Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon - Completed.
As mentioned earlier I missed Tiki. I did get the Falchion, and knew the trick to get to 24x anyway, so I used that. Probably a good thing I did. Marth got doubled by Medeus and my plan to one-round him with a forged Wyrmslayer fell through when he was strangely not weak to them. 'sokay though, Nagi did 80% of his HP in one hit so none of his other scary stats really mattered. I could probably have managed anyway with Catria + Athena + two staff users but Nagi made things pretty easy.
Game time was 26 hours or so, got all the sidequests except 12x (curse you, Arachneian knights, I should have slaughtered you all in the chapter you joined). 26 hours is short for FE given I played the entire game with animations on + watching all scenes + my usual fairly long time in battle preparations. Maps are shorter than the norm which overall I am inclined to welcome? I do like some epic maps in FE (might have been nice to see this game try one or two at least) but multiple consecutive battles of 50+ enemies do get tiresome and I was glad to see this game dodge that. Longest battle in terms of time was Chapter 4 at 1:25 but I suspect I left the game on while doing something else here, otherwise the longest battles topped out at around an hour.
Kill leader was Caeda at 94 followed by Abel at 90 and nobody else was particularly close, Athena and Barst were the distant 3rd/4th in the 60's.
Overall, I've covered the game already. The plot is laughable, but that's FE1 for you. This has a trickledown/related effect that hurts gameplay as there are just way too many characters and you have no reason to care about most of them. Even FE6, the game in the series which suffers second most from this, does a far better job about it. Getting back to the plot, yeah. Game really fails at making you care about the sympathetic villains (I honestly don't recall hearing about Michalis until the battle you fight him, but the game implies that I should have...), only one serious villain has presence (final notably does not), PCs have no presence because they might die (and Marth and his advisors are cardboard cutouts). Just kinda bad on this front!
Gameplay-wise, well. I miss shoving and rescuing, they add a lot of options to the gameplay and the game was worse for lacking them. (Warp Staves being very usable makes up for this a little, but not enough.) No Canto (even after trading) either, which while balanced is probably annoying. Evade was... basically not an option as a reliable strategy since evade is literally half what it is in other games, plus weapons are more accurate in general (e.g. 100 hit Iron and Silver Swords).
Sidequests... well, part of me really likes the fact that it was very obviously aimed at the MUST NOT LET ANYONE DIE players to try to break them of the habit. Of that I approve. However killing off your own people is a bit silly. Put in a "Dismiss" command (as in FFT) and make the sidequest requirements more clear and I am fine with it.
Otherwise though the game had a whole bunch of neat ideas which were either neat experiments or things I'd like to see implemented in other Fire Emblem games.
-PCs who die drop their inventory into yours at the end of the battle. It's bad enough you're losing a PC forever, don't take their valuable swag too! This change fixes that. It makes perfect plot sense to boot. And it makes me much happier about this game's sidequest stuff. Might be my single favourite change, honestly.
-Mid-animation skip that still shows you changes to HP gauges. Hell yes.
-Enemy phase display skip. So yeah, you can now basically skip everything that doesn't involve you entering commands.
-Ballisticians were cool, and, I think, reasonably balanced in their implementation.
-Map design. I really liked the stuff connected with Gharnef (particularly him chasing you across the desert), the ballistician swarm map, and a few other things the game did. Definitely this is something this game did better than any other FE except 10.
-I think this version of forging made a bit more sense and was more flexible than FE9-10's. It would probably be better paired with only 2x might for weakness though.
-Reclassing was at worst a neat experiment. Opened up some new avenues for how to raise characters, but was reasonably balanced by how the game handled...
-Weapon levels. They matter a lot since they affect performance with weapons, not just what you can use. They raise slowly but not tooo slowly. Well done guys.
Usual FE experience beyond all this, which is fine. Fairly pretty in that FE way (animations were crisp, character portraits were good), music was quite listenable if not something I'll turn to outside the game much. 6/10 probably. Could rise if the multiple difficulty mode thing ends up impressing me a lot, or could fall on reflection like many games do, I have no idea.
DL-wise, the game doesn't really lend itself to the DL very well. Lack of rankable bosses, and lack of PCs with plot or that the player would be guaranteed to use. If the game ever gets players I'll probably support a Marth/Caeda/Jagen rank or something like that, could be argued on Cain/Abel but whatever. Caring is not strong here.
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PC notes!
Marth: Well, for years FE had this thing called "Sucky Lord Syndrome" and it's easy to see why with Marth. His growths are rather good so he was reasonably solid for a bit, but he's held back pretty badly by two things. First is the fact that he needs to visit all the towns and seize the gates and he can't be rescued to speed this up, so he can't really dally to fight things and this tends him towards being underlevelled. Second is the lack of promotion bonuses, so once the Master Seals come out to play his stats just start looking bad. I noticed people who recommend borderline ignoring levelling him entirely which says it all really, even Roy didn't usually attract such comments. Helps that the Falchion is leagues below the Sword of Seals, Ragnell, the Sacred Twins, etc.
Caeda: Overall MVP. Winged Spear (forging it for even more fun) + flight destroyed worlds for too long, she promoted well before everyone else (and Dracoknight is an awesome promo for Str/Def/Move) and continued destroying worlds. Fell off a bit in the last few chapters as her low Str finally caught up with her but she was always a perfectly adequate combatant even then, and outright godly against cavalry and knights. The storebought Wing Spears was quite an unexpected boon.
Abel: Also pretty awesome. All of the initial Cavs are on paper, since Cavalier is an awesome class and they have the Myrmidon option if they need more speed, and their stats are all good... but Abel turned out the best for me. After promotion he even had access to Dracoknight, though I used that less than I should have... didn't want to give up his sword rank but increasingly I ignored that for his lances anyway. This may have been a mistake too! Pretty sure I didn't raise him the best way possible as such but he's still good which says it all.
Cain: Also used him quite a bit. A bit behind Abel because he couldn't use Javs at first, but that just made the Myrm option more tempting. Ultimately decided to let him go for basically no reason, there's some biblical commentary there I'm sure.
Barst: Axeman. Mainly used him because I figured I would want one. While the weapon triangle isn't a good enough reason for this, having a lategame Hauteclaire user is. Probably. Also Hammer/Poleaxe in the meantime. Before promo he's a bit unimpressive, 6 move + middling (though not bad) speed. He does have the Merc option but that gives up axes, though I took it for a map or two. After promo, much better, goes Hero, keeps axes, gains move, gains speed.
Lena: Initial staff user! Thanks to the C she's good at this, but eh. Classed her into Mage since I wanted one, and while she was good at first, 20% speed growth murdered her, so I dropped her midgame.
Merric: Hey look it's a mage who actually does get speed! Also HP. Very refreshing. Competent and capable the whole way through but the move (no promo bonus to move was sadness) held him back from dominating.
Wolf: Oh my god the bases were hideous (game-worst along with Sedgar, sub-JAGEN). I used him at first anyway because I figured maybe I should raise an archer and Horsemen >>> unpromos. However he had a couple bad levels so I dropped him. Too bad, his growths are crack on paper (to make up for the bases, like FE9 Shinon but not stuck in a shit class and joining underlevelled). Another playthrough.
Wendell: His growths suck, and yet I used him the whole game and never regretted it for an instant. Why? 1. Prepromo, so initial move boost, etc. 2. Great base speed. 3. Base staff level. At first I used him as a Dracoknight because he doubled reliably and so was a good mobile striker, but as his Str became inadequate I switched him back to filler staff user and used him as one the rest of the game. Not having to burn time in 5 move Curate or use a Master Seal makes him damn good at this job, he could at worst always survive (was only doubled once or twice very late), and always counter for some effectiveness.
Athena: Her base HP and Strength are excellent for a Myrmidon, which covers the class' usual weaknesses beautifully. Her base Speed could be better but the growth takes care of that, making Paladin a reasonable option for her post-promo (she waffled between it and SM depending on map). So yeah, very overall solid, clearly a reward for getting that first sidequest.
Bantu: I really wasn't impressed by him, and was pretty annoyed you need to keep him for 12 chapters to get Tiki.
Jeorge: Used him briefly as filler as a second failed experiment at having a good archer. Why do I waste my time? Screw bows. His Str just sucked.
Minerva: Great filler, on the other hand. Hauteclaire out of the box together with the awesome move + Dracoknight defence. Eventually other people promoted and her stats became garbage but that's fine.
Linde: Has her own tome which gives her offence, but her stats didn't turn out that great for me, and she was typically Merric-. When she did die around Chapter 21 I didn't restart the chapter for her.
Beck: Ballista dude. Bad move, balanced by hitting anywhere. Limited weapons prevents true abuse of him, but this can be mitigated by the Starsphere (granted, a fought-over item) which conveniently you keep until the very chapter you get storebought ballistas. Actually thinking on it you should totally keep the Starsphere anyway, Falchion isn't worth it.
Catria: I heard about the stat growths in advance. They did not disappoint. She's underlevelled, but not by enough to be a liability, and is worth catching up because she was just a death goddess late. All stats above 20 except Luck/Res + 10 move + flight? Game cries. Gave her the Iote Shield and she could go anywhere and kill anything. Kinda took over Caeda's role late but was even better at it outside killing armours, though obviously not as good overall because of playing catchup.
Etzel: Filler staff user mark 2, inferior at it due to low staff rank.
Ymir: About the only prepromo who actually compares statwise to properly promoted units. He was nothing special but was doing a fine job as filler even into Endgame.
Elice: Well, she starts with an A in staves, so she has some filler use there. Master Sealed her immediately so she could enjoy the +1 move and attacking options. Terrible stats hurt her, but not too much? Admittedly I'd have to actually use a high-Magic staff specialist to get a sense of how she'd compare to one of them.
Nagi: Hey look she one-shots every random out of the box except Heroes (Manaketes get OHKOed, non-Hero humans get doubled/owned by 18 speed/36 Atk even before the monstrous growths which, admittedly, don't really have time to kick in) and takes down the final boss with only a bit more trouble (2HKO through the regen + not being OHKOed). Has only 6 move, but otherwise is an FE9 laguz royal.
Julian and Rickard: Are thieves. You only have so many Master Keys so they are very valuable, lots of treasure in this game, fair number of doors too. Worth noting when one of my thieves died in 24x he attracted my Aum Staff use.
Annnd that's all I care to comment on. Metroid Fusion is next, although of course I am still continuing with SMW2 (current progress on that: nearly done world 4).
