One big improvement from Gaiden is the characters themselves. Not only are the playable characters given personality, but several villains are made into recurring characters as well. Plot elements such as nobility vs commoners and even a slow descent into madness are emphasized by being able to both see and fight several of the same enemies multiple times.
A few characters have been created fresh for this game, including Faye, the somewhat annoying village girl whose only purpose is to obsess over Alm, Fernand, a prideful noble who helped start the Deliverance but doesn't care about anyone who isn't of noble blood themselves, and Berkut, the nephew of Emperor Rudolph who is obsessed with becoming emperor over all Valentia, but gets snubbed time and again when Alm beats him. While Faye doesn't really add much to the game outside of a playable female character and an extra unit for the first few maps, Fernand and Berkut are heavy influences on the plot of the game from the moment they are introduced.
The game also gives a lot more explanation and motivation for the characters to do what they're doing. In Gaiden, if you never saved Zeke, you might never know that Alm carried the Brand on his hand, but in Echoes it's told to you from moment one. Mila and Duma are also explained a bit more, not just being mysterious gods who created Valentia, but actual ancient divine dragons, who still live on Valentia to this day.
But that's enough about characters. Let's get onto my favorite part, and the most unique parts of Echoes - gameplay.
At a basic level, the game plays just like Gaiden. You have villagers, mercenaries, soldiers, archers, cavaliers, mages, pegasus riders and clerics, weapons that attack off base stats, no weapon triangle, spells that cost HP and are learned as you level up, etc. Classing up also gives you minimum base stats for that given class, meaning you won't have to grind up to 20/20/20 to still be relevant, at least for the main story of the game. Random stat increases will tend to determine who gets brought with you into the post-game and who gets shelved.
Tier 3 unit classes are all made unique in more ways, except the Gold Knight. FalconKnights are no longer insanely overpowered, but they still get +10 damage vs terrors. Barons only take half damage from bows, making them insanely good at safely drawing out enemies. Dread Fighters get an insanely good passive in Apotrope, making them take half damage from ALL magic, as well as being able to class-loop into Villager after hitting level 10. Archers get more range with every class change, making the change from sniper to bow knight less impactful, but still very good given the increased movement rate. Some mages actually learn extra spells after leveling far enough into their upper classes, such as Sonya learning Rewarp and Entrap, making them incredibly versatile.
Support conversations are much like older games such as Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones - if two support-viable units are within two squares and one of them fights, or if one of them heals the other even with a physic staff cross-map, they will gain progress toward a support conversation. Once you reach a certain level, you can have the units talk to each other on the combat map, increasing their support level. The difference is that there's no arbitrary limit of 5 conversations per character, meaning you can unlock every single conversation in a single run of the game. Some conversations are locked until certain chapters, usually A-rank conversations, but you will never be blocked from one conversation because you decided to have a different one.
So if there are no "dating sim" elements, what good is support? Well, just like in older games, if you are within 3 spaces of a unit you have support with, you get bonuses in combat! Some units provide extra hit% or crit%, others give you higher Avoid and Dodge. You can notice these bonuses by the little gold extension of your hit and crit bars on the combat forecast, as well as the greyed-out hit and crit bars on the opponent's forecast. What's more, you can stack support bonuses from as many units you have support levels with, meaning a character like Alm or the Whitewings can have some serious bonuses when working together.
The weapon arts system is both wonderful and frustrating at the same time. So instead of weapon experience, a unit will unlock weapon arts as they use each weapon more in battle. These arts are exclusive to their weapons, though a unit won't ever lose an art they've learned - they just can't use it with an incompatible weapon. Some of these are fantastic, like the longbow's Enclosure or the Regal Sword's Double Lion - let's be honest, even if the brave sword in other games cost 6 HP to attack twice in a row, you'd still use it. However others are of questionable usefulness, like the Levin Sword's Fuoydrant, because they cost HP and limit you to a single blow.
The blacksmithing is something I have a love-hate relationship with. Sure, it's a great way to customize your army and the limit on marks means you don't just always have the best weapons, but the weapon tree is needlessly confusing, and with no ability to revert weapons or reliable way to buy lower quality ones, you can end up wasting all your precious gold marks to create weapons that you'll never end up using.
Some notable weapon upgrades are the golden dagger upgrading to Beloved Zofia, Celica's unique weapon, the Blessed weapons upgrading to the Three Regalia of Shadow Dragon / Mystery of the Emblem fame (Parthia, Gradivus and Mercurius), and a silver-mark-only chain of Iron to Steel to Silver to Brave swords.
Shields and Rings are also in the game, though rings in particular have been nerfed HARD from Gaiden. Notably, the Angel Ring only gives +20 luck and doesn't double your stat increases, losing its "best item in the game" tag by a country mile. The Speed Ring doesn't max your speed and give you +5 move, instead it only gives +10 speed and +1 move. The Hexing Shield doesn't reduce magic accuracy to 10%, but it does make all magic damage half of what it would be, making the Medusa spell basically never able to kill you without other enemies nearby.
A brief note on the set-piece fights in the game. Since so many dungeon fights are the same, and so many fights are either in open plains or on boats, it's important that the game mixes it up a bit. In the times it does, the maps are incredibly interesting. The gate approach to Duma's Tower, for instance, is the same map layout used in Olivia's child-recruitment map in Awakening. The border before Rigel Castle is an intense map with several lanes of bow-knight and arcanists, topped off with Barons, making it a perfect death trap for a team with no good archers. My favorite has to be Nuibaba's Manor, however. The climb up the cliff toward a powerful sorcerer with Medusa magic? Possibly one of the most iconic maps in the entire game, so much so that it became a map in Fire Emblem Heroes!
A brief note on the set-piece fights in the game. Since so many dungeon fights are the same, and so many fights are either in open plains or on boats, it's important that the game mixes it up a bit. In the times it does, the maps are incredibly interesting. The gate approach to Duma's Tower, for instance, is the same map layout used in Olivia's child-recruitment map in Awakening. The border before Rigel Castle is an intense map with several lanes of bow-knight and arcanists, topped off with Barons, making it a perfect death trap for a team with no good archers. My favorite has to be Nuibaba's Manor, however. The climb up the cliff toward a powerful sorcerer with Medusa magic? Possibly one of the most iconic maps in the entire game, so much so that it became a map in Fire Emblem Heroes!
Side-quests are another feature that I both love and dislike. Sometimes they're straightforward, like kill 20 enemies from a certain area, or kill this special boss and bring back its treasure. Other times they're cruel, asking you to farm for a fairly rare drop, or use all your merchants (yes you still have a limited number of them) to send vital quest items from one team to another. Some items you won't find for several chapters after the quest is introduced, notably the Gossamer Hair you need to make Ethereal Fishing Line to catch a Dagon. This quest chain is introduced to Celica's team near the end of chapter 2, but the gossamer hair cannot be obtained until Chapter 4, on Alm's side, under Fear Mountain. Plus, the back-tracking to turn in side quests gives the enemy more time to rally reinforcements and send them on you, which means more time spent grinding just to get back to the main story.
The worst side quest has got to be the merchant who wants steel lances. Five of them, and he'll only pay 50 silver marks each. And he's on Celica's side, in the middle of the desert. Alm gets a lot of steel lances from the keeps he visits, but Celica sure doesn't! Plus you'll probably need the lances yourself, or at least be upgrading them to keep the pegasus sisters well equipped. And by the time you hit the post-game and can bring Alm's convoy of steel lances back to him? He doesn't want them anymore, and up and leaves in a huff! But if you use all of Alm's merchants to ship over enough steel lances to barely finish the side-quest, you won't be able to ship over the gossamer hair or other vital items for other side-quests!
Perhaps the best new addition to Echoes is Mila's Turnwheel. With this handy device, you can rewind time back to ANY TURN in the entire combat, changing the RNG rolls as you go. This is perfect for when you need to save a unit that got killed because of a poor decision, but you don't want to replay the entire 30-minute level all over again. Just go back to where you made the mistake, and try something else! Or, sometimes you can just rewind to the exact same spot and the AI will do something else. The only downside is that you can't rewind after Alm or Celica get killed, as the game instantly sends you to a Game Over screen with no chance to hit the rewind button. This can be particularly frustrating on later levels, where you spend an hour getting set up for the final boss fight, and a single lucky miss or crit means you're doing the whole level all over again. That said, the Turnwheel certainly mitigates that frustration, and makes the game feel a lot more enjoyable to play on Classic mode.
As I was talking about earlier though, AI confusion is a big thing in this game. A lot of times, especially when teleporting enemies get introduced, the AI will randomly decide to kill a specific unit, or they might randomly decide to spread their attacks around and not kill anyone. Introducing allied illusions into the mix confuses the AI further, as most of the time they will prefer a guaranteed kill on an illusion than a guaranteed kill on a real unit, though sometimes they will just kill the normal unit instead. This unpredictability is something I'm not a huge fan of, as someone who just finished a Lunatic Classic run of Conquest and thrived off of knowing exactly what the AI would do every single turn.
Finally, but CERTAINLY not least, is the dungeon exploration. This is where fire emblem meets the Legend of Zelda. Third-person camera angle, smashing pots and cutting grass for money and supplies, breaking cracked walls to access secret areas, it really is a zelda-like experience. You can influence the combats you have, too - either by attacking to start further forward and damage the enemies at the start, letting them hit you from behind to make them have the first turn (not recommended), or even just sneaking past them and avoiding fights altogether.
The fatigue system in the dungeon is another thing to consider - if a unit takes too much damage or does the brunt of the work in a single fight, they will become fatigued quicker, meaning you start consuming food or else they have half HP and potentially other stat reductions.
In most missions through the main campaign, you can take every single unit you recruit into the battle, meaning every unit is worth giving some exp. And since every unit that participates in the fight gets bonus EXP, with more given to units who got more last-hits, it's easy to keep your entire team at a fairly even level.
However, in dungeons, you are limited to 10 units, and their positioning is fixed in fights based on their order in the roster. So you can only really grind-train up to 10 units at a time, and one of them is required to be Alm or Celica (just Alm for the post-game even though you have both). For the end-game and post-game in particular, this means that you need to leave about half your army behind, making the best squad of ten you can get.
The post-game is basically a wrap-up of side-quests, plus a chance to take on the final dungeon, Thabes Labyrinth, with a squad from both Alm and Celica's teams. You can also play the DLC dungeons with a full squad from here as well, if you want. Additional enemies sometimes spawn in earlier dungeons, too, such as Dagons in the opening area of the Seaside Cave. Gold marks are still incredibly rare, however, so crafting perfect end-game equipment is going to be incredibly time-consuming.
Fire Emblem Echoes is a fantastic game, and a masterwork port from the old Fire Emblem Gaiden. It's not perfect, but just like Gaiden it tries a lot of unique things, such as the armory upgrade system, which I expect might be implemented in some fashion into future entries in the series.
