Fire Emblem: New Shadow Dragons and the Blade of Light

How do you fit an epic strategy RPG like Fire Emblem onto one of those impossibly tiny DS game cards? Nintendo has the answer, obviously, and in Japan Fire Emblem DS is now a reality. It’s going to take some time for the game to be translated, so don’t expect to see it in the UK this year – but from the time we’ve spent with the Japanese version, we reckon you can pretty much count on it being an essential purchase in 2009.

In one sense we’re slightly disappointed that Fire Emblem DS is just a remake of the first game in the series, yet developer Intelligent Systems seems to have gone out of its way to make this new version appeal even to those who invested many tens of hours in the 8-bit version nearly 20 years ago. For a start, the game is driven by touchscreen controls. If you like it that way, that is – if you prefer, the traditional D-pad-and-buttons combo can be used all the way through the game. In battle, though, touch-screen controls make the whole process much quicker and easier to manage, as you can direct units just by dragging the stylus to their destinations. All of the menus can be navigated with the stylus, too, which again increases the speed of play.

For all that, there aren’t any ‘gimmicky’ touch-screen features. Fire Emblem DS is true to the series’ roots, in that all of the battles are turn-based and are fought between individual units, with attack animations displayed on the top screen (the battlefield and menus are drawn on the touch-screen). It doesn’t even provide much of an upgrade in terms of graphics, either. The character sprites are simplistic, and the animation is quite choppy. But all of the important stuff – the deep battle experience, the lives and deaths of comrades and enemies, the level-ups and the acquisition of new items – is squarely in place and, thanks to the DS’s interface, very easy to get to grips with. We imagine Fire Emblem DS would make an excellent introduction to the series for people who have never previously played an FE game.

Old-time players needn’t worry, either, as there’s also plenty here for them to enjoy. Aside from all of the chapters of the Fire Emblem story that were playable in the original game, there are additional new books to play through in FE DS, including some which have been adapted from the obscure Fire Emblem Gaiden cartridge. There are also new characters scattered around the place, and the whole adventure kicks off with a new Prologue sequence of mini-adventures. On top of that, there’s a new two-player, Wi-Ficompatible versus game, which lets you compete against the units of another player on a special battle map. So at last Fire Emblem players can fairly settle those old arguments over who has the greatest strategic ability. Plus, there’s an online shop where you can buy items for use also in the offline game, using the virtual money you’ve accumulated in the single-player campaign to fund some luxury spending.

… continued