Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, also known as “Shin Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Tsurugi” or 新・暗黒竜と光の剣 is the eleventh game in the all-time popular strategy game series, Fire Emblem.
Despite being the eleventh game, it was a remake of the first ever Fire Emblem (暗黒竜と光の剣) with added Nintendo DS capabilities.
The plot of the story, as usual, started from a legend from long ago — the continent of Akaneia was invaded by the Doluna Empire, led by the Shadow Dragon, Medeus. Then, a young hero from Altea slew Medeus using Falchion, a divine sword. For the next 100 years, the continent was peaceful.. until Medeus was resurrected and joined forces with the Demon King, Gahrnef, who shared his ambition of ruling the world. They attacked Altea and killed Cornelius, the son of the continent’s hero, Anri, and took away Falchion. The main Protagonist of the game, Marth, is the only son of Cornelius and the only successor of Anri. What would his destiny be, and what would happen to the continent of Akaneia?
Overall, the gameplay of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon was very similar to all the other games in its series — the weapon triangle, the terrain differences, the life of characters (once dead, cannot be revived anymore) and etc.
The stats and weapon systems of the game are similar as well. Weapons have a limited amount of usage before it breaks, and characters can only equip themselves with weapons which they can handle according to their rank.
In every game, there are bound to be things which you want to complain about, and things you want to praise. For Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, the best thing is, of course, the fact that I can craft weapon every round just like Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, and no doubt, its classic storyline.
The bad thing is that the storyline can be pretty much predictable at this point in time, especially for the series’ die-hard fan like myself; who has played so many Fire Emblem game series from various platforms. Another complaint worth mentioning is its graphics — as you can see from any of the screenshots I uploaded in this post, it is not good at all. It’s disappointing how they remake the game yet did not really improve its graphics. Maybe they did, but this is definitely not a good job well done.
Instead of having to press ‘Select’ and view the map like Fire Emblem on various other platforms, the NDS version allows players to view the map directly from the non-touch screen. Note that my screens were reversed to avoid overlapped keys on my android Drastic app, NDS emulator.
As much as I don’t think this game is anywhere close to the standard of the other Fire Emblem games that I’ve played before (and blogged about them), this is no doubt, a classic game that you might want to try — because like I said, it’s the first-ever Fire Emblem game in the series!
Get the game now on Nintendo DS!
Read about the other games in the Fire Emblem series:
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