A great game for the series, with perhaps room for improvement I feel.
After that the Sacred Stones came out for the GBA and I took it up, expecting the same brilliance I saw in Fire Emblem. It was good, and it also had improved game mechanisms (for one thing, training is easier in this version). However I felt the story lacked impact compared to Fire Emblem, mainly due to the fact you're no longer part of the story as an advisor or some other entity within that universe.
Subsequent Fire Emblem games so far told their stories in a similar fashion to Sacred Stones (i.e. you're reading their stories). Same holds true for the current remake of the very first Fire Emblem game now on the DS, Shadow Dragon. Don't get me wrong though. The various stories in the Fire Emblem series has me hooked more than any bestseller you can find in bookstores. However, the way the story was presented in Fire Emblem 7 was by involving the player into the story. This made it stand out so much over the rest that I hope one day Fire Emblem games could return to that approach, albeit in variations of course and not necessarily as an advisor again.
Sorry for the long detour, but I had to get that out for a bit. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragons is no doubt a great DS game, incorporating the classic Fire Emblem gameplay we know (and love with any chance). Well... it should. It is the very first Fire Emblem game after all!
So yes, you've got an insanely hard battle waiting for you when you get this game. To top it all off, there's a hard mode for those masochistic enough to try. Now, I know that this concept isn't new, what is though is the various levels of difficulty within the 'Hard mode'. Yes, it seems like the developers had too much time on their hands, creating 5 levels of difficulty ranging from 'Hard' to 'Merciless' (five star difficulty). I've tried the first mission on merciless and got my entire army killed off (I'm no pushover at Fire Emblem, but man... they give enemies increased stats and reduce your by loads causing, for example, one of their thieves to hit my lance wielding cavalier twice taking a huge chunk of health away...).
So, the gameplay is good. However, there are a couple of grips I have with the game apart from it's story presentation that prevent this game from getting more merit than it deserves.
Firstly, there's no support conversation system. Some of you may like/dislike/ignore this system, but I love it mainly for its part in shaping the story and the relationships between characters. The characters in Shadow Dragon are as good as any other Fire Emblem characters, but without the support system the nuances in the various characters' relationships are lost. Replayability is also reduced in this case (I've played Fire Emblem 7 so many times, and I've only got 47% of my support conversations. I'm taking a break from it but you can bet anything that I'll definitely be going back to play it again!).
Next up is the fighting animations (is that a cheer I hear, maybe?). I love the 2D fighting animations in the GBA games. The were oozing with charm and their attacks had sooooo much 'oomph' that you either went into an adrenaline rush whenever your characters made their attacks (let along their criticals) or you reeled from an enemy attack, wincing from the damage dealt. Whatever the case, the animations were fluid, fast and definitely furious. Come the 3D character models... I've not played much of the Gamecube/Wii FF games much yet, but from what I saw the characters attacks lack impact. Same goes for Shadow Dragon. Here, you get a isometric-ish 3D character model. The animation is fluid... but it's lackluster. Remember the criticals from the mercenaries in FF7 or Sacred Stones? Tapping the sword on the shoulder, then tossing it up high in the air quickly followed by a mighty leap, catching the sword in mid-air and slamming it into the enemies' skull? Brilliance. Now? A sudden fast movement forward, he attacks, the screen whites-out for a micro section and shakes for the same amount of time. There's nothing to compare. We need to get the point back to Intelligent Systems, stick to dynamic 2D models until you find out how to do the same for 3D ones!
Finally... well, actually that's it I guess. So in summary:
Gameplay: 8 (-1 from lack of impressive attack animations)
Story: 8 (-1 from lack of player involvement in story, -1 from lack of support conversations)
Hence the 8 I guess. Note that I've still yet to play through the bulk of the game yet, so an update to this personal review will probably be up... in a couple of years time. ^ ^
~mya