Three of the four of my least favorite Fire Emblem games. I’ve already reviewed Revelations so I won’t review it again. If you didn’t read those reviews you can read them here:
- The Story and the Characters: http://thecrusadergrant.blogspot.com/2016/07/my-revelation-review-part-2-story-and.html
- My Final Thoughts on the Game: http://thecrusadergrant.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-epilogue-my-final-thoughts-about-3.html
So yeah I’m not the biggest fan of Revelation. In fact I dislike Revelation about as much as I dislike Fire Emblem 1, Fire Emblem 3 Book 1 and Shadow Dragon. Why do I dislike the other three games so much? Well you’re about to find out.
Story: The first point I’d like to bring up is the story because it’s basically the same in all three games. “The plot goeth thusly” (to borrow a term from Sursum Ursa): Marth’s home country of Altea gets screwed over by its former allies causing Marth and a few knights to flee to the Island Kingdom of Talys. After time transpires Marth and co. decide to set out and defeat the evil Dolhr Empire. For the rest of the game Marth and co. gallivant through the continent wiping the floor with the blood of their enemies until they defeat the Big Bad Dragon Medeus and restore peace to the continent of Archanea.
I remember first reading Marth’s trophy in Melee and thinking that the plot of his game sounded so cool. You’re this super cool swordsman prince wrecking an entire continent overthrowing an Empire after your country got wrecked. It sounded exactly like my cup of tea. Then I actually played his games and I got so bored really fast. The execution feels very lackluster in general. In Fire Emblem 1 / Fire Emblem 3 Book 1 you start out in the Island Kingdom of Talys and the destruction of Altea is explained with text. In fact, the only time you actually get to see any evidence of Altea getting destroyed is in the prologue chapters of Shadow Dragon. This is something that I appreciated about Shadow Dragon (yeah I played on Normal mode just so I could blitz through the game and get it over with).
What I find boring about this game’s plot is that there’s no feeling of stakes or tension in the narrative at all. There are no plot twists or interesting revelations to keep us interested. It’s just Marth and co. wrecking the Dolhr Empire and that’s really all there is to it. You could argue that other games like Fire Emblem 6 or the second generation of FE 4 do this too, but they usually find a more interesting way to do this (usually it’s because they have better characters, at least FE 4 does) so as a result it doesn’t feel stale. Here none of that happens. There isn’t enough to rant and rave about like there is for Fates, but at the same time there’s nothing to love either. It’s just a boring, predictable march to the player’s inevitable victory. I can’t call this plot awful the way I can for Awakening and Fates, but I can’t call it good either.
Final Summation: “The story is bland and totally forgettable but there are worse stories in the series. I can’t think of any major plot holes in the story, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they existed. It’s a little too straightforward and overly simplistic to be considered good though and it certainly doesn’t measure up to the better stories presented in the later games.”
Characters: Wait a second, this game has characters in it? All I saw were a bunch of rocks. That’s the biggest flaw of these games: There are no interesting characters at all. Most of the cast barely have any speaking lines and you don’t really get to know anything about them. They often join the player because….reasons. At least the characters in Awakening and Fates have quirks or something to remember them by. What do these characters have going for them?
To be fair Shadow Dragon did give Marth some good lines of dialogue throughout the game. Shadow Dragon did have the best characterized Marth in the series. I also recall a recruiting conversation between Caeda and Roger that was pretty funny. Okay, I’ll admit that Caeda’s characterization is decent too. The explanation that’s given for Medeus’s actions (i.e. getting revenge on humans for the crap that Manaketes received at their hands in the past) sounds good on paper but unfortunately we never see anything happen to make us sympathize with him. Plus it doesn’t work as a good reason to enslave an entire race. Gharnef is mostly forgettable (except for his character design which is freaky) and in my opinion Nergal and Manfroy are better executed versions of the “dark wizard who manipulates the crap out of everything and everyone” since they actually get to accomplish stuff onscreen.
Unfortunately Marth and Caeda are about the only characters that get any personality at all while the rest of the cast is boring, bland and forgettable. Heck, there’s a part of me that prefers the cast in Awakening since at least those characters had memorable personalities. This game doesn’t even give you that. Shadow Dragon would have benefited from the existence of support conversations. As for Fire Emblem 1 / Fire Emblem 3 Book 1: These characters may as well not exist. They have next to no lines of dialogue so there’s nothing about their characters that stands out.
Overall Summation: “Two of these games don’t even bother to try giving any of these characters a personality. Shadow Dragon tries and usually fails for the most part. It does have some good lines here and there but overall most of the cast is forgettable."
Gameplay: Fire Emblem 1 is about as simple and as basic as it gets. The game is not very difficult at all and Marth’s rapier breaks it hard. I do like the fact that stat boosters can boost a significant percentage of a unit’s stats.
Fire Emblem 3 Book 1 has...dismounting? Oh and it cut a few chapters. Yeah it didn’t really add very much did it?
Shadow Dragon is by far the best of these games in this department. It’s the most challenging of the three, it actually has a weapon triangle, it’s easy to check your enemy's’ movement range (you can’t even do that in Fire Emblem 1) and you can actually see where your characters are going. Unfortunately Shadow Dragon invented the broken system of forging that ended up breaking the game really hard. I’m also not a fan of reclassing as well since it does take away from the uniqueness of the cast. Shadow Dragon feels like a step backward from the Tellius games and frankly the game does feel a little too “bare bones” for my tastes.
One more point: The infamous gaiden chapters. Personally I think the intent behind these was for the game to give the player back-up characters instead of requiring the player to kill off the cast. Obviously this didn’t work out and yeah I agree that these requirements are stupid, but I can at least understand the intent behind them, even if this wasn’t executed properly.
Overall Summation: “Way too bare bones to be enjoyable. Shadow Dragon didn’t do enough to modernize the game making it feel like a 90’s game in a DS skin while Fire Emblem 1 and Fire Emblem 3 Book 1 have aged like milk. They feel clunky and outdated and don’t offer anything that Shadow Dragon cannot give you.”
Soundtrack: These games have a soundtrack? I honestly only remember one track and it’s nothing special at all. At least the soundtrack in Fates was memorable, even if it gets more love and praise than it deserves.
Graphics : The NES / SNES portraits and sprites are not very good. The ones in Shadow Dragon are minimally better and don’t hold up very well. Honestly I like the Super Nintendo sprites better than the DS ones. The graphics in all 3 games suck as far as I’m concerned.
Overall thoughts: I refuse to play any of these games again. They’re all just so boring. The plot is bland, the characters are forgettable and shallow, and the gameplay is way too bare bones in contrast to what some of the other installments have to offer. Shadow Dragon is clearly the best of the three and if you hated Shadow Dragon you probably wouldn’t like Fire Emblem 1 or Fire Emblem 3 Book 1.
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