Shadow Dragon may show its age, but it's still worthwhile for fans of the franchise and has a lot to go back to
Marth, who we were introduced to in Super Smash Bros. Melee, is the main character in Shadow Dragon. A former ally betrays his country, leaving the king dead and the land ruined. Marth escapes to a safe place where he stays until he is grown, and once he is old enough he gathers troops to regain his country and the entire continent, and save the world from the evil Shadow Dragon Medeus.
While the tale's premise is cool, Shadow Dragon's story is really quite shallow and disappointing. There appears to be no difference between it and the dialogue from the NES original, because it feels totally stripped of significance and a reason to care about what happens next. The entire story revolves around Marth being told to go capture this place or save this person, and the dialogue in between doesn't involve Marth nearly as much as it should. The other characters are nonexistent in the story after they are introduced, too, which is a big letdown and takes away almost all the strength the other Fire Emblem games have in story. Shadow Dragon shows its age in its story, and it makes for a lackluster adventure 18 years later.
Thankfully, the rest of the game is more solid than the story. The outstanding feature of Shadow Dragon is its turn based strategy gameplay, which is accessible while still being deep and leaving you with a lot to come back to. You take turns with your opposing army, moving each of your characters on the grid and attacking your enemies. Battles are decided by a basic rock-paper-scissors method of hit chances while using the characters' statistics such as strength, defense, and the like. Despite the fact that you are leaving the battles to chance, the game still involves a lot of skill in its strategy and how you use your characters. Fire Emblem has always been very good at this and it still is.
The units at your disposal are very diverse, and within each one you can change their class between battles if you want. This gives you the chance to fully customize your team and find where a certain character fights best. There are also quite a few weapons at your disposal, but not as many as recent games in the series have had. You are able to customize weapons, though, which is a really worthwhile feature and makes up for the lack of variation.
Shadow Dragon is the first game in the series to feature online play, and this is one of the best parts of the game. You are allowed to form a squad of any five units from one of your save files and use any weapons you have to fight against other people over Wi-Fi, and this is one of the biggest inspirations to replay the game. There is also an online shop that has great weapons and is very useful for playing through the story and forming a good online team. The online play is a great addition to the game, and offers a good reason to come back to Shadow Dragon.
To characterize Shadow Dragon as a DS game, it features touch screen controls as an option for those players who dislike the use of buttons. This control scheme is actually quite good and functions almost as well as the good old fashioned way. I use the normal controls because I've played enough Fire Emblem to the point where I move along at a very rapid pace, but the touch controls are good for newcomers or those who are intimidated by buttons (I don't know why you would be, as the normal controls are simple enough, but you never know...).
Shadow Dragon's graphics are an interesting mix of 2-D and 3-D. The map is shown in normal 2-D, like an enhanced verison of the GBA games. The battles have 3-D characters fighting on 2-D backdrops, which doesn't look half bad. The character models look pretty good, and they are always moving slightly to make them more lifelike. The fights, like on the GBA, aren't the most interesting things in the world, so being able to skip them by pressing start is a welcome option. Of course, you can always just turn them off too.
Shadow Dragon does a pretty good job in the sound department. The music is well done and sounds pretty good, and although the tracks aren't as memorable as in previous games they're still fitting to the situations and environments. The sound effects are good as well, with sounds like the clanking of armor or galloping of horses sounding nice and clear.
To sum it all up, Shadow Dragon is a great game that could have been better. Although I have never played the NES original I can tell there isn't much improvement here in some areas, namely that of story and weapon variety. However, the addition of online play and update in graphics are great, making the game look like it's from this decade at least on the outside. Despite its shortcomings, Shadow Dragon is still well worth a purchase for fans, and with online play and six difficulty levels there is a lot of value within the little game card.
Positive:
+ Fire Emblem gameplay is as solid and outstanding as ever
+ online play is fun and adds lots of value
+ six difficulty levels offer great challenges and more play time
+ touch controls work very well
+ you can make a unit whatever class you want
Negative:
- story is very shallow and weak, and it's only 25 chapters long
- doesn't push the DS very far graphically