Shadows of Valentia is a remake of the second game in the Fire Emblem series, Fire Emblem Gaiden. The series’ black sheep, Gaiden tried to change up the formula from the original title and failed to make a balanced and fun SRPG. Shockingly, SoV keeps most of the quirks of Gaiden and attempts to balance this with more standard FE mechanics. It works well enough, making SoV endearing to play, but still becomes unbalanced and a slog in the endgame. I must commend Intelligent System’s plot rewrite, however; they took the cookie-cutter NES plot and made it far more interesting.
