Well I finally beat the game over the weekend, so I guess I can give my final thoughts and observations about Shadow Dragon. This isn’t going to be long.
- This is possibly the only game in the franchise where death is necessary. This sounds like a post title, but hear me out. In order to get other characters in Shadow Dragon, you have to either have a certain amount of units die or just have a specific unit die. That basically fights with the expected notion that we have to save all our characters.
- One day I’ll do a run where I’ll play the game without trying to save characters. One day.
- On that note of characters, making a formal note to have 15 strong characters by or close to the endgame, since that’s the amount that it takes.
- Also, though expected, you have to decide what characters you want to have by then. Can’t train everyone. Then again, this is Fire Emblem, you can’t really train everybody.
- I didn’t remember Medeus being as hard as he was, until I remembered I was facing him on Hard mode. God the other levels must be brutal…
- Also, fuck those closing doors at the endgame.
- As much as pains me to say it, the Archers/Snipers in this game suck. I hate how they’re so useful and seemingly strong for the enemies, but for you they grow incredibly useless. This is mainly due to what units are useful (you’re going to have flying units, for example), but still, it’s annoying. Good thing the Horseman are around. Too bad their growth rates suck…
- One day I’ll train Est. Well, actually, maybe not.
- Being a Pegasus Knight in this game is suffering. I say that since you can’t change their class into a Falcoknight unless you have the Elysian Whip, and you can only get the Elysian Whip by the online shop on a certain day, it’s almost suffering to train them. Well, unless you want them to be Wyverns. But I’d rather they not become Wyverns.
- Man, one day I’ll avoid making the stupid mistake to get a character killed, but I know it’ll happen.
- I promise to finally train a thief. No seriously, I swear!
- Welp, time to move on to the much superior Shin Monshou no Nazo.
Well, in all honesty, Shadow Dragon is not bad. The problem is that it really is just a remake of the Famicom/Super Famicom game — meaning it’ll have no depth or personality when it comes to its characters, or its story, nor any weapon additions or fights that we haven’t seen before. With its 25 chapters and little chance of getting to the side chapters unless you kill off characters, there’s also a case of playing the game over and over again — where’s the motivation going to come from? It’s just not going to happen. And that’s unfortunate, really.
