4 reviews

games I beat within the past 2 months

[REVIEW]

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

- this game is literally most bare bone mechanics in the whole series besides the free re-class system
- awkward translation
- gives you a million units because they want you to suicide them on hard 5*
- ok story

overall probably not worth a play if you have played other games in the series

5/10



Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem ~Heroes of Light and Shadow~

- sequel to Shadow Dragon
- re-uses like 20/25 maps in Shadow Dragon
- introduces Avatar creation, dats some good shit
- ok fan translation
- good story sequel to Shadow Dragon
- it was pretty dang hard
- this one has falcoknights, Shadow Dragon does not
- still gives you a million units + another million because of sequel
- still has that re-class system I never abused, 5 flyers FTW

here was one really strange thing. I got a bunch of new party members from the first game that auto-joins you, but in Shadow Dragon, they would only join you if you had less than 15 total teammates, meaning you have to kill off some people to recruit them. So it's really weird that they have them join you anyways even though some people were suppose to be dead in the first game?

overall infinitely better than Shadow Dragon but still lower on the tier list for the series

7/10



Mario & Luigi: Dream Team

- very sluggish start, takes like 15 hours to get the game to really start going
- tutorials left and right, feels like this would be the first installment into the series
- gyro controls are ass, I will not be playing with them again.
- I actually found some of the fights to be actually difficult, never turned it to easy mode
- the boss fights in this game are pretty dang legit though, throughout the whole game. A+ giant fights and A+ regular boss fights
- a few areas were pretty bad, notably the desert. the best area, probably just the final area.
- useless side dream areas that weren't necessary and were basically there to just eat up time, doing 100% is pretty pointless.

this game could've been really good, if they just cut down on having to tell you every single little thing, gyro controls and maybe make some of the areas bigger. the final area was probably as big as 3 areas which includes dream world. the gyro controls make this game feel pretty awful though because many of the bros. attacks rely on it, and it doesn't feel 100% accurate. But saying all that doesn't mean the game is bad, some of the areas were very cool to explore and the battles are pretty damn solid.

overall. if you are a fan of the series and haven't played, it'll be hard for me to recommend seeing that it falls short at many parts of the game. if you haven't played any of the series, this would actually be a good one to start with? if they just took out gyro and some of the boring tutorial stuff from the beginning, it could've been a high 8, but it'll just get a

7/10



Etrian Oddessey IV

I've played the previous 3 titles to this series, and never got past the 5 hour mark on any of them, this is the first one I've basically completed. I've restarted this game like 3 times to get into, so the stuff I'm gonna write about is all my speculation and if any of you veteran fan gays get mad, get over yourself.

- this game has no info at the start. you are not told anything about battle mechanics, just how to draw a god damn map.

- regarding mechanics, you're given like 7 different classes to make, up to a party of 5. later down the road, you can give your 5 dudes sub-classes, which are based on the 7. also later down the road, you unlock 3 more total classes giving a total of 10. so it seems overwhelming at first, then it actually gets more overwhelming. all these classes have talent trees, where you level up, you can put a point into the tree however you like. this game DOES have a re-spec system but it costs 2 levels, per character that you want to do. which is pretty damn shitty, I don't want to have to grind another 2 levels just to re-spec my build.

here is my issue with this. at first it looks like you get a million options, which can be cool, but it would be even cooler if you were just given the extra 3 classes to start with and have the subclass unlocked. half way in, they just give subclasses and I'm now even more confused about my character builds, and some of the base 7 classes don't even mix well with the extra 3 classes. but the extra 3 classes work extremely well with the base 7 as sub-classes.

so when you unlock these new classes, you have to make a new character, that starts at level 1, which means you have to grind to get it to your current level, afaik there was no other way to bring them up to speed. great

so basically, you gotta pre-plan a build because you're not gonna know anything about anything and can be potentially walled later on because your build is ass and then you are required to either, make new characters for other classes, or re-spec and grind up to get your points back.

- dungeon drawing is w/e, the only things I ever placed down were gathering nodes, doors and shortcuts
- the dungeons themselves are pretty short, there are main dungeons which are story based, but they also make you go through these like 5 mimnute dungeons to grab an item, feels pretty pointless and filler
- this is the first one to allow overworld travelling, but it's pretty shallow despite it trying to involve baiting of giant monsters
- progression is pretty poor too, you tend to spend most of your time in the story dungeons because they are infinitely longer than the 4 side dungeons they give you
- quests are pointless
- the equipment is pretty standard, higher numbers the better, can have some bonuses like poison or agility, has forging to add extra stats to equipment

overall, this game isn't that great. it requires much info before you can even start otherwise you're gonna be lost and beaten badly, either requiring again, to start with new character combos or re-specing and grinding your way back up, which is pretty daunting.

4/10