I was unsure when I started this game whether I would be able to enjoy it much less weather it all the way to the end. Revisiting old NES/Famicom games can be hit or miss. Sometimes I'll have fond memories from my childhood of games I remember quite enjoying. Then upon loading them up 30+ years later, the experience quickly falls apart with poor hit detection, lack of proper hit invulnerability windows or other associated design foibles that have been solved in the intervening years.

As the original Fire Emblem never had an official English localization and release until the limited December 2020 release on the Nintendo Switch, it was a title I never had a chance to experience in my youth. Warnings from other Fire Emblem fans mentioned the game was very rough and could be difficult for modern audiences to endure. Despite that, as I've become a big Fire Emblem fan in the last couple of years, I really wanted to see how the series began. I enjoy playing through a series from beginning to end to see how the series will evolve over time and how the developers choose to tackle and address design and gameplay issues that crop up through the years.

That said, Nintendo's own games seem to do a much better of job of weathering time and standing out as gems of their era among the other releases scattered across their platforms. Nintendo has seemed to often be ahead of their time in terms of basic gameplay mechanics and polish which allows a good number of their older titles to still be quite enjoyable in the modern day.

I'm happy to report that Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light is another such title that seems to stand the test of time where others of its NES/Famicom brethren are best left to the faint memories of nostalgia. Well... mostly. I mean, it does have some glaring issues which will be enumerated on. But the core gameplay still holds up. (If you enjoy the core Fire Emblem gameplay, that is. This is obviously no Super Mario Bros.)

If you enjoy the tight tactical maneuvering of your units across a map and planning which of your units should engage which of the enemy to achieve success in the battle, I think you might enjoy the core gameplay here. You'll probably need to look up the battle formulas to have a good understanding of how engagements will play out, but I consider that part of the basic Fire Emblem experience. Be warned, much of the basic quality-of-life features that have become standard in the series will have not yet been invented. There's no battle forecast to approximate the outcomes of the battles. There's no enemy range indicators to show which of your units are in danger of being attacked next turn. These are annoying and may turn off some people due to the amount of busy work required to successfully battle through the maps.

However, the biggest issue by far is the basic inventory, trade, and shop systems in place in this first entry. It's rough to say the least. Your inventory is restricted to four slots. There's no pre-battle inventory management. Everything has to be done in the battle map. Each unit can trade with one another, but only one way. Then the shops can only be visited by one unit per turn. Units stop their turn on the shop blocking any other units that may need to visit and purchase something. This often results in large "conga lines" of units waiting to enter the shop each turn if multiple units need to be outfitted. It's frankly quite messy and honestly my biggest complaint about the game. A large bulk of my time on each map was just doing basic busy work of trying to get items passed around or bought and getting all the inventory issues sorted out. Depending on how particular you are about your units being properly geared, this can result in a big time sink for your playthrough.

Despite that, once everyone is ready to go and you're pitting your units against the enemy one after another and slowly turning the tide of battle, the game can be quite fun. I genuinely enjoyed my time with the game and I'm glad to have played it to see how the Fire Emblem series was born. However, I don't think I can ever see myself playing through it again. Once is enough. The lack of quality-of-life features creates enough of a slog that I don't think I could stomach a second playthrough. Plus, there are two remakes of the game in Mystery of the Emblem for the SNES/Super Famicom and Shadow Dragon for the DS if you just want to revisit Marth's story with better QOL features. I look forward to playing them in the future along with the many other Fire Emblem titles in the series. I just wish Nintendo had not pulled a Disney with the limited time release shenanigans so that other people that are later introduced to the series could have had a chance to play through an official English localization. For me, I'm glad I discovered it when I did so I was able to get a chance to see where it all began.