Remakes

[TheEmblem]

So I have a question how good is the remake of fe1 (shadow dragon) l heard it was terrible; how faithful are any and all remakes in the franchisw for that matter? 

Edited January 27, 2017 by TheEmblem

[Etrurian emperor]

Shadow Dragon is at the very least functional. If you go in with low expectations then you may have some fun with it. Its Fire emblem at its most basic.

Shadow dragon is VERY faithful, too faithful. About no one in the first game had a personality and some had no lines aside from a death quite so Shadow dragon had that as well. The original had no supports and Shadow dragon doesn't either. The story seems to have been largely unchanged though there has been a prologue added that details kid Marth's escape from Altea. Aside from that lil bit of extra the story is very bare bones but its at least functionally.

Shadow Dragon isn't terrible. Its problem is that its so faithful to a decades old game that almost every other Fire emblem surpasses it. If you accept that and don't expect anything more then the basic fire emblem then you'll enjoy it. The map design and enemy placement seems to be decent. I'd even say the maps themselves look pretty good. 
The map narration is also pretty excellent, not enough so to mask the absence of a story but its at least something. 

I consider FE12 to be one of the best games, surprisingly. It fixes a lot of the problems that denied Shadow dragon from having any charm. Some sort of supports return and the story has a bit more meat on its bones. The maps are pretty excellent as well. 

Edited January 27, 2017 by Etrurian emperor

[maybe]

it's really good and fun

it's really faithful to the original too, everything is kept at least a little similar to the original and things that didn't work are generally made less frustrating or bad 

it also added reclassing which is pretty cool

fe12 is less faithful to the original but also has a lot of new content

it added a player avatar who alters the story a bit, but a lot of the new content is pretty interesting

they also added a new subplot that the avatar is involved in as well as extra gaiden chapters to get the fe11 characters that weren't in the original fe3

you can get almost all the fe11 characters in fe12 which is cool

the avatar did sort of affect the story in not so good ways that may have also undermined a few things from fe11 but it's forgivable for most people (i am not included in those most people though)

Edited January 27, 2017 by unique

[The Malign Knight]

SD is quite polarizing in that there are people who dislike it for being too faithful to the original and for the Gaiden Chapters requirements and other people who like it for not only the first reason, but also because of the simplicity that came from Its "faithfulness". Still,if you like the typical FE gameplay a lot, then you should definitely try it.

New Mistery is...strange: the gameplay is top notch and the presence of supports give more characterization to the Akaneia cast. However, It has one big problem: the Avatar, whose name is Kris; the problems regarding him is that he is Always praised by everyone for no reason and his own presence ruins certain aspects of the story - such as Marth's character. If you care primarily about gameplay tough, I'd recommend you to give it a try.

 

[Jedi]

27 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I consider FE13 to be one of the best games, surprisingly. It fixes a lot of the problems that denied Shadow dragon from having any charm. Some sort of supports return and the story has a bit more meat on its bones. The maps are pretty excellent as well. 

So you like maps where you just pair 4 people up and rout everyone and find it interesting map design?

[Slumber]

44 minutes ago, Jedi said:

So you like maps where you just pair 4 people up and rout everyone and find it interesting map design?

Yeah, of the things I'd praise Awakening for, map design/objetive design is definitely not one of them.

Anyway.

Shadow Dragon is... whatever. As said, it's way too faithful to 25 year-old game design. It more or less completely neglects the advancements the series has made over this time period, and it just feels... off. It's ugly and the characters are boring. That said, there's a chunk of the fandom that still really enjoys it, so it may be worth your time if you are curious. You might like it more than some of us.

New Mystery, on the other hand, is what would happen if you took an ancient Fire Emblem, and remade it with the bells and whistles you would expect out of a Fire Emblem game made in the 10s. It's a very good game, even for FE standards. Kris being a bit of a Mary Sue hurts it, but if you're not familiar with the original FE3, Kris is no worse of a Mary Sue than Robin or Corrin, and at least the entire story doesn't revolve around him/her. It's still a Marth game, it's just for some reason, everyone loves his sidekick.

Shadows of Valentia claims to be a faithful remake, but that remains to be seen, as we know very little of it.

Edited January 27, 2017 by Slumber

[Etrurian emperor]

57 minutes ago, Jedi said:

So you like maps where you just pair 4 people up and rout everyone and find it interesting map design?

Oh wow, this is silly of me. I don't which is why I don't think Awakening has the best maps. I was actually talking about 12 but got the number mixed up 

Edited January 27, 2017 by Etrurian emperor

[Slumber]

46 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Oh wow, this is silly of me. I don't which is why I don't think Awakening has the best maps. I was actually talking about 12 but got the number mixed up 

Fates does have pretty bitchin' maps.

I'd still say Thracia and Radiant Dawn have better maps though. That chapter 14 map of Thracia is just... I love it so much. Fire Emblem needs more maps where you're playing a very tight defensive game. It shows up here and there, but the setting of holding off an INSANE, large-scale city siege is so good.

[maybe]

1 hour ago, Slumber said:

Shadow Dragon is... whatever. As said, it's way too faithful to 25 year-old game design. It more or less completely neglects the advancements the series has made over this time period, and it just feels... off. It's ugly and the characters are boring. That said, there's a chunk of the fandom that still really enjoys it, so it may be worth your time if you are curious. You might like it more than some of us.

okay I know people don't like shadow dragon and I understand why people think it could've been better but the thing is it's not really because it "neglects the advancements" the series has made or is "way too faithful"

the original FE1 isn't a very good game although fe3 is a slight improvement

pretty much everything archaic and bad about fe1 is completely removed

most characters have increased growths (some even had 0% in certain stats previously), almost every class has a promotion (fighters, pirates, and more couldn't promote), classes that can't promote can reach higher levels, myrmidons and mercs are separate classes, master seals are used to promote, unit stats are all visible, classes are tweaked to be more like their newer counterparts, (wyvern knights can use axes) and the weapon triangle is present

the thing that I think is more important though is that it has a lot of newer aspects that can honestly make it more playable than most of the prior fire emblem games

battle animations can be skipped without having to turn them off completely, enemy range can be toggled with the push of a button, individual weapons can be forged without having to purchase new ones, you get extra units if you lose too many to prevent the game from being impossible, and chapters have actual checkpoints that you can reload

honestly I feel like it's less that shadow dragon didn't update the original enough or add anything that the newer games have and more that it didn't add the things people love about the newer games, which is a totally fair reason not to like it, but I still feel people shouldn't ignore that it did add plenty of things to FE1 to make it more playable and enjoyable

[Slumber]

27 minutes ago, unique said:

okay I know people don't like shadow dragon and I understand why people think it could've been better but the thing is it's not really because it "neglects the advancements" the series has made or is "way too faithful"

the original FE1 isn't a very good game although fe3 is a slight improvement

pretty much everything archaic and bad about fe1 is completely removed

most characters have increased growths (some even had 0% in certain stats previously), almost every class has a promotion (fighters, pirates, and more couldn't promote), classes that can't promote can reach higher levels, myrmidons and mercs are separate classes, master seals are used to promote, unit stats are all visible, classes are tweaked to be more like their newer counterparts, (wyvern knights can use axes) and the weapon triangle is present

the thing that I think is more important though is that it has a lot of newer aspects that can honestly make it more playable than most of the prior fire emblem games

battle animations can be skipped without having to turn them off completely, enemy range can be toggled with the push of a button, individual weapons can be forged without having to purchase new ones, you get extra units if you lose too many to prevent the game from being impossible, and chapters have actual checkpoints that you can reload

honestly I feel like it's less that shadow dragon didn't update the original enough or add anything that the newer games have and more that it didn't add the things people love about the newer games, which is a totally fair reason not to like it, but I still feel people shouldn't ignore that it did add plenty of things to FE1 to make it more playable and enjoyable

The thing is, the "improvements" to SD were half steps, rather than whole steps. New Mystery is where you see whole steps, and that game isn't nearly as divisive as SD.

Yeah, there weren't many characters with 0% growth rates(They were still there, but the revamped class system was supposed to compensate and give units better growths) in major stats, but the growth rates they DID have weren't very high. There are so, so, SO many worthless units in Shadow Dragon that liking a character and wanting to use them was an extreme gamble. Even accounting for classes, most units had pathetic growth rates, and somebody like Darros, who is a good unit, can only ever get a 25% speed growth at MOST, on top of an awful base speed state. This makes progression in SD feel incredibly slow, as you'll only ever see a handful of units make meaningful gains by leveling up, and it's a hold-over of the FE games before 4(Though 4 had its own issues for making character progression feel slow in the first gen). Adding promotions to classes that could promote doesn't do a whole lot to fix that, since aside from Barst, any axe-fighter isn't going to feel much different at promotion than they did at recruitment.

The only "newer" aspect I can think of is how the game introduced growth rates that were tied to class and swappable classes, which is something I've never been a fan of. It worked best in New Mystery and Fates, but here it just effectively forces units into archetypes dependent on their class, which was already an archetype. The series has done methods of influencing character stats in the past, and they've all been better than forcing a unit to play as a class that doesn't fit their bases and growths to fix bad stats.

The other new thing it does is how it handles gaiden maps, but that feels like something that was thought up 25 years ago, before anybody gave any serious thought to gameplay balance. This one aspect is actually something that is a step back compared the original FE1.

And yes, I was being hyperbolic by saying it "ignores advancements in the series", but it really only meets the bare minimum. You can skip animations? That's cool. The game still feels slow as dirt because it doesn't feel like your units grow in any meaningful ways, the maps aren't very appealing, the story is barebones and the characters get almost literally no development. In FEs where the story, characters, and maps fail(*coughcoughAwakeningcoughcough*), it's at least fun to see your party flesh out and your units develop. And in this regard, Shadow Dragon still feels like a very, very old FE.

Forging is cool, but that's a very minor newer FE feature that SD got right. What about supports, or in-between chapter conversations? Various other things that have been with the series since the SNES? Gone.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Slumber