Shadow Dragon was design for players not to "reset" after losing a unit and it was like a "faithful remake" of the first game adding up the weapon triangle and more things added all the way from FE2 to FE10. It is a a good Fire Emblem game when you realize that it has good replayablity. A lot of cool things and broken things you can do in this game like forging inasne weapons , have warp staves to finish the chapters in one turn , and the ability to reclass any unit at your disposal with a limit of course. Its also a very good Fire Emblem game to "ironman" because it gives you "replacement units" so you keep sacrificing them lmao.
It is canon that Matthis survives long enough to witness his NTR. Via Julian by the thief saving his sister when he couldn't. Then Matthis dies to a stray Mage Dragon while he weeps.
I'm a huge localization nerd, and I LOVE the way Shadow Dragon was localized. The dialogue and prose is absolutely sublime! It's one of the only games in which I don't skip the conversations and cutscenes on repeat playthroughs, because the writing is just so good. (The other game I do this with is Final Fantasy XII, btw)
the thing i like most about Shadow Dragon's story is it doesn't pretend to be more than it is. right from the beginning they tell you the evil wizard brought back the big evil thing so now you need to get the special sword and save the world. it doesn't try and hide that and pretend to be more complicated like some other games in the series.
I'd like if Medeus in particular had a bit more depth though. And they really should have tried to bridge the gap between Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Embelm a little more.
Some things about my favorite FE game: 1. I began appreciating the visuals once I realized that they remind me of old 90’s computer games. Everything about Archanea has this aged quality to it, and I think the visuals contribute to this feeling of playing a game from the 90s. 2. The Archanea games feel like playing a legend. The visuals are muted, the characters don’t say much, and the language the characters use have this pre-modern, elevated diction. Much of the story in shadow dragon that relies on the imagination. It feels like a word-of-mouth tale, in a way. 3. All the Kaga FE design stuff + the replayability. This game is great for ironmanning, but we all know that. What I really love about this, though, is how ironmanning intersects with Marth’s character. He is someone who desperately does not want his allies to die, so putting him in a game built around ironmanning forces him to learn about the realities of war. It is one thing to play the game from the perspective of the user, trying to get through the ironman with as few deaths as possible. The stakes feel higher when you know that each death is going to silently hurt Marth. This combined with the noble stoicism he develops throughout the story makes him an inspiring lord in some very subtle ways. Anyways, Shadow Dragon is wonderful. Thank you for making a great video on my favorite game.
Thanks for using my music! I like the discussion on gameplay transparency. Years ago I would never not use a guide, but over time I may have started to enjoy the relatively simpler games a bit more.
One of my top 10 favorite fire emblem moments was from my first playthrough of either this or the original version on switch when on my very first round of combat against Medeus he crit Marth and killed him from full HP.
its kinda petty but the fact that the DS era games don't have unique color pallets for characters hurts my interest. it makes the characters feel less different even if it doesn't actually effect the unit feel
You should talk about new mystery if you've played it! Honestly my hard 4 run was the most difficult and rewarding fire emblem experience. I think it improves on shadow dragon a ton with its characters and music.
I love SD's music. It reminds me of a old console game but I agree with you if you're talking about the soundtrack diversity of New Mystery over Shadow Dragon.
Y'know, I've been meaning to give FE12 a shot at some point, but you've convinced me to give this one another try too! Modern FE skill systems can be a bit exhausting. Sometimes you just want to only think about the present, not the future.
If you like SD you HAVE to play that "Shadow Dragon but Better" mod Mekkah put up on his channel. I've played through SD and am now doing the mod, and it is really, really good. It's a lot easier to break than base SD, but it's still something you need to plan for, and it's also fun to have a couple units that you can build modern-looking stat lines on (Rosado and Micaiah are the most busted stat-wise). There's also an absolutely GOATed remake of Shadow Dragon in Fates' engine and it is just brilliantly done, to the nth degree. Look that one up, you'll thank me--even if it takes away some of the elements that make Shadow Dragon so unique such as its simplicity, it's still really fun to see. Honestly, in terms of overall experience Shadow Dragon is my favourite game. It has the simplicity of the older games but with modern QOL, such that it's honestly the only non-GBA FE game I can see myself just playing casually without much forethought. All the others are complicated enough that even if you're playing blind you still have to account for a lot of stuff.
I would definitely rank it in my upper tier of fe games. The maps aren't so huge but you get a lot of movement to experiment with. Some units have special weapons that make them invaluable to lose like marths honey and such which i wish more fe games did to give characters a unique feel to them not just special classes like engage Story is a classic and the "start" to this amazing game series that almost fell into obscurity if not for awakening revamping the fan base. Shadow dragon definitely a game to game
Despite there being Fire Emblem games that I would consider better, Shadow Dragon is the one I find myself replaying the most due to it's accessibility and speed (seriously, while most FE speed runs clock in at around 2.5 hours or more, Shadow Dragon can be speedran in less than 20 minutes). I have some sentimentalism to Shadow Dragon because it was the first FE that I have beaten and as an ironman so there was a story going on in my head about how things played out.
Shadow dragon was the first fire emblem that I played When I was like 7yrs old, I never knew what game it was until I discovered it recently, just finished the game and damn, it's in my top 3 FE games
It was my first one too and it has a special place in my heart together with RD (my favourite) and Awakening (because the production value there is just insane: soundtrack, gameplay improvement in comparison to past games, artstyle, etc)
Honestly, I think Shadow Dragon is the second best game in the series, it's definitely what I'd use to introduce someone to Fire Emblem with and I actually kinda like the artstyle, it helps give the game a comparatively realistic look compared to Nintendo's other franchises without looking completely butt ugly and hideous like Zelda's realistic take wound up
Big SD fan here, just about everything in the game feels “just right” maybe aside from the aesthetics. Also it’s got two of the most absurd juggernaut units in wolf and Sedgar
I liked the game a ton. Played it by borrowing my friends copy then trying to find it in every GameStop i could find. They all said they had it but none of them did. It was so annoying as i called ahead each time. Luckily my friend is a MVP and gave me his copy while i got a Marth amiboo. Miss the guy he was cool
FE11 is straight and to the point faithful remake of the 1st game that fixed the problems of the original, while retaining the essence of its great challenges, and great map design without breaking too much. The new content is was a much welcome addition to keep everything fresh and interesting. What I enjoyed about it is that Gaiden Run Challenge that has a huge failure rate amongst players who have attempted it. To those who have succeeded in completing that Gaiden Run challenge, ya are in the elite 5% of players who have succeeded, and those who have completed it on real hardware, you are far better than half of the others within that 5%. I didn't have that disappointing impression when I first played the game at all as I wanted to know what Marth's story was all about without dealing with the problems of the Famicom. I played the hell out of it to know all the ins and outs of the game while seeing what it took to 100% its Event log. Not a lot too much for regular runs. But once ya factor in the Gaiden content is where it gets complicated to do it in the best way especially when ya are doing the Gaiden Run at the same time. No matter it has been completed both on emulation and on real hardware, which put to shame the previous owner of the cart who barely played the game.
I guess I could mention here the « shadow dragon in fate » remake which is probably the highest quality fates hack out there and a possibility if you absolutely can’t stand how the ds game look
I rlly love Fe11, Archanea is so beautiful, its one of my personal favs, i love the mechanics and story and everything, gives so much personality, also shiida is queen, And as always marth is the type of the guy to say: No matter who you are “As a friend you are replaceable farewell”
I think I only played through Shadow Dragon once, maybe twice. But that was like 6 years ago or something. Might need to revisit the game sometime soon...
I don't know if this is the place to post ideas for new videos, but one that popped into my head just now is "A look at story event promotion in Fire Emblem." In other words can you do a video about scripted promotions of main characters across the FE series? I think that could be an interesting topic...
The prose used in the writing of Shadow Dragon is so important to making it an enjoyable story. Fates (just as an example, not for the point of bashing it) has extremely basic, unromantic prose. SD’s is beautiful, especially by comparison.
So to be completely honest, I've only ever watched a few let's plays of SD. Most of the time the person playing seemed to be enjoying themselves. I would like to try it eventually. That said, because I have seen the game in motion, I have thoughts. I can appreciate Shadow Dragon on a conceptual level, but the way the game is just happens to be antithetical to what I enjoy about the series, for the most part. For the story, it has the same issue I have with FE6, expect that it's a better version of that. The main gameplay turn off for me is the importance of the effective weapons. I find it a little demotivating that in a sense the weapons are more important that the units that use them. I will say though, I wish more games had as many difficulty settings as SD.
I'm playing Shadow Dragon right now and I'm having a blast, while the game looks ugly and lacks modern FE paraphernalia like supports, itself the game is so hard to put down, with a smooth gameplay and a great scaling dificulty, and like you said Marth is more compelling than people credit him to, so far my favorite has to be Caeda because all of her dialogue is gold
3 minutes ago???? damn im right on time. havent played shadow dragon (currently starting a series of playing through every FE game in release order so i'll get to it one day), but ive heard interesting things about it
I really enjoy the gameplay of this game. For me the main issue is at the time this came out the GBA Fire Emblem sprites were some of my favorite game art of all time. Then this game came out I was extremely excited as a huge fan of the series. Then these models are just gross looking, we went from the most beautiful sprite arts and attack animations and immediately go into these dull and lazy character models and animations. The gamecube games look better in my opinion but there is no graphical style I prefer over the GBA games.
You make a good point about embracing permadeath in SD, but let's be real, very, very few people do that. Characters in FE are not replacable units like in Advance War. Although the lack of unit identity in SD ironically makes it easier to accept someone's death.
I'm a shadow dragon hater but I love that Ceada recruiting rodger got a shout-out its the best recruit convo in the series. The reason I bounced off shadow dragon is that the gameplay is just far to basic and there are like 3 real characters in the game total (the lack of dialogue really hurts). Lategame shadow dragon maps look terrible to play honestly and I really just don't find them fun mostly because it feels like you fight a ton of the same thing. I do like save tiles tho, and Ceada is goated fr.
I've always liked Shadow Dragon, but the first time playing left me dishearten. Coming from fe8 and 7 many of my deaths happened because features in gba emblem not being in it. Characters that would have survived if rescue was in, the Jeagen Jeagen, being so much weaker than Seth and Marcus that it was part of the reason I swore them off as a kid.(only used Seth and Marcus if it was life or death) And my poor, poor Bantu... died on his joining chapter because I though he would be at least decent compared to Myrrh... he died in 1 turn the same turn as he exited the village. But my love for Gordin and Lena wouldn't exist with it~ Thought I do wish that they expanded the characters some.... I would say the story is kinda "bland," only because you can greatly expand the conflict a lot. Since it is so direct and having little dialog that one can flesh it out so much. But that might just be the writer in me, lol. I do hate the death requirement for the gaiden chapters, aside the 1 that makes sense. I just play the "better" version where I can play all the content without the braindead bits. Get all gaidens without the bloodprice, play the prologues outside the easiest difficulty. And still obtain the online shop items, Falcon Knight baby!
I feel like if it presented more like a gba or 3ds game and maybe had a tiny bit of voice acting like what they had in awakening, I would be game to play everything else as is. But I never finished this game. Just couldn't like it enough to keep going after the midpoint
Shadow Dragon is my first and favorite, so you're preaching to the choir in my case. Despite the story being silly at times, in Archanea, it often feels like everything is slightly worse than the ideal fantasy world. When you free the Archanean capital, you find that it has a slave market right next to it, something of which the ramifications are glossed over. By the end of FE12, if you've been paying attention, a lot of the world has lost its gleam. Archanea is not a happy place, and in that sense, I think the colour palette is justified. I also really like how much show don't tell there is in the story. Like, you can tell Ogma is part Grustian from his hair colour. One can extrapolate that this explains his involvement to some degree in the events of FE12 where he becomes the gardian of the Grustian royalty. Also, it's one of the games to juggle the most complete politics between a set of over 7 nations! That's something! Anyways, there's a lot to the Archanea games' story, especially if you're willing to dig into it. It rewards you for thinking about things and making links between events by yourself.
FE11 was my first FE game, and I had attempts of playing a H5 ironman but with the extra condition of Marth not being used in fights at all. So I'd give some feedback on it. Gameplay: Multiple difficulty levels are fun, but with FE 11 gameplay simplicity and how FE handled higher difficulties, there's a limit to how far you can go with stat inflation before it becomes ridiculous (Chapter 1 to 3 anyone?). After that, I felt like there was a huge dropoff in difficulty even in H5 up to chapter 20, probably due to the new tools FE11 brought in. And then they suddenly throw all kinds of shit at you. Just didn't seem playtested at all so I can understand why more than 3 difficulty levels didn't make a return. Regarding the reclass system, I'd disagree with reclassing makes units lose some individuality mostly because the stats that they come with are mainly in the class they come with. You have Draug, supposedly one of the most sturdy units in early game yet reclass him to merc and then has like 3 def. Most units are just carried by their class stats, and aren't really that different from one another. When you look at Marth's base stats, he has 6 0's across the board and his Lord class comes with most of his bases. Here are the sites for unit stats and class stats and you'd be surprised. serenesforest.net/shadow-dragon/characters/base-stats/absolute/ serenesforest.net/shadow-dragon/classes/base-stats/ Story: FE 11 came out in 2008 as a remake of a 1990 game. I'd prefer there being a simple story with no character uniqueness than them asspulling a trait out of thin air with almost zero reference from the original. What I don't like is that some characters aren't even accessible depending on how you play. Two of my favorite FE11 characters, Etzel and Norne, are either in a gaiden chapter after killing off everything except 15 or less units after a certain chapter or doesn't exist in higher difficulties at all. As for me, the FE11 portraits are fine as they are, just the in-battle models are off-putting. Edit: and on the opposite spectrum, some of the classes offer nothing and its the unit's bases that are good. But for the most part, it's consistent enough.
I'm a big fan of strategy games where you don't play units with a lot of differentiation like HoMM2, Battle for Wesnoth, and most recently Song of Conquest. What I like about those games is that they don't demand the relentless investment and loss aversion games with more differentiated units like, say, Final Fantasy Tactics does. I don't feel like I'm actually missing out on something if I don't min-max a character's class progression and supports and parentage. It makes repeat playthroughs a chore. FE3H has the best writing in the series, but I have zero desire to play through it again for that very reason. FE14: Conquest is about as complex of a game as I can tolerate. To that end, FE11 definitely appeals to me. In theory. The problem is that the map design gets kind of boring around the midgame. FE12 is much more interesting, and except for the fact that its H3/H4 modes are needlessly frustrating and restrictive it'd have the best gameplay in the series.
The DS games seem fun but I REALLY dislike how they look. I know I shouldn't let that get in the way of gameplay but I just can't motivate myself to play them a second time since they're the only FE games I actively dislike the presentation of.
My problem with shadow dragon is that they make all your units way way worse and make enemies way way stronger like how you gonna make my units WORSE than in FE1?
Actually shadow dragon is the first FE game I play and I thought no conversastion and no skill was the normal FE experiance and those were just added in the modern FE for more marketting bullshit, little did I know skill was added early in FE 4 or 5 and shadow dragon was the odd one
Fe11 taught me to stop hoarding useful weapons. Your units are trash, growth rates are trash, and the only way to keep up is to put those rare weapons and forges to work. For that I am forever thankful. Also shiida wing spear brrrrr
I respect that some people like this game, but i disagree personally on most points. One character alone is boring Marth is boring because the people around him are boring, he alone can not make me care. And tge gameplay is just...garbage. This is simple for me, if a character is worth a portrait they are worth being distinct, if you can't make the characters more than numbers don't make them characters, go the Advanced Wars route.
Shadow Dragon was design for players not to "reset" after losing a unit and it was like a "faithful remake" of the first game adding up the weapon triangle and more things added all the way from FE2 to FE10. It is a a good Fire Emblem game when you realize that it has good replayablity. A lot of cool things and broken things you can do in this game like forging inasne weapons , have warp staves to finish the chapters in one turn , and the ability to reclass any unit at your disposal with a limit of course. Its also a very good Fire Emblem game to "ironman" because it gives you "replacement units" so you keep sacrificing them lmao.
I think my copy of shadow dragon is glitched, as Matthis is capable of dying, which I have been told by Kaga himself is not lore accurate
It is canon that Matthis survives long enough to witness his NTR. Via Julian by the thief saving his sister when he couldn't. Then Matthis dies to a stray Mage Dragon while he weeps.
It's a very underrated game for sure. Simple, but effective.
I'm a huge localization nerd, and I LOVE the way Shadow Dragon was localized. The dialogue and prose is absolutely sublime! It's one of the only games in which I don't skip the conversations and cutscenes on repeat playthroughs, because the writing is just so good.
(The other game I do this with is Final Fantasy XII, btw)
the thing i like most about Shadow Dragon's story is it doesn't pretend to be more than it is.
right from the beginning they tell you the evil wizard brought back the big evil thing so now you need to get the special sword and save the world. it doesn't try and hide that and pretend to be more complicated like some other games in the series.
I'd like if Medeus in particular had a bit more depth though. And they really should have tried to bridge the gap between Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Embelm a little more.
I feel like this is a bit of a detriment too. It deals with things like slavery, but the game feels...unserious.
I'm glad the narrative is somewhat changing on FE11, it was one of my top 3 FEs
Some things about my favorite FE game:
1. I began appreciating the visuals once I realized that they remind me of old 90’s computer games. Everything about Archanea has this aged quality to it, and I think the visuals contribute to this feeling of playing a game from the 90s.
2. The Archanea games feel like playing a legend. The visuals are muted, the characters don’t say much, and the language the characters use have this pre-modern, elevated diction. Much of the story in shadow dragon that relies on the imagination. It feels like a word-of-mouth tale, in a way.
3. All the Kaga FE design stuff + the replayability. This game is great for ironmanning, but we all know that. What I really love about this, though, is how ironmanning intersects with Marth’s character. He is someone who desperately does not want his allies to die, so putting him in a game built around ironmanning forces him to learn about the realities of war. It is one thing to play the game from the perspective of the user, trying to get through the ironman with as few deaths as possible. The stakes feel higher when you know that each death is going to silently hurt Marth. This combined with the noble stoicism he develops throughout the story makes him an inspiring lord in some very subtle ways.
Anyways, Shadow Dragon is wonderful. Thank you for making a great video on my favorite game.
Thanks for using my music!
I like the discussion on gameplay transparency. Years ago I would never not use a guide, but over time I may have started to enjoy the relatively simpler games a bit more.
Thank you for making music and allowing folks like me to use it! Glad you enjoyed the video :)
One of my top 10 favorite fire emblem moments was from my first playthrough of either this or the original version on switch when on my very first round of combat against Medeus he crit Marth and killed him from full HP.
One of my favourites was when Marth, about to deliver the killing blow to Medeus with a 94% hit chance.... missed and died lol
its kinda petty but the fact that the DS era games don't have unique color pallets for characters hurts my interest. it makes the characters feel less different even if it doesn't actually effect the unit feel
this ^
I'll fully agree. It threw me pretty bad that Jaegan was. Orange. In example
You should talk about new mystery if you've played it! Honestly my hard 4 run was the most difficult and rewarding fire emblem experience. I think it improves on shadow dragon a ton with its characters and music.
I love SD's music. It reminds me of a old console game but I agree with you if you're talking about the soundtrack diversity of New Mystery over Shadow Dragon.
Y'know, I've been meaning to give FE12 a shot at some point, but you've convinced me to give this one another try too! Modern FE skill systems can be a bit exhausting. Sometimes you just want to only think about the present, not the future.
If you like SD you HAVE to play that "Shadow Dragon but Better" mod Mekkah put up on his channel. I've played through SD and am now doing the mod, and it is really, really good. It's a lot easier to break than base SD, but it's still something you need to plan for, and it's also fun to have a couple units that you can build modern-looking stat lines on (Rosado and Micaiah are the most busted stat-wise).
There's also an absolutely GOATed remake of Shadow Dragon in Fates' engine and it is just brilliantly done, to the nth degree. Look that one up, you'll thank me--even if it takes away some of the elements that make Shadow Dragon so unique such as its simplicity, it's still really fun to see.
Honestly, in terms of overall experience Shadow Dragon is my favourite game. It has the simplicity of the older games but with modern QOL, such that it's honestly the only non-GBA FE game I can see myself just playing casually without much forethought. All the others are complicated enough that even if you're playing blind you still have to account for a lot of stuff.
I would definitely rank it in my upper tier of fe games. The maps aren't so huge but you get a lot of movement to experiment with. Some units have special weapons that make them invaluable to lose like marths honey and such which i wish more fe games did to give characters a unique feel to them not just special classes like engage
Story is a classic and the "start" to this amazing game series that almost fell into obscurity if not for awakening revamping the fan base.
Shadow dragon definitely a game to game
Despite there being Fire Emblem games that I would consider better, Shadow Dragon is the one I find myself replaying the most due to it's accessibility and speed (seriously, while most FE speed runs clock in at around 2.5 hours or more, Shadow Dragon can be speedran in less than 20 minutes). I have some sentimentalism to Shadow Dragon because it was the first FE that I have beaten and as an ironman so there was a story going on in my head about how things played out.
Shadow dragon is my first and favorite fire emblem game it’s so epic
Shadow dragon was the first fire emblem that I played When I was like 7yrs old, I never knew what game it was until I discovered it recently, just finished the game and damn, it's in my top 3 FE games
It was my first one too and it has a special place in my heart together with RD (my favourite) and Awakening (because the production value there is just insane: soundtrack, gameplay improvement in comparison to past games, artstyle, etc)
Long time FE fan, from like, the Tellius era. I used to be a avid resetter when units died but Shadow dragon broke that habit for me.
Honestly, I think Shadow Dragon is the second best game in the series, it's definitely what I'd use to introduce someone to Fire Emblem with and I actually kinda like the artstyle, it helps give the game a comparatively realistic look compared to Nintendo's other franchises without looking completely butt ugly and hideous like Zelda's realistic take wound up
Big SD fan here, just about everything in the game feels “just right” maybe aside from the aesthetics. Also it’s got two of the most absurd juggernaut units in wolf and Sedgar
I liked the game a ton. Played it by borrowing my friends copy then trying to find it in every GameStop i could find.
They all said they had it but none of them did. It was so annoying as i called ahead each time.
Luckily my friend is a MVP and gave me his copy while i got a Marth amiboo. Miss the guy he was cool
FE11 is straight and to the point faithful remake of the 1st game that fixed the problems of the original, while retaining the essence of its great challenges, and great map design without breaking too much. The new content is was a much welcome addition to keep everything fresh and interesting.
What I enjoyed about it is that Gaiden Run Challenge that has a huge failure rate amongst players who have attempted it. To those who have succeeded in completing that Gaiden Run challenge, ya are in the elite 5% of players who have succeeded, and those who have completed it on real hardware, you are far better than half of the others within that 5%.
I didn't have that disappointing impression when I first played the game at all as I wanted to know what Marth's story was all about without dealing with the problems of the Famicom. I played the hell out of it to know all the ins and outs of the game while seeing what it took to 100% its Event log. Not a lot too much for regular runs. But once ya factor in the Gaiden content is where it gets complicated to do it in the best way especially when ya are doing the Gaiden Run at the same time. No matter it has been completed both on emulation and on real hardware, which put to shame the previous owner of the cart who barely played the game.
I guess I could mention here the « shadow dragon in fate » remake which is probably the highest quality fates hack out there and a possibility if you absolutely can’t stand how the ds game look
Shadow dragon fates FUCKS SO HARD
I rlly love Fe11, Archanea is so beautiful, its one of my personal favs, i love the mechanics and story and everything, gives so much personality, also shiida is queen,
And as always marth is the type of the guy to say:
No matter who you are
“As a friend you are replaceable farewell”
I think I only played through Shadow Dragon once, maybe twice. But that was like 6 years ago or something. Might need to revisit the game sometime soon...
I don't know if this is the place to post ideas for new videos, but one that popped into my head just now is "A look at story event promotion in Fire Emblem." In other words can you do a video about scripted promotions of main characters across the FE series? I think that could be an interesting topic...
The prose used in the writing of Shadow Dragon is so important to making it an enjoyable story. Fates (just as an example, not for the point of bashing it) has extremely basic, unromantic prose. SD’s is beautiful, especially by comparison.
Yup. It is such a well-written game.
So to be completely honest, I've only ever watched a few let's plays of SD. Most of the time the person playing seemed to be enjoying themselves. I would like to try it eventually. That said, because I have seen the game in motion, I have thoughts.
I can appreciate Shadow Dragon on a conceptual level, but the way the game is just happens to be antithetical to what I enjoy about the series, for the most part. For the story, it has the same issue I have with FE6, expect that it's a better version of that. The main gameplay turn off for me is the importance of the effective weapons. I find it a little demotivating that in a sense the weapons are more important that the units that use them.
I will say though, I wish more games had as many difficulty settings as SD.
I'm playing Shadow Dragon right now and I'm having a blast, while the game looks ugly and lacks modern FE paraphernalia like supports, itself the game is so hard to put down, with a smooth gameplay and a great scaling dificulty, and like you said Marth is more compelling than people credit him to, so far my favorite has to be Caeda because all of her dialogue is gold
Hope you'll have a good day
3 minutes ago???? damn im right on time. havent played shadow dragon (currently starting a series of playing through every FE game in release order so i'll get to it one day), but ive heard interesting things about it
I really like it! I hope you enjoy it when you get to it too :)
I really enjoy the gameplay of this game. For me the main issue is at the time this came out the GBA Fire Emblem sprites were some of my favorite game art of all time. Then this game came out I was extremely excited as a huge fan of the series. Then these models are just gross looking, we went from the most beautiful sprite arts and attack animations and immediately go into these dull and lazy character models and animations. The gamecube games look better in my opinion but there is no graphical style I prefer over the GBA games.
You make a good point about embracing permadeath in SD, but let's be real, very, very few people do that. Characters in FE are not replacable units like in Advance War. Although the lack of unit identity in SD ironically makes it easier to accept someone's death.
I'm a shadow dragon hater but I love that Ceada recruiting rodger got a shout-out its the best recruit convo in the series.
The reason I bounced off shadow dragon is that the gameplay is just far to basic and there are like 3 real characters in the game total (the lack of dialogue really hurts). Lategame shadow dragon maps look terrible to play honestly and I really just don't find them fun mostly because it feels like you fight a ton of the same thing.
I do like save tiles tho, and Ceada is goated fr.
I've always liked Shadow Dragon, but the first time playing left me dishearten. Coming from fe8 and 7 many of my deaths happened because features in gba emblem not being in it. Characters that would have survived if rescue was in, the Jeagen Jeagen, being so much weaker than Seth and Marcus that it was part of the reason I swore them off as a kid.(only used Seth and Marcus if it was life or death) And my poor, poor Bantu... died on his joining chapter because I though he would be at least decent compared to Myrrh... he died in 1 turn the same turn as he exited the village. But my love for Gordin and Lena wouldn't exist with it~ Thought I do wish that they expanded the characters some....
I would say the story is kinda "bland," only because you can greatly expand the conflict a lot. Since it is so direct and having little dialog that one can flesh it out so much. But that might just be the writer in me, lol.
I do hate the death requirement for the gaiden chapters, aside the 1 that makes sense. I just play the "better" version where I can play all the content without the braindead bits. Get all gaidens without the bloodprice, play the prologues outside the easiest difficulty. And still obtain the online shop items, Falcon Knight baby!
I feel like if it presented more like a gba or 3ds game and maybe had a tiny bit of voice acting like what they had in awakening, I would be game to play everything else as is. But I never finished this game. Just couldn't like it enough to keep going after the midpoint
So not famicom translated shadow dragon and the blade of light?
Shadow Dragon is my first and favorite, so you're preaching to the choir in my case.
Despite the story being silly at times, in Archanea, it often feels like everything is slightly worse than the ideal fantasy world. When you free the Archanean capital, you find that it has a slave market right next to it, something of which the ramifications are glossed over. By the end of FE12, if you've been paying attention, a lot of the world has lost its gleam. Archanea is not a happy place, and in that sense, I think the colour palette is justified.
I also really like how much show don't tell there is in the story. Like, you can tell Ogma is part Grustian from his hair colour. One can extrapolate that this explains his involvement to some degree in the events of FE12 where he becomes the gardian of the Grustian royalty.
Also, it's one of the games to juggle the most complete politics between a set of over 7 nations! That's something!
Anyways, there's a lot to the Archanea games' story, especially if you're willing to dig into it. It rewards you for thinking about things and making links between events by yourself.
This is a lot of words to say
“It gave us Etzel so it’s peak”
FE11 was my first FE game, and I had attempts of playing a H5 ironman but with the extra condition of Marth not being used in fights at all. So I'd give some feedback on it.
Gameplay: Multiple difficulty levels are fun, but with FE 11 gameplay simplicity and how FE handled higher difficulties, there's a limit to how far you can go with stat inflation before it becomes ridiculous (Chapter 1 to 3 anyone?). After that, I felt like there was a huge dropoff in difficulty even in H5 up to chapter 20, probably due to the new tools FE11 brought in. And then they suddenly throw all kinds of shit at you. Just didn't seem playtested at all so I can understand why more than 3 difficulty levels didn't make a return.
Regarding the reclass system, I'd disagree with reclassing makes units lose some individuality mostly because the stats that they come with are mainly in the class they come with. You have Draug, supposedly one of the most sturdy units in early game yet reclass him to merc and then has like 3 def. Most units are just carried by their class stats, and aren't really that different from one another. When you look at Marth's base stats, he has 6 0's across the board and his Lord class comes with most of his bases. Here are the sites for unit stats and class stats and you'd be surprised.
serenesforest.net/shadow-dragon/characters/base-stats/absolute/
serenesforest.net/shadow-dragon/classes/base-stats/
Story: FE 11 came out in 2008 as a remake of a 1990 game. I'd prefer there being a simple story with no character uniqueness than them asspulling a trait out of thin air with almost zero reference from the original. What I don't like is that some characters aren't even accessible depending on how you play. Two of my favorite FE11 characters, Etzel and Norne, are either in a gaiden chapter after killing off everything except 15 or less units after a certain chapter or doesn't exist in higher difficulties at all. As for me, the FE11 portraits are fine as they are, just the in-battle models are off-putting.
Edit: and on the opposite spectrum, some of the classes offer nothing and its the unit's bases that are good. But for the most part, it's consistent enough.
I'm a big fan of strategy games where you don't play units with a lot of differentiation like HoMM2, Battle for Wesnoth, and most recently Song of Conquest. What I like about those games is that they don't demand the relentless investment and loss aversion games with more differentiated units like, say, Final Fantasy Tactics does. I don't feel like I'm actually missing out on something if I don't min-max a character's class progression and supports and parentage.
It makes repeat playthroughs a chore. FE3H has the best writing in the series, but I have zero desire to play through it again for that very reason. FE14: Conquest is about as complex of a game as I can tolerate.
To that end, FE11 definitely appeals to me. In theory. The problem is that the map design gets kind of boring around the midgame. FE12 is much more interesting, and except for the fact that its H3/H4 modes are needlessly frustrating and restrictive it'd have the best gameplay in the series.
The DS games seem fun but I REALLY dislike how they look. I know I shouldn't let that get in the way of gameplay but I just can't motivate myself to play them a second time since they're the only FE games I actively dislike the presentation of.
Aesthetic is gameplay
My problem with shadow dragon is that they make all your units way way worse and make enemies way way stronger like how you gonna make my units WORSE than in FE1?
Actually shadow dragon is the first FE game I play and I thought no conversastion and no skill was the normal FE experiance and those were just added in the modern FE for more marketting bullshit, little did I know skill was added early in FE 4 or 5 and shadow dragon was the odd one
Fe11 taught me to stop hoarding useful weapons. Your units are trash, growth rates are trash, and the only way to keep up is to put those rare weapons and forges to work. For that I am forever thankful. Also shiida wing spear brrrrr
my main issue is that the enemy variety is so lacking that i feel the game is just unfun to play
ugliest game in the franchise
as a game, shadow dragon is...replaceable. [cocks gun]
Playing through this for the first time but my god it looks like shit
I respect that some people like this game, but i disagree personally on most points.
One character alone is boring Marth is boring because the people around him are boring, he alone can not make me care. And tge gameplay is just...garbage. This is simple for me, if a character is worth a portrait they are worth being distinct, if you can't make the characters more than numbers don't make them characters, go the Advanced Wars route.