History VideoGame / FireEmblemShadowDragonAndTheBladeOfLight

** Marth had a shield that does not show up with him after the Super Nintendo remake. He also didn't wear pants in the NES version.

* ArtificialStupidity: The enemy seems rather obsessed with prioritize attacking Marth over every other eligible targets. The mindset for the AI is seeing Marth as someone to kill since WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou but it makes enemy target him over sensitive units like wounded units or healers.

* WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou: If Marth dies, [[GameOver your game will be over!]]

** A case of PaletteSwap and YouALLLookFamiliar is blatant in this game. The two duo, Bord and Cord and Dolph and Macellan, use the same portrait for each other when later games gave them some differentiation. Caesar and Radd started off as recolors of each other, and then given completely given designs that diverge from each other later on.

** Marth is completely pantless and wears a blue tunic in the original installment. His appearance in ''Mystery of the Emblem'' has been used as design since, even if his battle sprite still uses his old appearance.
** Abel appears much more goofier than in future installment as he is depicted with a bucktooth. He would be a {{Bishounen}} since ''Mystery of the Emblem'', as he no longer has a bucktooth. In addition to a case of CharacterizationMarchesOn, Gordin is drawn with a [[https://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/5/57/FEARHT_Gordin.png confident smirk]] when Gordin is nowadays depicted by his [[https://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/a/a1/FEMN_Gordin_01.png lack of confidence and maturity]].
** Navarre wearing shoulderpad and gear that would resemble a typical mercenary is a farcry nowadays when many recognized him with his tunic that became a reference design for myrmidon. Even ''Mystery of the Emblem'' depicts him as the latter, even if he uses the mercenary sprite due to the lack of myrmidon class in both ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' and ''Mystery of the Emblem''.

** A case of PaletteSwap and YouALLLookFamiliar is blatant in this game. The two duo, Bord and Cord and Dolph and Macellan, use the same portrait for each other when later games gave them some differentiation.

** Enemy units have a stat that displays how much EXP they are worth.

* TookALevelInBadass: This occurs somewhat literally every time a unit is promoted, but the straightest example would be Curates -> Bishops, since they go from vulnerable healers to useful support units that can still use tomes for attacking and tend to have high Resistance scores, making them surprisingly good for dueling enemy mages.

* {{The Numbered Things}}: The Three Regalia.

* {{Retraux}}: The 30th anniversary collector's edition of the Switch release includes a number of items designed to replicate what an actual English-language release of the game on the NES would have been like, including a box, manual, an art piece in the shape of an NES cartridge with a game label, and even a miniature ''Magazine/NintendoPower'' ("volume 11.5") with game tips inside.

* InconsistentDub: The American and European releases had several disagreements with names. For example, Caeda in the US was Shiida in Europe, Macedon was Medon, and Dolhr was Doluna.

* PlotArmor: If Minerva, Palla, Catria, and Est are killed in Chapter 7 when they show up as enemies, they will merely retreat instead of die and can still join as playable characters much later in the story.

* CrutchCharacter: Jagen returns in this role, of being a prepromoted unit you get in the beginning of the game with slightly better base stats and a high enough Lance Rank to use the very powerful Silver Lance that makes him significantly better than your other units at the start, but has very poor growths, which when combined with levelling up a lot slower will have him fall off later in the game. Compared to the original game though his growths aren't as bad this time, with them being increased substantially (with his non-magical growths ranging from 15-40% instead of 0-10%), and you can now reclass him to a Dracoknight that gives him flying utility with better stats and improves his Speed growth to an acceptable 30% that can help him avoid getting doubled for longer. Combine those improvements with ''Shadow Dragon'''s dynamic growths system (where each time you fail to raise a stat its growth rate is increased slightly until you do raise it), and Jagen can maintain his usefulness for a lot longer, even on Hard 5 difficulty he can last into mid game before he truly falls behind.

** Wolf and Sedgar are a unique example of this; they're units you get early that appear to be CrutchCharacter prepromotes, but with rather poor base stats and in the weak Horseman class that makes them initially appear like permanent bench warmers that should never be touched. However they have ludicrously high growth rates, by far the best of the game, that will near guarantee their non-magical stats besides Luck to increase with each level, while their HP is guarantee to go up with a good chance to increase by 2 each level. This can be pushed farther through reclassing, where they can be made into a more immediately useful class that makes them more feasible to train in addition to even better growths, including Sedgar as a General increasing Defense with every level up and having a shot to increase it by 2, while Wolf as a Warrior/Berserker is guarantee to increase Strength when levelling up and with a shot to increase it by 2. After some level ups they can really snowball out of control, even on Hard 5 difficulty, and become nigh-immortal against non-magical enemies.

* {{Nerf}}: [[RareCandy Stat boosting items]] are much less potent than the original game, granting smaller bonuses.

** The Starlight tome also qualifies; for giving up those very valuable spheres you get a tome with very limited uses (only 14) and only as much power as the Excalibur tome you had since the beginning of the game, with no crit nor any other special effects other than being the only thing that can harm Gharnef. Once you kill Gharnef with it you're not making much use of it again, whereas you could have made a lot of use from those spheres for the rest of the game. This additionally factors into the decision for players to keep the spheres over giving them up to get the Falchion from Gharnef.

** Pegasus Knights become Dracoknights when they Class Change. This also means that Macedon is the only nation in the series that has their military made up of both flying mounts, making it split in two between Minerva's Whitewings (who sided with Marth) and Michalis' Dragoons (the side that stays with Dolhr after his sisters' defection). Later games made the two of them distinct {{Character Class}}es with their own strengths, weaknesses, class family, and factions.

* PlotArmor:
** If Minerva, Palla, Catria, and Est are killed in Chapter 7 when they show up as enemies, they will merely retreat instead of die and can still join as playable characters much later in the story.
** Medeus has a more literal version; he has high Defense and Resistance scores, which make it pretty difficult to damage him by normal means; he's only vulnerable to [[MysteriousWaif Tiki's]] BreathWeapon and Marth's [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Falchion]], thus necessitating that one of them kill him (and even then, Marth does more damage, so it's most likely he'll be the one to land the killing blow). It's still possible to hurt him by other means, but it takes the kind of damage that would OneHitKill any of his minions, and so isn't easily accessible unless some of your attacking units are overleveled and over-equipped.

** Shadow Dragon added a "dynamic growths" mechanic unseen in any other Fire Emblem, where each time you fail to proc a stat upon levelling up, its growth rate is increased by X1.1 of its default value, with the result being rounded down but the decimaled number being kept internally to keep building the dynamic growth off of (so if a character has a 45% growth in a stat and doesn't proc it, it'll become a 49% real growth for the next level up but kept internally as 49.5%, and then if it fails again it'll become 54% for both, and so on). Then if a stat does proc, it'll be decreased by X1.1 of its default value, but if it lowers their growth below their default value, the default growth will still be used for levelling up while the lowered dynamic growth will be kept internally to build future dynamic growths off of (so if you procced that 45% growth to begin with, it'll stay 45% for the real growth in the next level up, but will be kept internally as 40.5% for the dynamic value, and then if you proc it again it'll stay 45% for the real growth but the dynamic value lowers to 36%, and so on). Essentially, this mechanic helps prevent your characters from getting "RNG screwed" with their level ups and so over time it'll be much rarer for a character to end up significantly worse than their average stats, but it still leaves open the possibility for a character to get "RNG blessed" and become significantly better than their averages, overall being a boon for the player. This mechanic would never return in the future ''Fire Emblem'' games, but growth rates would become so much higher across the board that it was probably seen as excessive.

** Astram is being wary towards Marth, [[spoiler:hinting his resentment towards the prince's decision to turn against Archanea in the future.]]
** Xane tells Tiki [[spoiler:that he is a dragon like her, but is unable to transform into one. ]]

** Boah considering a marriage candidate for Nyna. [[spoiler:It was revealed near the end of ''Mystery of the Emblem'' that the marriage between Hardin and Nyna was his idea, a decision he regretted to his death upon seeing how the loveless marriage serves as a catalyst Hardin's StartOfDarkness.]]

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: You know all the fuss of getting the [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Falchion]]? Well, on [[HarderThanHard Hard-5]], trying to use it to kill [[FinalBoss Medeus]] is actually a really bad idea. You see, Marth is capped at 25 speed and 60 HP, while Medeus has 30 speed, making it so that Marth always gets doubled. [[SerialEscalation Making this even worse]] is that Medeus has 50 attack while Marth's defense is capped at 25, if he gets lucky. Marth will thus need extremely lucky level ups and statboosters to just SURVIVE a single round of combat and not be sent straight to the GameOver screen for trying to kill Medeus like the plot told him to. And we haven't even discussed Medeus' chance to [[CriticalHit crit]], which with his astronomical attack, a guaranteed OneHitKill on anything without exceptions.

* SecretCharacter: The Falcoknight class can only be accessed by purchasing up to three Elysian Whips from the online store and promoting a Pegasus Knight with them. Since the Nintendo DS servers have been shut down, owners of the original cartridge version cannot have Falcoknights at all; owners of the Wii U Virtual Console rerelase are still in luck. This would be rectified in ''New Mystery of the Emblem'', where you can find three Elysian Whips in regular gameplay.

In 2020, an UpdatedRerelease of the original game was announced for the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch for a limited-time release on December 4th, 2020 as part of the 30th anniversary of the ''Fire Emblem'' franchise. In addition to several new quality-of-life features, the port features a complete localization, the first time the original game has ever officially been released in English.

In 2020, an UpdatedRerelease of the original game was announced for the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch for a limited-time release on December 4th, 2020 as part of the 30th anniversary of the ''Fire Emblem'' franchise. In addition to several new quality-of-life features, the port features a complete localization, the first time the game has ever officially been released in English.

** Boah considering a marriage candidate for Nyna. [[spoiler:It was revealed near the end of ''Mystery of the Emblem that the marriage between Hardin and Nyna was his idea, a decision he regretted to his death upon seeing how the loveless marriage serves as a catalyst Hardin's StartOfDarkness.]]

** Boah considering a marriage candidate for Nyna. [[spoiler:The candidate chosen is Hardin, and the loveless marriage between the two would lead to his StartOfDarkness.]]

* MeaningfulRename: Marth's army of Talysian mercenaries and Altean soldiers is initially known as the Altean Army. As more soldier from Archanea get involved, the name is changed into the Archanean League.

** The Starsphere and the other speheres can be missed if the player neglects to open the chest its in.

** Shadow Dragon added a "dynamic growths" mechanic unseen in any other Fire Emblem, where each time you fail to proc a stat upon levelling up, its growth rate is increased by X1.1 of its default value, with the result being rounded down but the decimaled number being kept internally to keep building the dynamic growth off of (so if a character has a 45% growth in a stat and doesn't proc it, it'll become a 49% real growth for the next level up but kept internally as 49.5%, and then if it fails again it'll become 54% for both, and so on). Then if a stat does proc, it'll be decreased by X1.1 of its default value, but if it lowers their growth below their default value, the default growth will still be used for levelling up while the lowerred dynamic growth will be kept internally to build future dynamic growths off of (so if you procced that 45% growth to begin with, it'll stay 45% for the real growth in the next level up, but will be kept internally as 40.5% for the dynamic value, and then if you proc it again it'll stay 45% for the real growth but the dynamic value lowers to 36%, and so on). Essentially, this mechanic helps prevent your characters from getting "RNG screwed" with their level ups and so over time it'll be much rarer for a character to end up significantly worse than their average stats, but it still leaves open the possibility for a character to get "RNG blessed" and become significantly better than their averages, overall being a boon for the player. This mechanic would never return in the future ''Fire Emblem'' games, but growth rates would become so much higher across the board that it was probably seen as excessive.

[[caption-width-right:350:At first. There are dark dragon, Falchion sword and...[[TitleDrop Fire Emblem]]]]

In 2020, an UpdatedRerelease of the original game was announced for the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch for release on December 4th, 2020 as part of the 30th anniversary of the ''Fire Emblem'' franchise. In addition to several new quality-of-life features, the port features a complete localization, the first time the game has ever officially been released in English.

In 2020, an UpdatedRerelease of the game for the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch was announced for release on December 4th, 2020 as part of the 30th anniversary of the ''Fire Emblem'' series. In addition to several new quality-of-life features, the port features a complete localization, the first time the game has ever officially been released in English.