Shadow Dragon: My personal thoughts and experiences

[Garlyle]

I decided to give a second chance to this game, but to be honest I don't see why this game was actually remade. The time the remake came out it already missed the de facto elements of Fire Emblem games like Rescue drops, support conversations and stuff. As everybody says the characters are boring, the story progression is weak, every map is seize the point, villages can only visited by Marth. I did make it to Ch.14, but I still wonder what were they thinking with Ch.13 ballista map, this is just annoying if you want a no death run.

Is Heroes of Light and Shadow any better?

[Scraiza]

The game was made with Kaga's vision in mind of letting you create your own story with the characters, which is why there's next to no dialogue, as that would get in the way.

Personally I love the game because of how it plays out, reclassing adds a bunch of replayability if you like messing around with your units, though reclassing is only really a big gameplay element when you increase the difficulty, since then the stats matter much more.

(Also yes Ch13 Wooden cavalry sucks, my condolences)

[Interdimensional Observer]

14 hours ago, Garlyle said:

but I still wonder what were they thinking with Ch.13 ballista map, this is just annoying if you want a no death run.

In FE1, Ballisticians were plain old 2 range. FE3 made them into long range units, but got rid of FE1 C13, therefore, they didn't have a problem.

SD decided to make Ballisticians like their FE3 selves in attack range, for more uniqueness as opposed to plain inferiority to Archers. Yet somehow, beyond removing the movement capabilities of a few of the Ballistae I believe, nobody thought that C13 needed any changing.

A really bad move here, it's like the introduction of the weapon triangle, including something FE1 wasn't built around, but worse in this one instance. 

[Garlyle]

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

In FE1, Ballisticians were plain old 2 range. FE3 made them into long range units, but got rid of FE1 C13, therefore, they didn't have a problem.

SD decided to make Ballisticians like their FE3 selves in attack range, for more uniqueness as opposed to plain inferiority to Archers. Yet somehow, beyond removing the movement capabilities of a few of the Ballistae I believe, nobody thought that C13 needed any changing.

A really bad move here, it's like the introduction of the weapon triangle, including something FE1 wasn't built around, but worse in this one instance. 

I'm ok with ballistas when they are fairly balanced. In this chapter it's a bad wheel of fortune, which could lead to unlimited reset counts. I'm ok with ballistas as how they worked in gameboy titles, they should keep it that way honestly: still annoying, but not too much. Since we can also have ballisticians in this game, it seems to be a balance choice, but the huge number of ballistas, it's ridiculous. It's as bad as infinite shot ballistas from Genealogy, you just can't get around it, you don't have multiple options to go against them.

[Etrurian emperor]

19 hours ago, Scraiza said:

The game was made with Kaga's vision in mind of letting you create your own story with the characters, which is why there's next to no dialogue, as that would get in the way.

I get this to some extend but the idea goes completely against what I consider crucial for a Fire Emblem game. Fire Emblem separates itself from something like advance wars by having every unit by an actual person with an actual personalty and actual hopes and dreams. Turning everyone into a generic soldier blob goes against this. Kaga himself moving away from this vision in his later FE games suggests they felt that making everyone a mute wasn't a good decision. And I wonder if technical limitations of the NES rather than vision isn't a bigger reason for the lack of dialogue. New mystery had the same cast of characters but would go on to do more with them then the first game did. 

On 24-9-2018 at 12:55 PM, Garlyle said:

Is Heroes of Light and Shadow any better?

It is. They try way harder with the story, the support system is limited but at least gives most people a defined personality and aside from that one notable exception in Macedon I think the game has very solid map design. 

Edited September 25, 2018 by Etrurian emperor

[omegaxis1]

2 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

It is. They try way harder with the story, the support system is limited but at least gives most people a defined personality and aside from that one notable exception in Macedon I think the game has very solid map design. 

But you will have to deal with Kris. 

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, omegaxis1 said:

But you will have to deal with Kris. 

I found him pretty easy to ignore. Just a matter of closing your eyes and pretending the character he stole the moment from actually doing the talking. 

[omegaxis1]

3 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I found him pretty easy to ignore. Just a matter of closing your eyes and pretending the character he stole the moment from actually doing the talking. 

Unless he's talking to Katarina. She's the only reason I will accept Kris's existence.

[Robert Stewart]

6 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

New mystery had the same cast of characters but would go on to do more with them then the first game did.

Just barely - most characters in FE12 get one support conversation with the avatar and nothing else. When you consider how many characters FE12 tried to force into the game that weren't there originally, is that really all that much better that FE11? You have the same situation where a few core characters are given most of the development, but the majority of the cast still has bare minimum characterization, though admittedly FE12's bare minimum is a bit more than FE11's.FE12 is also helped by FE3 having a larger script originally, so there was more to work with from the start.

...

My biggest problems with SD come down to gameplay, mostly due to the elements they tried to modernize. Updating classes to match their modern versions, adding the weapon triangle and STR offset weight, nerfing statboosters, and so on. One of SoV's key insights was keeping a lot  of the original gameplay weirdness intact, and IMO the game was better for it. With FE11 you had a very standard(if polished) story coupled with very standard FE gameplay, which leaves a very standard experience overall. Hopefully Echoes is an indication that IS has learned they don't need to alter the underlying mechanics of older games to make them enjoyable to modern audiences.

[eclipse]

On 9/24/2018 at 12:55 AM, Garlyle said:

The time the remake came out it already missed the de facto elements of Fire Emblem games like Rescue drops, support conversations and stuff.

If there's one thing that bothers me, it's ill-informed opinions.  So. . .

- Rescuing wasn't introduced as a mechanic until the GBA games.  It isn't a de facto element.  The Rescue staff is another story, but I doubt that's your issue.
- Side conversations exist, and they range from pretty bland (Minerva and her posse) to mildly amusing (Astram/Boah).  They aren't flashy, but it adds to certain characters a bit.  Actual Support Bonuses exist, though that's not very well-explained (and most of them don't make much sense).

This is by far the funniest game to draft.  Thanks to the relatively low stats, and the rather wonky growth rates, the results can be pretty amusing.  Who would've thought that taking Draug out of his armor would turn him into a really fast glass cannon?

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Who would've thought that taking Draug out of his armor would turn him into a really fast glass cannon?

Ironically, Draug had always had un-Armor archetypical growths. His FE1/3 selves have 20 Str and 10 Def compared to 40 Skl/Spd. His bases and class are the only things armory about him.

 

6 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Rescuing wasn't introduced as a mechanic until the GBA games.

I haven't played T776 yet, but I thought I heard Rescue the command was a thing there?

[DisobeyedCargo]

16 minutes ago, eclipse said:

- Side conversations exist, and they range from pretty bland (Minerva and her posse) to mildly amusing (Astram/Boah).  They aren't flashy, but it adds to certain characters a bit.  Actual Support Bonuses exist, though that's not very well-explained (and most of them don't make much sense).

I actually never found any of the support convos. Is it like gba style where they have to sit next to each other for a couple of decades turns or so?

[eclipse]

13 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I haven't played T776 yet, but I thought I heard Rescue the command was a thing there?

Maybe?  I know Capture was a mechanic, which I thought was cool.  Some of the other things, not so much.

4 minutes ago, DisobeyedCargo said:

I actually never found any of the support convos. Is it like gba style where they have to sit next to each other for a couple of decades turns or so?

Supports That Do Things (like give evade/crit): Have two characters deployed in a chapter.  If enough chapters pass, and they're within three tiles of each other, stuff happens.  Think FE9-style, minus conversations and affinity.  One example is having the Wolfguard hang out together.

Conversations: Deploy both characters, then move them next to each other.  An easy early one is Caeda/Ogma.

[Reality]

Thracia has rescue as well as capture... there are entire levels built around the mechanic with Chapter 19 probably being the most fleshed out. Using Rescue is also a massive quality of life improvement in casual play since you only have to mash through half of the "I'm leaving ahead of you, Prince Leaf" texts due to taking  2 units at a time instead of 1 in the many escape levels. 

That said it's not really a mechanic I consider core to the series... If anything I feel like it's pseduo-AI abuse in the context of the GBA games and Telius..

I think people notice it more in Shadow Dragon because of Marth having to interact with maps a lot more than other Lords, and much more focus on impassble/water terrain through the entire game instead of just a few one-off maps while doing some minor countries arc. That said I prefer it to the ubiquitous "if I can get a horse/flier there" that area is 100% done" mentality. 

I don't feel like rescue drops and other stripped out mechanics hurt Shadow Dragon because it makes it feel like more of a strategy game and less an RPG at least relative to the other games in the series. Things like skip-enemy turn more than make up for any elements that would make it's pace "slow" especially considering the notoriously slow pace of certain Fire Emblem games.

Edited September 27, 2018 by Reality