Welcome to our character guide, focusing on Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon characters. We’ll be breaking down each of the characters and their classes, and providing our verdicts on which of them deserve to be in your team!

Next up in our series of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon ‘Who is’ articles is the Thief, which leaves us in a rather strange position: When your Lord can open every chest in the game, you can’t actually steal anything from your enemies and the Thief class itself can’t promote at all… Is there a point in even using them?

Being completely honest, you really don’t have to at all. Marth can open pretty much anything you need, and you’re not exactly struggling for door keys throughout the game. Still, if you’re anything like us then something will eat you up inside if you don’t at least try to make one work…!

Join us then, as we consider the veritable plethora of options available to you when determining which Thief is the best in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon!

Alright we’ll level with you here: There’s only two thieves to choose from and one is blatantly better than the other, but we’re doing all the other classes and leaving a gap would just annoy us, so there.

2. Rickard

Rickard is the second Thief to join your troop, assuming you speak to him with Marth in Chapter 3, though in a rather ironic turn you need to unlock a door to do so. Said lack of thievery skills are, unfortunately, an apt description of his abilities within Shadow Dragon as a whole.

Statistically speaking he’s worse than your other Thief, and not just in one area; Health, Skill, Speed, Luck and Defence are all significantly lower than his counterpart, with only a very slim victory in Strength barely worth noting.

What we have here then, is the backup Thief. He’s essentially here as an alternative for those that perhaps overestimated the classes durability in a previous chapter. Of course, you could argue that a Thief should never see battle and as such that their stats do not matter. This is a fine argument of course, but given the option between an incredibly squishy non-combat unit and one less so, we know which one we’re going with.

VERDICT: Not good enough. Get benched.

1. Julian

Julian is the first Thief to join you in Shadow Dragon, and you will immediately notice those polarised statistics: Fantastic base speed of 12, poor base Strength & Defence of 4. So far so Thief, right.

Firstly, he is a markedly better Thief than Rickard, so much so that comparing the two verges on embarrassing for the latter. Julian is superior in almost every way: His Health, Skill, Speed and Defence are all orders of magnitude better than his counterpart, to say nothing of his Luck which is almost three times higher! Sure, it’s not the most important stat, but when you’re talking almost 20 points worth, it starts to make a real difference.

Of course, the old argument will always return: A Thief should not see combat at all. Sure, that’s theoretically correct, but unlike those that spout this time and time again, we have actually played Fire Emblem games. A lot. Our thieves always somehow get themselves in trouble, so we’d much rather have the one with more Health, Defence and Evade thanks.

It’s also worth noting that, health pool aside, a level 30 Julian – the level cap for the promote-less Thief class – isn’t actually too far away from your Swordmasters in terms of damage output, and he’s certainly likely to outdo them in terms of Critical chance and Evade.

In the end, you’ll only ever have to resort to Rickard if you lose Julian. No, he’s not going to all-of-a-sudden make the class viable over using Marth & Keys, but he’s a passable unit, and by far the best Thief on offer in Shadow Dragon. Give him a try – if nothing else, Fire Emblem is about challenging yourself.

VERDICT: The best Thief in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, and not a bad unit overall.