Replayed this for the sake of a video I'm making ranking every Fire Emblem, half-expecting to discover that my love for it was wrong the whole time but no, it's as great as I remembered it being. I could go on about how much I love DSFE's distinct feel of being player phase focused with extremely limited options in comparison to say Conquest or Engage, the interesting way having a meta based around forging affects resource management, and how the game it's a remake of is purposeful in a way that the overwhelming majority of subsequent FEs aren't but I think what makes this game hit different to me is my unique relationship with it. Maybe it's just because it was my first experience with the series when I was 12 but FE11 represents the weird mystique surrounding Fire Emblem prior to Awakening where it was spoken in hushed tones as this frictional experience where a character losing all their HP means they're gone for good. I'd liken it to Earthbound/Mother where being in the best selling party game of all time means you're inherently going to have a mythical specter built around the games from people who haven't played them, although in FE's case, that specter revolves moreso around its difficulty as opposed to weirdness in Earthbound's case. This reputation is of course exaggerated, as out off the five FEs with a stateside release (Blazing Sword, Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance if we're not counting the Japanese exclusive Maniac Mode) are easy to get the hang of regardless of which difficulty you're playing on and the remaining two only become uniquely hard if you play them on higher difficulties.
But as a 12 year old playing FE11 on normal as my first experience with Fire Emblem, this might have been the hardest game in existence. I could never get past Chapter 8 then. Still, something about the game was compelling to me. Shortly after the point where I threw in the towel though, Awakening would come out with this nifty little feature called "casual mode" and I would become fully obsessed with it, constantly starting new files in a foolish attempt to unlock every support conversation. At some point in this obsession, I tried to give the game another go and got as far as Chapter 20 before once again throwing in the towel. However, my Awakening obsession would eventually wear off. Fates and Echoes: Shadows of Valentia just didn't compel me in the way that Awakening did (to the point where I didn't even play past Act 2 of the latter) and getting into anime helped me realize just how tropey the game's writing is. I wrote off my love of the series as a juvenile one that only existed because casual mode Awakening was one of the few-non Pokémon games I was able to beat for the longest time.
However, in the summer of 2019, something would change. I watched the two episode Fire Emblem OVA on a whim and while I found it as cheesy as its reputation made it out to be, there was a charm to it that made me want to play a Fire Emblem game for the first time in two years. I remembered that I had all three of the Fire Emblem games available on the Wii U virtual console and started with Sacred Stones, the only one of the three that I hadn't touched beforehand and became enamored with it. Upon finishing it, I wanted more and booted up Shadow Dragon, aiming to conquer my childhood fears once and for all. While finally beating the game on normal mode really isn't that much of an accomplishment, finally emerging victorious against the demon that tormented me as a child felt like a transition to adulthood for my 19 year old self.
As corny as this story is, Shadow Dragon may very well have had a profound impact on the way I see games. For a long period of my life, a game's value was dictated by how much it stimulated me on a superficial level. Games I loved were ones I beat and if I couldn't beat a game, it probably didn't have that much value. But Shadow Dragon opened me up to the idea of more frictional experiences being worthwhile. It's probably not a coincidence that the overwhelming majority of games that I'd list among my favorites are ones that I played after the floodgates that this one opened. I don't think it's an understatement to say that my current tastes in games would not have existed without the one that most FE fans write off as "bad and ugly."
But as a 12 year old playing FE11 on normal as my first experience with Fire Emblem, this might have been the hardest game in existence. I could never get past Chapter 8 then. Still, something about the game was compelling to me. Shortly after the point where I threw in the towel though, Awakening would come out with this nifty little feature called "casual mode" and I would become fully obsessed with it, constantly starting new files in a foolish attempt to unlock every support conversation. At some point in this obsession, I tried to give the game another go and got as far as Chapter 20 before once again throwing in the towel. However, my Awakening obsession would eventually wear off. Fates and Echoes: Shadows of Valentia just didn't compel me in the way that Awakening did (to the point where I didn't even play past Act 2 of the latter) and getting into anime helped me realize just how tropey the game's writing is. I wrote off my love of the series as a juvenile one that only existed because casual mode Awakening was one of the few-non Pokémon games I was able to beat for the longest time.
However, in the summer of 2019, something would change. I watched the two episode Fire Emblem OVA on a whim and while I found it as cheesy as its reputation made it out to be, there was a charm to it that made me want to play a Fire Emblem game for the first time in two years. I remembered that I had all three of the Fire Emblem games available on the Wii U virtual console and started with Sacred Stones, the only one of the three that I hadn't touched beforehand and became enamored with it. Upon finishing it, I wanted more and booted up Shadow Dragon, aiming to conquer my childhood fears once and for all. While finally beating the game on normal mode really isn't that much of an accomplishment, finally emerging victorious against the demon that tormented me as a child felt like a transition to adulthood for my 19 year old self.
As corny as this story is, Shadow Dragon may very well have had a profound impact on the way I see games. For a long period of my life, a game's value was dictated by how much it stimulated me on a superficial level. Games I loved were ones I beat and if I couldn't beat a game, it probably didn't have that much value. But Shadow Dragon opened me up to the idea of more frictional experiences being worthwhile. It's probably not a coincidence that the overwhelming majority of games that I'd list among my favorites are ones that I played after the floodgates that this one opened. I don't think it's an understatement to say that my current tastes in games would not have existed without the one that most FE fans write off as "bad and ugly."
5 Comments
FIVE POINTS
I'm a Shadow Dragon fan (derogatory) and I feel like Marth's game put us through a STRUGGLE, nothing had challenged me as a kid as much as Fire Emblem and I appreciate it for that. Good review, they call this game ugly but when the berserker swings his critical attack I yell every time.
i prefer the nes version but this review makes i me think i might be Rarely and Actually Wrong
Bandidostar
3 months ago