How is this game compared to Fates and Awakening? I pick up every FE game at release but I didn't pick this one up for some reason.
Compared to them, this game is simpler in a lot of ways. No weapon triangle, and with the exception of Villagers everyone has only 1 class that they can be, and they can't change it, nor do their promotions feature branching paths. You can give the Villager's Fork to someone to turn them into a villager and therefore letting them go down 1 of 4 or 5 (depending on their gender) class routes, but you get a limited amount of them. Missions are much quicker as there aren't the usual set 26~28 chapters this time, there's a few smaller missions (the maps themselves are larger in most cases though
) that you can tackle in a somewhat free order after a certain point. Of course there are still some missions that can take over an hour to beat, but those are for the most part important late-game missions, the majority can be done in 15-30 minutes. Weapons also never break similar to Fates
gaidendiditfirst but they also don't have those silly side effects of "oh you can use this but you can't make crits or use abilities lelelelel." Passive skills are gone and instead you gain abilities through whatever item you're holding, or depending on your class. Some of them are passive, such as the Dread Fighter's
Apotrope, which halves all magical damage taken, or the Iron Bow's
Curved Shot, which is an ability that you manually activate and gives you higher damage, hit, and crit rates, but prevents you from doubling. Speaking of archers, they can hit MUCH farther in this game, 1-3 spaces is the norm (yes bow users can hit at melee range normally), and the later you get you can potentially hit from
7 spaces away, so they're really helpful compared to how they were in Awakening. The only downside is that bows aren't universally effective against fliers, only certain bows are. Thankfully you don't battle very many fliers, and not very many enemy archers have anti-flier bows so it works out in your favor. Also mages and healers have to sacrifice their own HP to use magic; and more is used the better the heal/damage is. Mila's Turnwheel is also added, which lets you turn back to a previous turn. This is helpful for if one of your units got crited and died, or you accidentally hit wait when you meant to hit attack. Hit rates are also back to how they were in older games, have fun missing wayyyyy more. There's also 3D dungeons to explore so that's pretty cool. Pair up is gone but supports are still here.
Gaiden in general is super different so I probably missed some stuff.
A bit off topic, but Fire Emblem Heroes is my first Fire Emblem game and has made me want to pick up Echoes! How is the game?
So for the most part, you'll notice the exact opposite of everything I said above
(read the part above too though). Missions are much longer and have you controlling and battling way more units in much larger maps. Normal FE games also have a hit and critical (shortened to crit most of the time) %, so attacks have the potential to miss, but you also have a chance to deal higher damage. Different terrain (such as everyone's favorite forests) can affect hit rates, and can sometimes heal or hurt you. Cavalry can also run into/through forests in this game, but everyone still has lower movement when going through them. Characters can also develop into different classes, and even though there aren't as many options as in other FE games, you get to see them develop into better classes. Characters can also hold items, which can either be stronger weapons, shields to raise defenses, food that they can eat to restore HP, rings with different effects, and other stuff. Characters also have WAY more stats than in Heroes.
Physical attack and Magic are divided into 2 separate stats (as some units like Celica can use both) Edit: Nevermind, Attack and Magic are still merged into 1 stat. I thought they were seperate;
kinda embarrassing I didn't notice that until now with how far I am into the game. , and the Luck and Skill stats are introduced. High skill=high hit rates, and high luck=lower enemy crit rates. Crit rates are usually determined by skill but I think they may be determined by luck in this game so it wouldn't hurt to load up on both.
Again I probably forgot to mention some stuff but you can watch
this to get a somewhat better understanding of how it plays (the quality is really fuzzy but it's the best thing to show, and it isn't that far into the game either).