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!

We’re back with another of our character guides for Shadow Dragon, today focusing on the Dark Mage & Sorcerer. This class occupies a rather strange place in the game, feeling almost tacked on as a way to give certain characters the ability to field a mage of sorts. After all, it would be no good if all of your units capable of becoming a mage or cleric died off now would it?

Anyway, let’s see what Shadow Dragon offers you for this oft forgotten class.

2. Etzel

It’s very easy to see why such a class might be forgotten when we begin to examine it’s only default addition to the game: Etzel. He can only be found in Chapter 17x, which is a Gaiden chapter. For those of you keeping up, these chapters can only be unlocked by losing a significant amount of units prior to their original chapters being completed. In the case of Etzel and Chapter 17x, you must have less than 15 active units to unlock it. Not only this, but you must complete the unlocked chapter without killing Etzel himself. Happily he doesn’t move against you, providing you stay out of his spell range. Surely going through such a painful experience would provide you with a worthwhile reward?

Alas no, Gaiden chapters continue to provide you backup units with only just enough stats to actually function, never mind thrive. Etzel confirms this trend by being only just enough of a mage to contribute some alright damage, nothing more nothing less.

His speed is the main offender here. Any other spell casting class that you’ve managed to nurture up to this point will likely have significantly more speed, in some cases twice as much. This leaves Etzel unable to defend himself from counter attacks whilst dishing out significantly less with his own. If his magic were a great deal higher we might consider his use, after all huge single hits can work just fine, but again you’re likely to find your current units easily match him in this case.

VERDICT: Not good enough. His fire tome has one use: Bench warming.

We’re back at what we’re starting to call the Shadow Dragon crossroads. Do you consign the entire class into oblivion, or find a way to make it work and see everything the game has to offer? Surely you know our answer by now…

1. Draug

Aside from the rather comical naming convention applied here – read it backwards – there is something very special about Draug: His Speed growth rates. To explain this we’ll have to dig a little deeper.

In order to correctly balance how the statistics grow as you level up throughout Shadow Dragon, each character has their own personal growth rates in every statistic. These then combine with the class growths to determine how their statistics will grow in their current choice of role. In this regard Draug is a strange one. His personal Defence growth is 0%, meaning a 30% total in his base class, and his Strength is a measly 5%, leaving him with only 20% growth there too. Not to mention his 0% Health!

He does however, have a 5% personal magic growth rate and a whopping 40% personal speed growth rate. You can see where this is going by now then. Reclassing Draug into a Dark Mage means that you’ll end up with the ultimate glass cannon that’s very likely to cap his speed stat. Oh sure, his Magic won’t be anything to write home about, but Resistance is traditionally very low in Shadow Dragon enemies so he’ll still serve a purpose.

If we’re honest the Dark Mage & Sorcerer class tree isn’t exactly necessary in Shadow Dragon. You’ll have Bishops and Sages by the time you see one come to fruition, never mind meet the above pre-promote. Still, if you want to use one, Draug gets our vote for the best option.

VERDICT: He’s not good at much, but minimal competition means he wins our vote for best Dark Mage & Sorcerer in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.