Shadows of Valentia is a 3DS title and a remake of the second game in the series, Fire Emblem Gaiden. It’s a true remake this time, not merely retelling the same story but adding tons of new content. It has a lot of good and a lot of bad.

The series wasn’t a franchise yet, so the creator decided he could get away with trying something wacky and different. This game is about a completely disconnected story set on another continent entirely, and also throws in more typical RPG elements like a world map, dungeons, and random encounters. The core gameplay is probably also changed the most out of any entry — weapons are unbreakable, magic costs HP, classes have three tiers instead of two, and, in the remake, archers have more than twice the range. In general I liked these new features — it was interesting to see how they shook up the gameplay, and it made archers actually good. (A bit too good, actually — they really should have removed the Killer Bow or nerfed their range, at the very least; it’s far too easy to snipe bosses with impunity.) I also loved combat arts; they make me feel like I’m playing an actual RPG where characters have a set of skills to choose from instead of just throwing numbers at each other. (I also liked how many of them were effectively deterministic versions of the skills in FE13/14, but we’ll get to that later.)

Also, bosses are actually hard this time! Bosses in FE tend to be really forgettable, as almost all of them are just beefed-up versions of regular enemies who can’t move (allowing them to be easily cheesed). Here, most bosses are not only mobile, they have unique equipment and abilities that make them genuinely fearsome. Taking down bosses required serious thought and the use of all the abilities at my disposal, making them far more memorable. (Jedah’s gimmick is ridiculous, though.)

The map design is, unfortunately, a real drag this time. Maps are extremely bland, with tons of open space and often either no choke points or only one choke point, severely limiting what strategies you can employ. Terrain penalties are also really painful, with a lot of maps where non-fliers are slowed to a crawl. Nuibaba’s map is probably the worst, with your characters forced to move in single file for almost the entire map; I spent ages slowly inching around to pick off her soldiers one by one. (Apparently the recommended strat is the recommended strat for all bosses, snipe her with Hunter’s Volley, but I didn’t have that at the time.)

The plot is… well. The remake completely overhauled the plot, adding massive amounts of detail and entire characters to the narrative. The presentation is also phenomenal, with gorgeous and expressive character designs as well as full and surprisingly good voice acting. (Berkut’s actor was clearly having the time of his life hamming it up and I support him.) However, while the writers recognized the simple NES plot needed an overhaul, they did not change any of the main beats of that terrible NES plot, resulting in wildly inconsistent quality.

The central feature of the story is that there are two protagonists you follow in parallel, Alm and Celica; unfortunately, Celica is astoundingly stupid and the plot relies on her holding the idiot ball in a deathgrip. See, when I saw the opening flash-forward to Alm tearfully killing Celica for unknown reasons, I thought this would be due to an actual ideological conflict between the former friends, like in Three Houses. The game seemed to set this up early with a scene of Celica telling Alm he’s bad for trying to repel the invading evil empire because violence is wrong uwu which, while stupid, at least would be something. Instead, what happens is that Celica inexplicably decides to trust the cackling evil mad sorcerer and do everything he says while her companions tell her this is stupid and she shouldn’t do it, leading to her getting mind controlled into fighting Alm. So no, their conflict wasn’t due to her own agency, it’s just her being used as a puppet to make Alm sad and thus has no pathos. (Don’t worry, she’s immediately revived by a deus ex machina, so at least the female protagonist doesn’t get fridged stupidly. Yay?) What’s odd is that in the NES version is less bad about this (Jedah held Alm hostage to force Celica’s compliance, which is much more reasonable). I don’t know why they changed it.

Alm’s plot is much, much better. It’s a genuinely tense and complex political plot about liberating his kingdom from the evil empire; however, the resistance isn’t all sunshine and roses. As you’d expect from a group seeking to reinstate the status quo, it’s composed largely of former knights and nobles of the old regime who have retained their bigotry and classism. They balk at accepting Alm the farmboy from Nowheresville into their ranks, prompting a dramatic schism between the conservatives and the class traitors. Even among the resistance members who are nobles, we get to see depictions of the petty class warfare between the different noble ranks. Moreover, even the resistance leaders acknowledge the former king was a hedonistic dick who kind of had it coming. It was a shockingly realistic and nuanced political analysis of the tension between radicals who want substantial change and conservatives who just want to be on top again, even though they have a common enemy that should be bringing them together…

LOL PSYCHE Alm’s a prince and ends up god-king of both kingdoms because being royalty is awesome actually. Whew, we almost criticized monarchy in our Monarchy Sim, glad we dodged that bullet!

There have been painfully forced attempts to explain that ackshully this is still anti-monarchist because the fact the snobs couldn’t tell Alm was royalty proves divine right is a lie, to which I say, why do we never see it the other way around? Why does the farmboy always have to turn out to be a secret prince, why does the prince never turn out to be a gutterblood? That would teach the same message, no? So why not? Why is royalty always something we give to our heroes, but never take away? Could it be that maybe, just maybe, we do still intrinsically believe that royalty is good and special and better, and this is an endemic cultural problem? One that we shouldn’t keep encouraging, maybe?

Anyway, Fernand can go to Hell and I reject the endgame’s last-ditch attempt to redeem him. If you decide you’d rather betray your country and try to kill your best friend than get commoner cooties on you, you deserve no sympathy.

The game also has, uh, issues with women. Though the outfits are much less sexualized than in the other 3DS games (more on that later), we still get egregious stuff like, well, this CG. (Clerics are also given a very prominent bum roll, but that’s so mild compared to the stripper outfits in Awakening I find it funny more than anything.) Sexist class restrictions are the most extreme they’ve ever been, with women locked to only four classes (mage, cleric, pegasus knight, and cavalier). Sorry, girls, you’re just too dainty to string a bow. The remake also adds a new female character among the initial cast whose personality consists entirely of being a yandere for Alm, who has to turn her down because he’s in love with his adoptive sister. (Oh yes, the incest kink started early; more on that later too.)

Mathilda (the woman attached to the tits in that CG) is particularly weird. See, she’s the lover of the resistance leader, and in gameplay, she’s the same class as him but leagues better in every stat (except strength, of course). Their support conversations bring up that she’s insecure about being a strong woman upstaging her man, but her lover assures her he finds nothing hotter than her being a badass warrior laying waste to their enemies:

Mathilda: Ah, Clive…
Clive: Mathilda, what grieves you? You look so sad. Where hides your lovely smile?
Mathilda: It’s your sister… She claims I was showing you up on the battlefield. That it was… unbecoming. This conversation set my mind a’whirl. On the battlefield, man and woman are equals judged by skill alone. But you are to be my lord husband. It was never my wish to diminish you or bring you shame.
Clive: My sister is the one who should be ashamed. Such an old-fashioned idea! I will never be your “lord,” and your exploits bring me naught but pride. If I want to outshine you, then I must earn it by my own hand. Don’t you dare change. I love you exactly as you are.
Mathilda: And here I thought I could never love you more…!
Clive: Now get back out there and have at those dastards, you wild Valkyrie.
Mathilda: Ah, it does my heart good to hear those words. Now stand back while I unleash the seven hells upon these pitiful fools!

This sounds… amazingly progressive for a video game company. They bring up a sexist trope only so that her boyfriend can immediately and thoroughly reject it. But then her ending is this:

Excuse me, what? What happened to loving her exactly as she was? Why would you write that if you were just going to relegate her to housewifery anyway? It’s so bafflingly contradictory I have to wonder if the supports and epilogues were written by different people.

Also, just for funsies, here is Clive’s lover and Clive’s sister side by side:

I see you married your sister but with bigger boobs, Clive. How interesting. (Trust me, the incest subtext is only beginning.)

The creepiest part of the game, though, is definitely the witches. As is typical for the series, pursuing dark magic rots your soul and turns you into a monster. However, the writers chose to add a gendered component to this.

Pictured above is the male version (left) and the female version (right). We’re told in-story that only one of these two give up their souls and become mindless tools of their evil god, while the other retains their sanity and is basically normal. Which would you assume is which, based on their designs?

If you guessed the purple mummy gets to be sane and the sexy woman gets to be an empty shell, you guessed right! Because it is the nature of women to suffer (and remain sexy even when otherwise ugly = evil) while men get to have power with no consequences. Moreover, we are told that women are frequently turned into witches against their will, in a ritual that… gives the male priests more power. Alm at one point is rightfully horrified by this, but is told there’s no way to save a witch and the only solution is to kill them. (Which is not true, because Celica is turned into a witch but she recovers.) Despite this, witches still talk and display personality, including saying, “Please, no…” while writhing in agony every time you kill one, so it sure looks like the characters are just telling themselves that to better rationalize killing mentally disabled torture victims. This lore is apparently unique to the remake, so the designers deliberately chose to add in these incredibly skeevy and misogynistic details to a game in 2017. Not encouraging for the future direction of the series.