[3DS] Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia ROM

It’s amazing what the 3DS did for the Fire Emblem series. Once a “niche” strategy game, it blossomed into one of Nintendo’s flagship franchises. Awakening truly saved the series, and Fates continued that success. Now we have a lot of Fire Emblem games to look forward to, but there’s one more game for the 3DS before the series moves to Switch: Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. This is a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden on the Famicom.

Deep Storyline

The story of Shadows of Valentia features two protagonists, Alm and Celica. Both grew to be close friends during their childhood until they were forced to separate. Both grew up apart and concealed from the wider world. The land of Valentia is ruled by two gods, Duma and Mila, who fought endlessly until a stalemate was reached and a fragile peace treaty was formed, which is represented by their respective nations of Rigel and Zofia. However, Rigel has broken that peace treaty and invaded Zofia, forcing Alm to leave his village to join the resistance while Celica leaves at the same time to discover what has happened to Mila as the land of Zofia is beginning to rot.

Refined Gameplay and Mechanics

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia changed the traditional Fire Emblem formula. Fire Emblem Echoes has no chapters, and instead focuses on Acts where a lot of battles can take place. An Act doesn’t end until all the battles in a section of the map have been completed. The later Acts give you the freedom to choose between Alm’s and Celica’s armies, going in any order you see fit. This adds a lot of variety as you get to work with different units more often.

It’s a little like other Fire Emblem games with a map except there’s so much more to do. You can move to the next battle and continue the story, but expanding the map also allows access to towns and dungeons. Each town naturally holds villagers who provide more information on what is going on as well as occasional quests. These quests are usually in the form of providing certain items or completing a set task within a dungeon and rewarding you with items for battle. These items can also be found around the towns or any exploration option, allowing you to hold onto them for your reserves. There are no Vulneraries or healing potions this time. Instead, it comes in the form of food.

Food becomes important in the dungeons. Enemy units roam around in them, and an encounter with them will trigger a traditional battle. Thankfully, these battles are usually fairly short and don’t take up too much time. Players can surprise attack these enemies with a well-timed sword swing to reduce their health and position your units closer to them for a quick damage. Of course, if they surprise attack you, then they get the advantage and are allowed to move first. This can be troublesome for your vulnerable units.

All of this makes Shadows of Valentia feel closer to a traditional RPG, but it is still a strategy game. Right off the bat, the traditional Weapon Triangle is gone. There is no longer a time when your weapons can break which has caused some significant changes to how things play out. Instead of each character having a large inventory, they can only carry one item at a time. This can either be food for healing or equipment that you find along the way. There are the classic forms of items like iron, steel, or silver weapons and shields. The stronger the equipment, the more a character’s strength or defense stat increases at the cost of speed. And this applies to all units since there is no weight stat. So, it becomes a question of how much speed you are willing to sacrifice for additional power.

But as you use equipment, you’ll also learn special Arts, sacrificing HP in exchange for a stronger attack that can boost your power, accuracy, or even your evasion. It leaves a lot of room for how each player wants to customize their armies. Arts are similar to how magic works in the game. Since there are no spellbooks, magic is exchanged for health. The stronger the spell, the more health is drained. Thankfully, there are ways to keep your mages healthy, including rings that restore a little bit of HP at the start of each turn. It feels like a great way to balance the power yet also the vulnerability of the magic units.

The other major change is with archers, who can now hit units right next to them as well as those that are very far away. However, they don’t automatically have the ability to do extra damage to flying units, which helps to balance things out.

While the game does get harder, it is at its most frustrating when there are Cantor enemies. Cantors can summon monsters to fight your party almost indefinitely. That action does drain their health, but they always have a way to restore it instantly. And it can be a nightmare sometimes trying to fight through these hordes just to get to the Cantor, who is usually quite tricky.

Perfect Audio and Visuals

There is a lot to love about Shadows of Valentia. Firstly, every interaction is fully voice-acted with a few minor exceptions of some villagers. It adds a lot of personality to the characters, and all of it is handled in an incredible way. Some stand out more than others, such as Gray, Mae, Delthea, and Berkut, but this might be some of the best voice acting I’ve ever encountered in a video game. It all comes so naturally that it is very easy to get invested in the world.

The music is just as good. There are a lot of standout tracks here that really push the epic scale of the story and the events that unfold. It is handled in an excellent way.

This is the most beautiful Fire Emblem game on the 3DS. Each encounter reflects what is going on on the map, and there are so many little details such as swords cutting through nearby grass in swings. Also, the choreography of the battle animations. They are often so seamlessly blended together that you are even entertained in the times when you miss an attack.

Download Shadows of Valentia ROM for Nintendo 3DS Emulator

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is a really good remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden. Many of the ideas here were originally from that Famicom title. It updates and refines, keeping what works and not finding any way to implement newer ideas like Pair-Ups and Child Units. It’s a great thing that you’ll finally be able to get this game on your Nintendo 3DS emulator.

• All files have been compressed by us in 7zip format, so you will need to decompress them. We recommend using 7zip or Winrar.
• The ROM file after decompression is in *3ds format. You can use a suitable Nintendo 3DS emulator to play it. We recommend Citra Emulator or Panda3DS for Windows, MacOS, and Mobile. -> Check Guide Here
• All game information in the ROM Info section is taken from the first file we uploaded. Some games have multiple releases for different markets such as Europe, America, Japan, Korea, etc. Most of the content is the same except for the language pack. You need to pay attention to the file name to distinguish them.