and a remake of the 1992 Famicom game Fire Emblem Gaiden, the second entry in the series. It follows dual protagonists Alm and Celica as they aim to bring an end to the war through opposite methods, with Alm fighting to resolve the war through battle, while Celica attempts to find a peaceful end through guidance from the Goddess Mila. Fire Emblem Echoes carries over the core gameplay mechanics of the Fire Emblem series while incorporating mechanics from Gaiden like dungeon crawling.

The main storyline remains the same as in Fire Emblem Gaiden. Long ago, the sibling gods Mila and Duma fought for control over the continent of Valentia. Eventually, they called a ceasefire and each took half of the continent. In the south, Mila’s worshippers would form the Kingdom of Zofia, a land of plentiful bounty. Over time, however, it spoiled and corrupted its people through complacency. In the north, Duma’s worshippers created the Empire of Rigel, a desolate land whose people grew in strength but also became numb to emotion.

The game follows Alm and Celica, childhood friends who set off on their own journeys across Valentia in order to restore peace. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is a tactical role-playing game in which players command two armies on opposite sides of a war on the continent of Valentia. There are two difficulty settings (Normal and Hard) and two modes that dictate the fate of characters that fall in battle. In Classic Mode, a fallen unit is subject to permanent death, a recurring mode in the Fire Emblem series that removes fallen characters from the rest of the game (though it is possible in Echoes to revive fallen units a limited number of times).

Casual Mode enables units to be revived at the end of a battle. The player navigates Valentia using a world map, going to different story-based and optional locations. Environments are split between battle maps similar to earlier Fire Emblem games, towns which can be explored to find friendly non-playable characters (NPCs) which run shops, and dungeons the player can explore. Encountering enemies on the world map or in dungeons will trigger a battle.