|
Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Genre: Turn Based Strategy
Release Date: February 16, 2009
Platform: Nintendo DS
ESRB: E10+ - Everyone 10+
Reviewer: Eric
After a dozen or so titles in the Fire Emblem series fans in the States will
finally get to see one of those games that never came out over here. Shadow
Dragon is a remake of the original Fire Emblem game. That means your favorite
characters may die at any moment and the gameplay is still the same, no matter
how you look at it.
This series has never been that grand in the United States. Most people know of
Fire Emblem from some of its characters being in the Smash Bros franchise. If it
wasn’t for that we may have never heard of this series. Still there are times I
wonder if it was best for Fire Emblem to stay out of the states.
Fire Emblem has yet to really advance and by bringing out a remake it just
proves that Nintendo does not care a whole lot for this franchise. The story is
the games biggest draw. The story follows Prince Marth as he journeys Archanea
while taking on the Dolhr Empire. It is a simple story and it has a few minor
twists. Nothing too out of the ordinary, this game originally came out on the
Nintendo 8-bit.
Managing your team is easy and is still the same like every other game. The
biggest difference here is how you have to sacrifice allies to advance in the
story. This is the first Fire Emblem that I’ve played that made me do this. Your
team does say there could be another way but I could never seem to figure it
out. Even early on in the game they say there might be something else to do as a
huge army approaches. What happened to the days when it was alright to keep your
team around for the entire length of a game?
Each character is placed into a class. Fire Emblem follows the
rock-paper-scissors method to the bone so nothing has changed. You can clean
house one minute with a mage but then the next a heavy character will get
through and destroy them with one big swing. Even at high levels your characters
will die right away if they use the right attack. You would think at some point
this would change just a bit. Maybe if a character has five more levels than an
enemy they can live for an extra turn or two, after being attacked.
Shadow Dragon offers a tutorial that lets player learn about the basics of the
game as they level up. Fire Emblem is known for putting you through stages, one
at a time, never giving you a moment to level up. With the new tutorial levels
you can hopefully get an extra boost in the hardest game the series has ever
seen in the United States. As good as it may sound having the tutorial I found
myself dying more during these levels than some of the first official ones. It
is sort of funny, don’t you think?
Some of the online features in Shadow Dragon are quite interesting. The Rental
Unites feature lets you trade teammates with your friends. This can give you
some extra leverage if you leveled up your characters wrong or if you are having
problems. There is also a versus mode that offers special prizes to the winners.
It is also nice that Nintendo actually used the built in microphone for these
online features, a huge plus indeed.
Final Verdict
Out of all of the games Nintendo makes it seems like Fire Emblem will never take
that next step it needs to. It would have been a lot nicer to see a new game in
the series, not a remake from the first game. This is why we have the online
store on the Wii and the store on the DSi. Shadow Dragon may seem like a good
idea to some, but to me it is only worth the ride if you have nothing else to
play.
Rating
6.25 out of 10
More reviews:
MetaCritic: 8.1/10
TestFreaks: no score yet
IGN:
8.5/10
Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon Trailer
|
