Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Platform: 3DS
Genre: Tactical RPG
Release Date: 05/19/2017 (NA/EU), 04/20/2017 (Japan)
“Guess what Dee, you can finally stop playing Trails of Cold Steel II and talking about butai.”
At long last, I can drop everything and dust off my 3DS. My 3DS unfortunately has not seen… all that much activity in the last couple of months so this is a welcomed change of pace. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, the remake of 1992’s Fire Emblem Gaiden (which never was localized) for the NES, was released in the US. While the Fire Emblem Fates Special Edition was fine, I heard it suffered from preorder problems either online or with retail. However Echoes came out with a beautiful Limited Edition and I was not disappointed.
I won’t lie, this was not what I expected. I thought the box would be as small like what Fire Emblem Fates or even Shin Megami Tensei IV had. Now I see that I was wrong. This was a monster and twice as big compared to Fates. Echoes did have a CD to fit though.
The box isn’t as heavy as Bravely Second but still. In addition to a giant box and game, the Limited Edition was packaged with a CD, an artbook, and set of pins.
The game itself follows Fire Emblem Awakening‘s design with pixel art sprites of the main characters. While Nintendo has stopped putting manuals in their games (I assume, it’s been a while since I got a physical 3DS game), I appreciate they took the opportunity to make a reversible cover slip featuring the Japanese NES game art. That old school art shows up quite a bit actually.
The Sound Selection CD has a total of 30 tracks. The disc alternates between “Classic” and “Echoes” versions of the songs. Classic being the music from the NES, Echoes being the 3DS music. If you take out the CD, the art underneath is the NES art again. Of course the usual Fire Emblem Theme is present, opera vocals and all. It’s not Fire Emblem without that theme
I feel like this is the first time we have gotten Fire Emblem music on an actual CD. The West has gotten books sure but never the music like what Japan releases for their original soundtracks.
By far, artbooks are my favorite thing about Collector or Limited Editions. The Valentia Artbook is a hardcover book filled with character art and background designs. Like Fate‘s artbook, the notes written around the characters and weapons are not translated. However some of the text are already in English like titles of buildings and character names. The monsters look well, I can’t wait to get owned by RNG with them.
Also like Fates, there is a page spread for all the signatures of the Japanese voice actors who are in the game. I realize that Echoes and Fates are not dual audio but I like this was still kept in the book. I know certain Japanese voice actors who are in the game and that’s good enough for me, I can suffer silently in agony.
And finally, the metal pin set featuring the game’s heroes: Alm and Celica, and Marth from the first and third Fire Emblem games! Pixel art is fun.
That’s it for the Limited Edition! I have mostly avoided (or simply ignored) most of the news for this game so who knows what I’m walking into but it feels great to get back into Fire Emblem again.
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