Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

Where it all began, and for the first time in full form for Western players too. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is a remake of the very first entry in the legendary turn-based strategy series from 1990, which originally never left Japan. Prince Marth, a character many in the West knew only from the fighting game Super Smash Bros., finally got his story into the hands of players around the world.

The heart of the series is unforgiving turn-based tactics on a grid-based map, where every unit has its class, range, and weaknesses in a rock-paper-scissors weapon system. The key element is so-called permadeath: fallen comrades stay dead for good, which turns every decision into a weighing of risk and reward. Shadow Dragon adds modern conveniences such as class switching and touch-based control of units with the stylus.

The game was developed by the studio Intelligent Systems under Nintendo, the very creators who have accompanied the series from the very beginning. The remake set the classic story into modernized graphics and supplemented it with optional side missions, which you can access only at the cost of sacrificed units, a harsh but thematically fitting mechanic.

Culturally, Shadow Dragon holds a special significance: it introduced the series' long history to a Western audience at precisely the time when Fire Emblem was gaining popularity, partly thanks to its heroes' appearances in Super Smash Bros. For many players it was the first chance to play where the entire saga of tactical fantasy began.

Compared to the later, more story-rich entries, Shadow Dragon feels austere and classic, but that is exactly where its charm lies. It is pure, hard tactics without embellishment, a textbook of the fundamentals on which the series built its name.

Why play: A modernized remake of the very first Fire Emblem that finally brought Marth's original story and its harsh permadeath to the West.