What’s New in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia? Everything You Need to Know

Two Protagonists, Two Armies

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia tells the story of Alm and Celica, two children destined to save the continent, although through different means. The pair has known each other since childhood, and their fates are intertwined. Where Echoes is really unique, however, is in the fact that it splits its main story between Alm and Celica equally.

The two protagonists explore separate parts of the map, although their stories do intersect occasionally. The interesting thing about this is that they each have separate armies that require a little different strategy. Alm’s army is much more focused on physical defense and attack, while Celica’s is filled with magic users and healers. This adds a little more variety into the game as you’re training two different armies, seeing different support conversations, and exploring separate parts of the map.

Explorable Dungeons and Towns

The biggest change to Fire Emblem Echoes, just like the original game Fire Emblem Gaiden, comes in the form of explorable dungeons and towns. Towns are seen from a first person perspective, letting you move around different screens and examine objects or talk to townspeople, adventure game style. There’s a ton of items and story to be had in these areas, both in terms of world building and character building with your units.

At the same time, dungeons put you in direct control of Alm or Celica, bringing a party of up to ten characters along for the ride. You can run around at will in these areas, breaking barrels and pots and finding chests with treasure. Enemies also roam the halls, and running into them will prompt a random battle. Fighting multiple battles in dungeons will cause your units to become fatigued, reducing their starting health in battles. The reward for dungeons are well worth it however, as you can find valuable weapons, stat boosting fountains, and more.

Voice Acting For All Story Scenes

Recent Fire Emblem games have featured bits of voice acting, mostly in CG scenes. This time, however, Fire Emblem Echoes features extensive voice acting for all major characters and party members. All major story scenes in the game feature voiced dialogue, as well as all support conversations and lines from your units. It’s a far cry from how the older Fire Emblem games were presented, giving off a unique feeling for Echoes.

Of course, there’s still plenty of gorgeously animated CG cutscenes in Shadows of Valentia, highlighting important story moments.

One Equippable Item at a Time and Combat Arts

Shadows of Valentia’s equipment system works a little differently from what Fire Emblem fans might now. Units can now only equip one item or weapon at a time, although you won’t have to worry about anything breaking in this game as there’s no degradation. The biggest thing to keep in mind with this new system is that everything counts as that one equippable item, whether it’s food for health recovery or a new weapon. Because of this, you’ll need to carefully plan, and put the best item on each unit to maximize their stats.

A new feature included with weapons comes in the form of Combat Arts, powerful and unique abilities that you can unlock on each weapon. A character needs to use a weapon enough to unlock these Arts, but once they do, they can be used at will. Arts can have a variety of effects like restoring your HP with the damage caused to enemies, or launching a powerful attack that sacrifices your HP to boost attack power. There’s a wide variety of Arts to unlock, so you’ll want to experiment and see what each weapon holds.

Big Changes to Traditional Combat

Fans of the last few Fire Emblem entries might be surprised to see the longtime weapon triangle system absent from Echoes. Instead, a system based entirely on stats is used for combat. For example, if an attacking unit’s attack is higher than the other unit’s defense or resistance, the resulting difference will be the amount of damage done. Of course, plenty of other stats like Luck, Speed, and Skill also play into the overall performance of characters. This new system integrally changes the way that you approach battles in Fire Emblem, as strategy no longer needs to be based around which weapon has the advantage on which. There are still differences between weapons and units, however, like hit rate and the overall amount of damage they can cause.

A few other small changes also shake up how things play out in Echoes. Magic users now need to sacrifice HP in order to use spells, flying units aren’t as weak to archers as before, and archers can attack from one space away as well as up to five or six eventually. For longtime fans that never played Fire Emblem Gaiden, the new systems in Echoes may take a bit getting used to. Don’t worry though, there’s still plenty of strategy necessary to overcome battles.

Unit Promotion Works Differently

Unit promotion has always been a staple of Fire Emblem, with recent games requiring you to obtain Master Seals to use on your units in order for a promotion. In Fire Emblem Echoes, however, you’ll need to raise the unit to the required level and visit a Mila Shrine. These shrines can be found in every dungeon of the game, as well as a few other spots, meaning you’ll often need to traverse a few battles to find one.

Each unit type has a different required level in order to unlock a promotion, and promotions themselves happen in a much more straightforward manner. Villagers are the only units that can choose what type they want to promote to, and after that there’s a linear progression. Each unit type in Echoes has an assigned role and strengths, and it’s up to you to figure out the best way to combine those in battle.

Turn Back Time During Battle

One of the new features included in Fire Emblem Echoes that wasn’t present in Gaiden is Mila’s Turnwheel. This mysterious device gives you the ability to turn back time during battle at will for however many uses you have in it. An icon on the bottom screen that you tap will bring up the option, and allow you to use the D-pad to move back to a previous turn or move. It’s an interesting feature that makes Echoes a lot more accessible for newcomers, especially as the difficulty begins to ramp up.

The Turnwheel also allows you to scan amiibo into the game, and outside of battle it will let you to view previous support conversations and new story events.