Shadows of Valentia nailed the presentation in so many ways that the newer Switch titles missed
The artwork by Hidari was absolutely stunning and I’m really hoping they bring her back for future games. What I loved most was how the character portraits showed more than just faces - you could see their shoulders and upper body similar to the older Tellius games. The storytelling through beautiful artwork instead of relying heavily on 3D cutscenes was so much better.
The visual design for major story moments was incredible. The UI and menu design felt polished and had this warm, detailed aesthetic that made everything feel more mature and grounded. Sure, some animated scenes looked a bit stiff, but they had this nice 2D animation feel even though they were technically 3D rendered. Way better than what we got in Three Houses in my opinion.
The music was another highlight. They took those classic Gaiden chiptunes and transformed them into amazing orchestral pieces. Having multiple versions of each track was genius - if one arrangement didn’t click with you, another version might. Almost no vocal songs either, just pure instrumental beauty. Plus the voice acting coverage was like 90% of the game and the cast was fantastic.
I know this came from the original Gaiden design, but those exploration segments where you could click around environments and chat with NPCs were really engaging. The dungeon crawling was pretty cool too. These little adventure game elements really helped with world building and immersion.
The battle animations looked great for 3DS hardware. I’m fine with 3D map sprites, but that blend of 2D and 3D elements worked really well. Three Houses tried something similar but the graphics could look pretty rough at times.