Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - Fledgling Warriors Pack (Nintendo 3DS) Review

The Fledgling Warriors Pack made available right at launch contains three different things: An additional dungeon, and two additional battle maps. The first of the bunch, the Astral Temple, is an extra dungeon, built to worship the race of the sacred dragons, the Manakete, which itself was a class of playable characters in the original Fire Emblem and its remake Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, as well as the reimagining Mystery of the Emblem for the Super Famicom and the Japan-exclusive remake of its second half for the Nintendo DS, Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem - Heroes of Light and Shadow. With Fire Emblem Gaiden and its present remake, Shadows of Valentia, taking place in the same world as the very first entry, the race of the dragons are also referenced in this case, even if no Manakete is directly recruitable in-game.

The dungeon itself is pretty straightforward and featureless. It is a simple large room with smaller individual chambers found within, containing jars that can be broken to obtain basic shields and weapons already found in the game itself, except here the place can be played over and over to amass more of these, bypassing the limitations of what the game has to offer in the way of such items. Moreover, offering for Mila, as well as recovery items, respawn inside every time.

The place is roamed by relatively weak brigands that players should have no trouble dispatching, but it is otherwise quickly dealt with. The first of the two maps is called Wretches and Riches. It features a small stronghold, property of a merchant, roamed by more brigands. Most of these carry a silver purse, which they'll drop upon defeating them. This, as should be expected, opens the possibility to grind for money more easily than what the game otherwise allows, which in turn can be used to forge more powerful items.

Lastly, the other map on offer is called Band of Bandages and takes place inside a sort of crypt inhabited by Terrors. There are a few Revenants that give very little experience except to very low level characters, as well as up to five or six Entombed, which can give a lot of experience points upon defeating, even to higher level characters.

This last map, however, proves to be the less interesting of the bunch. Here, enemies will never try to engage the player's units, and he or she has to actively prevent them from escaping the map in order to obtain experience points from them, which proves less convenient than looking for the same enemies inside the dungeons that the base game already offers. Contrary to other games, like Fire Emblem Fates, which don't necessarily always give a lot of opportunity for the player to grind levels, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia gives plenty of good opportunity already that actually perhaps requires even less input on the player's part than in the case of this DLC.

All three pieces of content are dispensable at best. They are there to extend the player's experience and to make things slightly more convenient than otherwise, and will mostly do so early on in the case of the two maps, whereas the Astral Temple offers a good opportunity to gain more useful pieces of equipment and recovery items than what the game would otherwise allow the player to obtain during a normal playthrough.

It is otherwise quite short, although a hermit at the entrance to it makes a reference of 12 rarely-spawning astral objects that are said to occasionally be found inside, which kind of adds to the play value of this sole dungeon. Otherwise, the overall value of the package for the asking price is lower than what the main game itself offers. The latter does easily offer more in the way of dungeons and maps per £/€/$ if calculating that value. There's nothing wrong with the quality of the DLC on offer here, but rather the value it offers for the price is not quite as high as one could hope for, and just because it's been like this since Fire Emblem: Awakening should not mean that it cannot be complained about.