I chose...
Blue Lions.
As my house. At first, I was going to choose Golden Deer, but something was DRAGGING me by my HAIR to Dimitri. I wasn?t sure why until I got to the tine skip. Then I knew exactly why.
So, yeah, Claude and I may be almost identical, but Dimitri needed love, okay? He deserves it after everything he went through. I love him dearly, and to be honest, he?s my favorite FE character besides Roy and Xander. Add Dimitri to the list of husbandos. LOL.
But... I thoroughly enjoyed Fates, as it was my first FE game, then when 3H came out for the Switch, I knew I had to have it. Badly. I know Shadows of Valentia exist, but I heard it wasn?t that good? I don?t know. But yeah. 3H is one of my favorite games at the moment, and I will always cherish it!
Depends on what you want to get out of it. Great characters and story? Check! Great presentation with voice acting, cutscenes, and fantastic music? Check, Berkut's voice in particular is highly praised and there are a ton of great songs, especially in my opinion the end credits theme. Great maps? Not so check. The problem with Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is that, in terms of battle gameplay, it is basically a straight remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, the second game in the series, without changing the maps up. This is a bit of a problem because Fire Emblem Gaiden came out in 1992 and the maps are very straightforward without many gimmicks or anything compared to what came to the series afterward.
Additionally, the DLC practices were pretty scummy, locking certain classes behind a purchase and all the DLC ended up costing more than the main game itself. Some people also criticize Celica's choices late in the game, though I can see where she's coming from.
I personally enjoyed my time with it, but it's the one game in the series that I've played and enjoyed that left me with no real desire to revisit afterward. This seemed like a common thing among other people I talked to about it, you enjoy the ride but it doesn't leave you wanting to replay it anytime soon. If nothing else, I would recommend at the very least to maybe watch a playthrough or something if you don't feel confident in the purchase. I'd say it's very much worth witnessing in one form or another.
If on the off chance you have a Wii U, you can also find Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, and Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon on there thanks to the Virtual Console on the eShop. That last one is criticized some for being, like Echoes,
too faithful of a remake (it's a remake of the first game in the series) since it lacks Support conversations and that leaves some people underwhelmed.
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To return to the original topic, I've been drawing out my initial playthrough as long as possible because the Black Eagles path is shorter than the rest of them. I'm currently in the next to last chapter, a week or two before the battle at the end of the month. Been a bit hesitant because the Black Eagle group are my favorite based on design and personality and because my Byleth is a flying machine of death, alternating between Falcon Knight and Wyvern Lord depending on the battle, and I don't want to give that up.
Plan to start Golden Deer afterward since I didn't interact as much with as many members of their class compared to the other two. I'm not sure what I should do about my Byleth's class this time around, I generally like making my avatar in these games a flier because the range is fantastic and Pegasus Knights are resistant to magic. That said, I feel like maybe I should pick something else and switch it up a bit.
Although I didn't recruit very many students, and having to battle 50 speed Petra twice after the timeskip was a nightmare.
