GameXplain did a 2 hour stream of the now released Japanese version of Echoes, which you can see here.

Derrick shows off the new prologue of the game, where Alm and friends are kids assisting Mycen fight off some invaders, before Celica goes on her own way to begin her training as a Priestess. Afterwards, the stream kicks into the video we saw from the original trailer announcement.

Fast forward to the present; the new village mechanics are shown. Similar to Shin Megami Tensei IV, there are static images of characters to talk to, which can include townspeople offering hints or even your own allies sharing their backstories.

In addition, you can examine and move between areas just like in Phoenix Wright. You can often find provisions (food items) lying around or even equipment to aid your warriors during your long adventure.

Fire Emblem Gaiden had shared experience in the past, which is making a return in Shadows of Valentia as seen here. At the end of a fight, you basically get “participation” experience.

There are also tutorials for all the little mechanics sprinkled throughout these first few hours of the game.

We then see the first Shrine of the game, after some of the typical Gaiden beginning maps, you are limited to taking a ten unit party into dungeons. We’ve already seen a fair bit of this from the old PAX East Videos (that analysis can be found here).

Onto the newer side of things are the English build, where we get to see a video of Clive reacting to Alm’s appearance instead of Mycen.

Once again showing off this games really good presentation, the voice actors chosen seem to really bring their characters to life, (Alm showing a little nervousness on being addressed by Clive, for instance).

This scene also allows Gray and Tobin to have some minor background comedy which was lacking in Gaiden, basically after someone joined you, they’d never really get to talk much after. It’s really nice to see these characters getting a chance to interact.

GameXplain also had one last video to share with us, a general overview on their thoughts, basically going over everything we just discussed, and going over how Gaiden’s black sheep mechanics have been touched up to be more presentable in 2017.