While not discussed in many circles online, Shadow Dragon is probably one of the most important Fire Emblem games, being the last true “classic” styled entry. Upon it’s original release, the game wasn’t generally favored, and alongside rather poor sales in the United States it left Fire Emblem in a tricky place. Where the series would go after this will be explained in some other review i do in the future, as for now I want to talk about this game. Like a majority of this franchise, I had much interest in trying this game, as it was a remake of Marth’s very first adventure after all. But just like the many other games in the series I wanted to play, it wasn’t very accessible.
In the current day when FE8 and 7 started my obsession with this series I had hopped onto 6 immediately afterwards. I was not very impressed. Ok-ish map design tied with lackluster player units and absolute beasts of enemy units led me to frustration into dropping the game after only 13 chapters. I was done. So I decided to hop into this game instead, it was also on a handheld and I had heard some good things about it before. So I started playing.
This is a contender for my favorite Fire Emblem game so far from its gameplay alone. While rejecting a few gameplay systems from previous entries and retaining certain cryptic NES jank, the game itself is very speedy and easy to just pick up and play. Maps aren’t very long if you play smart, you can turn off pointless enemy turns to save time, and the game rarely feels like it's wasting your time. That being said… the certain carryovers from the original can be pretty annoying at points. Only Marth can enter villages, and there’s no rescue system which can leave your weaker units in a lot of trouble sometimes. I miss the rescue system because it added an extra layer of possible risk vs reward and gave cavaliers and fliers even more usability. But it's not too major of a blow.
Reinforcements are another element of this game that can be obnoxious. It’s a complete coin flip on whether they will spawn from unattended forts or the sides of the map, and like other FE games with reinforcements you would only know this from previous knowledge or using a guide. With some maps it's a fine enough hindrance for not playing efficiently enough, but in others it’s such a pain in the ass, especially when 90% of the time these reinforcements are horse riders or flyers, meaning they will dash after your ass IMMEDIATELY.
That being said, I feel as a tradeoff this game is honestly kinda broken. Units such as Caeda, a General Setger, and any Ballista user will be your best friend for a majority of the game, especially when properly exploiting the forgery system on the Wing Spear or Ballista weapons. There’s this one map I was really struggling on until I realized that I can just warp Setger to the central part of the map and have him sit there while taking literally no damage and killing every single enemy + reinforcement for almost the entire session. It’s little moments like these that make me kinda love this game, it’s busted and exploitable in areas to a comical degree but almost as a balance to this there are a lot of reinforcements and later maps are fine with having enemy healers out of your range constantly.
Permadeath, permadeath, permadeath. It’s impossible to discuss any Fire Emblem game prior to 12 without mention of this ever so infamous punishment for poor play, the ability to permanently lose any of your units at any time. It’s easy to be intimidated by it. What if I lose an integral character from my team and I can’t beat the game because of it? Shadow Dragon seems to try something a bit different with this concept by also fusing it with another frequent feature of Fire Emblem: the gaiden chapters. In previous games, the gaiden chapters could only be accessed by certain parameters, to my knowledge mainly related to recruiting certain units or finishing a chapter in a turn limit (and they were also required to beat FE6. lol.). This game’s approach to gaiden chapters was rather different- instead, they are used rather as a failsafe for players who are losing too many units. I’ve seen many players complain about this feature and how they don’t like the game is “forcing” them to lose units for it, but that’s entirely missing the point- the game isn’t forcing you. It’s there for players who might be struggling or decide not to constantly reload their game upon failure. If you feel that you are falling behind and might not be able to make it to the end, the game encourages you to keep going and gives you backup to put the player in a much more comfortable position. Now obviously, you still have to try if you want to see things to the end, but it’s there to keep you going regardless.
I think this take on the concept of permadeath is an insanely smart way of still keeping the punishing system it always has been, but creating new ways to make the player not feel discouraged from finishing the game. As early as the prologue, you are forced to sacrifice a single unit- with you even being told to accept your losses and move on. This is war, there is no playing around.
Replayability is another focus of Shadow Dragon. The game itself isn’t very long, consisting of 25 chapters that are all relatively short. However, this is taken advantage of by incorporating several difficulty options. Each difficulty progressively gets harder in a natural scale, starting with normal and slowly increasing the BS factor. It’s a way to keep you coming back, and topping that with Shadow Dragon’s addictive nature it fits like a glove.
The graphics have always been a major turnoff. After the simply beautiful GBA games with plenty of colors and smooth battle animations, going to the ugly pre-rendered look of this game alongside the “meh” looking animations may turn away most players. As much as it is to say “graphics aren’t everything” presentation still means a lot to a game in the long run, especially if it’s in a series with previous entries that looked much better. They’re graphics I can simply tolerate, but it did leave me disappointed especially with the potential of visuals the DS could pull off. The promotional art is a different story, though. Composed by Ghost in the Shell manga artist Masamune Shirow, they’re splendid pieces that fit Fire Emblem while being distinctive and stylish pieces in their own right. Unfortunately, he didn’t make that much art for this game, aside from some promotional pieces and some other artwork that you can’t even see outside of an art book he published, but they’re great nonetheless.
This game, while being fantastic in it’s own right, also marked the end of an era for Fire Emblem. The sequel would be the introduction to modern FEisms such as casual mode and a player avatar, which would soon be followed up be Fire Emblem Awakening, an absolute game changer in both Fire Emblem and Nintendo’s history, but that’s a story for another time. It’s a shame that this game wasn’t ever really given it’s moment to shine, especially when it’s a very solid package with a lot of fun quirks alongside being a great remake. Hopefully it will someday be given the recognition that it deserves, and I hope that this review will encourage readers to try it out themselves. Come join us, together we ride!

SMT If… is pretty poorly considered by people who go through it today, and while I kinda understand that (it’s the meanest one of the SNES ones), I also think what it does is incredibly interesting and ambitious. In terms of structure and scope it paved the way for both the Persona and Devil Summoner series, and there are decisions made as late as Persona 5 and SMT V that I could trace back here. Plus, at its core, its still SNES SMT, and that’s just a damn good time.

Honestly on a gameplay front there’s not a whole lot to talk about. The party has been split into a front and back row, but all that affects is whether basic attacks can hit or not, and enemies have a completely different party system still. The guardian concept, a proto-Persona idea that requires you to die to upgrade the demon possessing you, feels a little underbaked. It just feels like the guardians would (and do!) feel better when they affect your stats less and your abilities more, which is exactly what they do in later games. I like the dying mechanic though, its a nice buffer at the beginning.

Besides that, it’s still SMT. The dungeons are a bit prettier and sliiiightly less labyrinthine now, and there’s much less of them (only 6-8 depending on how you count it in the main game), but they’re still goofy and mean little mazes at their core. Each dungeon is themed around overcoming one of the seven deadly sins, so like in Greed you make the boss harder if you pick up more loot, or in Sloth you have to wait just beyond the point of boredom/frustration (lots of people despise this dungeon, but idk it wasn’t too bad for me. maybe i just like grinding tho lol)

The story is quite personal compared to the mainline games, focusing on just a couple characters and their interactions, without needing to save the world (instead, just gotta save the school!). I don’t really wanna say more about it, but make sure you play Reiko’s route the first time, as it unlocks an extra dungeon and the true final boss, who is INCREDIBLY thick and difficult.

But yeah, not totally sure why this one gets so much flak, it mostly seems like a slightly different and super interesting spin on the SNES SMT formula. Big recs!

a decent game. it has a lot of cool ideas, like TATE (which requires you to constantly kill enemies if you want to survive) and the walljumping sections (which are quite basic and annoying at times but overall interesting) but it gets boring real fast. since there aren't any real combos apart from mashing the square button, and every boss revolves around using the combo system, it's a game that will probably have you bored for most of your playthrough. thankfully it's not too long to be that much of an issue.
hotsuma's scarf is badass tho i'll give it that