FE:DS Shadow Dragon/Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light

TheWebbuilder

And we have confirmation. Fire Emblem 11/DS/Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light/Shadow Dragon will be released early 2009.

The game's a remake of FE1 (Marth's original game) with an updated story and a few new features. It does NOT include Marth's sequel game: Mystery of the Emblem, although it does retain some of the history set forth in that game.

Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly:

Marth no longer looks girly, he's become quite the arabian prince, he has.

The biggest 'feature' of the game is that it now features a 'Class Swap' function. Depending upon a character's class when they join, you can then swap their current class for another one. This means that you can turn cavaliers into generals/myrmidons/etc. at the start of every chapter.

In reference to the above, when using class swap, all the experience and growth that a character has gained will remain- but it will be transferred to the new class base stats. Its hard to explain but it works sorta like this: say you have a cavalier with 15 skill and the base stat of a cavalier's skill is 4 (so you've gained 11 points of skill since recruitment) and you're turning him into a general, the general's base skill stat is 6. When the class swap occurs, then your new general will have 17 points of skill (6 base points plus the 11 gained). Should you switch the guy back to a cavalier, then his skill will return to 15.

Also in reference to the above, Lords, thieves, and commandos cannot use class swap.

Lords, thieves and commandos cannot promote but cap at level 30 instead of 20. Their growths are also higher to compensate for this.

Marth is reported to be like similar to an immortal swordsmaster in that he can dodge everything and dish out some serious punishment. Many see him as a cross between Hector and Eliwood of FE7.

The commando unit is a new class that is capable of mimicking the attacks and abilities of other classes, albeit temporarily.

Shooters have returned. These are basically ballistic units that you are free to deploy and move about at will.

Support convos have been nerfed again. You can still support characters, but there are no conversations between characters. At all. Worse yet, character endings will not change depending upon supports, they're static and remain the same throughout.

The game comes with five (you read that right) hard modes, ranging from Hard Mode 1 to Hard Mode 5. In the later hard modes, the enemies will appear at the start of their phases and sport better AI and weapons. HM5 is reported to be downright insane.

Side quests have also been nerfed. Now the qualifications for entering the various side quests is that you have fewer than X amount of units in your posse. Most of the time the X amount is set horribly low, so you really have to kill people off to access them.

As an aside to the above, if you do have fewer units alive than are possible to take into a chapter, then faceless, generic units will be made available to make up the difference.

There's evidently a 'Black Knight'-esque fight to obtain Marth's immortal blade, Falcion. If you manage to collect the pieces of the Starlight spell throughout the game, then you stand a chance of actually defeating Garnef and earning the Falcion. If you fail, then a sidequest opens and you get a weaker version of the blade.

Talk about a mixed bag, some of those changes sound great and others are really, really lame. I'd like my support convos back, IS, kthanxbye.
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ACME-Rian · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 7:42 pm Post subject:

Is this release date for the US or Japan?If this game is indeed coming out to the US,I am totally going to start saving up for it.

Mars' new look is a whole lot better than the one in Brawl.BTW,will the characters be speaking?I'm asking,as I've been hearing that they will be able to speak.Can you confirm if it is real or rumor?

Can't wait for this.It will be epic.
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HeatShadow · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:00 am Post subject:

You know, I'd much rather they remove the 5 Hard Modes (what is this, Devil May Cry? This is a strategy RPG, who the hell needs more than one Hard Mode, much less 5?) and gave us our support conversations back. They were one of the #1 features that I loved about FE7 and Path of Radiance, since they presented such a staggering amount of depth and development for the characters beyond what was presented in the main story. The alternate endings, while not that big of a deal, were also a nice little touch.

I also find the Class Swapping, while interesting, a bit...odd. I could see it as being an option if you get a Paladin and already have 3, or want access to a flier or Pirate before you'd normally get them, but it's got the potential to be abused. After all, you could always just check what units you're going up against and then alter your entire party to have an advantage against them. :/

When accessing side quests, are the requirements that you bring X amount of units with you into the mission, or that you have X amount of units in your party at all? Because if it's the latter, that'll be pretty ridiculous. Side quests used to be rewards for achieving certain objectives and such, and now they're requiring you to do poorly in order to access them? Big WTF there.

Probably the biggest feature I'm looking forward to is the online unit sharing; supposedly, you can lend a unit to one of your friends for a few missions, and then when they rejoin you, they retain all the experience and items they gained. I'm just not sure if all those ridiculous drawbacks will be worth that and Class Swapping.
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TheWebbuilder · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 5:46 am Post subject:

Answered in no particular order at all...

**Sol** · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:42 pm Post subject:

I've already heard about the subtle differences in the game (why hello there, Chapter 1), and it's going to be interesting to actually get my hands on it to play it when it comes out. Class Swap is really interesting (although Kain and Abel will be Cavaliers FOREVER, trufax), and I look forward to playing around with it.

5 Hard Modes...I'd actually say that's pretty overkill right there. Hector Hard Mode and Radiant Dawn Hard Mode were already approaching/near Fire Emblem 5 difficulty, and HM5 is undoubtedly the same. They should have just add two of them and gave another extra in the game.

I'm saddened by the loss of support conversations. FE10 gave us the 'support anyone but no convo' thing, which actually worked out rather well, even though the loss of conversations hurt all the new characters coming into the game.

AFAIK, Gaiden chapters have been in the process of 'phasing out' ever since FE8 (which in there was only one, and that was mandatory and not even a side quest). I like thinking of 5/6/7 as the exceptions, not the rule (and that's not even counting the fact that if you want to get the true ending of FE6, you have to do all the Gaiden chapters anyway or you're screwed).

All in all, I look forward to the game and it's translation. Lord knows that I really couldn't enjoy the characters of FE3 because the conversations were so stilted. =/
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HeatShadow · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 9:34 pm Post subject:

TheWebbuilder · Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:20 pm Post subject:

Well this is an oddball. FE:DS will actually be released on Dec. 5th in Europe.

The date of the US release is still set for 2009.

Cue dancing Europeans.
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ACME-Rian · Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:53 pm Post subject:

Everybody dance!*does that 'Lord of the Dance' dance*

I'm impressed with how everyone looks like now.If only Sakurai used the Mars design for this one instead of that femme Mars design we get in Brawl...
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Things are going to be changing soon in the next few months.Stay tuned for updates and the like.

AngelfanA16 · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 2:40 am Post subject:

massive GBA fire emblem fan. These games are great destroyers of free time. I love this series. I haven't been fortunate enough to play FE1, so hopefully, i'll enjoy it just as much as #6
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ACME-Rian · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 8:02 pm Post subject:

According to Target,the game comes out this week here in the States.

The cover looks impressive though.Anyone plan to buy it,then play it so we can find out if it's worth it?
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Things are going to be changing soon in the next few months.Stay tuned for updates and the like.

HeatShadow · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 11:25 pm Post subject:

I was but, I haven't exactly heard too many good things about it. Apparently, are far as remakes go, this one ranks under "antique" rather than "refurbished". This is just reading the reviews of others, of course, but apparently some strategic elements have been cut (there's only one form of magic instead of their own advantage circle for example), the maps are unchanged from the NES incarnation and are showing their age, and the new features don't pan out too well.

Not the most credible sources, but the game wasn't exactly giving me good news in the first place, and this doesn't really make things any better.
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