In Shadow Dragon, Death is Your Strategy

Prior to Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, the Fire Emblem games that came out before it — Fire Emblem GBA, The Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn — had characters with basic personalities that in a wartime setting and the idea that you can’t bring them back into battle made you care enough about them that you had to keep them alive. Even if it was someone like Fiona.

*shivers*

I’m guessing this was also the case in prior Fire Emblem games, or the ones stuck in the Land of the Rising Sun. You know, Gaiden, Genealogy of The Holy War, Thracia 776, and The Binding Blade. Heck, even Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Tsurugi and Monshou no Nazo valued the idea of saving your characters, even if it wasn’t as fully released as the games after those two.

Shadow Dragon teaches you death is a legitimate strategy, and fuck keeping your characters alive, in the prologue.

That Not So In-Depth Report on Shadow Dragon

Well I finally beat the game over the weekend, so I guess I can give my final thoughts and observations about Shadow Dragon. This isn’t going to be long.

Why It’s Hard To Play Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

So a few weeks ago after watching the Fire Emblem anime, I had a desire to start playing Shadow Dragon and actually seeing ALL of Marth’s story. I was really pumped up to play it, so of course I started over and chose a difficulty level…

…And then in a matter of minutes, I stopped playing.

Granted, my days of playing video games obsessively is long gone (unless it’s something crazy addicting), but even so, I generally seem to play a good hour or two of a Fire Emblem game. Well, not for Shadow Dragon. Shadow Dragon unfortunately happens to fall into the trap of being a dated game after Awakening. I think that’s why it’s hard to play Shadow Dragon now.

That excuse could fly now, but I had this game when it came out in 2008. And I managed to beat the entire game in one go…once. Why is this bad? I’ve replayed every other FE game more than once. Uh-oh. What’s going on here? Guess I better share.

To Reclass in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

“Wyrs…with a sword? WAT”

If you’ve been playing Fire Emblem: Awakening, you probably know that you have the ability to reclass your character into nearly whoever, with the use of the Second Seal. Well guess what? You could also reclass your character in a game that turned out to be the only Western released Fire Emblem game on the DS, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.