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Is there any real reason to play the DS remakes over Mystery of the Emblem?


GreatSaiyaman
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Gamefaqs (http://www.gamefaqs.com/ds/943695-fire-emblem-shadow-dragon/reviews)

In all fairness though, a lot of those are good/great scores, but when a game has that many awful scores, you gotta wonder. (Hence me coming to a dedicated Fire Emblem site for opinions)

And you think you're going to get an unbiased opinion here, especially from someone who's favorite game is "Shadow Dragon"? ;/

There's a pretty big disconnect between your opening post and where this topic is now. I would like your thoughts on the responses in this topic.

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Looking at Gamefaqs scores is like asking IGN for a fair review. Aka not very accurate.

And you think you're going to get an unbiased opinion here, especially from someone who's favorite game is "Shadow Dragon"? ;/

While it may be true that those scores are biased or unfair... Pray tell where on the internet am I supposed to find anything that isn't biased?

There's a pretty big disconnect between your opening post and where this topic is now. I would like your thoughts on the responses in this topic.

Okay... I guess you could say in the opening post I was leaning more toward just playing FE3, but wanted to know if the DS remakes were worth my time. I wanted to know what all changed between versions and which was superior.

Right now you could say I have been reminded of how archaic Mystery was (again - I only played a couple chapters like, a year or two ago) - and more or less convinced that the DS remakes are the way to go.

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While it may be true that those scores are biased or unfair... Pray tell where on the internet am I supposed to find anything that isn't biased?

It's called "try it out for yourself, and don't rely on others to form your opinion for you". You know your own tastes better than anyone else.

I can understand the sentiment behind wanting a second opinion, this time from the side that doesn't think Shadow Dragon is awful. However, pointing to really low scores on a general gaming site and basing your dislike of Shadow Dragon around that isn't going to lead to the friendliest response on the specialized one.

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It's called "try it out for yourself, and don't rely on others to form your opinion for you". You know your own tastes better than anyone else.

Plus, i honesty suspect that the same group of people would have rated mystery of the emblem worse. Although shadow dragon is far from the improvement it could have been, most people you ask will tell you that it was an improvement.For example, having a gaiden chapter with a stupid unlock requirement might be only slightly better than having no chapter or any of the content in that chapter at all, but it is still better.

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Damn... Would it have killed them to have added Canto? I feel like I'm playing frigging Sword of Seals here - But at least in that game you could move after trading!

Really don't know why I expected that to be in there...

Given that canto isn't in awakening, they probably decided that canto was too overpowered to include and have not changed their minds since.

Edited by sirmola
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Canto would have been a nice Lv. 10 skill for cavs in Awakening. Other than that, it's a little too good for mounted units to have for free, considering all of the other advantages they tend to have over footies (such as weapon triangle control before promotion). Heck, FE4 is the pinnacle of the bias FE has had toward mounts over the years.

Edited by Inference
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Play Shadow Dragon because the script is fucking amazing.

My only gripe is that virtually no characters got development past their introductory chapter, (bar Marth, Shiida, and a few others)

Damn... Would it have killed them to have added Canto? I feel like I'm playing frigging Sword of Seals here - But at least in that game you could move after trading!

Really don't know why I expected that to be in there...

I'm extremely glad to see the exclusion of Canto, personally.

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Given that canto isn't in awakening, they probably decided that canto was too overpowered to include and have not changed their minds since.

Are you people fucking serious?! Not only did they exclude it from the remakes, but it isn't even in Awakening?!

...Man... And that was something I was using to console myself too. (Well at least it'll be in Awakening! (The game that is apparently supposed to have every good thing from all the FEs combined))

What kind of argument is that anyway? "Remove Canto because it is too overpowered - Nevermind the obscenely high growth rates and all kinds of other absurdly powerful skills in the game."

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Galeforce is basically a slightly more balanced Canto. It's still OP though. TBH, whilst I agree that Canto is OP, buyable Rescue Staff is about as stupid in practice anyway so they could have definitely just chucked it in as a skill for the Cavalier line somewhere.

My only gripe is that virtually no characters got development past their introductory chapter, (bar Marth, Shiida, and a few others)

Yeah but man, what little is present is really impressive. The Japanese script is somewhat less flavorsome, but the localisers did a great job of adding charm without really changing the core of it. I wish the amount of effort put into the localisation for that game was replicated in other titles. :\

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What kind of argument is that anyway? "Remove Canto because it is too overpowered - Nevermind the obscenely high growth rates and all kinds of other absurdly powerful skills in the game."

Honestly, i think that you are right there. I might understand the logic, but i don't think it's right. canto is vastly less overpowered than pair up, gailforce, or grinding.I think that it would have made less scence as a skill that one class learns, and more sense as a class trait for all mounted classes (like how dance, or the ability to use longbows are class traits.)

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Being overpowered is a different thing from being overcentralizing. In Awakening, everyone has access to the tools needed to be good (which is mostly a product of the "overpowered" pairup system, by the way). In FEs with Canto, units who have it have it and those who don't are screwed.

Also, power bloat != being overpowered. Otherwise you'd look at Paper Mario and see the most underpowered game of all time, and at Final Fantasy or Earthbound or something and see something ludicrous.

I personally think the difference in translation quality alone is enough to play the DS versions over the Super Famicom ones.

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No and...

I would say the old versions.
They're much more historical and provide better depth of interest. As some battles that were epic like Book I Ch's 8, 17 and 24 were cut dramatically in the SNES and the DS remakes. It's partly what made the series continue to thrive. Plus arenas having no exits (bringing the nature of only the strong survive) and not being able to sell stuff futher added challenge to the game. So...
FE1(NES)>FE2>FE3(Book II) are what I recommend to fully experience on why Marth became such a success enough to be fitting to be playable in Smash.
Edited by PuffPuff
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In FEs with Canto, units who have it have it and those who don't are screwed.

Can someone please explain to me why the hell everyone says this? Just because a unit can't fly over mountains or some crap doesn't mean that that unit automatically sucks.

Look at characters like Aira, Lakche, Levin, Sety, Rutger, Fir, Ike, Mia, Zihark, etc. etc. - Are you going to tell me they suck?!?!

There are a number of factors that go into making anyone useful in Fire Emblem.

- Growth Rates

- Base Stats

- Skills

- Supports

- Weapon Mastery

- Movement

- Promotion Time (for Lords)

Not necessarily in any order. And the order would probably change depending on the game (since not all of those are applicable, or at least as broken depending on the game).

Movement is important, sure. But significantly less so than growth rates and skills. There are plenty of mounted units that suck. It doesn't matter if you can move halfway across the map in 1 turn if a kitten could kill you.

Same goes for weapon mastery. Great, you have an S rank in every different weapon type. ...But you're base stats suck, and you have unnacceptably bad growth rates, so who cares?

I'm tired of people saying that everyone sucks unless they have a mount and can wield something besides swords. So what if you are swordlocked? So what if you don't have a horse/pegasus/wyvern?

Roy didn't suck just because he was swordlocked and didn't have a mount. He sucked because he didn't promote until the game was 90% over, was in a game where growth rates were less awesome (even though Roy himself had some of the best growths in the game), and even after all of that... his ultimate sword of legendary flaming badassery... only had... 20 uses???

...Plus he only had 5 movement and coud only use swords.

Also, power bloat != being overpowered. Otherwise you'd look at Paper Mario and see the most underpowered game of all time, and at Final Fantasy or Earthbound or something and see something ludicrous.

What does that even mean?

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Can someone please explain to me why the hell everyone says this? Just because a unit can't fly over mountains or some crap doesn't mean that that unit automatically sucks.

1. Utility - visit a village and get out of the way, as a universal example. In RD, you can have a mounted unit weaken something and pull back, or kill it and forge on ahead.

2. The more versatile a unit is, the more likely it'll be used. And if you're head and shoulders ahead of everyone (distance-wise), and getting all of the kills, you'll end up stronger.

It doesn't mean a non-mounted unit automatically sucks, or a mounted unit is automatically awesome (hello Fiona) - it's simply a useful characteristic one has that the other doesn't. Likewise, staffbots are usually somewhere in the upper portions of a tier list. It's because of their sheer utility, not because they can one-shot enemies (unless your name is Pent, but then he loses out on half the game).

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Can someone please explain to me why the hell everyone says this? Just because a unit can't fly over mountains or some crap doesn't mean that that unit automatically sucks.

A strong unit without canto has to choose between dispatching a nearby enemy or moving ahead. One with canto can do both.

A fragile unit without canto becomes wide open if they're in a poor position after attacking. One with canto might be able to use its remaining movement to run away.

It's a pretty considerable tactical advantage.

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I'm not denying the fact that Canto is useful. (Why else would I have complained about it's exclusion from Shadow Dragon?) There is a reason I have a hard time going back to the GBA games now that I've played FE4/9.

I know full well why Canto is useful. Literally the only thing I am debating is the viewpoint that Canto is so godly that anyone w/out it sucks and shouldn't be used. Etc. (again - their is more than just one thing that makes a unit useful / suck)

A strong unit without canto has to choose between dispatching a nearby enemy or moving ahead. One with canto can do both.

Or just camping and slaughtering everyone on the enemy phase. Move in range of a mob and they will all come to you. What is complicated about that?

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I've seen people say that character A is better than character B because they have canto, but I don't think I've honestly ever seen someone say character B is useless solely for that reason.

Its more of a case of people saying characters suck because they don't have a mount. Which in some cases, just happens to also mean Canto.

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What does that even mean?

Power bloat not being the same as overpoweredness?

Basically what's meant by that is that overpoweredness is sort of a relative thing. A lot of characters you'll see getting called "OP" are called that because they're way more powerful than other characters in their game. If everyone is superpowerful, that doesn't make them all OP. But someone who rises above and is way stronger than everyone else would be OP.

That said, Canto is very highly-regarded because it opens up a whole new batch of strategies you can use a unit for.

  • They can do hit and run tactics in the games where Canto activates even after attacking.
  • They can Rescue injured characters and duck back behind your lines in a single turn.
  • They can snatch items from villages and then move into a more advantageous position.

I'm sure there's more than this, even. For such a seemingly-simple ability, Canto really adds a lot to what a unit can do.

Edited by Starlight36
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No and...

I would say the old versions.
They're much more historical and provide better depth of interest. As some battles that were epic like Book I Ch's 8, 17 and 24 were cut dramatically in the SNES and the DS remakes. It's partly what made the series continue to thrive. Plus arenas having no exits (bringing the nature of only the strong survive) and not being able to sell stuff futher added challenge to the game. So...
FE1(NES)>FE2>FE3(Book II) are what I recommend to fully experience on why Marth became such a success enough to be fitting to be playable in Smash.

Actualy i like the DS versions partly because of all the little things they have, like a button to display the range of all enemies, or the ability to merge weapons, or map saves, or the ability to easaly select who starts in what map location. Part of the reason that i never finished gaiden was how inconvenient and unpolished the logistics were, and i hear fe1 is even worse because everyone in gaiden only has one inventory item. As for cut content, shadow dragon did not cut anything from fe1 that i am aware of (i just read an lp to check). Fe3 cut a lot of content, but shadow dragon added it back in.

Edited by sirmola
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  • 2 weeks later...

Or just camping and slaughtering everyone on the enemy phase. Move in range of a mob and they will all come to you. What is complicated about that?

Something about kittens. You tell me.

It doesn't matter if you can move halfway across the map in 1 turn if a kitten could kill you.

So a unit without Canto who can't take an enemy phase has fairly limited options for gaining exp, usually involving either deliberately being fed or stuck fighting enemies who aren't in packs, which puts them at a big disadvantage to units who can take on packs during enemy phase. What does Canto do? It allows a glass cannon to ride into a pack, kill something, and get away without a scratch. And a whole lot more, but that's beside the point.

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I think you've already made up your mind that you're not going to play the DS games no what anyone says so this topic is really pointless.

Gamefaqs (http://www.gamefaqs.com/ds/943695-fire-emblem-shadow-dragon/reviews)

In all fairness though, a lot of those are good/great scores, but when a game has that many awful scores, you gotta wonder. (Hence me coming to a dedicated Fire Emblem site for opinions)

Lol GameFAQs.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/ds/fire-emblem-shadow-dragon

You might question why I'd recommend Metacritic of all things. Fire Emblem is a low profile game. Unlike high profile AAA games, reviews for games like Shadow Dragon are far more likely to be honest because there is little to no hype for these games except from their niche fanbase.

I would never recommend metacritic aggregates for AAA games like say, GTA or Assassin's Creed or something.

Besides, if you aggregate the scores on GameFAQs, you get... 6/10.

User reviews on GameFAQs are usually even worse than professional reviews because it's either a 8/9/10 out of 10 or a 1/2/3 out of 10. No proper analysis. Just this line alone from the first review invalidates the whole goddamn thing: "Make sure it looks even worse than the NES game! Yeah! "

Edited by Ranger Jack Walker
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Ultimately it boils down to a few questions such as:
Which era of RPGs do you like the most?
Do you prefer the NES version of Final Fantasy or its remakes? Pokémon Red/Blue or Fire Red/Leaf Green?
Are the quirks in graphics and gameplay in older RPGs archaic or charming?

If you're an old-school RPG person, there is no real reason to go beyond the originals. If you're a new-school RPG person, go for the remakes.
Chances are, if you're the latter you're not going to like Shadow Dragon anyway.

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