Board 8 > So i'm playing Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon *SPOILERS*

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm still in the prologue and they present the Idea of sacrificing one of my people so I can keep going

at first I was like FRIENDSHIP IS MY STRENGTH and figured I can wipe out the enemies before the knights show up

but I just got swarmed on and murdered by them

I can't believe it

they REALLY want you to do this!

I just simply didn't see this coming. I'm pretty amazed!

Also, once I start this over, its totally gonna be the archer I just saved

lulz
---

I've only played PoR before

b8ers have taught me some terminology and said the "Jagen" is the prepromoted horse person whos your crutch in the beginning, but gets pretty weaker once people surpass him

I remember Titania was that role in PoR

so I was considering killing him

but I dunno, I like his portrait, and having a get out of jail card with him around in the first chapters is too tempting

also I never used Archers before, so I think I'm going with him
---

Shadow Dragon is pretty bad, couldnt get into it and I love FE

Hopefully you have a way better experience
---

nobody has been able to tell me why its bad

why is it bad

its pretty okay so far
---

The connection you make with the characters is nowhere near as strong since they are more or less disposable

I recall it being a bit clunky and not as pretty.

Its like a remake of the first one from japan or something so not being up to snuff makes sense, but that was my take from it. I couldnt get connected with it
---

Characters are bland and unmemorable. So's the story though at least that's pretty normal for FE.

You need to kill off characters to get the optional side chapters.

Gameplay removes mechnics from the previous games like shove, rescue, skills, etc. Evasion is mostly non-functional as a build now (spd and luck's effect on evade are halved), which pretty much leaves everything as simple atk/hit/spd checks.

Normal mode is way too easy. Every other difficulty mode has reinforcements that act as soon as they appear.

It's not an awful game or anything but it's pretty clearly the worst game in the series that we got in North America.
---

I mean

like

its the first in the series, right?

so of course theres not gonna be much characterization. This is an NES game, right? well, Famicom, but still

thats like me complaining that FF1 isn't as epic as 6 or something

and clunky? how is it clunky? you're not using the characters themselves, you're moving a cursor along a grid. how can that be clunky? I don't get the sense of clunkiness by choosing options from these menus
---

NeoElfboy posted...

Gameplay removes mechnics from the previous games like shove, rescue, skills, etc

but were they in the first one?
---

Punnyz posted...

NeoElfboy posted...

Gameplay removes mechnics from the previous games like shove, rescue, skills, etc

but were they in the first one?

No, but by this point it's kind of "hey, here have the experience of FE1 if you're somewhere else in the world. With every failed mechanic of FE1."

It was a remake to give us the world of Marth and the only thing they updated was like... sprites and a few changes with characters (less overblown sword users). And gaiden chapters, which was a terrible mechanic in this game.
---

I only played a few chapters; I think I remember it being okay but not great?

I thought Echoes (remake of Gaiden) was really good, though.
---

So basically, I'm at an advantage because this is my 2nd FE then. i'm not spoiled

I don't even remember much of POR, that was easily 10 years ago when I played it
---

but anyways, thats what i was trying to find out

if its truly bad

it just seems like its more accurate to say its dated or obsolete
---

not enough waifus for the nerdz
---

I actually like SD. It's still just a fun game. It's just missing stuff like supports and mechanics. It's not better than the other games, but it's still a good one.

Also, the canon sacrifice is Frey; he wasn't in the original games.
---

I didn't even consider the fact that there could be a canon sacrifice. Wait a second, if he wasn't in the original and he's the canon sacrifice, does that mean there was no sacrifice at all in the original?
---

Okay that's definitely one thing I remember from Path of Radiance, the RNG is so bad with stats
---

Punnyz posted...

nobody has been able to tell me why its bad

why is it bad

its pretty okay so far

for what it's worth I like it quite a bit. I can give you some speculation as to why I think others call it bad, but I can't really speak for anyone but myself.

so unfortunately I can't really answer that question. since I do like it!
---

Heroic Bigpun posted...

I didn't even consider the fact that there could be a canon sacrifice. Wait a second, if he wasn't in the original and he's the canon sacrifice, does that mean there was no sacrifice at all in the original?

All of the tutorial "prologue" chapters are new. You haven't actually reached the first level yet.
---

Since you mentioned Jagen and his archetype being bad, I feel I have to chime in to clear up some potential confusion.

On the higher difficulties, Jagen ranks as a high-tier unit because you actually need his better base stats in the early chapters. On casual playthroughs of Normal difficulty, it doesn't really matter as much since basically anyone can do 99% of what Jagen does on Hard, so he's left as mostly dead weight.
---

I usually unequip my Jagen characters and just let them be a wall until I get better characters. I haven't played any FE on the hard difficulties but I can see why they would be the most important characters.

One thing I really like about Shadow Dragon is the save points in the middle of the battlefield, it makes it much easier to build up characters that are awesome but needs a lot of time to catch up to the rest of the team since they join at low level (Linde and Est for example).

Also Tiki is the best character in the game.
---

the save points in the middle of maps is amazing, yeah.

I didn't use jagen at all in my 3 star or 4 star hard mode runs.

made a few solid attempts at 5 star but got stuck on a specific map every time. that being said, it's later on past the point where jagen would be considered mandatory, and I definitely didn't use him much early on if at all.
---

Letting your teammates die just to unlock chapters is the most idiotic idea in video games ever
---

Nanis23 posted...

Letting your teammates die just to unlock chapters is the most idiotic idea in video games ever

Wat
---

If you want to see every chapter for completionists sake then it's pretty bad.

The way I look at it is that it's meant to be a balancing act for people who suck too much. So if you lose too many characters can you unlock an extra chapter that gives you more powerful characters to make up for it. That's the best way to justify it. I always just ignore them, they weren't in the original game anyway
---

Grand Kirby posted...

If you want to see every chapter for completionists sake then it's pretty bad.

The way I look at it is that it's meant to be a balancing act for people who suck too much. So if you lose too many characters can you unlock an extra chapter that gives you more powerful characters to make up for it. That's the best way to justify it. I always just ignore them, they weren't in the original game anyway

It's still unlockable characters that are based around having dead characters, which is annoying. Especially for someone like me, being a completionist. I've never recruited those characters because I don't like having teammates die, but it means I miss out on ever having recruited them.

That said, remake to FE3 basically made Shadow Dragon look even worse, since they didn't hide characters behind death wall gaiden chapters, they gave you more chapters to tell stories in between SD and HoLaS, added Supports... and actually added more story. But wasn't released outside of Japan because "wah Shadow Dragon didn't sell"
---

I got a bunch of random axe guys that had no dialog at all

Ogma seems pretty cool

wasn't he in YS?

Right now I'm in a chapter where a Thief and a mage are fleeing from a Myrmidon

hey that term rings a bell!

Mia and I think Zishark or something?

They were in PoR

They were good units!

also I think, Stefan?
---

I'm trying to remember some of the nuances this game offers

Does speed determine if you get double hits?

I remember you needing strength to wield heavy weapons, and if its heavier than your strength, your speed goes down, right?

What does skill do?
---

Punnyz posted...

Does speed determine if you get double hits?

yes. if you have 4 more Speed than your opponent, you will double them. (so 6 speed vs 2 Speed will double, 15 Speed vs 11 Speed will double, etc.)

it also increases your evasion.

Punnyz posted...

I remember you needing strength to wield heavy weapons, and if its heavier than your strength, your speed goes down, right?

yes. 11 weight and 10 strength means -1 speed. 9 strength would be -2 speed. etc. etc.

Punnyz posted...

What does skill do?

makes you hit more often
---

Skill is only +1 hit per point in this game, so it's a very impotent stat; you can mostly ignore it. (I mean, skill is always a bad stat, but it's worse in this game than usual!).

Grand Kirby posted...

If you want to see every chapter for completionists sake then it's pretty bad.

The way I look at it is that it's meant to be a balancing act for people who suck too much. So if you lose too many characters can you unlock an extra chapter that gives you more powerful characters to make up for it. That's the best way to justify it. I always just ignore them, they weren't in the original game anyway

My problem with that is that the side chapters (like Horace's in particular) have some of the only remotely interesting writing in the game (probably because whoever wrote the original FE1 was incompetent). But yeah if you just care about gameplay you can probably just ignore them. (The units you get are often pretty solid, but hardly essential or the best.)
---

the game is like 10 hours long honestly. problem is that fire emblem breeds the kind of fans who are literally obsessed with keeping every character alive even if it means they just sit in your roster and do nothing.

you can play the game one time, get all of the characters to the end

play the game a second time with a small roster, killing everyone else, and bringing all of the gaiden-recruited unique units to the end

if you were a "completionist" you'd just do that in two runs of the game and call it a day. it's not even that hard or time consuming. I've beaten the game 4 times on 4 different difficulty settings (normal, hard 1, hard 3, and hard 4).

it's a very short game that you can get through very quickly, even on your first playthrough.

the other main complaint is of course the mechanics being dated which... as PUN already addressed... it's literally an NES game. if you want to play a more modern game then go play one.
---

I seem to recall being able to move after you attack, and if you are able to do that in later games, I am definitely missing that right now. But it's literally the first game in the series so I'm willing to forgive it
---

That was just something mounted units could do in PoR and RD. They make small changes like that between games sometimes.
---

I started freaking out because I was using my White Mage to heal 2 HP wounds so he could level up , then I realized his staff was about to break. But luckily after I finished the chapter, they started letting me freely go to the armory. Dodged a bullet there
---

It's now in the point of the game where I have to select the units to go into battle. I'm taking everyone except two axe guys and the Archer kid

Already benching people
---

Yeah, there's a lot of filler in this game.
---

Heroic Bigpun posted...

It's now in the point of the game where I have to select the units to go into battle. I'm taking everyone except two axe guys and the Archer kid

Already benching people

That's another reason the "killing characters for bonus chapters" isn't really that bad, you have TONS of people to throw away.
---

Heroic Bigpun posted...

I started freaking out because I was using my White Mage to heal 2 HP wounds so he could level up , then I realized his staff was about to break. But luckily after I finished the chapter, they started letting me freely go to the armory. Dodged a bullet there

haha yeah you get almost no staves in the first maybe 3 or 4 chapters of the game which makes h3, h4, and h5 difficulty PARTICULARLY brutal, but things get a lot more manageable after that. being able to buy items, forge weapons, and change character classes freely gives you a ton of options for dealing with the difficulty.

you can even mitigate the RNG of growths to some extent. if you get outright BAD gains you might be stuck needing to reset, but if you get gains in areas you might not have wanted, it's sometimes possible to fix this issue by simply changing the class of specific characters and their role within the group.

certain classes also have optimal growth rates for certain stats, too, so there's also an element of strategy to using class change as a way to get better growths in farmable chapters before switching to permanent classes with better suited abilities for difficult chapters. the fact that you don't pay anything or need to use any items to change between classes within your current group helps this a lot.

(and if all of that sounds confusing or overwhelming just feel good in knowing that you can easily beat the game on normal or even h1-h3 difficulty without ever bothering with the stuff I mentioned above)
---

waiiiit a second

an arena?
---

Yeah, the earlier games had arenas, where you could spend money to fight someone and get as much exp and money as you wanted. But be warned - if someone dies in the arena, they die for real.
---

NeoElfboy posted...

Characters are bland and unmemorable. So's the story though at least that's pretty normal for FE.

I dunno, I think the story's pretty decent in Shadow Dragon. Or at least the writing is.

The side characters are one-note (sometimes literally one-line), but there probably about the same number of interesting main characters/main villains as most of the rest of the series. They're just surrounded by a ton of generic trash.
---

I'm not gonna do anything excessive here but I'm gonna use the people that have been falling behind and catch them up to lvl 5 or 6 using the arena

nothing excessive indeed because I don't have good gear, and apparently you can't use forged items
---

so now that I have the attention of some fire emblem fans

how was the remake of Gaiden on 3ds?
---

also i doubt I'm using Mathis

I also got my first mage here

I have ALOT of horse units right now
---

Did they let you use your actual equipment in the arena in this one? In all the other games they just gave you an iron weapon so you never had to worry about losing your stuff.

I really enjoyed the Gaiden remake on 3DS. That's how you should remake an NES Fire Emblem.
---

Yeah, they throw horses at you like no tomorrow in this one. Mages are really good in this game because the only units with resistance are other mages. Most non-magic units have a 0% resistance growth, so don't expect your guys to get any better resistance than they have now.
---

its pretty funny because its OBVIOUS if a unit is recruitable in the battlefield

but the tricky thing is HOW you do it

who am I supposed to bring!
---

Lena

I think Matthis makes a comment that should basically tell you but I might be thinking of New Mystery.
---

If that's the one I think it is, it becomes a lot more obvious after you've played a bunch of the games because they reuse the whole "cleric or other weak unit recruits myrmidon" so many times.
---

Punnyz posted...

its pretty funny because its OBVIOUS if a unit is recruitable in the battlefield

There's actually at least one unit that isn't obviously recruitable, and it's hilarious if you figure out you can recruit that person.
---

WickIebee posted...

Punnyz posted...

its pretty funny because its OBVIOUS if a unit is recruitable in the battlefield

There's actually at least one unit that isn't obviously recruitable, and it's hilarious if you figure out you can recruit that person.

Oliver from RD? Or are you talking about someone from Shadow Dragon?
---