FIRE EMBLEM: SHADOW DRAGON

The 11th or 12th “mainline” Fire Emblem game was released for the Nintendo DS (which stands for DualShock) sometime in the late 2000s, I think. It’s a remake of the very first game in the series from about 20 years previously: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. They (perhaps wisely) opted to cut down the existing extremely long title into a briefer version.

Before we go any further, I’m going to say the following: Shadow Dragon was my introduction to the Fire Emblem series, knowing basically nothing about its story or mechanics. I don’t want to bury the lede here! I think, as an introductory game to the series, it is great, and if you’re interested in Fire Emblem but know very little about its gameplay, like I was, I highly recommend you go play at least a couple chapters of it on an emulator or something before reading the rest of this, because at the end of the day, it’s a fun time, and it is Very Fire Emblem.

And, aw man. Shadow Dragon gets a lot of flack from fans, and admittedly a lot of that is deserved! Following up the incredible (from what I hear) Radiant Dawn on Wii with a game that is intentionally stripping the series back to bare essentials is a bold choice, to say the least, and looking at the games side-by-side it’s very easy to see this as a downgrade. I haven’t played Radiant Dawn, but I have played Path of Radiance, to which it’s a direct sequel, and it’s a strong contender for my favorite game in the franchise. It has a compelling story (wow!), actual characters that aren’t cardboard standees, dynamic gameplay, strong writing, and wonderful design overall. Going directly from a game that is that but more to a game that has no support conversations, barely any character lines, some of the worst dialogue writing in the entire series, and an overarching story that, while it could be compelling, is relayed to you via a series of largely-identical “Marth! Now we’re here in [insert made-up country name]. Capture the castle!” prompts is...not great, to say the least!

But I can never bring myself to be that hard on Shadow Dragon. It occupies a strange place in my heart: when I first decided to get into Fire Emblem (after playing a lot of Super Smash Bros, reading some fanfic, and making a numerated list of every game in the series and who its protagonists are, natch), I intentionally picked Shadow Dragon to be my first game in the series, and that’s for one reason, really. It’s got Marth! I love that guy!

Not that he really gets much of a character in this game, but whatever, it’s not like any of the other protagonists are better (except, like, Ike and Byleth and Celica, probably). And as an introduction to the series, it’s actually like really strong?? Like, I’m gonna be real with you here, but playing a game that was released by the time that manuals had shifted strongly away from “teaches you how to play the game” and towards “supplementary material at best” means that the game actually teaches you how to play it as you play. Not all Fire Emblem games do that! A lot of Fire Emblem games don’t do that! At least six, in fact!

I’m not saying it’s the ideal introduction to the series, but let’s look at some of the other contenders. There’s Path of Radiance, which, while frankly brilliant, I think would actually set your standards too high—most Fire Emblem games aren’t that good at telling a story, and don’t have the cool mechanics it does. There’s Blazing Blade, which—okay, I haven’t actually played Blazing Blade. I know, I know! It’s great! But look, I’m playing Binding Blade first, and it’s been a bit of a slog (more on that later) but I wanted to get it out of the way before I played the prequel. There’s Awakening, which (okay, I also haven’t played) trades on a lot of past knowledge, including a lot of stuff set up in Shadow Dragon and its sequel. There’s Mystery of the Emblem, which tells the same story but with a much worse quality of life (even if the art’s prettier)—that game makes no attempt to teach you its mechanics. And there’s more recent stuff, like Three Houses—great but decidedly off-model for Fire Emblem—and Echoes—the same complaint. I have no idea about Engage.

Look, the fact of the matter is, Fire Emblem as a series has a really compelling core gameplay loop, and in playing Shadow Dragon, you get that in spades. Shadow Dragon is all about the core tactical gameplay. Additionally, it is the iconic setting: Archanea is to Fire Emblem what...I don’t know the names of the Pokemon locations, but what the one with Ash and Team Rocket and Professor Oak is to Pokemon. Marth is the lord character, every third character has an archetype named after them, and Minerva is there. I love Minerva. I’m biased.

But of course I’m biased. I’m writing this to trade on bias: the entire point of this series is to talk about my biases. And Shadow Dragon starts with an extended prologue where it introduces you to characters and game mechanics one at a time, while also explaining the actual plot that barely appears in, like, Mystery of the Emblem, where it’s thrown at you in an explosion of text. Here stuff actually happens! I said earlier that Shadow Dragon has some of the worst dialogue writing in any Fire Emblem game, and I do stand by that—some of that stuff is downright dire (“Tick-tock, move that frock, Sister!”). But also, it...this is a stretch, okay, so bear with me?...it serves as a sort of trial by fire? If you can get invested in Shadow Dragon’s story (a tall order!!), you can get invested in any Fire Emblem story. And it’s not as if Shadow Dragon doesn’t try very hard (albeit poorly) to get you invested in it. See: the entire extended prologue sequence, and on-map character conversations as a (poor) replacement for support conversations.

At the end of the day, Shadow Dragon is a game that I keep looking at and thinking “what if?” What if they weren’t afraid of putting player-controlled characters in dialogue scenes and we had conversations with Minerva and Hardin and Caeda as well as Nyna and Marth and Malledus doing a whole strategy meeting? What if Nyna was allowed to be a combat unit, and got a personal class or something? What if we actually had support conversations? What if the writing was good?

But I ask all these questions from a position of a person who has played at least part of nine different Fire Emblem games. And that’s not what Shadow Dragon is. Shadow Dragon is a game for people who’ve been wondering about this Marth guy in Smash Bros and his series, who don’t really know what it’s like. It’s a game that’s best to go into blind, which I realize putting at the end of this retrospective is a bad move, so if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go back and put that at the top.

Okay I’m done. It’s a game that’s an introduction to the mechanics of Fire Emblem, and it pulls it off I think quite well. I like it a lot. It’s my Fire Emblem game, more or less. And it’s got Marth. And, finally, it sets you up for one of my favorite (and personal “best”) games in the series: New Mystery of the Emblem. So, hey. You’ve got that to look forward to.

(It also has several obscenely difficult “hard modes”. If you’re into that sort of thing.)

Final rating: 7-7.5/10. Great entry point to the series.

(Oh, and if you're interested in the story that could be really compelling but isn't delivered well, I do happen to be writing an adaptation of it on my AO3. If that's your sort of thing.)