Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Time to Completion: 44 hours

DISCLAIMER: While I usually post screenshots of the games I discuss, I thought it would be better to post a few tracks from the game's gorgeous and deeply emotional soundtrack instead

I've been sitting on particular game for a while.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (Echoes henceforth) released in 2017, months after the launch of the Switch. Nintendo apparently wanted to ease the transition process for 3DS owners with a few years of support, but the console immediately became the only game in town for Nintendo fans, who were eager to move on from this handheld. As a result, sales for this entry were pretty bad compared to multi-million sellers like Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates. Which is a shame, since this might just be one of the best first-party releases on Nintendo's charming little 3D handheld.

Echoes is a remake of a Nintendo Entertainment System release from 1992, called Fire Emblem Gaiden, which was actually the second entry in the series at that point. Following on from a tradition of experimental sequels at that time like Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Gaiden mixed up the more traditional SRPG gameplay of the original Fire Emblem with the inclusion of more traditional JRPG elements. Elements introduced in this entry included a world map that gradually unlocked as players advanced the game, town exploration, dungeon exploration, branching promotion trees for units, the removal of durability limitations for weapons and spells, and the beginnings of a support system that would be expanded on dramatically in later games. While almost all of this would subsequently be stripped out of the series with the next entry, various aspects of Gaiden have resurfaced in various entries over time, and while long considered the black sheep of the franchise for how different it was, Gaiden's innovations have made the game seem increasingly ahead of its time in recent years.

Echoes is the chronicle of a war that engulfs the antagonistic nations of Rigel and Zofia on the continent of Valentia, and how the game's two protagonists, Alm and Celica, who fell in love as children, only to be separated by forces beyond their control, independently decide to participate in the struggle. The two nations' antagonism stems from a long-standing ideological conflict between the gods Duma and Mila, who helped to mold the two civilizations to reflect their respective beliefs. Alm, alongside a cohort of childhood friends, leaves the simple peasant village he was raised in as he seeks to push back an invasion by the Rigelian Empire, while Celica embarks on a pilgrimage to the Temple of Mila in an effort to help stop the war. Alm and Celica's lives will soon become entangled again in ways the two never expected. In terms of how the game progresses, this is reinforced by the fact that both characters, who have their own independent armies that you'll jump back-and-forth between, frequently affect one-another in interesting ways, creating a larger core campaign as you follow their respective stories.

As far as remakes go, Echoes is on the more faithful side, maintaining the general structure, mechanics, and map design of the NES original. This last part actually serves as a detriment, as Gaiden's map design was... pretty much non-existent, and the same remains true here. Granted, there's a reason for this: most of the battles in this game are roadside or dungeon skirmishes, so it makes sense that there wouldn't be complex geological formations in caves and fields. Nevertheless, it serves to make the tactical aspect of Echoes less engaging than it would otherwise have been.

Echoes does actually add a number of new elements to the game, though: including a few new characters (such as a new villain named Berkut, the heir presumptive to the Regelian throne), support conversations and improved dialogue for existing characters, and, staying true to the spirit of Gaiden's experimental nature, a new time-rewinding mechanic known as Mila's Turnwheel, which allows players to re-do botched turns that lead to the death of a character. If this last mechanic sounds familiar, it's because it was adopted wholesale in newer series entries such as Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem Engage, which actually literally just released today. Players will find cogs throughout the world that give the turnwheel more 'charges,' allowing them more freedom to rewind and try out different strategies.

It's also worth mentioning that while Echoes maintains Gaiden's innovations, it does so in a unique fashion. For example, town exploration is now rendered in a point-and-click adventure game format, while dungeon exploration has been revamped in such a way that you're actually able to maneuver a 3D model of your character around dungeons in real time in order to solve puzzles, destroy environments, and ambush enemies. I believe this was also the first game in the series to give the player full 3D control of the player character, prior to Three Houses. Like Gaiden, Echoes is also a game of several 'first's.

While Echoes doesn't shine with regard to its maps, it does do almost everything else extremely well. The RPG-like format where you progress across a world map and complete side-quests is still compelling. The orchestrated score, while mostly faithful to the original NES chiptunes, still impresses today, showing off the strength of the NES-era compositions. The game's art-style is lovely as well: developer Intelligent Systems hired popular Japanese light novel illustrator Hidari to bring the game's characters to life, and his illustrations bring a distinctiveness and warmth to the cast. Major plot points are also accompanied by gorgeous full-screen artworks, often accentuated with subtle 3D effects. These choices help to keep the game aesthetic pleasing, despite the inherent limitations of the platform it's on.

The real star of the show with Echoes is the cast and narrative, however. Admittedly, these elements are comparatively simple when put up against more convoluted recent mainline entries in the series, but Echoes does more with less, crafting a tragic, moving, and almost fairytale-like experience from the basic components of the plot. Effective brevity is also used to flesh out the cast: support conversations in this game are incredibly short compared to the rambling dialogues found in a game like Three Houses, but they always cut to the core of who the character is. Moreso than most games in the series, Echoes' cast is grounded and likeable, and over the course of the war, we'll learn their fears, watch them grapple with feelings of grief and loss, and, oftentimes, observe the buds of both friendship and love blossom. This is particularly true of protagonists Alm and Celica: while the romance between them isn't rubbed in the player's face, their love for and desire to help one-another is persistently in the background of their respective stories, and this all becomes especially difficult as their feelings and duties begin to collide, creating conflict and uncertainty between them.

Just as an ending note, I wanted to mention that I miss when JRPG campaigns weren't quite as bloated as they are today. Fire Emblem Echoes sits at a breezy 30+ hours for players who just want to experience the story, and goes up into the 40s if you complete most of the side-quests, grind for special loot, and tackle the game's post-game gauntlet of a dungeon. Another (arguably) nice aspect of the game is that it doesn't require you to replay it to see everything. Some people won't like this, since it means there's less incentive to return over time, but for those of us who tend to be 'one and done' gamers, it's great knowing I was able to experience the best parts of the game on my first run.

Like many other Nintendo fans at the time, I didn't play this when it first released, which is a decision I now somewhat regret, as it has quickly become one of my favorite entries in the series. Fire Emblem Echoes updates the original in almost all of the right ways, emphasizing its strengths and downplaying most of its weaknesses. Like the other best entries in this series, Echoes maintains a serious but measured tone throughout, making room for levity even as tragedy looms in the background of the story. This really made for a memorable experience, and, in retrospect, I have to say it's YET ANOTHER notch to add to 2017's belt, which was filled to overflowing with amazing games.

I just beat Miles Edgeworth: Investigations on my DS Lite. While I wouldn't say the game is bad, I would say it has a ton of issues holding it back from being truly great. The story and writing, arguably the two most important parts of any Ace Attorney game, are severely lacking here. Every returning character practically feels like a shell of who they were in the previous games, and it really shows that Shu Takumi had no involvement in this one. Overall, I thought the story was pretty boring, and even toward the end when all the twists and turns came crashing down, I found myself uninterested.

The fact that I finished the game at least says something, though. I liked the ability to fully move around the crime scene, I thought logic mode was a cool new mechanic that maybe needed a bit of work, and I thought the artwork was fantastic. The majority of the music felt a bit too generic for me, save for a few tracks. Although, Lying Coldy is an absolute banger.

5/10

I beat Gotham knights about a week ago. I still don’t get why people do not really like the game. I’m about halfway through paper Mario. Hopefully I can beat super paper Mario soon. It’s my favorite paper Mario game yet I have never actually beat it.

I wrapped up Paper Mario: The Origami King a couple days ago. A fairly decent game all told, with a serviceable plot, some amazing and entertaining writing, and some very memorable characters. Olivia's child-like innocence is definitely endearing, and she's part of many of the game's best moments. A beautiful environment with plenty of variety, and exploration is rewarded via hard-to-find items and holes in the world to fill with confetti for those obsessed with doing so (like me). There are plenty of Toads to rescue too, and how to do so lends to some interesting puzzles.

Perhaps the biggest letdown for me was - drum roll - the combat. This game had so many great elements going for it, but bog standard combat was a huge letdown with the wheel system. It was either too easy or difficult enough to finish within the time limit (if the enemies weren't already jumbled up in an uneven hodgepodge). You can't dodge, only block. The battle system shines a LOT more in boss battles when the mechanics are turned on their head by putting the boss in the center, but a couple of these fights were also quite gimmicky and annoying (The Fire Vellumental was particularly frustrating....). Any weapons outside of Mario's standard boots and hammer will also break after a limited amount of uses, so I'd avoid combat in later parts of the game just to conserve some of the best stuff. Some of these issues are alleviated with accessories, and I appreciate Nintendo/IS trying something different. But in the grand scheme of things, I feel that they should've further fine-tuned combat in this game. That said, it beats out Color Splash's combat system, which was my biggest issue there too in an otherwise fairly decent game.

This is recommended to those who like Mario, don't come in expecting standard RPG fare, and can deal with some of its quirks. Outside of not caring for the combat system a lot of the time, I really did like this game.

Arietta of Spirits

It takes a lot of inspiration from Zelda. Top-down action adventure. But where Zelda is a bit more of an open world, with a bit of exploration, AoS is much more of a linear experience. It only took three hours to play through. But the music is quite nice and the boss fights are mechanically good fun.

7/10 - Nothing award-worthy, but considering the size of development team, a well made game.

Mario and Luigi: Dream Team

While BIS is still my favorite game in the series, this is a close second. While the tutorial’s, (specifically at the beginning) can be annoying, everything else is amazing.

Ryse: Son of Rome (Steam) - Xbox One launch sword & sandal actioneer is only $10 on Steam. Worth it?

Time to march on & show our worth.

• The main campaign consists of 8 linear missions with a flair for the cinematic (the third mission in particular seemed to give Saving Private Ryan a roman era makeover, as your legions are brutally dismembered by arrow & catapult fire as you make landfall on Brittania, an inspiration the devs don't even try to hide as "Saving Private Marius" is the name of the achievement you get for clearing the mission). All in all the game took me 7.5 hours of playtime to clear on the game's equivalent of Normal difficulty.
• Combat seems to take a page out of the Arkham playbook as you tend to be surrounded by enemies and you must strike down a rhythm of strikes, parries, & dodge rolls to engage in a rhythmic dance of death. When an enemy is low on health you can trigger a brutal execution move (these can be contextual, as when you are near a ledge Marius may throw the enemy over, for example). It's not a particularly novel setup, but works smoothly & feels good when you get into a groove (it does a decent enough job of introducing one or two new enemy variants each mission as well, so things don't get too repetitive).
  
  I've disarmed you.
• There are 3 perks you can swap around as well, which are activated whenever you perform one of the aforementioned execution moves. Depending on which one you have equipped, each execution will either restore some health (I kept it on this), grant you extra EXP (I was practically able to max everything out without using this anyways), or quickly fill your Focus meter (an ability you can trigger to slow down time, I never had to use it much).
• There are also some light "shooter" mechanics, for a lack of a better term. Sometimes archers will be firing on you from afar, and you'll have to wait for openings to throw spears back at them. Other times you'll have to man a ballista (which puts things in a first person orientation) and fire away at waves of foes, striking exploding barrels & knocking over cauldrons of boiling oil for maximum carnage. The former segments can be a bit finicky, while the latter are pretty fun & make you feel powerful.
  
  I'll give it a shot.
• One of the game's big twists is that at certain points you can command a legion of soldiers into battle. Occasionally this means marching in a line (these segments feel overly cinematic, where your only options are to move forward, raise shields to block arrows, and throw spears to retaliate, but are nonetheless cool) or getting to slightly alter your next combat encounter (you can have them cover archers while you're left to melee encounters alone, or they can help you on the battlefield but you still have to dodge arrows), but mostly this means a lot of escort/tower defense objectives (probably two or three for every one of the previous types of situations). For example the line may be held down by ballistae positions, and it's up to you to go around on your own to take them out before they whittle your soldiers down (likewise, most of the time your in the ballista seat, you're trying to thin down the waves so they don't overwhelm your line).
  
  Take command.
• It also naturally features boss fights, but these tended to be the easiest encounters in the game, IMO. They're almost always one on one fights & they don't tend to have much of a deeper move pool than regular enemies, so they mostly feel spongy rather than challenging. Well, then there's the very last confrontation in the game which is just a hallway of QTE prompts.
• There's some longevity added to the campaign in terms of collectables which are hidden in out of the way locations right off the main path (sometimes you may have to break down a gate or some such to reach a little hidden area). There are a bunch of these & despite thinking I did a pretty good job combing through the levels I still missed quite a bit. You have "Vistas" (environmental concept art), "Scrolls" (character, enemy, weapon bios), & "Chronicles" (comic book pages that tell side stories/go deeper into the lore). It's the Chronicles in particular I missed a bunch of, they seemed to be well hidden & there's more of them than the others.
  
  Wonder what's behind there?
• There's also an entire gladiatorial themed multiplayer mode included, but I haven't tried it out (at this point I can't imagine there'd be many people playing it anyhow). Though I do know you get to customize the look of your combatant & there's some sort of DLC related to this mode as I saw a "booster pack" option in it's menu.
• Graphically it still looks pretty modern & even impressive looking at points, especially the environments (some of the less important NPCs still look pretty "PS360" though). There is some hilariously uncanny valley stuff going on with a few of the female characters though. It's clearly at the point where they were motion captioning real people for the important characters and there's one scene where a prominent woman is in a very serious conversation with Marius, however they decided to map near DOA levels of jiggle physics to her chest so she's just bouncing around as she lightly walks around during this serious moment, lol. There are a handful of other scenes where such effects make some sense, but this didn't feel like one of them.
  
  
  
  
• In terms of vibe it's very much a sword & sandal genre effort from the era where 300, Spartacus, & the OG God of War games were the most prominent names in the field. It's very gory (you can almost guarantee an arm or a leg is coming off during the execution moves, and goops of blood always), and you're not making your way through without seeing some boobs (queue the decadent orgy party showing how corrupt/out of touch Roman leadership is).
  
  
  Whether you want to see bodies, or... bodies, this game has you covered (hopefully that second screenshot is still covered enough to be safe here).
• Story is pretty simple but sets the stage well. You play as Marius (a young soldier with a family legacy in the Legion), and after being sent off to quell a revolt in Brittania he must question loyalties as the sons of emperor Nero just make things worse with each decision. In the end he'll have to make choices that'll effect the future of Rome. While it's not to the level of the GoW games, there is some level of supernatural/divine work at play as well (though your only foes are fellow humans... and a few elephants).

Overall:

• While it's GotY material or anything of the sort, it's still a pretty solid action game that's well worth the inexpensive $10 (that's not even it's sale price). As far as short launch window "look what our box can do" titles go, I think I liked it more than the other brand's The Order: 1886.
  
  A new legacy is born.

@RR529 Those screen shots are so pretty 10/10!!!

Over the last couple of weeks I have been playing Live A Live after getting it for Christmas. I had been waiting for an opportunity to play it, as I don't actually have a Switch and instead rely on the generosity of my siblings. When I finally got the chance to play it, I was really excited. I had waited about half a year to play it, so as to avoid spending my own money. After playing it, I find it stupid I waited so long, as it is incredible. Each individual chapter in the game is at least rather different from the others in many ways, such as music or the effects of the Y-button, which is somewhat context-sensitive, so even if there is one you don't like, such as the far future one for me, as it's pretty much survival-horror and the music is lacking, there might be one you absolutely adore, such as the prehistory one for me, because the music is awesome and it's kinda funny. Even if I didn't like the far future chapter as much, it's still good even though it's the worst for me gameplay-wise. The Japanese voice acting, at least, is great, but I'm probably somewhat biased on this matter, as it featured some of my favourite voice actors, and after playing the wild west chapter in English, that one was alright, but could have been better. Mad Dog sounded fine, though. The fact that it gives you the Jukebox in the menu is definitely a point in its favour. I'd genuinely call it an 11/10, and say it was my favourite game out of all the ones I've played. And this became longer than I thought it would. Sorry.

@blindsquarel Dream Team is part of my backlog. It's genuinely one of your favs? I've been gradually playing the M&L titles in order and am due to start Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey on the 3DS whenever the mood finally strikes me.

@Kermit1, yeah, it's a pretty nice looking game when it wants to be. I have a few other screenshots I didn't use in the writeup that I may post in the "Other Gaming Screenshot Thread".

@Tyranexx
I will admit that I have a fair bit of nostalgia, since Dream Team was my introduction to the series. But if you can get past the long intro, it is amazing. Fun areas, bosses, improved giant battles, and the music is amazing. Plus I like how Luigi’s character is developed in the story. Bowsers Inside Story is my favorite, but it is very close.

Outside of Nintendo: Grand Pix on the Commodore 64 through Antstream. A picross game of 100 images.

Still powering through Xenoblade Chronicles X.

@blindsquarel I have heard Dream Team can be pretty bloated at times, but many online impressions I've seen appear positive. A lot of top picks I've seen are often between Superstar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story. I'd say SS is my favorite right now, partially thanks to the guy in your profile pic. XD Prince Peasley was pretty great too. Plot and setting wise I really enjoyed PIT, though it didn't always work for me mechanically. I'm still surprised that one never received a remake before AlphaDream went under.

I beat Scooby Doo: Night of 100 Frights for the PS2 today. I would say that it's an alright game. It's not perfect, but pretty nice.

I beat Boneworks and Bonelab in the past month. Both great VR games to check out if you're experienced. Bonelab felt to short though.

Just finished Little Nightmares I've had it for a long time and yesterday decided to start it. Really amazing game!

Today I will start the second one and I know that it is even better! As I've seen the bosses and the environments!

I finished Harvestella, tho still working on after game stuff. It's really a great game and ticked all the boxes for me.

Tomb raider. Anniversary on Wii. Awesome flashback to the nineties! Started underworld straight after but it's very janky and I just can't get on with the grappling hook central mechanic

Link's Awakening remake on Switch. Great game. Made me remember how good Links Awakening is. Probably my second favourite after OoT or maybe even ahead.