It's rather telling that I'll try to get to every single franchise I can at one point or another, and now I finally get to check out the flagship game of a number of Super Smash Bros. characters, starting with Marth's flagship game, translated to Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. Honestly in hindsight, the fan translation I picked up for this NES game pissed me off. Mars? Really? He's known all around as Marth, and I realize some things may be lost in translation at some point or another but the translators of the patch I picked up took a lot of liberties, to the point of even breaking the fourth wall in one rare dialogue box that references future games in the series. Thanks a lot. Don't spoiler me on that stuff just yet.
As for Fire Emblem's gameplay, I feel as if this is a relatively nice starting point if someone would get into tactical RPGs, though not the best starting point. Final Fantasy Tactics does a great job, while I was not a fan of how Shining Force dealt with things. Fire Emblem is somewhere in between. Units pretty much always counter, and depending on speed stat, one unit could get a follow-up attack which is one thing you'd really want to get. Skill stat is what dictates hit percentages, and misses still suck, but at least you'll be able to gauge your hit percentage with the stat bars at the bottom of the units, plus attack and defense. Critical hits are awesome surprises when you get them, and deadly when used against you. Because of the permadeath mechanic that units have to deal with, you really don't want to take chances with losing the best units. I believe the creators of this game wanted all players of it to do an Ironman-style challenge when playing, as in you lose units, you just move on. Well, you still have a lot of limited choices in term of characters, AND a limited choice in weapons before they break, so you know that's always a ton of fun, ain't it?
Marth, being the main character, is an enemy magnet. He at least dodges many attacks and counterattacks well. I recognize his critical hit animation is different from others, and actually translated to his Final Smash from Brawl onwards. As for the other characters, those in the mercenary class, which could promote to the hero class, were the exceptional ones without weaknesses, and they were pretty much in all my parties. The horseback riders (social knights, paladins, horsemen) were great for maneuverability, while armor knights were the opposite yet were walking tanks, but both do a decent job with things until you meet the enemies that have specific weaponry against them. Dragon knights were awesome but then you contend with those with the dragon-slaying weaponry. OR arrows, which work well against the pegasus knights too. Mages and clerics are quite typical, with bishops combining them. Clerics on the other hand have the dumbest leveling up mechanic, they have to be hit!? Weird. Then there's the Mamkutes, secretly dragons who have infinite uses of their stones and just are tanks as dragons unless you have the dragon-slaying weaponry. And of course, all these kinds of units, you gotta figure out ways around them all the same. Along with that, weaponry dropped by enemies is usually better than what you own, the shops only give half-decent things until you find a good member card and find SECRET SHOPS. Oh, and I spent a lot of time in arenas, saving before using each one hoping that the character that enters doesn't die. It made some chapters go up to 99 (turn limit), but it's worth it to level people up before promoting them or using them later. But hey, at least I got the chance to play a Fire Emblem game and enjoyed what I could. I look forward to many others.
