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Shadow Dragon: My personal Experience


Yexin
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So, i finished Shadow Dragon on Hard 1 just yesterday

The fact is that i bought it physically (at the modic price of 70 goddamn euros, around 82 dollars) almost a year ago, but my first impression at the time was something like "wtf is wrong with this game? i get tons of useless units, and i also have to kill my comrades in order to access extra chapters! that's absolutely stupid!"

2 weeks ago i remembered about my copy of Shadow Dragon, lying there in my Holy Temple of Fire Emblem yes, i have my personal temple of fire emblem, and decided to finish it

i eventually ended up liking it a lot, some of the maps are really good, like the one where you recruit jeorge, or the one where you recruit xane (i don't really care about sudden enemy reinforcement, they never bothered me too much), and i LOVED that falchion had unlimited uses

the story is nothing amazing, but it has some political intrigues that i really appreciated; the reclassing system is cool, even though i almost never used it

so yeah, my experience with Shadow Dragon is absolutely positive: it has a lot of bullshits, but i found it a really solid game

not one of my favourite FE titles ever, but surely a good one!

 

what do you think about it? do you like or hate it? lemme know!

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For me Shadow Dragon was an interesting experience. I beat the game with no deaths (many resets) and ultimately nearly screwed myself over by only relying on like 3 units to do everything, come endgame and I had to rely on a few potent level 1 promotes but I managed. Also I got my copy the weekend Star Wars ep 7 came out due to a game store being right by the theater and it was only $25ish USD so I feel sorry for your wallet there. I agree on it being a decent title, but not one of my favorites.

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It's the first title I played on hardware (thanks to flashcards: I only saw it once before that point and it would not have interested me then, not knowing about FE much at all then). Despite the fact it's the third title I finished, I've never felt much of a connection to it.

The art style's not interesting to me across the board. The cast is obviously limited as a tightly faithful remake. I know that it's probably the most interesting in terms of localisation for the better in it's main story, but most of the others only matter as units and I avoided reclassing entirely. I didn't feel too challenged from what I remember, though I was playing Normal to be fair.

I definitely feel like I need to replay from the start, but emulation is not being kind on the laptop.

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I don't hate the game for what it is. What Shadow dragon has is decent enough. Its got a couple of good maps and while I don't like reclassing I seem to be in the minority. For all the critisism the art style gets I think the maps look pretty good. 

But I really dislike the game for what it isn't. It lacks so many important things. Its characters barely have personality, it doesn't have a good story, world building barely exist, its got no villain with presence or screentime and its got no supports either. 
I just don't think the game as any excuse to lack these things that their predecessors all had to some extend. That its a remake isn't an excuse, its the entire reason those things should have been put into Shadow dragon.

I also kinda blame Shadow dragon for a lot of my tepid reaction to Fire emblem crossovers. If Shadow dragon had made the effort to show me what was so great about these characters I might have understood their inclusion over other characters a lot better rather then get frustrated about all these black slates holding other characters back. 

Edited by Etrurian emperor
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1 hour ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

I feel sorry for your wallet there.

well, that's a reality i ended up accepting

here in italy, particularly rare games like the whole fire emblem saga (except awakening and fates) tend to have extremely high costs, because in italy we get very few copies of games which are considered as a niche (fire emblem, tales of, etc...)

for example, in england and germany, this doesn't happen, or at least not at this level

take the "the older and the rarer a game is, the higher is the cost as well" rule, and triple it: that's our situation

 

something i forgot to mention

what i find crazy is that some characters have insignifical growth rates, such as gordin, while other characters have huge growth rates, like wolf

for example, i really like wolf, esthetically, but since he's a pre-promoted unit, even with his amazing G.R., he simply doesn't have enough space to shine

when you get them, they're too strong and they would steal exp, but in the lategame they're too weak so you don't use them

i tried to train wolf anyway, and he got actually quite decent: 48 hp, 20 atk, 19 spd, 14 def (i also gave him parthia for the final chapter)

 

one more thing i like about the game is that units have very high movement

9 for mounted non promoted units and horsemen, 7 for marth and unpromoted sword users, 10 for dracoknights and paladins: i really liked it

also, the ost is very good: the bosses' battle theme, camus' battle theme and "after the battle" in particular

Edited by Yexin
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Well Shadow Dragon and New Mystery are tied for my second favourite fire emblem games for a reason. I like the gritty art style, Marth's development and characterization, each play through was different (Killing off so many units to use the lesser ones was a fun challenge), the ost, and reclass was a lot of fun. I didn't mind the side characters having like no lines because I came up with head cannons for them which is why I love them so much. 

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I absolutely love Shadow Dragon. I just find it super fun to play, the map design is very good, it's fast and smooth, reclassing is a lot of fun and the higher difficulties are challenging. It's honestly one of my favorite fire emblem games.

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*points to favorite game*

Shadow Dragon is relatively simple, which means I can run through the game in an afternoon.  There's a lot of flexibility in reclassing.  The localization is really good, even if it gets a little cheesy at times.  The forging system is a wee bit busted. . .ah, who am I kidding, it's borked beyond all hope.  So's the Lightsphere/Starsphere, especially when a unit with Gradivus holds them both.  Overall, it's still one of my favorite games, even if the battle sprites are, um, bad.

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2 minutes ago, eclipse said:

The forging system is a wee bit busted. . .ah, who am I kidding, it's borked beyond all hope.

Well it can get to be very expensive, but effective weapon forges don't need much might added to become really strong, and nothing else is really worth boosting.

 

The game could use some character rebalancing, and actual character supports to flesh out the majority of the cast. The game was simple, but barebones, a major update on the original (with the totally new addition of reclassing, which wasn't a bad idea) and something new and portable to hold off over after Tellius, but it just needed more.

New Mystery seems to have been a step in the right direction, although it still lacked that all important update of characterization.

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Just now, Interdimensional Observer said:

Well it can get to be very expensive, but effective weapon forges don't need much might added to become really strong, and nothing else is really worth boosting.

Even a lightly-forged Iron weapon can carry someone for a while.  That's due to the relative lack of stats all around.

Now, if it was Awakening-style stats, then the forges wouldn't be quite as crazy.

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6 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Even a lightly-forged Iron weapon can carry someone for a while.  That's due to the relative lack of stats all around.

Only on the lower difficulties, the higher ones not so much. Which is one thing to thank SD for the- the invention of maddeningly hard difficulties. PoR Japan-only Maniac? Well maybe that deserves the title, but maybe not.

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1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Only on the lower difficulties, the higher ones not so much. Which is one thing to thank SD for the- the invention of maddeningly hard difficulties. PoR Japan-only Maniac? Well maybe that deserves the title, but maybe not.

IIRC forging is used to clear some benchmarks in SD Lunatic, if the RNG decides to be a pain.  It's also used to get people from weapon rank E to D, without losing offense.

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7 hours ago, eclipse said:

*points to favorite game*

Shadow Dragon is relatively simple, which means I can run through the game in an afternoon.  There's a lot of flexibility in reclassing.  The localization is really good, even if it gets a little cheesy at times.  The forging system is a wee bit busted. . .ah, who am I kidding, it's borked beyond all hope.  So's the Lightsphere/Starsphere, especially when a unit with Gradivus holds them both.  Overall, it's still one of my favorite games, even if the battle sprites are, um, bad.

Nothing personal but can I ask why you like this over the original? I mean, I played the original one and from what I heard, besides reclassing, there's not really a lot of change that the remake has to offer.

 

 

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Shadow Dragon was my first Fire Emblem game and is my favourite game.

The gameplay is smooth and super fluid. Reclassing is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it and it makes the game incredibly easy once you have it mastered. The maps are a bit too campy, but I grew up with the experience and learned to love it. Michalis's Dragoons is an onslaught.

Most characters are pretty bland unless you do some research outside of the game, which is something I don't mind. It keeps the experience focused on Marth and the central plot and just adds to the fluidity of the game. Under 8-4's godly localization, Marth is a stellar character and several other characters are really great. A personal favourite of mine is Caeda, who is a joke character done well. The villains are memorable and have an imposing presence, Gharnef, Michalis, Camus and Medeus's importance can be felt across the game, and not just through actions to make them feel evil.

The plot is basic, but so is the plot of most Fire Emblem games. The writing is the best Fire Emblem has ever seen. The story is Marth's and he is stellar, but I repeat myself.

I have to disagree with Erturian Emperor, I found the world building to be excellent. Talys, Archanea, Altea, Gra, Grust, Macedon, Dohlr, Khadein and Aurelis all feel like they have their own history and place on the continent. I'm more of a mystery person when it comes to world building, I prefer impressions than information, and there is plenty of that in Shadow Dragon.

The map sprites and battle animations are nigh undefendable, but I really like the Paladin design and the more grounded animations. It feels a lot better when everything has weight and horses can't do flips. I really like the more realistic tone of the character portraits and the designs of the characters as shown in the game manual are just wonderful. I open the manual up once in a while to adore the designs.

I could talk about this game for ages, and sometimes I just get really angry when I keep seeing it get unfairly dump in the "worst Fire Emblem game" bin.

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I know I might ruffle some feathers by saying this, but I consider Shadow Dragon the worst Fire Emblem game I've ever played (and the worst game I ever played period). Heck, I blame it for almost making me quit Fire Emblem altogether, as well as my tepid reaction to FE remakes in general. That being said, I suppose it deserves credit for introducing reclassing and enemy phase skipping, but those aren't nearly enough to make up for hiding most of the new stuff behind a wall of questionable-to-outright-bad design choices, as well as missing a lot of features that could've helped modernize it.

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
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As of now I have not been able to play Shadow Dragon although it is on my list of To Play games. I have seen some gameplay of it and here are a few things I like about it.

1) High movement for all units

2) The 3d models of classes, in particular I love the Hero, Berserker and Warrior classes

3) Generals using every weapon type

4) The forging system, it looks similar to RD's forging and is the system that I hold to be the best. 

5) How reclassing was done, if reclassing is going to be a thing in the first place I like how this game handles it where you just click the reclass option. I will add though that I like that certain units can only reclass into certain classes which Awakening introduced but otherwise prefer SD's reclass system.

I hope to play Shadow Dragon, but it is very expensive and for a while I thought that it wouldn't work on my 3ds XL but recently learned that was not the case.

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On 10/1/2017 at 9:18 PM, Harvey said:

Nothing personal but can I ask why you like this over the original? I mean, I played the original one and from what I heard, besides reclassing, there's not really a lot of change that the remake has to offer.

 

SKIP ENEMY TURNS.

That's more than enough justification.

Oh, and I can level staffbots via staff usage, not having them facetank things.

7 hours ago, SavageVolug said:

As of now I have not been able to play Shadow Dragon although it is on my list of To Play games. I have seen some gameplay of it and here are a few things I like about it.

1) High movement for all units

2) The 3d models of classes, in particular I love the Hero, Berserker and Warrior classes

3) Generals using every weapon type

4) The forging system, it looks similar to RD's forging and is the system that I hold to be the best. 

5) How reclassing was done, if reclassing is going to be a thing in the first place I like how this game handles it where you just click the reclass option. I will add though that I like that certain units can only reclass into certain classes which Awakening introduced but otherwise prefer SD's reclass system.

I hope to play Shadow Dragon, but it is very expensive and for a while I thought that it wouldn't work on my 3ds XL but recently learned that was not the case.

Generals are stuck with lances/bows, though.

I THINK SD should be in the eShop somewhere?  If so, give it a whirl!

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1 hour ago, eclipse said:

SKIP ENEMY TURNS.

That's more than enough justification.

Oh, and I can level staffbots via staff usage, not having them facetank things.

Generals are stuck with lances/bows, though.

I THINK SD should be in the eShop somewhere?  If so, give it a whirl!

Oh, whoops! I saw them using bows and made the assumption that Generals were back to their FE4 version, and thanks for the tip Eclipse. I'll give it a shot!

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1 hour ago, eclipse said:

SKIP ENEMY TURNS.

while this is EXTREMELY useful if you don't want to waste time looking at every single enemy's actions, it doesn't allow you to see if one of your units dies

but you can always look at the number of your remaning units, i guess, so it's not a big deal

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2 minutes ago, Yexin said:

while this is EXTREMELY useful if you don't want to waste time looking at every single enemy's actions, it doesn't allow you to see if one of your units dies

but you can always look at the number of your remaning units, i guess, so it's not a big deal

It'll show the unit's death quote, if it's a named unit.

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My feelings on the game go back and forth, I like it, but it is no where near my favorite. The fact that they kept the fact that only Marth can visit villages and that rescue isn't a thing is just bonkers imo.

On 10/2/2017 at 3:18 AM, Harvey said:

Nothing personal but can I ask why you like this over the original? I mean, I played the original one and from what I heard, besides reclassing, there's not really a lot of change that the remake has to offer.

 

 

Story is better written (although comparing that to a nes game is a little unfair)

Armor Knights can promote

Hunters can promote

Fighters can promote

Weapon Triangle

Weapon ranks are a thing instead of Weapon level

A nice little prologue (on normal)

Gaiden chapters...... not wonderful requirements, but they weren't in the original

It's faster to play overall

You can skip enemy turns

You can forge weapons

And of course, reclassing.

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On 3-10-2017 at 0:17 AM, Schleimann said:

I have to disagree with Erturian Emperor, I found the world building to be excellent. Talys, Archanea, Altea, Gra, Grust, Macedon, Dohlr, Khadein and Aurelis all feel like they have their own history and place on the continent. I'm more of a mystery person when it comes to world building, I prefer impressions than information, and there is plenty of that in Shadow Dragon.

I think the country of Archanea has decent lore behind it. We know some history and some famous historical persons. But the rest of the continent isn't so lucky. The minor evil nation for example can't really be described as anything other then ''Bad guys with flyers'' and ''bad guys with knights'' while no matter what Xane says nothing that Dohlr does ever makes it anything else then an evil dragon country that somehow doesn't have all that many dragons in it. 

 

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16 hours ago, Harvey said:

Don't get how skipping enemy turns is a thing. I mean, you'd have to see what your enemies are planning to do to begin with....

 

If you REALLY know the game, right down to what the AI will do, then skipping enemy phases means you don't have to wait for the computer do to what you predicted.  You'll see that those archers Way Over There moved closer, the three guys you baited died as normal, and all is right with the world.  Great time-saving feature IMO.

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On 04/10/2017 at 3:15 PM, Etrurian emperor said:

I think the country of Archanea has decent lore behind it. We know some history and some famous historical persons. But the rest of the continent isn't so lucky. The minor evil nation for example can't really be described as anything other then ''Bad guys with flyers'' and ''bad guys with knights'' while no matter what Xane says nothing that Dohlr does ever makes it anything else then an evil dragon country that somehow doesn't have all that many dragons in it. 

 

The game doesn't give much detail, but you can gather that:

Dohlr: Humans took over the continent and pushed dragons aside. It was also at that time that the manakete sickness started being a problem. Naga also always favoured the humans over the dragons, despite being the king of the dragons. You could understand why some would be angry.

Grust: The king is being blackmailed by Dolhr and is a coward.

Macedon: Macedon had the potential to become the greatest empire of Archanea if they could conquer some land, however, Archanea was in the way. Michalis's father didn't want to disturb the world order while Michalis saw the Dolhr alliance as a chance to overthrow the Archanean order and elevate Macedon to the title of first power. So Michalis does what any totally not sociopath-ish person would do and murders his father and takes the crown of Macedon for himself. After having conquered Archanea, Michalis intended to conquer Dolhr.

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