Rating: 7.5/10 | Gameplay Rating: 8/10 | Story Rating: 6/10 | Music Rating: I don't remember/10
3 review in 3 days? Wow!!! Don't get your hopes up for this kind of consistency in the future! ( • ⩊ • ) Today's review is on the famous Fire Embelm: Shadow Dragon! "The NES version?" No! "The Nintendo DS version?" No!! Wait then what versi-- THE REMAKE ON THE 3DS THROUGH THE FATES SYSTEM ⸜(*ˊᗜˋ*)⸝(+ a portait replacement mod for all of the units)
Alright I gotta be honest, I was too lazy to play both the NES and the NDS version. I knew I wanted to play the first Fire Emblem simply because I bought a 1/7th scale figure of Marth and didn't want to be a fraud. Out of nowhere, the all-knowing algorithm of Youtube recommended me a video on this remake at the perfect time, and I felt this would be the most pleasant way to consume this game. This remake provided the same exact story and all of the same characters while at the same time providing the QOL improvements that were built from the progression of 13 different games. The last thing I wanted to do was start the older versions of Shadow Dragon and quit only two hours in for dated mechanics (not for its "dated" visuals).
Did I get the true Shadow Dragon experience by playing it this way? Probably not. However, I still had a very fun time simply because I love the Fire Emblem gameplay formula. Through 25 different levels, I stayed engaged the entire way through, building up my varied and hand picked cast of characters, trying to recruit every possible new unit introduced, promoting units and seeing what new skills they would receive (Fates version only!), and planning out some sweet paths to victory. Considering that it was a game made in the NES era, many of the maps were pretty simplistic and straightfoward, but I still had a fun time viewing it more as a fun romp through many kingdoms instead of some extremely deep and compelling war.
Like I said before, the story of Shadow Dragon was copy and pasted from the original game into this 3DS version. The story was certainly there. Really the only interesting thing about this story was Marth being Marth and just pushing his way through every single army in order to regain control of his kingdom, kill (never spare) the people who wronged him and his family, and demolish a big, evil dragon.
Characters this time around were very basic personality and depth wise. Instead of focusing on this, I really just gravitated towards the cooler looking units throughout the game. I used every flier in the game since they were all really cool (the 3 sisters + their captain), both bow knights (Wolf was super cool), and a bunch of other random units mainly for their portrait art. Fun little cast of characters but definitely nothing spectacular, not that I was expecting it to be.
The portraits looked so damn beautiful. Props to the modders!
I played this game as a "nice, I played the first Fire Emblem." What I ended up playing was a very engaging experience gameplay wise, with a very basic story and cast of characters. If you are ever interested in playing this entry in the series I would most definitely recommend playing this version.