Nintendo announces another Fire Emblem DS remake

Silly JC, "first comment"s are for kids!

Well, at least it was sort of relevant. (I cannot stress 'sort of' enough; dammit Joystiq, give me italics!)

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I feel like we're going heavy on the Picard facepalm lately. I'm not blaming you, Robert, just saying that I feel like I've seen it like 3-4 times in 2 days... but I could be wrong!

Picard is just having a bad week, Acosta.

Dude, every time I see your handle, it reminds me of: http://www.cutiecentral.com/bios/rosaacosta/index.html

Ok Picard, take a vacation. You! GET IN HERE!

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I present to you, Jewish facepalm.

@Robert

BRILLIANT!

@ robert
quite frankly it would be hilarious to change the § to $
JK! JK!

Alex- I've been able to find it for $35 on ebay and gamestop's website (as well at stores nearby).

I'm too lazy for Ebay. Plus why should I have to pay any more than $30 for a 2-3 year old game. Games should reduce by $10 every year they're out, so by now, it should be 20-30 bucks.

Living up north, we only have one movie store, which sells only recent games and crappy old ones and we have one video game/computer store, but they sell games for 90+ bucks.

It's not worth it.

The game is without a doubt the worst in the series. The story is fine, albeit very cliche (something that doesn't happen often in FE games), but the characterization in the game is atrocious. The game's gigantic cast and a complete gutting of the conversation and support system means that any one but the main characters only gets about four lines of dialogue. Some characters' personalities have also been completely changed from Path of Radiance, which makes no sense whatsoever.

The new characters introduced largely are useless, due to how little they are used in the game. The Laguz are as useless as they have always been with their slow stat growth and experience gain and utter reliance on charging their metres. The jumping from party to party in the story ensures that, during the eventual super-team meet-up in Act 4 (zomg obvious spoilers), you have about 70% of your massive character roster that is beyond saving. They are so underlevelled or have such poor stats due to the imbalance of chapters per team and the very, very large spread of the experience that they are nothing but deadweight. Most Fire Emblem games you can get away with not playing with the best characters. But here, majority of your team is completely unusable, even if you level them to max. Out of the rest, half of your army will still be significantly underlevelled, requiring you to level them up in a matter of only a few chapters so that you can have an actual party during the endgame.

All of this requires incredible foresight and research beforehand. If you don't, you'll find yourself completely screwed 3/4 of the way through the game. Sure this is how most Fire Emblems are, but that's for new players. I'm talking about even the most hardened veterans of the series not being able to make it through and not because of the difficulty. I know almost every trick in the book when it comes to this series, but even that doesn't make up for broken and complete lack of balance in the game mechanics. It's like being really good at a fighting game and trying to play competitively with a DDR dance pad. One that only works "some of the time".

Wow that was long. And scathing. But my point stands: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is not a good fire emblem game. It is not a good Strategy RPG. It is not a good game in general. In fact, it is an atrocious game. One that I could not get rid of faster.

Oh, and the voice acting made me want to jump off a cliff.

Overall I tend to agree with Alexisonfire, except I think the reverse--the GAMEPLAY was indeed very strategic and fun--but the story...wasn't good.

We start off with Michaia, a rare female light-magic user, as the "Lord" in the first part of the game; this is an interesting twist--she's kind of like a "bizarro Ike" (female instead of male, strong magic and res. but weak strength and def. instead of high strength and def. but low mag. and res; you get the idea). Unfortunately, I feel she gets the shaft. The side she takes is automatically assumed to be the "wrong, evil" side. Speaking of which, I agree that some character personality changes were confusing, even insulting to those that played PoR--but I won't say anymore on account of spoilers. There also is, regrettably, a massive plot-hole that I've spent hours trying to fill--but no--it's unquestionably a plothole that could easily have been rectified with a little more creativity.

As for the gameplay, yes it is frustrating that your units are spread so thin, however, in the original Japanese version, you NEED the "special item" to upgrade to the 3rd class; the strategy is simply to decide which units to use it on. This makes higher-level units somewhat easier to manage.

At any rate, I just found the combat to be so addictive, more so than any of the other Western FE games, and the attack animations are vastly improved; watching special attacks can be particularly thrilling. I'd say it's still worth a look regardless of its flaws.

I know, it's stupid to remake the remake again. Now there'll be no reason to own Shadow Dragon.

Actually I'm hearing its a remake of only the sequel....now my mind is truly blown.

I thought FE3 was a two-part game, with the original and its directly sequel. Basically like if Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn had been crammed onto one disc.

FE2 was in the same world, but totally unrelated, then they moved on with 4 and 5 linked, 6 and 7 linked, 8 as a standalone, and 9 and 10 linked

Y'know, I've always felt that the Fire Emblem plots were kind of like the Ogre Battle/Final Fantasy Tactics games, only not as good. I'm aware that FE came first, but no one tells a fantasy-tinged tale of medieval politics and intrigue like Yasumi Matsuno.

I think the most lacking feature in Shadow Dragon was the support conversations that became a staple of the franchise. Without it, the game felt soulless.

You could definitely see some of the archaic elements float to the surface in Shadow Dragon. Little things, but definitely there.

I'm sure that people in the early nineties were thinking the same thing about the original games.

Spoiler: It was.

Although I didn't play them, the original FE1 and FE3 were exceedingly popular in Japan. I assume they were damn good for their time, being the very first console SRPG series. And the rest of the series continued to improve on the formula.

The DS remake of Shadow Dragon improved the graphics (though they were still really ugly) and the interface, restored the content cut from FE3 Book 1, and added a few new bells and whistles like gaiden chapters and class changes. But, ultimately, it failed to update the gameplay and story to the series standard. The remake was reviled by the fanbase.

I actually liked it more than most fans did, as I hadn't gotten a chance to play FE1 yet and enjoyed it from a historical perspective. But I don't have enough mercy to forgive FE3 Book 2 getting the same treatment (when it should have been included in Shadow Dragon DS to begin with). Rehashing its engine and graphics and hacking some different maps would be way too lazy of a port job to spend money on.

If IS continues to be lazy, you just might see it before the next original title.

If IS is really lazy, they'll split it up into two games like they did to FE3.