Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
- Easy-to-follow tutorial chapters
- Take the battle online and clash with players around the world
- Choose from dozens of characters with unique spells and abilities
- “Fire Emblem” returns to its roots with a total overhaul of an NES classic never before released in America
- Touch-screen controls and multiple save options
Product Description
Medeus, the king of the dragonkin, has been revived and is forming an alliance with a fearsome sorcerer named Gharnef. Together, they threaten to the throw the entire continent of Archanea back to an age of chaos and war. Now, it’s up to young Prince Marth and his small band of loyal followers to rise up and rally all those left in the land to make one last desperate push to free Archanea from the tyranny of the Shadow Dragon. Fire Emblem returns to its roots… More >>
Tags: Archanea, Fire Emblem, Gharnef, Prince Marth, Shadow Dragon
Nintendo DS | ed2yp79 2010/01/24
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By Cory T. Griffin, 2010/01/24 @ 8:14 pm
I purchased this Fire Emblem game the day it came out, being very excited about this release. I have all the American released games (7-11). The first six games were only released in Japan, this game, “Shadow Dragon” is a updated version of the first japanese game.
Here is a list of my loves and one hate for this game:
LOVE: Simple story, not hours of “info” conversations to read like in the console versions of Fire Emblem.
LOVE: Items can be combined before starting chapters. (for example taking 8 steel axe uses and 12 steel axe uses can be merged to make 20 steel axe uses as one item). This can be done with weapons, staves, staffs, etc. It is a really nice tweak that the developers made for this game. Before I would always sell off weapons that were getting low on uses. Great improvement over previous versions of the game.
HATE: Save feature only at two spots per chapter. Players were abusing this function in the last game Radiant Dawn (#10). There is a random number generator for stat level-ups that was being exploited due to the save feature. The intended purpose was that you could save at any point in the game and reset if one of your characters died. This was so you would not have to start from the beginning of a chapter and waste two hours that some chapters would take. In Radiant Dawn this was needed because it was more difficult even on “normal mode”, as the enemies had more hit damage and would critical more often. Radiant Dawn’s save feature was better than Shadow Dragon’s limited saves of two per chapter.
LOVE: Arenas. One of your guys vs one enemy who fight to the death. You may continue to fight as long as you have hit points, but if you die in the arena you lose the character for good. You win a money wager plus about 30 experience point per challenge if you survive. It is a nice way to level-up certain characters, but most 1st tier characters are not strong enough for more than one challenge per turn. I imagine this is why the Radiant Dawn save feature was taken out of Shadow Dragon.
LOVE: Characters dead for good, and being okay with that. SPOILERS: In previous Fire Emblem games I never wanted any characters to die, if they did it was a instant restart. Yet at endgame you only could use about 15 characters in that chapter, while having 60 to choose from. In Shadow Dragon, when one of your people die all their items go back to the convoy. Great addition Intelligent Systems! In real life you wouldn’t just leave the guy’s sword on the battlefield if he died, you would take it with you. So in this Fire Emblem you don’t have to reset just to avoid losing your items. SPOILERS AGAIN: Plus the game rewards you for letting some of your characters permanently die. I won’t go into the details of this, but it is a neat incentive.
All together this is a really nice game. I still prefer the console games (#9&10) over Shadow Dragon, but I like it much better than the game boy games (#7&8) because of the new features stated above. Even the Shadow Dragon save feature is a improvement over the game boy game which had none during chapters. In a future version I would prefer a once-per-turn limit for the battle saves and no saves during arena fights.
I have not had any online experience with Shadow Dragon, but apparently you can fight another player with five of your characters, use various cards for gameplay, and purchase items from an online store.
I am happy with Shadow Dragon for the DS as I will no doubt go back and play this game again and again with a different cast of people. So the many hours of playing was well worth the cost for me. Thanks.
Rating: 4 / 5
By Colin Macgregor, 2010/01/24 @ 10:44 pm
I haven’t picked up a good Strategy/Tactics game like this for ages. My last favourite was Shining Force, but it was a little too easy after the first go. I love having multiple hard levels! I want more just like this one! This is the first time I have given a 5 star rating to any game since Starcraft!
Rating: 5 / 5
By Garret J. Staus, 2010/01/25 @ 12:45 am
If the critics are right, and Nintendo is losing its touch with the hardcore base, then the big-time publisher better be kissing the feet of developer Intelligent Systems. Despite solid gameplay and lush visuals, Fire Emblem is decidedly very uncharacteristic of the Nintendo of this generation. No, the light of heart need not apply here – Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is as much about loss and war as it is about knights and mages. Save for a frustratingly unimmersive storyline, Shadow Dragon forges deep, difficult, and satisfying gameplay and holds up extremely well considering it’s a remake of the 20-year-old original Fire Emblem.
Series mainstay Marth stars in Shadow Dragon as the prince of Altea, who must defend his kingdom after the shadow dragon Medeus returns to once again take over the continent. The game begins with Marth awaiting his father’s return, who has gone to battle Medeus with the legendary sword Falchion. It doesn’t take too much foresight to determine what happens next – get used to that feeling, because the story in Shadow Dragon is lacking at best. Marth moves from mission A to mission B, with a little filler in between but nothing substantial. No branch paths are ever afforded to the player, and there is little to do in missions that substantially affect the story. It’s disappointing; many tactical RPG’s thrive on an excellent story driven by war-time politics and heroic intruige. It’s a remake of a 20 year old game, sure, but you can’t help but wish you felt more immersed in the kingdom of Archanea.
The combat is done in a manner similar to Advance Wars for fans of that series – a grid system allows each character in your army (usually in the realm of 15 characters) to move a certain amount of squares each turn, and then engage in turn based combat with the enemy if they are close enough. Battles are simple enough – a unique rock-paper-scissors combination of weapons keeps things tactical (in this case, it’s axes, lances, and swords) and different classes have advantages over others (keep your flying units away from archers!). It’s a solid system that works well – strategy is so key in the early and late game that success feels very satisfying.
In contrast, defeat is a bitter pill to swallow in Fire Emblem. Fans of the series will be on familiar ground in Shadow Dragon – if a character dies, they die for good. No resurrections, no undead, no phoenix downs. They’re gone for the rest of the game, and the only way to get them back is to reset your DS and do it over again. Limited save opportunties make every move a heavy decision and every battle an important one. It’s likely that you’ll at least once or twice reset the system to get somebody back, but death here is unavoidable – some of your soldiers will die. It brings intensity to the gameplay, and weight to the decisions you make. It’s rare that a game makes you think about death, but Shadow Dragon (and Fire Emblem in general) will surprise you. It’s probable that once or twice you will opt to leave behind some of your favorite characters from the game – despite the lacking story, you grow very attached to individuals whom you’ve commanded for ten or twenty missions.
Permanent deaths are reflective of the game’s difficulty in general – strategy is a necessity or you aren’t going to make it very far. The normal difficulty alone will punish newcomers and veterans alike, not to mention the game’s five hard modes. It’s refreshing for a lot of core gamers, and genuinely difficult games are growing so rare that you’ll probably end up appreciating the game for what it is. Victory in absolutely every mission comes with both relief and enthusiasm – you reap what you sow, and in Shadow Dragon it’s very satisfying.
The missions themselves can grow stagnant after a while, but Intelligent Systems clearly did their best to keep them varied. Most take place either on a battlefield or inside the walls of a castle with the simple objective to take over a spot on the other side of the map. Ocassionally, gameplay elements are tweaked or an unexpected variable is added to the mission, which helps keep things fresh and forces the player to think outside the box a bit. Despite this, mission objectives still feel rather formulaic and ocassionally bland. Fortunately, the change in terrain and different opposing armies still manage to keep the core gameplay enjoyable.
Fans of RPG’s and strategy games will almost certainly find something to like here. Story junkies might be turned off, but it’d be a shame to ignore a game which does a tactical RPG like it should be done. Newcomers to the Nintendo platform this generation may end up struggling through the difficult campaign and death mechanics, but those familiar with Nintendo games of old will feel right at home. If Nintendo has indeed strayed from the path, it’s good to know developers like Intelligent Systems are still willing to light the way.
Rating: 4 / 5
By R. J. Weber, 2010/01/25 @ 1:49 am
If you’re a fan of the Rock, Paper, Scissors style fantasy tactical turn-based games, you might just want to get Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for your Wii. If you absolutely must have a portable game in the aforementioned genre, this game will do nicely, too.
By today’s standards, the game isn’t all that fantastic. The graphics look a bit dated, and the story is flimsy. However, the gameplay is decent, and the controls are fairly intuitive.
Fire Emblem fans, though, should beware. This game contains nothing you have never seen in a Fire Emblem game before. Except Marth. And honestly, he’s not all that.
Rating: 3 / 5
By Alanna E. Angel, 2010/01/25 @ 4:02 am
I love the Fire Emblem series. I have played the GBA, Gamecube, and Wii versions. Path Of Radiance is my favorite with the first GBA game being my second favorite. I always love the story and characters.
I could not get into the story of this DS version and the graphics were ‘flat’ to me (I personally preferred the graphic style of the GBA versions more). I never felt like I cared about the characters and many are thrown into your party without any background (ie: Barst, Bord, and Cord). I understand this is a remake of the first fire emblem, but I just don’t think the remake is on the same level of the previously mentioned Fire Emblems.
The online multiplayer option is nice, but there is no normalization so you have to complete the game if you hope to compete. For example, I decided to try it out early (after finishing chapter 10), and was matched up against people with characters much more powerful than mine (because they had already completed the game).
It’s not a bad game by any means, just not the quality that I’ve come to expect from a Fire Emblem game.
Rating: 3 / 5