FIRE EMBLEM 11: Shadow Dragon Retrospective - ShaneBrained

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what even is a long-running Nintendo series without the eventual remake as the oldest console makers still in the business series that have traditionally stuck to the company especially those that first debuted in 8-bit all eventually choose to resurrect the past in their than modern glory in times of uncertainty it's natural to want to go that way not only do you allow new fans to catch up but you also allow your old fans to reminisce for a bit as long as it's not overdone it's a harmless way to shore up enthusiasm especially when recent fate has not been going your way fire emblem 11 shadow dragon is easy to call just another remake but I find that to be a bit dismissive Fire Emblem 1 wouldn't have led to this and neither would mystery of the emblem shadow dragon is what it is due to the decade plus of series development that came after all these titles despite taking place on the same Maps this is very much its own fire emblem I was often asked at the beginning of this series if I would even bother to play the quote-unquote remakes as if just playing one of these completely removes the history importance and context of the others like with the very recent as of my writing Resident Evil 2 & 3 remakes the experience of playing the original versus the remade versions can be leagues different just because this is less obvious and a strategy RPG doesn't make this any less true this is important to remember because Shadow Dragon can be too easily brushed aside to the casual observer it is tempting to just take one look at it and call it ugly or to call it simple but to just leave it at that would be an utter shame Shadow Dragon is a bit ugly and yet over time there's something about it that grows on you it is also a very simple game but in playing it you may begin to realize that its simplicity with a purpose for many fans this was their first exposure to Marth in his a series context and their first chance to experience his journey throughout Arcania on his quest to reclaim his homeland today on the fire emblem retrospective we will once again be examining this journey and discovering the ways that this entry in the series both stood on the shoulders of its predecessors yet also blazed its own paths with my goal of completing each game in the series twice this game actually represents the fifth and sixth time I have made my way through this specific journey even still I was surprised to find that that there was a lot to unpack and examine let's go ahead and get that started unsurprisingly the release and poor sales performance of the two prior games path of Radiance and radiant dawn put the development of the next fire emblem into a whole new context despite trying and failing to land back on the home console twice the next game and the series was originally planned to be released for the Wii this was not met with enthusiasm from the staff at Nintendo who suggested that they probably shouldn't release another fire emblem on a home console due to how niche they perceived the series to be at first this message was interpreted as meaning that the syriza needed to broaden its appeal in order to get a fresh take the massive fire emblem team of radiant dawn was drastically reduced in size and with this done they then began to take the upcoming fire emblem we in a very different direction according to Toru Nara hero director of the binding blade and a longtime producer for the series many different ideas were thrown about at this time such as the player being able to bring a massive army with you Pikmin style everywhere you go it's a bit hard to understand exactly what he meant nowadays but whatever the case ultimately this project fizzled out it was Kohei Maya a writer and planner since the blazing Blade who got the ball rolling once more expressing his desire to become a director and to reintroduce marriage into the series so they could kickstart that mass appeal ultimately he was passed over for this entry but if you know the future of this series development then what he had just proposed should sound a little bit familiar longtime project coordinator for Nintendo Misaki tewara became the director taking the series back to a portable system yet again it was decided to remake the very first game which had already seen an altered revision a scene in book 1 of the third game mystery of the emblem despite the journey of Marth having already been retread one time the team really wished that players outside of Japan would be able to experience his story for themselves and going back to redo this entry also meant that they could fix some of the issues with mystery of the emblems version which had to cut five levels and some playable characters due to super famicom storage limitations fire emblem shadow dragon was viewed internally as more of a renewal than a remake this meant that multiple new mechanics were implemented for the first time and the team even went out of their way to add five new Gaiden chapters each with new recruitable characters even with these new chapters and units a concerted effort was made to not over complicate the story and though much more dialogue was added which fleshed out the cast tremendously compared to the previous outings the team was committed to keeping the atmosphere as close as possible to the original yet again they used a guest artist for the visual design with Masamune Shiro of ghost in the shell' Fame redesigning Marth Sita and many of the other more prominent members of this cast after serving as a sound supervisor since the seventh game none other than Yuka sue gioco returned back to a more direct role serving as Shadow Dragons composer this of course was a natural fit since it was her who had composed the music for the original game nearly 18 years prior with the ball finally rolling development only took ten months to complete with a game releasing on April 7th 2008 in Japan with Western releases in December of the same year and a February of 2009 along with positive reviews from a number of outlets sales for the game thankfully went up with this game easily outselling both of the previous entries however very strangely sales numbers for this game were higher in Japan than in the West which definitely wasn't a great sign given how much larger the Western market is compared to Japan's this was very quickly noted as it showed that the series had maintained an invested audience in its home country but in the West much of the attention since the successful Game Boy Advance games seemed to have mostly worn off after the panic inducing results of the last two entries sales performance this game succeeding was a slight ray of hope although it was one that would soon be interpreted in a disastrous way we'll be getting into that naturally in the next video for now we will be moving on to covering the plot technically I have told this story two previous times but I still find it important to do it here as well even the most complete fan translation of the original game continues to be extra ruff and of course that was on top of the lack of storytelling capabilities that the Famicom already had of course the second retelling of Fire Emblem 3 which had a better fan translation still had to cut out large portions of the original in order to fit in the real meat of that game which was the book 2 sequel section Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon is the only official English translation for these events but on top of that the vastly improved storytelling and writing has gone on to make it the definitive version for all regions as always I will provide links for those who wish to jump right to the story analysis section at the top of the screen or a link to the start of the gameplay sections at the bottom for people who want to avoid all story spoilers whatsoever alright everybody let's get going in three two one long ago in the land of Archaea the king of the Dragons and midis ruled the continent with fear and despair in response to the tyranny of his wretched rule a hero hailing from the small nation of Altea appeared wielding a shimmering blade this man onry challenged the evil dragon and ultimately prevailed 100 years of peace followed him but eventually the Dark Dragon Medusa returned to the world he seized power and the land of the Dragons doler and began gathering allies for his second conquest of the continents nation after nation submitted or fell to the shadow dragons power and it was now up to the current ruler of Altea King kornelius to wield anri's blade the falchion against the tides of darkness yet again while the Kings sallied forth it was up to his royal children princess Elise and Prince Marth to maintain the castle with the Queen and to host a garrison of troops from all Tia's neighboring Ally grah although Prince Marth's days of training both the pin and the sword at passed without incident all of this would soon change one day the same as any other Marth was suddenly awoken by a castle Guardsmen who had been seeking him on behalf of his sister and as Marth was going to the throne room to try find her he was shocked to see soldiers of gras within the castle working together to try to apprehend him after proving to them that the son of Cornelius was not to be underestimated mar 3 United with his sister who informed him that they had all been betrayed grah had chosen to side with doler and had turned on their father slaying him in the field of battle now the entire castle was under attack as their former allies soldiers were frantically searching for the both of them hoping to wipe out the bloodline of Unruh on behalf of their new master Elise implored her brother to flee choosing to stay behind herself instead Martha quickly gathered his guards been around him and together they fought to secure the young prince's future even with their very lives if they had to as Martha escaped by sea he vowed to return one day and to right all the wrongs which had been so unjustly delivered onto him for the next three years Marth remained hidden as a guest in the tiny island nation of Tallis he was even given a fort to man there with his own personal troops over time he grew quite close to his host nations princess Sita and so when she arrived suddenly one day pleading for his help with a recent pirate threat the prince was all too happy to assist her after easily dealing with the Raiders the king of Talas himself acknowledged how strong the prince and his followers had become and that it was finally time for them to begin their counter-attack after being granted some of the most powerful fighters of Talas Martha sailed west arriving in the kingdom of a rellis and as he battled through both bandit and soldiers standing in his way he would gather more and more powerful allies drawn in either by the kindness of princess Sita or the righteousness of the princes cause at the gates of Arella Castle Marth was met by Duke Hardin the younger brother of the local king and a fiercely powerful cavalry commander joining their two forces together the princes were able to overcome the forces of doler within and the first of many nations to come was finally liberated from Evil's control within the castle Marth was met by an unexpected guest Princess Nina Hale from the massive nation of Archaea her kingdom for which the continent was also named was in many ways the mother country to all of the other kingdoms throughout the land including Marth's own home of all taya as the heir to our Camejo it was Nina's role to protect all of the nations in a time of crisis a task which she was woefully unable to do in her current situation what she could do at the very least was choose a champion and adorn him with a symbol of her family's trust Marth was presented with such a symbol the fire emblem a holy object which was only to be bestowed to a true hero one who was believed had the power to save the world with this act Martha's cause now had full legitimacy granted by the most powerful royal family in the land with this his group became known as the Arcanum League for those living under the tyranny of Matthias Martha's fight represented hope and soon many others such as the warrior princess Minerva of Macedon were seeking out his help after gaining evermore allies the league finally arrived in Nina's homeland and after launching a long siege on the castle finally wrestled control away from the forces of doler with half of the continent free the next stop on the princes journey would be a personal one as he now set his sights on grah the land that had betrayed his family so long ago at that time a three years ago the prince had been nothing but a weak boy fleeing for his life thanks to the sacrifice of others now with the might of many loyal soldiers from all over the continent at his command the table's had completely turned though the soldiers of gras had personally seen to King kornelius death on that fateful day many years back his Divine blade the Falcon was not to be found within their castle luckily through careful search Martha's group was able to learn that had had been taken away by garnet a fearsomely powerful dark magician who is also one of the shadow dragons first and closest allies located currently in the northern Magic Kingdom of a game in the sands of this land the Arcadian League were finally able to confront the magician but they soon found that no sword spear axe arrow or magic could possibly break through the barrier of dark magic he commanded after garnet grew bored of this show and vanished to parts unknown Marthe was suddenly telepathically contacted by the sage Gotoh the very man who had taught garnet before his dark turn to defeat the mage and retrieve his family sword Marthe would need to craft the magic of starlight which could only be done by retrieving two powerful orbs from a temple nearby and personally delivering them to go toe in the heavily guarded kingdom of macedon with this goal in mind the league continued with little stopping them from finally liberating marts homeland of Altair though he would have wished to stay here if he could their current need elsewhere in the continent was too great and so they continued on to the temple inside they found not only the star and light orbs needed but a fiercely powerful opponent a member of the nearly extinct tribe of divine dragons the young amana kate Tiki mind-controlled by gar Neph Tiki challenged the group but rather than blades it was words that caused her to stand down as her caretaker bond to who had been traveling with Marth for some time was able to help the dragon princess break the spell that had clouded her mind one divine dragons power was worth legions of lesser dragons and antiquey Marth had gained not only a new friend but a devastating new ally to help him resist the shadow dragon and his most powerful dragon troops with the objects needed for starlight in hand Marth's group next marched through the land of grossed and came toe-to-toe with the noble yet fiercely loyal general camu camu had been the man who had personally prevented princess nina from being executed following her nations fall but despite the love that the two shared for each other the general refused to betray his home country for their side and soon he too had to fall at the league's hands though this resulted in utter heartbreak for princess nina at last very little remained of the doler alliance now even though Massa Dawn's King Nicholas the brother of Princess Minerva threw everything he had at them it was not nearly enough to stop the league and eventually he too would see the end of his rules at the hand of Marth with the fighting in Macedon quelled Marth was able to meet with Gotoh and deliver the requested orbs which were immediately used to create the magic needed to defeat garnets power the only tasks that still remained were retrieving the falchion from garnet and turning the holy blade on his master The Shadow Dragon mid use thanks to go toes power the Arcadian league was teleported right to garnets location and after the power of starlight broke the dark magician's barrier and saw to his end Marth retrieved not only his family's divine blade but also his sister Elise who had been kept alive at the will of garnet due to her own magical ability with nothing left between him and the mastermind of the continents current woes Marth and company were once again teleported by Gotoh landing straight in the land of doler with medio s' unable to manifest his power outside of the castle just yet all the dragon could do was wait for the prince who by now had proved himself to be a truly worthy foe before long the blood of onry and the fangs of the Shadow Dragon would once again face off in battle just as his ancestor had done a century before Marthe struck down the dragon who was yet again disgusted to fall at the hand of a mere human promising to return as long as darkness remained in the world menus finally disappeared with the Dragons defeat peace had once again been restored to our Kamiya as the many allies who had all gathered around the prince over this past year returned back to their homes and families the princes final battle was won for his own happiness thanks to his dear friend Nina Marth was able to muster his courage and ask Sita to remain with him forever at his side the tale of the Shadow Dragon and the sword of light had finally drawn to a close for now [Music] analyzing the story of Shadow Dragon is trickier than it seems like the original game Shadow Dragon is an extremely straightforward adventure women looked at broadly unlike the original this wasn't done because of limitations and the hardware rather this was a very deliberate choice even though this entry does update and flesh out some elements of the plot this is still easily the most simplistic a Fire Emblem game story has been since the very first game the trick to seeing the value of this game storytelling isn't realizing if that is a bad thing or not to you for anyone tracking the history of the series I imagined that they might see Shadow Dragon as a major step back technically it is true anyone can look at this radiant dawn footage and compare it to what this game did and immediately see the degradation and I'm not just talking in terms of graphical power we are basically back to the Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem style of using still art with text to depict important scenes even though this is far from what the D s was actually capable of here's the thing though if the game was able to achieve its storytelling goal which in this case was maintaining the atmosphere of the Famicom original in order to craft a deliberately classic feeling experience then how much weight does decrying the game for its simplicity really carry a game story is not inherently improved due to it being more complex nor is it inherently worsened due to it being simpler what matters to me is how well each of these types of stories embody the values that they each suggest an epic story needs an epic scope something that is difficult to depict with just overhead 2d sprites that's not saying that it is impossible to do but this type of story is better served being in 3d which can allow for a more dynamic depiction of the events if a game is reaching for a broadly epic tale then a lot of this great potential can be lost through using an overly simple script which i think is what led to a big problem and radiant dawn something that I elaborated on in the last shadow dragon isn't trying to do anything like this and it ends up being exactly what it needs to be it's a simple story told in a simple way and although there's nothing that will really wow the player or create as powerful of an emotional response as a game like Thracia 776 or a genealogy of the holy war I still found it really easy to enjoy I admit that part of my enjoyment of this script is due to my experience of playing both fire emblems 1 and 3 with their admittedly limited scripts and fan translations even though I have seen this story multiple times over in my native language no less shadow dragon still feels like the first time I'm really meeting this cast even without a structured support system which has now completely fallen away after radiant Dawn's limited showing one thing that shadow dragon has an abundance is evocative and efficient writing even though intelligent systems seems to think that not much was actually added to the story stating precisely as much in an interview from the 25th anniversary book the making a fire emblem they might be under estimating the generous amount of characterization that that was actually added here as a matter of fact the game script was so weighty that the translation had to be outsourced to a different company rather than being handled internally at Nintendo the company 8:4 were responsible for this translation rather than merely translating the words on the screen to their English equivalents and calling it a job which i think is a pitfall of many fan translations and even official translation rush jobs 8:4 specializes in carefully crafting a game script to convey the same experience as the Japanese original in this respect they did an absolutely amazing job even without each individual character having a flood of dialogue the personalities of many of these characters definitely shine through which I think really illustrate individual aspects of them such as the extreme crazy loyalty of achma and the true kindness and possibly slight manipulative Ness of Sita I also want to give a special mention to Princess Elise who actually became a real character in this game as well as all of the other new additions to this cast who I think all slot in there well oftentimes recreating an 8-bit era game with a more modern perspective gives developers too easy of an out when it comes to Rhys crypting things incredibly that is not what happened here shadow dragon is actually very smartly written its return to this simple story sets a very different tone and refusing the impulse to completely replace what came before in favor of enhancing what already existed to me shows a remarkable level of restraint the light breezy tone that it sticks to is a testament to the roots of this project the more direct goal based story setup combined with very enjoyable character scenes had me flashing back to some of the characterization in genealogy of the holy war and the excellent project Naga translation it also took me back to memories from even earlier in my life playing games like a Link to the Past on the first console I ever owned this kind of enjoyable but not overly convoluted writing it makes the game easy to pick up easy to put down and easy to return to there is plenty of value in that kind of experience and it goes to show how critical giving a game a worthwhile translation really is after experiencing Shadow Dragon twice I feel like I'm finally seeing the ARCA naen characters with the same kind of fondness that Japanese players must have been doing since the early days of this series though the writing itself contributes a lot when it comes to painting this comforting emotional landscape it's fair to say that the gameplay is just as responsible for this as the story let's get into that next the last time that any Fire Emblem games shook up the formula so dramatically from one game to another the series creator shows oka had just left intelligent systems completely like the binding blade before it Fire Emblem shadow Dragon was a ruthless in how many long-running systems it hacked off itself stopping just short of regressing back to the days of the early Super Famicom games about the only additional systems that remain that weren't in the original game are the weapon triangle system weapon proficiency system and a weapon for G character skills are gone the c2 a support system is gone bonus experience charging transformation forms tier 3 classes Kanto shove rescue auto promotion they have all been cut almost every new addition since the binding blade is not here and though this seems obvious since we are returning to the arcanine games remember that even in mystery of the emblems version of this game the weapon triangle system didn't even exist yet of these implanted inclusions the deliberate incorporation of both the weapon triangle system and weapon forging are more than enough to completely change how this game is played these changes are so significant that when you seriously start to consider this game versus either previous version calling it simply a remake struggles to have any useful meaning to get what I mean by this an understanding of the originals is required and I'm not sure that this is an understanding that many people have not many people play Fire Emblem one and probably at this point even less people play mystery of the emblem I really have no doubt that for many watching this video the exact specifics of that era and the franchise continue to be somewhat vague I'll try to clear things up briefly here in both fire emblems 1 and 3 the difference between sword axe and spear was only seen in their hit rate damage and weight no weapon had any innate advantage over the other there was no real drawback to assigning the baddies all one kind of weapon or one kind of class throughout a whole map this was also true for the bosses since every map in the game was a siege every chapter had to have its own boss with a large majority of them being either an armored Knight Cavalier or either of their promotions in the originals this made for an actual challenge since it was harder back then to overcome their accuracy damage and high defence without any extra systems helping you along this entire setup is kept in Shadow Dragon from very consistent enemy types to the repeated use of the same classes for bosses while this is quite obviously not suited for the weapon triangle due to how it makes certain units more or less useful for very long periods of time it's actually the weapon forging system which turns the original games intentions into a complete joke here rather than forging completely new weapons as was done in the past in this entry you can now improve any weapon in your inventory and this is really important this also includes special effective weapons what this means is that you could now take something like a hammer the staple armor killer for x-men and use forging to make up for its horrendous accuracy as well as giving it a lot more power or crit chance while radiant dawn limited you to only +5 and any of these stats Shadow Dragon has raised that to 10 due to how effective damage in these games work if you're using these weapons against their effective damage targets every one of these points is actually worth a three which means that if you've got the gold you can add up to thirty more damage to every one of your strikes against armored foes of course the most infamous example of this broken forging system is in Sita's wing spear an exclusive weapon for her that does effective damage on both armored Knights and cavalry though Sita initially struggles with her strengths stat she will consistently have great speed and hitchens meaning that you really just need to improve the power of the spear in order to have access to one of the most broken characters ever seen in a Fire Emblem game with the constant ability to fly and gaining a Oates shield later in the game to negate her weakness to arrows Sita's power in Shadow Dragon is a rightly infamous yet another example of turning the reused old into the newly broken in the form of the ballast ition units Jake and BEC who functioned like low movement archers who can fire at enemies up to ten spaces away in the original they weren't so great their utility which amounts to pretty much free damage against any enemy in their range was very much balanced around them having an extremely low hit rate in this version if you understand the power of forging at this point you can see how this isn't actually a problem at all and rather turns them into two of the best characters in the game with a little bit of gold you can boost that accuracy right up as well as a healthy dose of power allowing you to one-shot any enemies and range that you wish and even sometimes to shotting the bosses with the abundance of warp staffs in this game and this kind of power at your fingertips Shadow Dragon plays a lot faster than any game in this franchise before it which is ironic considering that it's the tedium of the original versions that keeps most players from experiencing them these days I imagine if I'd played these out of order it would be really hard to go back and that's not even mentioning the host of other quality of life features that were added here like the ability to skip through animations even when they're turned on which includes skipping entire enemy turns if you wish as well as being able to see every possible danger zone at the push of a button Effie 11 more so than any other injury before it seems like it was built for you to go back for more to keep pushing yourself to do better and better until the tricks you've learned can no longer break it as hard as they could on your initial runs this was done primarily by making this game one of the most modular and self-correcting games I have ever seen in my life which is precisely what we need to talk about next for as long as the Fire Emblem games have endured at this point the stigma of being a niche experience has been unavoidable even if you personally enjoy the following characteristics to the masses these games are perceived as being overly complex RNG heavy very unwelcoming games for beginners I hope that this entire retrospective series by now has proved that these are untrue statements after all few people can claim to have been as ignorant as I was when I was starting this whole thing and yet I've made it all the way to this point gladly still even with some of the later very popular games in the series I think it's fair to argue that this impression uninformed as it may be has never really gone away in the eyes of a novice no feature of these games is more intimidating than the permanent death system if this game is about building your army then nothing else is so blatantly intimidating than the thought that if you do make a major mistake not only will you be punished for it you will also suffer permanent loss people want a challenge sure but nobody wants to suffer while they're just trying to learn of course this isn't the truth of the matter unit permadeath has always been a purposeful feature it's not one that's put in merely to punish the players these are games that are designed around this whole feature and this has always been true even since the very first game which actually put in hordes of replacement characters throughout the entire journey to ensure you'd never be undermanned there's a quote that I see over and over again concerning the issue of permanent death it usually goes something like this I hate having to start over whenever I lose a unit it's either start over or lose hours and hours of work I'm fairly confident that a lot of fire Ilham fans have had this feeling at some point and I'll admit that includes myself this is why I think it's fair to stop and ask why do you have to restart when you lose a non-essential unit this need to constantly reset the need to do things perfectly I do think it comes from a good place but it's not a mindset that these games were meant to be played with from the beginning of the series Shozo kaga the father of fire emblem himself offered a word of advice to his players it's not a big problem if some of your characters die don't get caught up trying to get a perfect ending have fun I have to ask you what is the actual measurable consequence of losing up slot optional units maybe it's that you miss out on a bit of lackluster text at the end of the game or maybe it's some kind of nebulous fear of missing out the issue here like The Outsiders concept of what Fire Emblem is lies in our own misguided perceptions just like how a story without conflict isn't much of a story forcing a lack of hardship onto your gameplay experience is similarly self-defeating it removes the nuanced emotion that a journey through these games can bring both positive and negative I can understand not wanting to let this happen on your very first run since there is a valid desire to want to meet the whole cast if you can still I can tell you from my own experiences that by now I have learned that when I let this overly protective mindset go I always end up having a far better time playing these games I would honestly wager that many of these players who force themselves to reset constantly would actually not be too terribly bothered to be reminded that they've lost a character at some point in the game and even if they are I'd argue that the negative feeling associated with that is far better than the alternative strategy the alternative I'm talking about here is playing these games like some kind of nervous wreck you can't make mistakes you can't allow failure your units must survive and you will arena abuse grind endlessly or save scum as much as necessary to make it so some players do simply like doing this and I'm not trying to shame them here but at the same time I believe that continually submitting yourself to these kind of tactics can also lead to becoming stuck in your own self-limiting mindset one may start to believe that they can't beat these games without doing these things simply because they've never gone outside it just as I've seen with games like the infamous thracia 776 and the niche only stigma of this entire series the most alluring lies of all are the ones that we tell ourselves so why in the world am i bringing this up now of all times in the eleventh video of the series the reason for this is simple fire emblem shadow dragon represents the beginning of a significant shift in this series away from design priorities which had lasted for over 18 years for the direction that this series wanted to go it was a necessary change but even though the next game will mark the introduction of a true casual mode the steps that fire mo m---eleven took to try to meet the same goals before hand do need acknowledging I really get the feeling that the staff and intelligence systems wasn't fully ready to allow permit F to no longer be a concern for their players resulting in what from the outside seemed like absolutely ridiculous design decisions that will actually make perfect sense in a new light why in the world many ask would this game a bother to put in multiple new side missions each with a completely new recruitable character but then limit access to those missions to players who have lost a large amount of units already well this is for the same reason that the prologue of this game forces everyone literally every single player to sacrifice at least one unit to the enemy it wants to teach its players the same thing that shows o kaga said over a decade back death is a feature of this game don't get caught up trying to get a perfect ending here in this game you literally cannot these side missions are but one of the many many safety net features which it uses to guard all its players and to teach them to keep moving on players who refused to allow loss or to allow any amount of chaos to seep into their perfect playthroughs are banned from seeing these missions or from meeting these characters here I have to say that even if you are willing to let your characters die meeting the under-15 requirement especially since this game reinforces you with faceless generic characters when you're too low at times is probably too low another still I do think the attempt to nudge players in this direction rather than push them is definitely admirable if there were any game that made getting out of your comfort zone as painless as possible it would definitely be shadow dragon above all of its predecessor with its incredibly fast gameplay speed the same battles that would take me hours on my original runs could be 20-minute Affairs here not only does the game have your back if you lose a unit in the two ways I mentioned previously but we also have the new class change system which allows you to reclass nearly all of your units this not only gives you the freedom to make whatever kind of team you want to experiment with but it can also allow players who have had units died to fill in gaps in their team if for example they were to lose their only healer or a magic user this game is by far the most easily replayable fire emblem which I think is why the developers even dared to include five levels of its hard mode both of my full runs were actually only about 15 hour affairs and with animations always off or unnecessary enemy turns skipped which I couldn't really do because I needed to capture footage this playtime could likely have dropped even closer to 10 or maybe even under it so you finished normal why not try hard one it's not that much of an investment of your time well you finished hard one why not try hard to you've already learned so much about this game this approach I think is significantly less intimidating then suddenly bumping a player up to one of its very hardest difficulty settings and all in all the changes here were an admirable attempt to try to begin to appeal to players of many different stripes though the changes seen here were far from overwhelming all of these additions were signs of the inevitable Fire Emblem was going to change whether that was all for good or ill is something that we'll have to examine more in the future for now at last it's time that we wrap everything up for a game that many questioned if I would even want to cover I have found more to consider than I ever thought possible here in terms of gameplay it was by far one of my favorites even after finishing it twice I would happily return to it yet again trying new compositions or tactics maybe relying less on the overpowered forges or convenience warping all the while possibly bumping up the difficulty another notch on top of the invigorating gameplay speed and possibility space the charms of the character writing and scenarios as simple as they are further add to the refreshingly classic and rkd fun that this entry has in spades there's a pureness envisioned here one that took a team willing to throw away what they thought they knew they wanted in order to open the series to more ambitious changes there is definitely a certain stagnation in this direction very little in this game can be said to be truly new other than a few design priorities still I think that the best word for my overall experience returning to our Kunia yet again could only be refreshing it was great to come back here again to see this cast and these events in a new more competently crafted stage I loved seeing the playability of this series that make a huge leap forward and it was also really interesting to see the beginnings of some changes that were happening changes that were implemented without the developers feeling to need to throw out absolutely everything in order to make it so still I'm not sure that I would consider this game one of my favorites but I would probably say that I had a lot more fun on a minute-to-minute basis than I did for many of my actual favorites thus far if I cared about nothing but gameplay I could very easily see myself getting lost in it over and over again I loved the experience of playing Shadow Dragon and of course I definitely recommend it but I'm not sure that I would call this one necessary it was fantastic to play but I wonder what the legacy of it will really be as I continue to make my way through this wonderful series on our next stop on the fire emblem retrospective we will once again return to command Marth as he faces a new mysterious threat join me then as we take on enemies unforeseen in Fire Emblem twelve new mystery of the emblem if you don't feel like waiting you can watch the new mystery of the emblem retrospective right now all you need to do is click the link on screen or in the description to become a patreon supporter for as little as $1 you can gain one week early access to my videos including the next retrospective video which just became available right now if you wish to support for more you can gain further benefits such as being able to watch all four videos in a current season of retrospectives 4-3 or gain immediate access to everything I do without having to wait for a seasons completion for five please consider helping my channel grow and this series continue with your support today thank you so much for watching I'd like to give a special thank you to Connie Reed dw7 still rules henry gutierrez Ignace isil hey-zeus ruiz radiant archiver ryan poe and true tactician as well as to all of my other supporters who make these videos possible by donating on patreon thank you all very much

Channel: ShaneBrained

Views: 57,137

Keywords: Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem Awakening, Fire Emblem Three Houses, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Games, Series: Fire Emblem, Retrospective, Marth, Fire Emblem Warriors, Magvel, Path of Radiance, Gamecube, Tellius, Shadow dragon, Nintendo DS, DS

Id: r78bG-RVLKA

Length: 42min 0sec (2520 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020