advance wars conquered … for now

yes, i confess, i do let my obsessions get the better of me. i’d finished advance wars 2 and advance wars: dual strike back to back, but i couldn’t help trying out the next in the series, advance wars: days of ruin, the second advance wars game for DS. i was intrigued by the different direction that the game took in terms of its art style and presentation and was curious about how much the gameplay had changed.

i agree with the common response that in some ways the gameplay of days of ruin feels more like a step back than a step forward. the game lacks any of the new modes or features from dual strike and omits CO powers completely until about halfway through the campaign mode, and even then the CO powers are much less powerful. instead of the game-changers of previous games CO powers provide more-modest bonuses restricted to the region around the CO who “boards” a unit and retreats when that unit is destroyed. the game’s other main change is that rankings have been rehauled: the power score is now based on the effectiveness of your attacks (i.e. the fewer number of attacks the better) instead of the percentage of enemy units defeated during one turn (which always seemed rather pointless to me anyway), and the technique score is now based on the number of units you’ve used compared to the number your enemy has used, instead of the number of units you’ve lost as a percentage of your total (so churning out units hurts rather than helps that score). another small addition is that each individual unit can increase a level if it defeats an enemy unit. there are only two levels it can obtain (after defeating two enemy units), and the bonuses it receives are minor, but it does give some motivation to keep units intact.

all of these changes focus the gameplay on keeping units alive, and thus force you to strategize a bit more in order to get S ranks. in some ways it feels like with these changes intelligent systems was looking to their other strategy franchise, the fire emblem series, for their inspiration for the gameplay of days of ruin. but IS borrowed from the fire emblem series more liberally for the presentation of this game: the music is distinctly reminiscent of the recent console fire emblem games, and the story, although set in a post-apocalyptic, contemporary world and not the fantasy world of the FE games, feels similar as well in its tale of a small band of do-gooders fighting against all odds to bring peace to the world. i was looking forward to the story, which the advance wars series thus far has been sorely lacking, but the story in days of ruin is trite: although it dwells on much heavier subject matter than the series has thus far, its exploration of such issues as survival, selfishness, and selflessness in extreme conditions is nothing we haven’t seen hundreds of times in other games or media.

in the end this was a game that i enjoyed playing through but isn’t my first pick for an advance wars game to replay anytime soon. it doesn’t contain a hard campaign mode, although it does include a slew of tougher “trial” maps, and it does have the advantage of enabling you to revisit any previous campaign map so you can try for a higher rating. when i think back on it i appreciate the new focus on strategy, but i still can’t help missing the fun of the previous games. although it took awhile and it hasn’t nearly supplanted my affections for fire emblem, in its four releases in the US advance wars has proven to be a series well worth playing in all of its iterations. i’m definitely looking forward to finding out where the series goes from here.

advance wars links … conquered!
- entry at wikipedia
- FAQ at gamefaqs, including a damage chart
- you can get a PDF of the manual at nintendo.com
- entry at strategywiki.org including regional differences
- you can get a the official site has a few wallpapers
- entry at metacritic.com

wars advanced … again!

just when i thought i was safe from my fire emblem obsession, somehow i got sucked into an entry in its sister series, advance wars, in particular advance wars: dual strike for DS. i had just finished advance wars 2 for GBA, and although i had to force myself to finish that game i had dual strike on hand so i thought i’d just dip into it, as is my wont.

and before i knew it i was hooked! the situation was somewhat similar to my experience when i immediately followed up the somewhat dull and tedious metroid prime 2 with metroid prime: hunters: dual strike turned out to be different enough from AW2 that the experience felt much more refreshing than its predecessor. although the core mechanics are still the same, the game has a host of additions even within the main campaign mode. the main addition is the new tag-team mechanic where you can switch between COs during battle. this change doesn’t seem like it should be nearly as fun as it is, but it’s satisfying to unleash a “dual strike” attack when both of your COs’ attack meters are completely full. the dual strike mechanic is a bit broken in that you get two consecutive, CO-powered turns and it’s easy to completely overwhelm your opponent, but bracing yourself for your enemies’ impending dual strike attack fits fairly well into the overall strategy. the new units are all fun and worthwhile, and the new COs (both enemy and ally) are entertaining as well. the game also adds “dual front” battles where two distinct maps are presented simultaneously on each screen (although most of the time the computer’s AI handles the top-screen battle and you just have to provide support in the form of units you send to the top screen), as well as CO levelling which provides bonuses in battle that are minor but another nice distraction (and you can choose to ignore them if for some reason you don’t want to use them).

beyond all of these gameplay additions are a host of new modes as well. the most straightforward of these are three survival modes (money, turns, and time) that turn out to be a lot of fun. a new real-time “combat” mode provides an occasional diversion, although it isn’t deep enough to be worth spending much time with. one of the most compelling additions for all the obsessive completists out there (such as myself) is the history feature, which tracks such useless stats as number of turns used and number of enemy units of each type destroyed. each stat has 3 “medals” you can earn, and although earning them is much more a matter of gameplay time than skill, it’s still fun to watch your medal count go up as you progress.

looking back on the game it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what made this iteration of the series (the 3rd for the US) so compelling. being able to level up your COs somehow makes one more attached to them, and i appreciated the fact that the later maps in the campaign mode aren’t the long, drawn-out affairs that its predecessor has. and although the additions seem relatively minor, they add up and give the game quite a unique feel, especially after the sameness of AW2. the series ended up going in a different direction for the next installment, taking on an entirely new cast, so for now the game has become the third of the “advance wars” trilogy begun with the original advance wars for GBA. it’s a fitting conclusion to the trio, with a host of new features that easily propels this to the top of my list of not only favorite advance wars games, but favorite games ever. now what about that fourth advance wars game? well, any guesses as to when i’ll get around to playing that one? … hmmm? … …

more links advancing to the battlefield!
- entry at wikipedia
- complete script at gamefaqs, especially useful if you’re wondering what the outcomes are of the two choices you’re presented with after the last battle of the campaign mode
- list of unlockables, detailed CO FAQ (including tag affinities), and detailed attack and defense stats FAQ at gamefaqs. (i still don’t understand why the game doesn’t give explicit defense stats, but ah well.) you can also find a damage chart here at advancewarsnet.com.
- you can get a PDF of the manual at nintendo.com
- guide at IGN

metroid prime hunters: last hunt

this is gonna be a short ‘un. for the most part i try to play games in a series in order, but it don’t always work out that way. case in point: i played through metroid prime hunters even though i hadn’t played the demo of the game that preceded it by more than a year. but i got my mitts on the demo soon after that, so i thought i would take it for a spin even though i was going about it all backwards.

needless to say there wasn’t much that the demo experience offered me, having played the actual game. playing through the three single-player modes was entertaining enough, and it was interesting to me that the modes were focused on getting score multipliers through continuous enemy kills. since you need two copies of the demo to play the three multiplayer stages (alas, there’s no vs computer mode like in the main release) i didn’t get to try them out, but one of these days i will. the game includes a control option where you tap the screen to shoot (apparently the original control scheme), but nothing else much worth noting. by this point hand cramps were definitely not a problem, though: either my hand muscles have strengthened from playing through metroid prime hunters or i’ve just adjusted the way i hold my DS when playing. either way it was fun to have to have this little closer to my metroid prime hunters experience. i doubt the big N’s planning a sequel to that game anytime soon, but i’d definitely be up for one. one can only hope and keep the flame alive.

roundin’ up the last of the first hunt links:
- thorough description of the demo at eurogamer.net
- entry at metroid.wikia.com
- PDF of the manual at replacementdocs.com
- a FAQ at IGN

hunting down the metroid prime hunters

oftentimes when i finish a game if i have the next in the series lying around i’ll try it out just to get a taster for how the series progresses. so even though i’d just finished playing metroid prime: echoes, i tried out the next in line, metroid prime: hunters for DS … and found myself totally hooked.

the first thing you notice is how great the game looks; it’s impossible not to be amazed at how much of the gamecube metroid prime games’ design they managed to fit onto the DS. the game includes movie cut-scenes that also look pretty good. the game does a pretty good job of making the most of the hardware and masking its limitations, except for a fair amount of enemy reuse (including the bosses, of which there are only two main ones that are repeated four times each, with variations) and too many places where rooms are overly symmetric or the room designs are reused too closely. the latter becomes apparent even from the first section of the game where there are three rooms in a row that are pretty much identical, making it too easy to get confused which room you’re in and which door you’re heading towards.

i definitely enjoyed the single-player “adventure” mode, although as people have noted the game is fairly linear. it’s divided into nine sections, two on each of 4 worlds and a final stage, although after all the backtracking of MP2 i found the rigid pacing (and warp portals) to be for the most part refreshing. there’s a clear emphasis on action over exploration, and the game highlights one-on-one battles with 6 spankin’-new rival “hunters”. the rival bounty hunters are pretty well designed and their unique abilities make the multiplayer mode entertaining (although i couldn’t really get into it; just not into FPS games enough i guess). the one drawback to the “formula” is that each of the 8 main sections of the game require you to “escape the planet” in a race against the clock, and having to deal with forced timed battles is just annoying. luckily, automatic temporary save points are fairly numerous. all these differences give the game quite a different feel from the usual metroid game, which is why i found that i wanted to continue playing (and ultimately finish) the game even though i’d just finished MP2.

another thing that people complain about often is the control scheme. the stylus mode is really the only viable option since the buttons-only mode doesn’t give nearly enough fine control, but the problem with that mode is that your hand gets cramped easily. however, i did find that after i’d played for a while i got used to it and my hand didn’t feel cramped so much. i’m really curious about trying the game out with a “thumb stylus”, which you can read about here and also here. the latter link is from a post at IGN about the original DS which came with an early demo version of MP:H, which i’m also curious about trying out.

among my other, more-minor complaints, are that the morph ball mechanics are less forgiving than the other prime games and that there are rather too many insta-death situations, both of which cause some really tedious sections of the game. the story is yet another rehash of the first prime story, and i beat the game without realizing that there’s something you’re supposed to do to get the actual ending which was also quite annoying.

at first as i played hunters i kept feeling like i really understood how mario fans must have felt when they first got to play super mario land: that having a portable mario game made up for any shortcomings. but in the end overall i found this game to be quite enjoyable, so much so that i’d actually give it the edge over MP2, which for me just dragged on. as i mentioned, i didn’t spend that much time with the multiplayer modes which was enjoyable enough against the computer but felt fairly repetitive, but i’ll come back to them at some point. meanwhile, i’m seriously itching to try out metroid prime 3. let’s see if i get sucked into that one as well …

huntin’ for bounty-ful links:
- the official site has a lot of video clips and wallpapers for each of the hunters
- if anyone’s interested, nintendo power’s coverage of the game included a preview of the multiplayer mode (march 2006, v. 201), a cover feature and a poster of the hunters (april 2006, v. 202), a review (may 2006, v. 203), and a guide to beating the final boss (june 2006, v. 204).
- great game site at metroid.retropixel.net
- the entry at strategywiki.org includes a lot of info on multiplayer strategy
- entry at metroid.wikia.com, which includes screenshots of the brawl trophies for all the hunters
- video of the ending
- a good FAQ at gamefaqs
- guide at IGN
- entry at wikipedia.org
- entry at metacritic.com

metroid (metroid) echoes (echoes echoes echoes)

finally beat metroid prime 2: echoes this week. (here’s a good run-down of the game for anyone who hasn’t played it.) the game seems to be universally praised for being an expansion of the original metroid prime, but the consensus is that it doesn’t offer a whole lot that is new. some people feel that the game does everything that was in the original, but “better”. i was blown away by the original when i played it a few years ago, but much as i love the metroid series i found this entry to be somewhat tedious. the game not only lacks the freshness of the original, it just feels too similar, and its storyline of a threatened alien race feels incredibly stale.

among my complaints are that the game seems twice as long as the first one, and it seems to have a lot more backtracking in general. i’m always skeptical of games that create an “alternate world” in order to reuse much of their design, and like my opinion of final fantasy 3 (a.k.a. 6) the majority of the alternate world in MP2 feels like unnecessary padding. also, when first encountering the “dark” world of MP2 the environments are fittingly drab and somewhat difficult to navigate due to the monochromatic purple color palette. i did appreciate the different feel of the pacing in the dark world, which requires you to hop between the various safe havens of light that are spread out in each room, but by the game’s end the dark world’s galaxy of purple oppressiveness is just boring and dull, dull, dull.

people often mention the boss fights, and they are fun because they require you to actually strategize to determine each boss’s weakpoint; but they’re also somewhat annoying because each boss fight has multiple sections, all of which require some trial and error to master. this definitely gives the boss fights a very same-y feeling, which is unfortunate because for the most part they’re very well designed. the final boss fights are the most annoying of the game, and the game’s ending is pretty lame. i also had mixed feelings about the fact that the game only has three alternate endings: one for if you finish with less than 75% of the items, one for finishing with more than 75%, and one for finishing with 100%. lastly, i didn’t have anyone to try out the multiplayer with, but i checked out all the stages and it looked like it could be pretty fun. not sure why it gets dissed so much, but i’m guessing that’s probably just in comparison to other multiplayer FPS games.

despite all my complaints this was definitely a worthwhile entry in the series and i have a feeling it’s one of those games that’s much more fun the second time through. i’ve already dipped into the next game in the series, metroid prime hunters on DS, and have been quite enjoying the new interface. and i’m really looking forward to playing through metroid prime 3 on wii. and who knows? i may even finish those just in time for the new metroid: other M, due out sometime next year.

metroid (metroid) links (links links links):
- great site on the game at metroid recon, including screenshots, item guides, and a walkthrough
- as with the original metroid prime game, metroid2002.com has tons of information on sequence-breaking and glitches for the sequel
- video of the 100% ending. for all that effort you’ll be rewarded with a few seconds of extra video, yippee!
- guide at IGN

i-do-mo’ yu-gi-oh

about a year ago i played through a decent amount of yu-gi-oh! world championship 2007 (as recounted here). at that time i set the game aside because i got fed up with how long it took to build up a decent deck. to quickly recap, the game requires you to duel to earn duel points (DP) which you then use to buy packs of cards, but since you’re limited to only 1 rare, super rare, or “ultra” rare card per pack, many of which aren’t even that useful, it takes ages to develop a deck that contains a decent amount of the better cards.

this time around i passed a threshold and finally my deck had enough of these better cards, so much so that duels were significantly easier to win than before, even against the computer-controlled opponents at the higher level i had reached. but perhaps unsurprisingly, as my percentage of good cards increased and the difficulty of the duels decreased, the game’s interest started to wane for me. it became apparent to me that the game was significantly less deep than i had originally thought: duels seem to be less about strategy and building up decks that have a lot of cards supporting each other (e.g. “elemental hero” cards) and more about just having good individual cards. maybe at higher levels still or against human players the strategy becomes more important, but as it is once i got to this point i didn’t have much motivation to continue.

this time around i did end up exploring a bit more of the other modes. i had enough breadth of cards that i felt up to tackling the limited duels (e.g. limiting your deck to only dark monsters, or no trap cards in your deck), and those provided entertaining-enough diversions. still didn’t bother with the “theme” duels, though, (e.g. win after fusion summoning at least five times) as most of the themes just seemed pointless.

i also tried out the online matches, an area i hadn’t spent much time on before. i quickly ran into the problem that is so pervasive in online games in general, namely people who drop out as soon as it becomes clear they’re going to lose. this was extremely frustrating, especially since the game doesn’t include any sort of punishment for people who drop out. your ranking only increases based on winning online matches, and my partners were ill-matched anyway since i kept getting matched with newbies who dropped out and there wasn’t any way to increase my rank by playing more dedicated players (although the game does have an option to be matched with someone with a random rank, i still ended up being paired with newbies the few times i tried it).

one of the interesting features of the online mode is that you can get a list of the top-ranked players in the country and the world and download a copy of their decks, and then play against that deck on your own. this provided some interesting games, although i inadvertently discovered that you win duel points based on the rank of your opponent, even when playing him/her as a ghost. this turned out to be a big surprise because i played the ghost of the highest-ranking player in the world, and perhaps because of poor AI i beat him easily and suddenly found myself with thousands of DPs. this made buying packs of cards in the game trivially easy, but once i realized i could get pretty much whatever rare cards i wanted and thus fill my deck with the best cards the game completely lost any sense of balance it had (which was already in short supply as it was). that ended up being the last straw for me, and for now i’ve put the game aside indefinitely. it’s too bad that the game didn’t have better pacing and more strategy, but i enjoyed the time i spent enough that i’d be willing to try out another game in the series. i don’t expect there to be any differences in the gameplay, but i’m somewhat interested in seeing if the pacing is any better. i doubt it will be, but i have a copy of the next game in the series, yu-gi-oh! world championship 2008, so i’ll try it out eventually. i’m leery of the fact that there are 2000+ unique cards in that game, compared to ~1640 in this game, since even in this game the majority of the cards felt fairly useless, but we’ll see.

you need yu-gi links!
i actually don’t have any links to add to my original list in my original post on the game here. but the two essential FAQs are still these two from gamefaqs: guide to all the cards with their text and the list of cards available in each series of packs.

japanese coached

i’ve been playing my japanese coach for DS for awhile now. i had played my french coach at the beginning of last year, and despite its limitations i had enjoyed it enough that i was quite looking forward to my japanese coach as japanese is a language that i’d been interested in learning at least the basics of for quite some time.

there was a lot i appreciated and enjoyed with my japanese coach. first off, i was looking forward to learning the three writing systems (hiragana and katakana, the two syllabic scripts, and kanji, which is based on chinese characters), and in general the game accomplishes the task decently well. the handwriting recognition works well and the characters are taught sequentially and in manageable groups. people have commented that the stroke orders aren’t completely accurate, but outside of that fact on the whole this isn’t a bad way to learn the characters. (in case anyone’s interested, i ended up looking through some other books to reinforce the writing i was learning in the game, and for katakana i came across a really great book called easy katakana that instead of teaching the characters in order teaches them out of order so that you can write a whole slew of actual words right off the bat. i highly recommend that book, although i didn’t find its companion book, easy hiragana to be as useful.)

the biggest complaint i had about my french coach was its emphasis on vocabulary over pretty much anything else within its 40ish lessons. my japanese coach is a definite improvement and includes 100 lessons and explicitly goes through many grammatical concepts, including verb forms, adjectives, and honorifics, although the game is still far from a perfect teaching tool. for one thing, some of the games are carried over wholesale from the previous games and don’t really apply to japanese as much (e.g. the spelling the game and the seek-and-find game), particularly when they use romaji (the english romanization of japanese characters) instead of the actual japanese characters. the game also doesn’t move much beyond flash cards, and exercises that require more usage and comprehension of the language and actual construction of sentences would have been great. even simple fill-in-the-blank exercises would have been helpful. also, as with my french coach there are some noticeable bugs (although nothing major that i encountered), and after the lessons are all completed the rest of the game consists of random vocabulary which is fairly useless. but in this game 100 lessons will keep you busy for quite some time.

all in all i’m definitely happy i picked up my japanese coach, although as with my french coach i’m disappointed at the missed opportunity. MJC is definitely a step in the right direction, and hopefully the series will continue to improve. i’m not counting on ubisoft to ramp up the quality much, but maybe i’ll be pleasantly surprised, as i was with MJC. regardless, you can bet that i’ll be picking up my german coach and my korean coach when/if they come out.

coach’s japanese links:
- most of the reviews don’t get that far into the game (e.g. don’t even mention the kanji lessons, which start around lesson 50). a typical example is this one from joystiq. but here’s a nice review of the whole game. also, here’s a glowing review from diehardgamefan.com.
- apparently one of the developers of the game has a blog. he even includes a cheat to unlock all the lessons (or however many you want).

went! fought! ouendaned

elite beat agents was the game that tipped me over the edge and caused me to finally buy a DS, and i wasn’t disappointed: it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time, and ever since then i’ve been hankering to play the original japanese version, osu! tatakae! ouendan (i.e. go! fight! cheer) and its sequel.

ouendan is certainly an import-friendly game (and now that i think about it, i think it’s the first import game i’ve officially completed), and i thoroughly enjoyed getting to re-experience the series’ unique and totally awesome gameplay with completely different stories and songs. (i also enjoyed the character design, which is by the same artist as EBA, atsushi saito.) there are a number of other small differences between the two games, and in some ways it’s a bit surprising that i so preferred EBA to the original. part of it is no doubt due to the language barrier, but in general the situations and characters in ouendan seemed just less wacky and off the wall overall. the songs throw enough curves that even an EBA vet like myself will have to spend some time getting to the highest level of difficulty, and not knowing any of the songs except one added to the challenge (although i’d only known a bit more than half the songs in EBA). incidentally, if anyone’s wondering, the one song i did know in ouendan was “linda linda”, originally by the blue hearts, which is featured in a pretty rad japanese movie called linda linda linda. the one major drawback in ouendan compared to EBA is that at the hardest difficulty level the markers appear for what seems to be a shorter amount of time than in EBA, thus requiring much more memorization, which i find to be a fairly cheap way of adding “difficulty”. so all in all this doesn’t surpass EBA in my affections, but i’m still definitely looking forward to playing ouendan 2, and of course i’m still hoping for the day we get a US sequel to EBA.

cheer-ful links:
- crackedrabbitgaming.com has a great fansite including links to original versions of the songs, screenshot translations of the menus, and a page of trivia
- the official website is in japanese, but it includes some rad wallpapers and interviews with the developers that google translate might be able to help out with but isn’t working for me at the moment.
- gamefaqs has a few good FAQs including translations of almost all the game text and the japanese lyrics to all the songs and their english translations
- interview with iNiS co-founder and game designer keiichi yano
- entry at wikipedia

nintendogs: too doggoned cute!

at times being a nintendo fanboy has pushed me to some ridiculous places. in this particular instance, to playing that best-selling video game of all time (let me repeat that, of all time), nintendogs. in particular i played nintendogs: lab and friends. one of my main motivations was just to see what all the hype was about, but one of the other main reasons is because the video game god himself miyamoto worked on it (as general producer).

i don’t have too many insecurities about my manhood, but although it generally seems acceptable in polite society to admit to playing the animal crossing games, admitting to playing nintendogs is a bit of a step. where will this slippery slope of casual game playing i’ve started on end?? but actually i was kind of surprised at how much i enjoyed playing nintendogs, despite the game being much more shallow than animal crossing. it’s far from being the most interesting or entertaining game i’ve ever played, but as with my experience with animal crossing: wild world last year, the game quickly became a relaxing part of my daily routine … that is, until i got to the master and championship levels of the competitions and had to focus on training my cute li’l pooches to become ruthless killing machines that would mash their rivals into pulps of fur. muhahaha. once i mastered all the competitions, though, i had little desire to train up more dogs, so i put it aside.

from a gameplay perspective there was a lot i enjoyed. as one of the earlier DS releases it makes good use of all of the DS’s capabilities, with more of a focus on the voice recognition than any other DS game i’ve played. the voice recognition for the most part works reasonably well, although i was annoyed that i had to retrain my pups on several commands that seemed to stop working, presumably because i’d inadvertently changed the distance i was usually holding the DS from my mouth or something. this of course set me back in the obedience challenges (tragic, i know).

the game’s pacing is generally good, with your puppy becoming able to take longer walks and score higher in competitions (earning you more money to buy more items and house decors). you also accumulate “trainer points” which enable you to unlock more dog breeds. once you’ve beaten all the competitions there’s less replayability (even with all the useless items you can collect), so that although it’s true that all the variations of the games include every breed, gaining enough trainer points to do so becomes a long and monotonous process and i doubt many have done so. if you have friends to wifi with who have other versions of the game you can get the breeds you don’t have that they do, however.

the designers have done a pretty good job of bringing the pups to life. i was hesitant about getting a second dog and dividing my attention between two needy leeches, but it expanded the gameplay much more than i thought it would: my second dog’s personality was quite different from the first (calm as opposed to hyper) and their interactions were entertaining to watch. i’m somewhat interested in seeing how much the personalities of a 3rd or 4th dog would add to the overall experience, and at some point i’ll probably pick this up again. but for now my shiba inu (named “pixel” by my bemused significant other) and my mini schnauzer have been cryogenically frozen in their cartridge until i power it up again. (although because of the game’s internal clock they’re probably starved and dirty and have already run away.) and even though it’s only been a few days since i’ve stopped playing i already miss them! awwww …

tail-waggin’ links:
- a great, comprehensive FAQ at gamefaqs including info on the unlockables, version-exclusive items, and advanced tricks
- guide at 1up
- english version of japanese widget where you can make a map of the town on your cartridge to determine where you might find unlabelled items on your walk
- entry at wikipedia

shadow of a fire emblem

anyone who’s taken even a cursory look through this blog has probably picked up on the fact that fire emblem is one of my favorite video game series, as evidenced by, among other things, the fact that i played through the heretofore latest installment in the series, the epically long fire emblem: radiant dawn, twice in a row. i’ve been totally psyched to play the newest entry in the series fire emblem: shadow dragon ever since it was announced: at long last fire emblem fans the world over can rejoice that the original fire emblem has finally been released outside of japan. well, not the original since shadow dragon is actually a remake, but in many ways we’re better off with a remake than the original, even aside from the fact it’s been translated.

first off, yes, this game features the same marth made famous to western audiences through his appearance in super smash bros. melee and who also made a second appearance in the more recent super smash bros. brawl. my initial reaction, like many other hardcore FE fans, was disappointment that so many of the features, even relatively basic ones, that were present in the recent games weren’t carried over to this iteration. in particular i was really disappointed that support conversations hadn’t been included, which are easily one of my favorite things about the games. support convos are sections of dialogue between pairs of characters that occur when they fight close to each other in battle, and they really give the game’s storyline much more depth and also give the game more replayability.

it’s no secret that nintendo was looking to make a more accessible version of what is a hardcore series in order to attract newcomers, and in fact in an interview the creators said that they were afraid the support conversations would make the storyline more confusing (which i completely disagree with, a classic case of a developer and a fan not seeing eye to eye). in terms of making the game friendly to newcomers there’s no doubt that intelligent systems succeeded in their goal, though (helped in no small part by the fact that marth is such a popular character in the smash bros. series), and some of the changes they’ve made are: the number of actions and stats each unit has are much more limited than in the other recent games; there’s a slew of powerful characters to use and replacement characters available if you happen to lose too many of the story characters; there’s a method of borrowing more powerful characters from a friend to get through a tough spot; there’s an online shop you can connect to in order to buy powerful weapons; and for the first time save points are included on the maps. the additions to make the game easier can mostly be ignored if you choose, but the save points are a welcome change, even to me, a long-time vet, and a nice compromise between radiant dawn’s ability to save anywhere at any time.

i don’t have a problem with nintendo making their games accessible so long as they satisfy the hardcore audience as well. so how does shadow dragon shape up? well, at first i was looking at the game from the point of view of the recent games, and in that respect there’s so much that wasn’t included that it’s impossible not to be disappointed. but when you look at the game from the point of view of the original famicom game and see what was added, it makes you feel like you’re getting a taste of what the original was like and makes you really appreciate for the first time the innovations that came later as the series progressed, particularly since entries #1-6 weren’t released outside of japan.

but aside from the historical context of the original game, the standard addictive FE core mechanics, and the chance to finally see marth in a starring role, there still were just enough new features that i was kept entertained. there were the DS-specific interface features which were great, wifi multiplayer for the first time (although not particularly well designed at all in terms of matching you with a player at a similar level), and two new classes that non-japanese audiences had never seen before that were fun to use (chameleon a.k.a. freelancer and the incredibly useful ballistician). but the main new feature is the brand new reclassing system. each unit has base stats and growths and class-specific stats and growths, and it’s quite a lot of geeky fun to study the stats and work out which units would benefit the most from being changed to a different class (e.g. changing an archer to a dark mage) in order to make up for their shortcomings or emphasize their strengths even more. the FE series has always had a strong component of nerdiness in determining which units are the best and the best way to maximize each character’s stats as efficiently as possible, and the reclassing feature definitely helps make up for some of the features that weren’t included. the reclassing system isn’t intended to be anything like the complex, central system of the final fantasy tactics games, though, and it fits into the aesthetic of the game in the sense that it doesn’t change the core gameplay at all and it can help make the game easier for a novice. the addition of six levels of difficulty isn’t much of a saving grace, although there’s no doubt that i’ll be playing through at least some of them in the future.

so all in all although i was a bit disappointed with the shallowness of the story and the simpler gameplay, it’s still a fire emblem game and i definitely enjoyed it. in this great interview for nintendo between sakurai of brawl fame and FE series producer narihiro, the latter mentions that the game was created to acknowledge the 25th year of fire emblem and the creation of the 10th game in the series (although shadow dragon is actually the 11th game). he also says the game was intended to be “an opportunity to once again introduce everyone to the fun and attractions that this series has to offer.” in that sense it’s much easier to forgive the game’s lack of more hardcore offerings. the handheld games have historically had less features than the console ones anyway, so as long as this is just a dip and the next game will be as jam-packed with content as before i won’t be complaining too much. in any case, i’m hoping the game sells well enough that the SNES sequel to the game (the original FE3) comes out before too long. like shadow dragon, it would be the next best thing to playing the original games in japanese.

oh, and if anyone’s wondering, my main team consisted of frey, abel, ogma, cord (dark mage), bord, beck, shiida (a.k.a. caeda), wrys, marth, darros, lena, merric, and gordin. the game has less balanced characters than other games, in that some characters are clearly superior to others. i happened to pick a lot of the uber units this time around, but in other playthroughs i’ll focus more on the less godly ones. and if anyone is wondering and doesn’t already know, cord makes a great dark mage: he’s one of the few non-magic units who has a relatively high base magic growth, so he’s clearly an ideal choice. yes, i know, i’m an FE geek. i gotta get a FE t-shirt or some figurines or something hahaha.

some fiery links!
- yet again serenesforest.net has the most awe-inspiringly complete shadow dragon site around, with all the essential info including characters’ base stats and growths, info on reclassing and the online shop, as well as the soundtrack and wallpapers.
- also worth mentioning is that serenesforest.net has loads of information on the original version of the game, including some entertaining in-game character artwork, official character artwork from the japanese-only trading card game, and scanlations (some in english) of the official manga of the original game.
- the reviews all seem to be basically in agreement. here are the reviews at 1up, IGN, and IGN UK.
- nice interview with the director of intelligent systems with the tantalizing comment, “As the basis of the series is supported by features of ‘Strategy RPGs’, we will continue to make new titles based upon them even in the future. But I think all of the Fire Emblem games do not have to be so…” yowza! i think i just wet my pants.
- the official site doesn’t have that much information, but it may be interesting to newbies and it has a nice section on the various character classes.
- hardcore gaming 101 has a nice run-down of the entire 11-game series, including shadow dragon
- for the european release nintendo UK put out a video on the history of the series (youtube version here).
- presumably in order to make the game even more accessible to newbies nintendo sent out an official release offering up hints and tips for the game, hahaha.