Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

A reinvention of the original NES titles with revamped graphics and intuitive touch control, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon will finally introduce longtime fans to the stories that gave birth to the series nearly…

83 7 August 2008

Role-playing (RPG) Strategy Tactical Turn-based strategy (TBS) Fantasy Warfare

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is a role-playing (rpg) developed by Intelligent Systems, released 7 August 2008 on Wii U and Nintendo DS. The main story takes about 20 hrs to finish.

Verified 21 Aug 2026 Sources: IGDB , Wikipedia

What Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is a role-playing (rpg) game developed by Intelligent Systems and released in 2008. It was published by Nintendo. It is available on Wii U and Nintendo DS.

The premise, in the publisher's words

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is a tactical role-playing video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. It is the eleventh installment in the Fire Emblem series and a remake of the Famicom title Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, the first entry in the series. It released in 2008 in Japan and Europe, and 2009 in North America and Australia.

Description from Wikipedia · source

How it plays

It is played from a bird view / isometric perspective. Its themes are fantasy and warfare. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component. Available modes: Multiplayer and Single player.

Where it sits in the Fire Emblem series

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is the 14th of 66 entries we hold in the Fire Emblem series. It arrived 6 months after Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The next entry was Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo - Hikari to Kage no Eiyuu in 2010. Its critic score of 83 is 3 points above the series average of 80. The highest-rated entry is Super Smash Bros. Melee at 100.

See all 66 Fire Emblem games in release order →

How it was received

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon holds a critic score of 83 out of 100. That places it above 76% of the 3,811 rated role-playing (rpg) games in our database, which average 73. Games released in 2008 averaged 65, so it scored 18 points above the year average. Player ratings track closely with critics at 78, across 66 votes.

How long it takes, and what that costs

The main story runs about 20 hrs. Completing everything takes closer to 50 hrs, roughly 2.5 times the length of the critical path.

What it launched against

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon launched on 7 August 2008, within three weeks of Braid, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, Street Fighter IV and Castle Crashers. It reviewed better than 2 of the 4.

Released around the same time: Braid, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, Street Fighter IV, Castle Crashers.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

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