Fire Emblem Echoes - Easy Allies Review

Great review! I'm loving Echoes so far. The battles feel great, with more of an emphasis on actual military formations than the previous games. On the story side, though, I kinda hate Alm! The guy is just really REALLY bad at asking obvious questions about his past and his relationship to his own grandfather. In fact, he comes off as totally clueless and naive, and mostly a pawn in every cutscene. Celica's definitely the one with agency in this story, at least at my current point of progress. Also, my first impression of the character art in the game was that is looked fantastic, but (and this is going to sound like a really crazy nitpick) both Alm and Celica's portraits are just a little bit off. Like their eyes are not symmetrical, or not placed correctly on their heads. It's way more noticeable if you hold the image up to a mirror. I know that sounds INSANE, but it's driving me crazy now because those portraits are on the bottom screen in pretty much every conversation in the game and I can't not notice that their faces look just a little deformed. Still, It is a great Fire Emblem, I'm totally addicted! I'm enjoying it more than Fates, for sure, although Awakening is still just such a masterpiece, it's hard to top.

SubSamJam

The one thing that to me makes up for lame dungeon maps is how accurate the game places reinforcements into the battle grid when you're loud and attract more than one group at the start of battle. It's cool to see them appear from the northwest when that's the direction they were in the overworld relative to the enemy you sparked the battle with and such. Adds some nice variety to those encounters.

MBUN

I 100% agree with pretty much everything said in this review. The presentation of this game is easily the best of any FE to date and the changes to battle mechanics serve as to be fresh and exciting differentiations. I definitely feel the lack of map variety, though. Dungeon counters are expected to be simple but pretty much all the story battles I've fought so far have been on rather uninspiring maps. Coming from Conquest's excellent map design and varied victory conditions, this was definitely the biggest disappointment of Echoes. Nonetheless, I think this was a great addition to the FE family and I hope beyond hope we get a glimpse of FE Switch at E3 next month.