Many of these maps just don’t have enough elements for there to be more than one or two viable strategies. You stick your best couple units in one of the chokepoints and wait while every enemy on the map funnels into them. The first half of the game is loaded with maps that amount to single paths with a handful of chokepoints. While the core gameplay has much of the depth one expects from a strategy RPG, many of the maps in Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light don’t provide opportunities for multiple strategies. Players who aren’t familiar with the math behind the game’s combat system will have a particularly hard time making good plans.įans of recent Fire Emblem games will feel right at home with the core gameplay.
Ultimately, players have all the information they need to make decisions, but it’s presented in a very clunky way. You can always look at the stats and do the math before every battle, but if you want to play the game at even a moderate pace, you’ll be making some attacks without knowing exact hit rates or damage. Similarly, Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light has no combat preview. You’ll spend a lot of time checking enemy stats and counting tiles to figure out where it’s safe to place your units because there’s no visual indicator. The first thing I noticed when I started playing was that there’s no move range indicator when selecting a unit, so it’s difficult to visualize your movement options without manually counting out squares.
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Where Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light shows its age is in the lack of quality of life features that were added in later series entries. These timeless core gameplay elements ensure that Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light plays and controls well for its entire duration. Even the classes and items are largely the same as those in the modern games, with a few exceptions. The grid-based strategy combat system works well here as you take a small, weak army, and build it up into a force strong enough to beat back powerful villains and the forces of darkness. While the game had been remade on the Nintendo DS, this was the first time western fans could play the original Famicom game.ĭespite its age, Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light still feels familiar coming from modern entries in the series. Fast forward about 20 years and Nintendo finally released a translated version of that very game: the series’ first entry, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light.
Melee rather than the Japan-only game he originated from. Although there’s no better place to start than at the beginning, my first exposure to Fire Emblem, like many fans of the series, was playing as Marth in Super Smash Bros. This year, we’re looking back at the Fire Emblem series, including many of the games that were never released in the west.
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