Parents' Guide to Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

If your only experience with this series is the free-to-play Fire Emblem Heroes mobile app, you're in for a deeper, more satisfying game. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia delivers a rich tactical role-playing game experience, with battles featuring a dozen or more characters waging war on big maps that provide a range of sophisticated tactical options based on terrain, unit abilities, and gear. The concept of "permadeath" -- one of the series' signature features, although it's missing from the app -- only enhances the story, putting extra weight on the emotional connections players make with individual members of their unlikely bands of warriors. Permadeath can be switched off, but doing so vastly lessens the stakes and tension of each battle and comes with an equal reduction in the satisfaction derived from victory.

Shadows of Valentia isn't only about rehashing familiar mechanics. It also introduces new elements, such as 3D dungeons that you can explore from an over-the-shoulder view like any action game. These sequences deliver an enhanced sense of control and immersion within the world and can result in valuable treasure finds and more challenging enemy encounters. Not all the additions are as welcome, though. A new fatigue system, for example, makes it harder to keep your favorite fighters at combat-ready strength. These games are hard enough as it is, and fatigue just seems like an unnecessary burden. But the overall experience remains absolutely compelling. There are good reasons why Fire Emblem has sat among the cream of the tactical RPG crop for decades, and you'll find pretty much all of them on display in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.