Fire Emblem Echoes – I liberated Zofia Castle. You can thank me now.

As promised, I’m here to report my early thoughts on Fire Emblem Echoes after finishing Act 1.

Umm, well… It’s Fire Emblem all right. It was a bit tough getting into it when my party members were all so weak, but now they’ve toughened up a lot. I even managed to promote Gray to Mercenary at level 10 and he’s doing beautifully. I can’t wait to see how the others turn out, especially Kliff (my favorite already). What I like best about SRPGs is the “Just killing stuff with my friends” factor and now that we’re on the killing end and not the being-killed end, all is right with the world.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I can’t decide which, I’m playing Echoes on Normal + Casual mode so it’s dreadfully easy. So far, anyway. I’m sure it gets harder later. Since this is a choice I made and since I will never ever go back to Classic mode no matter what (too frustrating, too stressful, too time-consuming) this is the only time I will complain about the game being a bit on the easy side. Just that for future Fire Emblems and Echoes replays I will start on Hard instead.

Fire Emblem games are balanced around you trying to avoid any deaths so if you don’t care about losing a few party members here and there, they don’t really know what to do with you. I anticipated the problem and avoided it when playing FE: Shin Monshou so you’d think I would know the right thing to do by now. Unless you’re a regular here, then you’re not surprised 😉

I thought I’d been playing for a while, but my save file only reads 4 hours, so I won’t say too much today. I just headed out to sea with Celica to fight some pirates and stuff. I have mixed feelings about games that make you train one party then another then another. It’s nice to try different party members, but I’m going to bench almost everybody by the end, y’know?

Plus things had just gotten heated on the Deliverance side – leaving aside how laughable it is that everyone is immediately all over this random untrained village kid from nowhere instead of the heroes who had fought most of the war so far, almost made me sympathize with the one objector but whatever, Alm is just that special I guess blechhh – so having to start all over with a bunch of bickering level 1 kids is a bit of a buzzkill. But they’re growing on me too so there’s hope for the future.

My progress in Fire Emblem Echoes will be fairly slow for now because I’m playing three other games at the same time: Operation Abyss (wiped out spectacularly in Babyl and haven’t touched it since), Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment (just finished all the tutorial stuff and started my first real quest) and Shin Rorona no Atelier (finished the first two sets of assignments, almost done with the third, will post when I finish the first year). More on those games as they develop. I’ll probably devote a sizeable chunk of time to finishing Abyss this weekend so I can clear it off the list then play the rest more or less interchangeably.

And that’s what’s going on with me. Until next time!

6 thoughts on “Fire Emblem Echoes – I liberated Zofia Castle. You can thank me now.

  1. K says:

    Why would you subject yourself to anything Sword Art Online related? Do you live somewhere with no grass you could count to spend your time better?

    • Kina says:

      I quite enjoyed the SAO anime, actually. I’d seen so many comments (like yours) about how horrible it was that I was expecting the mother of all trainwrecks but it wasn’t that bad at all. And the world of Aincrad seemed pretty interesting.

      That said, the Infinity Moment game isn’t very good. The text is too small and the battle system is clumsy. And some other complaints that I’ll explain when I get round to posting about it.

      • K says:

        I’m a bit facetious, really. It’s an ok-ish ride as long as you don’t think about it. More frustrating than anything, because their are interesting stories you could tell in the SAO setup. The writer of the novels just clearly didn’t care much for it. And the show is thus exclusively setting priorities towards making Kirito the Maryest of Sues, or have every female character spontaneously wet their panties at the sight of him. It is still a rather watchable dumb show tbh.

        • Kina says:

          Very watchable dumb show, as long as you don’t take it too seriously. Instead of getting angry at every Mary Sue twist, just see them coming and take them in stride.

          Of course Kirito is going to carry all his OP stats to ALO, of course Kirito is going to be the best player in Gun Gale Online while wielding a light saber, of course every female character wants to bear his obviously superior children. That’s just the nature of the isekai genre.

  2. Cloaka says:

    My experience with Fire Emblem games difficulty was the other way. I started playing them carelessly, but when I found the game was really about smart decisions I started to love them so much.

    I always play without losing one single unit, retrying if necessary so I’m not sure how Fire Emblem deal with very unfair battles for your side due loss of units.

    I don’t own Echoes yet. I hope you are enjoying it.

    • Kina says:

      I am indeed. The story is a bit “whuuh? what are they thinking? wait, is anyone even thinking at all?” but the combat is the same old Fire Emblem with a few interesting twists.

      Unfair battles with everyone dying one by one are quite fun in their own way. The ability to use one or two units as suicide bombers to whittle down enemy HP or draw down bosses without fearing for their lives has its strategic uses as well.

      It may be a bit paradoxical but while I’m a fan of SRPGs, it’s usually the sense of camaraderie and the general battle system that I enjoy rather than the tactical aspect. In fact the more thinking and strategy a game requires, the less likely I am to enjoy it. Different strokes for different folks, eh?

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