Friday saw the release of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, a complete remake of another classic Fire Emblem game (Fire Emblem Gaiden,) for the Famicom. This game plays through a little bit differently than some of the recent titles so we created a helpful guide to get players who are not veterans of the series acquainted with the new game without tons of frustration.
Starting off, the game does a pretty good job of introducing you to the world and teaching you the bare basics (although not entirely.) But even in the first town, there are a few things you should know.
Pick up everything except the axe!
When you are wandering through the first town you will learn that if you select examine then the game allows you to search the premises for items to use in your adventures. This is a fantastic feature except sometimes you may out do yourself and pick up something that you should have waited until later to grab. Such is the case with the wood cutting axe. When you see this, hold off on grabbing it. You will want to wait until you return using Celica later due to a man who specifically requests the axe from she and her party. If it is with Alm at the time, then there is no way to access the axe until you can transfer it via a merchant … and that’s just making things complicated.
You can turn back time!
After you leave Ram Village your first dungeon will be a Thieves shrine. there you will meet a cleric named Silque. Should you choose to rescue her, (seriously though, why wouldn’t you?) she will give you an item called Mila’s Turnwheel. Now initially this might not seem like a big deal but once you activate it at the shrine it turns out that it gives you access to a button in the bottom right hand corner of the bottom screen in battle that previously was not there. If you push this button in battle you can reverse time in combat. This is INCREDIBLY helpful for when you do something stupid in battle and one of your party members gets killed, especially in classic mode. Just how far back you can turn time depends on the current power of the wheel based on how many cogs you have collected. The more cogs, the stronger the wheel and more times you can use this power in combat. The reason I write to you about this mechanic is because the game literally never really explains this feature. It’s surprising due to how much this Turnwheel can “turn” the tide of battle …. My editor is gonna hate me for that joke. Anyways though, just make a note that you have to actually rotate the wheel with your stylus to turn it back multiple turns in combat instead of just actions. If you press the left button while doing this then you will only go back a specific number of actions in combat instead of whole turns.
Talk to EVERYONE
So speaking of Silque, throughout Valencia you will run into various people who live in the different locales or who happen to be in the various dungeons at the time. TALK TO ALL OF THEM! Oftentimes, this is exactly how you end up getting new party members to recruit for your army. Should you not do this, you will potentially miss out on having them for the entire game since they otherwise would not have any other reason to interact with you. In particular, when you are leaving Ram Village for the first time, you should make sure you talk with all of Alm’s childhood friends to make sure they join you in your adventures across the lands.
Ignore what the people said, FIGHT THE DRAGON.
After you start playing as Celica, some of the people of the village will start trying to warn you about fighting a Necrodragon that guards a powerful weapon. They will tell you “Oh don’t fight it unless you have some kind of Seraphim magic!” Well I say do it anyways! Doing so will give you access to the Blessed Sword which is INCREDIBLY effective against the various terror type enemies in the game (Spoiler alert … you fight a ton of them.) The dragon isn’t actually all that hard to kill if your cleric knows invoke. Once she learns that then you pretty much just need to keep her healed up and just keep using invoke to summon melee allies to pin down the dragon into one spot and then fire at will with your ranged mages. It’s really that easy. Be warned though, should you not use invoke, there is a good shot that the dragon will in fact 1 shot half of your allies and 2 shot the rest of them.
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