Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light is a tactical RPG and the first game in the Fire Emblem series, developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems and released for the NES on April 20, 1990 in Japan only. The first official Western release happened on December 4, 2020 for the Nintendo Switch, however for whatever reason Nintendo made it a timed exclusive, meaning it is not available for purchase anymore since March 2021.
That baffling decision aside and disregarding the fact that the newest Fire Emblem game was just recently announced, this series was not an instant hit. The initial reception by some critics was poor due to "poor graphics" and the game being "difficult to understand". This resulted in poor initial sales, a situation that would improve over time through positive word-of-mouth (especially a positive Famitsu column on the game about half a year after release) and led Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light to sell well over 300.000 units up until 2002.
Since the Switch version is no longer for sale, I wasn't able to play with the official translation. The translation I got, as I noticed after playing for many hours, did not really fit with the official names for items, characters and locations. The main protagonist / the prince is called Marth, not Mars.
STORYTELLING
The translation differences on seemingly everything notwithstanding, it was still "easy" to follow since the different translation was used consistently. Unfortunately, the game throws around a bunch of names of people and kingdoms all the time so it takes a while to get a grasp on what is going on. At first, many names simply end up sounding the same, so I had to find my way out of that web of confusion.
There are 25 chapters/missions in this game, and before and after each, there is some text or dialogue progressing the story, plus a small monologue during missions when you would get near the more notable chapter bosses.
You play as the Prince of Altea, Marth, who was able to escape when Altea was under attack by the Dolhr Empire. Marth's sister Elice sacrificed herself so that Marth could escape. During this time, their dad had left an ally, Gra, to watch over his kingdom, but Gra betrayed them to the Dolhr Empire. Meanwhile their dad had left to fight the leader of the Dolhr Empire, the Shadow Dragon, but failed and died. He used a Falchion in battle, a divine weapon that had stopped the Shadow Dragon 100 years earlier and it was taken from Marth's dad when he lost the battle. It is needed to fight the Shadow Dragon.
At the start of this game you stop an invasion of the new home of Marth, Talys, and then move out with your allies to fight the Dolhr Empire. Before that, you visit and free many other kingdoms and find more allies to aid you in your quest. All characters that aid you are named and have their own little back story (once the game ends, there is a brief summary on what each character is doing after the story conclusion, provided they survive).
And this is where the game gets its uniqueness from. The dev team decided to build on their experience from war games such as Famicom Wars, and add "RPG elements" to them. I think this game pushes the definition of an RPG, but that's a different discussion.
Each character is assigned a class and can level up to increase their stats. While this has gameplay implications only at first glance, it goes way beyond that. Characters barely have any dialogue apart from when your first recruit them, so building a connection to them is only possible on a limited scale. However, it still happens as you find characters that increase in level over time and improve in their abilities. You're excited when they then get criticial hits at the right time to get you out of tricky situations or you love them for simply being consistent throughout. And ultimately, this means it can hurt for a short while when you lose them to the perma-death system. It's a feeling I only know from XCOM games, but in those characters don't even have that backstory like they do here.
It's a system that is very limited here but is effective in general, and I can only imagine how much later entries built on it.
The main plot itself is convoluted for a first time player because you get a lot of lore dropped with no way to read it again or look up any info on anything. In general, the game lacks a tutorial or codex.
Once you get to grips with it, it is a solid plot but basic storytelling due to the technical limitations of the time. In addition, it was pretty typical for the time. I have just played 9 games in 1990 through this challenge so far and more than a few included the concept of "divine weapon is the only way to kill final boss". It works for a game to give the player needed motivation, so I can see why this seems to have been a popular choice for the overall theme. You'll be content with the storytelling for a game this old and with this much content outside of it, it'll the do the job, but nothing beyond that.
GAMEPLAY
Lots to discuss here. The game is a tactical RPG. Back in 1990, you would have found a lot of strategy games and a lot of RPGs, but few, if any, that combined the two.
The tactical part looks like this: You control a battle unit out of a set number of characters based on the level. Often, you would have about 15 units on the battlefield at once. If you had more characters available than the maximum possible amount - through recruiting them - a level would start by making you select the specific units that you want to deploy.
Once you do that, battle commences on a grid-based map. Maps changed for each level and would add strategical challenges, but wouldn't really change anything graphically or of their tone. The game has a turn-based battle system. You select a unit, move it up a specific number of grids based on the unit's Movement stat, and then attack an enemy if it is in range.
There are 21 classes in this game that mostly are specialized in something. There are your typical Fighters and Mercenaries who wield swords and axes and have average Movement range. Then there are your Archers who can only use bows, Clerics who cannot fight but only use a staff to for example heal or warp units (send them to anywhere else on the map, very useful) and Mages who can use powerful Magic and have high resistances. There are also "Pegasus Knights" that are on horseback and can fly over obstacles on the ground like buildings or trees, which usually take an additional step to move past for ground units.
Weapons usually have multiple different qualities. The lowest is the "Iron quality" and the best quality that is usually accessible is the "Silver quality". As you make more progress in this game, you come across many enemies that can resist Iron quality weapons, making the upgrade necessary. Luckily, money is literally no issue in this game, so all you need to do is buy new items. Unluckily, there is no "safe hub" or anything like that to stock up. Instead, shops are somewhere on the map in levels and usually guarded by enemies. Often, there would only be one store as well, so you could only send one unit to buy something per round. So I would spend multiple rounds after a map was cleared to just get everyone new items. This is a typical QoL issue that is surely handled differently in newer entries. I haven't played any Fire Emblem game up to this point, so I don't know.
Another QoL issue is how slow progression in this game is. When you control 15 units, you have to move all 15 units at a time, of course, but that takes a lot of time. This is probably a thing in current Fire Emblem games as well, and not the worst thing to do, but it does take a while and gets kinda boring once you are 10+ chapters in. I prefer the XCOM games here, where you only have 6 characters to control.
But again, this isn't the worst thing in the world. What is much worse is the individual battles themselves. The animation for one attack takes seemingly ages and when you enter over a handful of fights in a single round, it will take minutes to go through them all. Luckily, my emulator had a fast forward function, so I could skip through these much quicker. I didn't finish this game (I made it to Chapter 22/25) but I think it's worth pointing out that I got there in just 17 hours compared to the 26-40 hours it takes on a normal playthrough according to HLTB.
Strategically, there are a lot of ways to play this game thanks to the different classes and their specialties. If you want to bring a Cleric, Thief and Archer for example, they will not be - or you don't want them to be in the Thief's case - in close combat. A big system in this game is the "counter", which means if an enemy character attacks you, your character can counter and vice versa. If the Archer is attacked in melee combat, he will not be able to counter, which can make a big difference. Clerics don't attack at all. Thieves barely have any strength and limited health, so they usually will only be part of your squad to unlock doors and/or open chests. Clerics heal and warp and Archers can be devastating in long range combat, so they all do provide arguments for why they should be included in the squad.
But bring a few more Mercenaries, Fighters and Paladins and you'll have a lot more strength in Melee Combat. So do you go for more of them, or for a more mixed approach? All strategies have their advantages and disadvantages and more than a few will work, so it's nice to see these options being available.
Bringing the right squad to do the job becomes more important however when different Chapters are filled more with specific enemies that can only be significantly damaged with specific weapons. Some need to be fought with Magic, some with Arrows and some with Melee weapons. Plus, maps have enough strategical differences that having Pirates or Pegasus Knights that can go over water or having Mages and Archers who can shoot over walls becomes more important.
On the flipside, you can quickly find yourself in a bad situation when the most useful units for a particular level are the most under leveled. The only way to level up units is by having them battle. Especially later on, bringing those low level characters with you can be pretty bad since you will need all the fire power you got when the game starts throwing infinite reinforcements in your face until you finally defeat the boss and send Prince Marth to the Castle, which is a location he must visit to finish the level.
There is a balance that must be struck here, but I would have liked to get more additional ways to train my units outside of battle (probably expecting too much in a 1990 game). Especially when my strong units started dying late into game and enemy units just started being filled with strong Dragons that would show up in the dozens, the game pretty much had me in an impossible situation. You can't now level your low-level guys, nor can you even get them weapons since you need to do that within levels. When never ending groups of enemies come at you, when are you supposed to find the opportunity?
Due to this, I didn't get to finish the game, but there is a lot to like here.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. There is nothing noteworthy to discuss regarding the sound design, it sounded average for the time.
The music was definitely one of the highlights for me. 3 or 4 tracks were playing for most of the game, so it didn't necessarily have variety, but some tracks just were bangers, especially the start of chapter track. Look for "Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light- Chapter Start" on YouTube.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Even back then the game wasn't considered graphically pretty. I'd say it has some strong colors and the varied character design is pretty good, but there isn't much else to it besides that. You see the same few assets on every level, maps are mostly green spots of grass and even battles take place in a black background with nothing else on it.
ATMOSPHERE
Once I got firmly into the gameplay loop, playing this game was rather comfortable thanks to the mix of a solid soundtrack, uninspiring but not-ugly graphics and simply being around a cast of characters that have a place in this world and start to grow into trusted allies. It is nothing special but to me the atmosphere was rather positive than negative.
CONTENT
25 chapters, each take about 30-60 minutes on average. Lots of repetition here but also a satisfying strategical challenge throughout.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
There is a good mix in the design of the maps, especially considering what technical limitations the devs had to battle. Map design and enemy placement means that challenges that players have to fight through are varied, but sometimes the enemy placement and especially reinforcements get so ridiculous that you have no way of progressing through them with the units you have on hand. And this was clear hours ago, you just weren't aware. Infinite reinforcements also mean that the amount of opportunity is limited to level up underleveled units and to stock up on weapons and other items in the lead up to chapters 20+, which was frustrating.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
One of, if not THE first tactical RPG that started a whole genre. Due to that, this game already gets iconic status, and it's a mix of genres that works pretty well too (as evidenced by the series status even today).
REPLAYABILITY
This game can be played in different ways, but the hours and hours of watching animations and moving your units make this a hard sell for people looking for replayability. Apart from improved stats, there also is no incentive to play through the game and try to keep different units alive compared to previous runs.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
Definitely worth checking out if you're a Fire Emblem fan and want to see its origins. There is also some fun to be had and mostly the game offers a fair strategic challenge. If you're a veteran of the series, you might also do much better than me in the first half of the game and go into the second half more prepared, which will make or break your chance of completing this game.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan-only release, nothing to find in Western magazines
That baffling decision aside and disregarding the fact that the newest Fire Emblem game was just recently announced, this series was not an instant hit. The initial reception by some critics was poor due to "poor graphics" and the game being "difficult to understand". This resulted in poor initial sales, a situation that would improve over time through positive word-of-mouth (especially a positive Famitsu column on the game about half a year after release) and led Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light to sell well over 300.000 units up until 2002.
Since the Switch version is no longer for sale, I wasn't able to play with the official translation. The translation I got, as I noticed after playing for many hours, did not really fit with the official names for items, characters and locations. The main protagonist / the prince is called Marth, not Mars.
STORYTELLING
The translation differences on seemingly everything notwithstanding, it was still "easy" to follow since the different translation was used consistently. Unfortunately, the game throws around a bunch of names of people and kingdoms all the time so it takes a while to get a grasp on what is going on. At first, many names simply end up sounding the same, so I had to find my way out of that web of confusion.
There are 25 chapters/missions in this game, and before and after each, there is some text or dialogue progressing the story, plus a small monologue during missions when you would get near the more notable chapter bosses.
You play as the Prince of Altea, Marth, who was able to escape when Altea was under attack by the Dolhr Empire. Marth's sister Elice sacrificed herself so that Marth could escape. During this time, their dad had left an ally, Gra, to watch over his kingdom, but Gra betrayed them to the Dolhr Empire. Meanwhile their dad had left to fight the leader of the Dolhr Empire, the Shadow Dragon, but failed and died. He used a Falchion in battle, a divine weapon that had stopped the Shadow Dragon 100 years earlier and it was taken from Marth's dad when he lost the battle. It is needed to fight the Shadow Dragon.
At the start of this game you stop an invasion of the new home of Marth, Talys, and then move out with your allies to fight the Dolhr Empire. Before that, you visit and free many other kingdoms and find more allies to aid you in your quest. All characters that aid you are named and have their own little back story (once the game ends, there is a brief summary on what each character is doing after the story conclusion, provided they survive).
And this is where the game gets its uniqueness from. The dev team decided to build on their experience from war games such as Famicom Wars, and add "RPG elements" to them. I think this game pushes the definition of an RPG, but that's a different discussion.
Each character is assigned a class and can level up to increase their stats. While this has gameplay implications only at first glance, it goes way beyond that. Characters barely have any dialogue apart from when your first recruit them, so building a connection to them is only possible on a limited scale. However, it still happens as you find characters that increase in level over time and improve in their abilities. You're excited when they then get criticial hits at the right time to get you out of tricky situations or you love them for simply being consistent throughout. And ultimately, this means it can hurt for a short while when you lose them to the perma-death system. It's a feeling I only know from XCOM games, but in those characters don't even have that backstory like they do here.
It's a system that is very limited here but is effective in general, and I can only imagine how much later entries built on it.
The main plot itself is convoluted for a first time player because you get a lot of lore dropped with no way to read it again or look up any info on anything. In general, the game lacks a tutorial or codex.
Once you get to grips with it, it is a solid plot but basic storytelling due to the technical limitations of the time. In addition, it was pretty typical for the time. I have just played 9 games in 1990 through this challenge so far and more than a few included the concept of "divine weapon is the only way to kill final boss". It works for a game to give the player needed motivation, so I can see why this seems to have been a popular choice for the overall theme. You'll be content with the storytelling for a game this old and with this much content outside of it, it'll the do the job, but nothing beyond that.
GAMEPLAY
Lots to discuss here. The game is a tactical RPG. Back in 1990, you would have found a lot of strategy games and a lot of RPGs, but few, if any, that combined the two.
The tactical part looks like this: You control a battle unit out of a set number of characters based on the level. Often, you would have about 15 units on the battlefield at once. If you had more characters available than the maximum possible amount - through recruiting them - a level would start by making you select the specific units that you want to deploy.
Once you do that, battle commences on a grid-based map. Maps changed for each level and would add strategical challenges, but wouldn't really change anything graphically or of their tone. The game has a turn-based battle system. You select a unit, move it up a specific number of grids based on the unit's Movement stat, and then attack an enemy if it is in range.
There are 21 classes in this game that mostly are specialized in something. There are your typical Fighters and Mercenaries who wield swords and axes and have average Movement range. Then there are your Archers who can only use bows, Clerics who cannot fight but only use a staff to for example heal or warp units (send them to anywhere else on the map, very useful) and Mages who can use powerful Magic and have high resistances. There are also "Pegasus Knights" that are on horseback and can fly over obstacles on the ground like buildings or trees, which usually take an additional step to move past for ground units.
Weapons usually have multiple different qualities. The lowest is the "Iron quality" and the best quality that is usually accessible is the "Silver quality". As you make more progress in this game, you come across many enemies that can resist Iron quality weapons, making the upgrade necessary. Luckily, money is literally no issue in this game, so all you need to do is buy new items. Unluckily, there is no "safe hub" or anything like that to stock up. Instead, shops are somewhere on the map in levels and usually guarded by enemies. Often, there would only be one store as well, so you could only send one unit to buy something per round. So I would spend multiple rounds after a map was cleared to just get everyone new items. This is a typical QoL issue that is surely handled differently in newer entries. I haven't played any Fire Emblem game up to this point, so I don't know.
Another QoL issue is how slow progression in this game is. When you control 15 units, you have to move all 15 units at a time, of course, but that takes a lot of time. This is probably a thing in current Fire Emblem games as well, and not the worst thing to do, but it does take a while and gets kinda boring once you are 10+ chapters in. I prefer the XCOM games here, where you only have 6 characters to control.
But again, this isn't the worst thing in the world. What is much worse is the individual battles themselves. The animation for one attack takes seemingly ages and when you enter over a handful of fights in a single round, it will take minutes to go through them all. Luckily, my emulator had a fast forward function, so I could skip through these much quicker. I didn't finish this game (I made it to Chapter 22/25) but I think it's worth pointing out that I got there in just 17 hours compared to the 26-40 hours it takes on a normal playthrough according to HLTB.
Strategically, there are a lot of ways to play this game thanks to the different classes and their specialties. If you want to bring a Cleric, Thief and Archer for example, they will not be - or you don't want them to be in the Thief's case - in close combat. A big system in this game is the "counter", which means if an enemy character attacks you, your character can counter and vice versa. If the Archer is attacked in melee combat, he will not be able to counter, which can make a big difference. Clerics don't attack at all. Thieves barely have any strength and limited health, so they usually will only be part of your squad to unlock doors and/or open chests. Clerics heal and warp and Archers can be devastating in long range combat, so they all do provide arguments for why they should be included in the squad.
But bring a few more Mercenaries, Fighters and Paladins and you'll have a lot more strength in Melee Combat. So do you go for more of them, or for a more mixed approach? All strategies have their advantages and disadvantages and more than a few will work, so it's nice to see these options being available.
Bringing the right squad to do the job becomes more important however when different Chapters are filled more with specific enemies that can only be significantly damaged with specific weapons. Some need to be fought with Magic, some with Arrows and some with Melee weapons. Plus, maps have enough strategical differences that having Pirates or Pegasus Knights that can go over water or having Mages and Archers who can shoot over walls becomes more important.
On the flipside, you can quickly find yourself in a bad situation when the most useful units for a particular level are the most under leveled. The only way to level up units is by having them battle. Especially later on, bringing those low level characters with you can be pretty bad since you will need all the fire power you got when the game starts throwing infinite reinforcements in your face until you finally defeat the boss and send Prince Marth to the Castle, which is a location he must visit to finish the level.
There is a balance that must be struck here, but I would have liked to get more additional ways to train my units outside of battle (probably expecting too much in a 1990 game). Especially when my strong units started dying late into game and enemy units just started being filled with strong Dragons that would show up in the dozens, the game pretty much had me in an impossible situation. You can't now level your low-level guys, nor can you even get them weapons since you need to do that within levels. When never ending groups of enemies come at you, when are you supposed to find the opportunity?
Due to this, I didn't get to finish the game, but there is a lot to like here.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. There is nothing noteworthy to discuss regarding the sound design, it sounded average for the time.
The music was definitely one of the highlights for me. 3 or 4 tracks were playing for most of the game, so it didn't necessarily have variety, but some tracks just were bangers, especially the start of chapter track. Look for "Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light- Chapter Start" on YouTube.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Even back then the game wasn't considered graphically pretty. I'd say it has some strong colors and the varied character design is pretty good, but there isn't much else to it besides that. You see the same few assets on every level, maps are mostly green spots of grass and even battles take place in a black background with nothing else on it.
ATMOSPHERE
Once I got firmly into the gameplay loop, playing this game was rather comfortable thanks to the mix of a solid soundtrack, uninspiring but not-ugly graphics and simply being around a cast of characters that have a place in this world and start to grow into trusted allies. It is nothing special but to me the atmosphere was rather positive than negative.
CONTENT
25 chapters, each take about 30-60 minutes on average. Lots of repetition here but also a satisfying strategical challenge throughout.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
There is a good mix in the design of the maps, especially considering what technical limitations the devs had to battle. Map design and enemy placement means that challenges that players have to fight through are varied, but sometimes the enemy placement and especially reinforcements get so ridiculous that you have no way of progressing through them with the units you have on hand. And this was clear hours ago, you just weren't aware. Infinite reinforcements also mean that the amount of opportunity is limited to level up underleveled units and to stock up on weapons and other items in the lead up to chapters 20+, which was frustrating.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
One of, if not THE first tactical RPG that started a whole genre. Due to that, this game already gets iconic status, and it's a mix of genres that works pretty well too (as evidenced by the series status even today).
REPLAYABILITY
This game can be played in different ways, but the hours and hours of watching animations and moving your units make this a hard sell for people looking for replayability. Apart from improved stats, there also is no incentive to play through the game and try to keep different units alive compared to previous runs.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.
OVERALL
Definitely worth checking out if you're a Fire Emblem fan and want to see its origins. There is also some fun to be had and mostly the game offers a fair strategic challenge. If you're a veteran of the series, you might also do much better than me in the first half of the game and go into the second half more prepared, which will make or break your chance of completing this game.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan-only release, nothing to find in Western magazines