Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (of FE1 for short) is the definite victim of first-game syndrome. The basics of the core Fire Emblem experience is here: the grid-based movement, combat by initiation, permadeath, varied maps, a tons of units to use, and the ever-so-lovable enemy ai and all their jank. Despite the important foundation for the series's future success, FE1 is a game I don't want to recommend to really anyone. The game is so slow and even with the Switch version's built in speed up, it is still slow. Item management is cumbersome and trading takes up an action of a turn. The battle animations - while oddly charming, drags the already slow game down. The characters and npcs portraits are ugly (though funny to look at) and the music is charming, but repetitive. Overall, the game is simply bad, even by NES standards of first games. Thankfully, this game was remade through FE3 Book 1 and Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon on DS so if want to see the events of the War of Shadows, go play those instead. I don't recommend ever playing this game and only bother to play the game if you value the historical impact of this game. While I do still value this game for ultimately creating one of my favorite series, I don't value it for how bad it plays now.

This was the weirdest release Nintendo has ever done. Why did they go back to localize this game, only to sell it for 4 months? Why did they create a new emulation UI that is legitimately worse than the NES online UI. The ONLY way to save is by using a bookmark. Several times while playing, I accidentally ‘load bookmark’ instead of ‘save bookmark’ and lost literal hours of progress. They also went so far as to let you roll back turn by turn, but only give you one save state. They added a very nice sound test but did not include any instruction manual stuff that is actually necessary to understand what you’re doing.

I've tried to play FE1 a couple times in the past but just kind of got bored and annoyed by having so much critical information only accessible outside of the game (like weapon might or weight) or is just super tedious to do (like counting movement or calculating how much damage you’re going to do or moving items around). But going in not taking it seriously and instead just picking up on the vibes makes it very fun. You can have fun with the game by just getting a general feeling of whether you will double an enemy or withstand an enemy phase. I think trying to play the game too fast can take the fun out of it since a lot of the challenge comes from the way this game handled reinforcements, and I think it's a mistake to try to play this too efficiently.

Not seeing enemy movement or a battle preview got really annoying in some of the late game maps which did get a lot more tedious but aside from Chapter 24 I made a point not to warp-skip anything so I could get the full experience, and I’m glad I did. The reinforcements made me actually try to beat maps quickly, though many of them I have 15-20 turns in just because of the rotten inventory management. I don’t think I even used all my talisman and speed rings because I just didn’t want to deal with convoy management and trading stuff off of characters a certain point. This kind of stuff feels hostile to the player in 2023, but I don’t think it really weighs the game down that much. The core of the game is almost everything you expect from Fire Emblem even if the execution is held back by the technology limitations.

I played pretty loose with my characters. Both Christmas Cavaliers died in the endgame chapters, Wendell valiantly sacrificed himself for the Falchion, and I killed Tiki on the map because I couldn’t recruit her without Bonthu lol. Hardin is amazing in this game and Midia was an MVP. But I think Best girl was Maria, the damsel who is the most thirsty for Marth. Her good ending was just "her enthusiasm for Marth has not diminished".

The game isn’t some hidden masterpiece (but Gaiden is, check that one out). It's worth playing from a historical perspective, and one that every FE fan should beat at least once.

Yep, this is it. The one I'll hardly find the motivation to play and go through it.
It's sad that the west never got it because I feel it would have been much better and more interesting, but I don't mind that the first one we got introduced was the most new entry-friendly as possible: FE7 for GBA.

This game feels choppy on the pacing and managing the units, a perfect run with all the in-game units is impossible by default and I feel (still at map 7 btw) that if I keep digging I will find something to furtherly criticize it rather than really appreciate what it actually is: a game that still started a great franchise.

Here's my notes for my series replay:
- Weapon management is archaic and downright obnoxious for most of the game. Four inventory slots is even more of a joke.
- There are two (fucking 2) map themes.
- Lays down groundwork for long running series tropes (Jagens, R/G cavaliers, the Camus archetype villain, etc.).
-Very jank and exploitable gameplay in the last half, last few chapters were a game of warp Marth to Castle, seize castle which I didn't really mind tbh because I feel like this game is a little too long for what it does.
-Archanea is a neat setting and I love the world-building.
-Neat for the time is the best way that I can put it.