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Author	Topic: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
FrostyNinja collection \| wishlist Posts: 1,582 Registered: May '07	Date Posted: 2/20 3:08pm Subject: RE: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	A writing assignment done the lunch period before it was due by a 4th grader with aspergers syndrome would have a strong enough story to appease the average FE fan. The only characters to have been well developed in the entire 10 games that this series has been around were Alvis in FE4 and Nergal in FE7. That isn't to say that there haven't been other entertaining characters, but those two had the only stories with any real matter to them. Most complaints on FE8 are gameplay related and not to do with its pathetic attempt at a story. FE6 has all the depth of a puddle formed three weeks back from a spilled canteen in the Sahara, and yet most FE players consider it one of the series' higher points. This shows that its perfectly reasonable to have no more story than a string of moral absolutes directing you towards the next army that you have to slaughter, so long as the slaughters are fun. The story in a video game is heavily dependent on gameplay anyway. There's an old adage in writing about 'showing not telling.' In prose this means making the character exhibit some emotional behavior rather than just saying that he or she felt the emotion. In FE5 and FE10 part 1 you're engaged in a war for liberation against an overwhelming occupying presence. Both games tell you that, but FE5 does a better job of showing it through the gameplay, and thus makes the story more compelling even though its clear that a lot more work went into the dialogue for cutscene/base conversations in FE10. -----signature----- Combat is an equation. Those with intelligence have a natural advantage. "Whoever sees one who points out faults as a revealer of hidden treasures should follow such a wise one, intelligent, who tells what is blameworthy." - the Buddha
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Link_Is_My_Homie collection \| wishlist Posts: 73 Registered: Sep '07	Date Posted: 2/20 9:33pm Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	"I am so going to get this game. Oh, wait... The World Ends With You is staring at me from across the room there. As is Chrono Trigger, Advance Wars, Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword, Dragon Quest V and others! Deadly Creatures, Okami Wii, and Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn are also vying for my cash. What to do what to do." -ilikenintendoalot Do what I'm doing and get these games dirt cheap at Circuit City while you still can. I got Chrono Trigger and two other DS titles last week and I'll probably go back for a few more this weekend.
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XxsceneXgirlxX collection \| wishlist Posts: 2 Registered: Feb '09	Date Posted: 2/21 11:25am Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	I don't know why the retards developing this game thought mid-level saves would be either a good idea, or a new idea. In both of the gba versions all that you had to do to save your game from where you were was turn it off. it would be right there waiting for you when you turned it back on. And those games had a restart option. The mid-level save has already f'd me so hard i had to restart the whole game twice to avoid losing my pegasus knight. Also the animations are way lamer this time around. I mean when was the last time an arrow lazily flew anywhere? and the characters all look the same on the map. Characters of the same class are also indistinguishable in battle scenes. Don't get me wrong, i love fire emblem and it is a great game, but how would creating an irreversible save file with no restart options be a good idea?
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BakuretsuUshi collection \| wishlist Posts: 197 Registered: Sep '04	Date Posted: 2/22 8:27am Subject: RE: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	XxsceneXgirlxX, there is more than one way to save your game. The mid-level save can be loaded as many times as you want, so you can try again from the midpoint if someone dies or something. It's supposed to make it easier. You can still suspend your game the old-fashioned way if you just want to take a break. http://fire-emblem.com/shadowdragon/essentials/index.html#topic3
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Hypershell_SBL collection \| wishlist Posts: 292 Registered: Nov '04	Date Posted: 2/23 1:43pm Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	And not only that, but mid-level saves DO NOT override your chapter start saves. They're stored separately, so if you save mid-level and find that you screwed something up, you can ALWAYS return to the start of the chapter. "you may not find yourself humming the tunes after you turn your DS off." What sane person DOESN'T hum, "Come, Let's Go Together" when their DS is off?
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XxsceneXgirlxX collection \| wishlist Posts: 2 Registered: Feb '09	Date Posted: 2/23 2:11pm Subject: RE: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	BakuretsuUshi, thank you for replying. i know i sound like an idiot, but i couldn't find how to access my chapter save file. The game would only give me the option of going to the mid-level save. So how do i get to my chapter saves?
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YourVeryOwnGeek collection \| wishlist Title: lolgrenades Posts: 14,631 Registered: Jun '07	Date Posted: 2/23 2:16pm Subject: RE: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	IIRC, there is a little button onscreen that will loop back to your file saves on the file screen. -----signature----- http://mmii.info/?db=YourVeryOwnGeek http://myanimelist.net/animelist/GeekyG
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dragonmaster9000 collection \| wishlist Posts: 591 Registered: Jun '07	Date Posted: 2/24 1:50pm Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	Yeah, you can press R or tap the button near the top right of the screen to toggle between Battle Saves and Chapter saves, which are two different things.
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abyssal_lover collection \| wishlist Posts: 6 Registered: Jan '09	Date Posted: 3/9 3:08pm Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	> The ESRB would have a field day with the incest running rampart in FE4. They don't have to know. wth? esrb plays the game through to check all of the different things it must be rated for dang....
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Abitibi collection \| wishlist Posts: 16 Registered: Aug '00	Date Posted: 3/11 12:52pm Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	Pre-rendered sprites hurt my eyes! Where is the great pixel art from the GBA titles? ... Might still be a good game tough.
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Narcacist collection \| wishlist Posts: 3 Registered: Mar '09	Date Posted: 3/11 2:44pm Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	The Good: One of the first elements of game-play that stood out to me was obviously the ability to toggle the enemy movement radius. This is a feature I would have loved to see in other titles I have played such as Advance Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics. It is easy to implement and goes a long way in helping you emerse yourself in other, less tedious, aspects of game-play. The ability to switch between items, in your inventory, on the fly was also a nice feature and added yet another element to strategic game-play. In addition, I was glad to see that terrain had a noticable impact on unit movement. The terrain is essentially another opponent you have to deal with and this really lends itself to a more interesting strategic expirience as well. The Bad: Maybe 'bad' is too strong of a word; but, there were a few features that simply annoyed me. The convoy system was one of these features. I would rather see a system in place more in tune with FFT where you may toggle equipment at the expense of an action turn. Having to interface with Marth to do this was very annoying as I didn't very much like having to sacrifice my movement AND action phase to do this; albeit, I never had much need for the convoy as I was able to prepare myself before the battle began. Another item was how each individual character's turn played out. I'm cutting the game some slack, however, as I understand this game is simply a refurbished version of the earlier Famicom game. With that in mind, I didn't like the fact that performing an action negated my movement turn. Character turns did not appear to have any phases at all with the exception of 'outside-battle' and 'in-battle.' I would like to see the character-turn phase further broken down to action, movement, and battle. That way I can actually perform an action BEFORE I moved. I know it sounds small, but it actually can be a nuissance at times as I could not, say, heal a Cavelier before he moved without waisting my Clerics movement turn. If I wanted to both move the cleric AND heal the Cavalier, I would have to limit the movement of my Cavelier to within the radius of my Cleric. Annoying. The last item was the re-class system. Maybe I just don't understand the system (as I'm not that far in the game...I think. Chapter 13); but, there appeared to be no 'talent-tree' so to speak. In other words, is excelling in a sword-based class going to unlock higher sword classes/techniques/ or will it unlock some seemingly unrelated class. I'll leave this short as I'm very well aware this could be a direct result of my ignorance. I'd also like to see weapon skills that transcend your current class. If a charater learned how to use a sword, he should remember whether he is on a horse or not. Bottom line though, this system is definitely not as cool as the job system for FFT; though, again, this was a remake of an original dating back to 1990.
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Narcacist collection \| wishlist Posts: 3 Registered: Mar '09	Date Posted: 3/11 2:46pm Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	(continuation of prev post) The Ugly: The game menu was the absolutely most annoying aspect of the game; particularly, with the pre-planning menu system just prior to a battle. the Armory did not give you a way to check equipement counts while purchasing items. This applies to both in the battle and pre-planning phases. I also did not like how you could not check a characters attributes while forging weapons in the Armory. That is something, I beleive, you would want to see! It just seems like the information in the menus could have been consolidated a lot better. Information that you would want to compare is often distributed over several menus, with no way of actually seeing it together. This basically manifested itself as not being able to change a units inventory in the pick-character menu and not being able to pick a unit while in the inventory menu. They could have eleminated the 'pick' menu and the 'inventory' menu and just consolidated it to one screen. While they were at it, they could have allowed you to reclass on the same screen. There was no need to seperate everything! This particular feature should not be overlooked by the fact that this is a game from 1990. They could have easily changed the menu system..assuming this was not their attempt to do so. Anyway. This was the single most distracting feature of the game. \ All in all though. This game is very entertaining and I do not regret buying it. I think the score is a little bit high for this game (maybe due to some type of nostalgic factor); but, hey, I'm not a prefessional critic.
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FrostyNinja collection \| wishlist Posts: 1,582 Registered: May '07	Date Posted: 3/11 5:09pm Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	Narcacist posted: Another item was how each individual character's turn played out. I'm cutting the game some slack, however, as I understand this game is simply a refurbished version of the earlier Famicom game. With that in mind, I didn't like the fact that performing an action negated my movement turn. Character turns did not appear to have any phases at all with the exception of 'outside-battle' and 'in-battle.' I would like to see the character-turn phase further broken down to action, movement, and battle. That way I can actually perform an action BEFORE I moved. I know it sounds small, but it actually can be a nuissance at times as I could not, say, heal a Cavelier before he moved without waisting my Clerics movement turn. If I wanted to both move the cleric AND heal the Cavalier, I would have to limit the movement of my Cavelier to within the radius of my Cleric. Annoying. Live with it. That's part of the strategy, and you're asking for it to be removed without an adequate reason. In some of the later games they've given mounted units the ability to use their remaining movement after performing actions, but that's it. It isn't an outdated feature, its one that never had to be updated in the first place. Narcacist posted: The last item was the re-class system. Maybe I just don't understand the system (as I'm not that far in the game...I think. Chapter 13); but, there appeared to be no 'talent-tree' so to speak. In other words, is excelling in a sword-based class going to unlock higher sword classes/techniques/ or will it unlock some seemingly unrelated class. I'll leave this short as I'm very well aware this could be a direct result of my ignorance. I'd also like to see weapon skills that transcend your current class. If a charater learned how to use a sword, he should remember whether he is on a horse or not. Bottom line though, this system is definitely not as cool as the job system for FFT; though, again, this was a remake of an original dating back to 1990. The class change system alters stats and growths. Switching to a new class exchanges the class bases, and alters the character's growth rates. More information is here. Also, weapon levels do stay with you as long as you change to a class that uses the same weapon. For instance, Navarre starts as a Myrmidon with a C in swords, and will retain that C in swords if you choose to switch him to a cavalier. Narcacist posted: The game menu was the absolutely most annoying aspect of the game; particularly, with the pre-planning menu system just prior to a battle. the Armory did not give you a way to check equipement counts while purchasing items. This applies to both in the battle and pre-planning phases. I also did not like how you could not check a characters attributes while forging weapons in the Armory. That is something, I beleive, you would want to see! You know, knowing the quantities of an item would actually be a not bad idea. I usually only buy items when I know that I have a unit in need of a new weapon, and buy for that unit specifically, but I can't see such a feature doing any harm. I don't really understand the Forge complaint though. There really aren't any scenarios where you won't want to give the maximum bonuses to mt, hit, and crit. There's some reason to worry about Wt, because there's no reason to reduce it more than necessary to avoid AS penalties, but that only requires that you know your unit's str, and it's very rare that wt will even need a change at all. Narcacist posted: It just seems like the information in the menus could have been consolidated a lot better. Information that you would want to compare is often distributed over several menus, with no way of actually seeing it together. This basically manifested itself as not being able to change a units inventory in the pick-character menu and not being able to pick a unit while in the inventory menu. They could have eleminated the 'pick' menu and the 'inventory' menu and just consolidated it to one screen. While they were at it, they could have allowed you to reclass on the same screen. There was no need to seperate everything! Yeah, I'm going to agree with you there. That would actually make a lot more sense. -----signature----- Combat is an equation. Those with intelligence have a natural advantage. "Whoever sees one who points out faults as a revealer of hidden treasures should follow such a wise one, intelligent, who tells what is blameworthy." - the Buddha
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Narcacist collection \| wishlist Posts: 3 Registered: Mar '09	Date Posted: 3/11 10:44pm Subject: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Review
	FrostyNinja posted: Live with it. That's part of the strategy, and you're asking for it to be removed without an adequate reason. In some of the later games they've given mounted units the ability to use their remaining movement after performing actions, but that's it. It isn't an outdated feature, its one that never had to be updated in the first place. I think you may have misunderstood me. I was just stating that the ability to allow units to complete their movement after an action would be desirable (as you say they do in later games). I understand the game is the way it is (and it is fine that way); but, it would have been preferable if that feature you mentioned above was used within this game. FrostyNinja posted: I don't really understand the Forge complaint though. There really aren't any scenarios where you won't want to give the maximum bonuses to mt, hit, and crit. There's some reason to worry about Wt, because there's no reason to reduce it more than necessary to avoid AS penalties, but that only requires that you know your unit's str, and it's very rare that wt will even need a change at all. I totally understand your take on this. From the prospective of that particular weapon, who cares who wields it? You just want to maximize the stats; understandable. However, when I am choosing a weapon to forge (since I can only use the forge once per battle) I want to see the overall character stats in order to see who needs the weapon modifications the most. This also helps me to decide what weapon type I should modify to maximize my armies effectiveness to particular opponents; basically, I would look for the unit with a low attack stat and forge a weapon to compensate. I consider this a very minor inconvenience, though. I could always look up that unit's attack stat and then go into the forge for my modifications. This was simply another argument that information could have been consolidated more effectively. Thanks for the link BTW.
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