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!

Time to take the reigns with our favourite Fire Emblem once again, this time going through the characters that Shadow Dragon makes available to you in the Knight or General class. Traditionally these are a very defensive, slow moving tank of a unit, capable of taking on almost anything from a physical perspective – as long as you avoid mages.

To business then – what are your options throughout the game, who’s best and exactly why? As usual, we’ll start with the worst…

Lorenz

Seemingly usurped by a character of the same name in Three Houses, Lorenz joins you late in Shadow Dragon, Chapter 20 to be exact, though you’ll have to pay attention – he is situated as the boss of the chapter, so you should take care not to kill him by accident… Or should you?

Unfortunately he clearly occupies a backup position within the game, someone you could use to plug a gap despite him being vastly inferior to your other options at the time. Outside of his relatively good Defence stat, everything else is very poor and unlikely to grow very much at all. This is compounded by him already being a level 5 general, leaving less room to actually do any growing, and that there are only a handful of chapters left in which to do so.

If you’re absolutely desperate for a unit that can stand in front of physical attackers and perhaps plug a gap for a turn or two, then he can probably just about manage, but be prepared for him to be doubled a lot, especially on higher difficulty levels. Feels a bit bad given his light story involvement, but there’s no room for mercy here.

VERDICT: Worst Knight by a distance. Make him tank the bench… Which will still probably double him.

Horace

A bit of perspective for Lorenz here, especially in terms of statistics – Horace joins 5 chapters earlier, albeit in a Gaiden chapter, is two levels below him and yet has vastly superior statistics. Ironically, they’ll actually end up quite similar in terms of statistics, but ye gods look at that gap in Skill. That’s 9 points of difference on a class that you really need to hit it’s retaliations on, especially on enemy phase.

Despite this superiority, Horace still suffers much of the issues facing Lorenz: He joins relatively late, doesn’t grow a great deal or indeed have time to do so, and aside from the Skill statistic he ends up incredibly similar.

He may see more use in the immediate term due to his better base stats, plus the fact that you’d need to have a trimmed down team to recruit him, but these are all advantages over Lorenz and that alone. When compared directly to the rest of your options he falls down, particularly in health and speed, the latter of which might not even reach double figures.

VERDICT: Better base stats than Lorenz, but little else. Not good enough.

Draug

You may have noticed that we’ve spoken about Draug in a recent article, in which we detail exactly how bad he is at being a Knight but finds use by reclassing into the Dark Mage class.

We still retain that opinion – he’s not a good Knight, he really isn’t, but he is better at it in the long run than those above, for one main reason: His Speed statistic. For Draug, this grows much faster than any of the other Knights, meaning that you can actually get some use out of him should you decide to keep him in the base class.

Things start to fall down when you look at the other statistics. He won’t cap his Defence rating, something that others in this list will do, and his health total is good but not great. The worst offender though is his Strength, which isn’t likely to grow further than 10 additional points over the course 40 possible. This leaves you with a low movement, weak hitting and retaliating unit that isn’t too slow and can take a few hits. What a strange combination. It’s no wonder people switch him out of this class.

VERDICT: Make some use of him as a Dark Mage or be disappointed in his Knight performance. The former wins out for us.

Macellan

We’re finally starting to reach the Knights that actually behave like we’d recognise a Knight in the Fire Emblem franchise. We recognise the irony in this given that it’s a remake of the original. That being said, we’re getting into the characters that have a huge defence, good strength and middling stats everywhere else.

In that regard Macellan represents a below average example. His stats aren’t the best but they’re nowhere near the worst. He joins in Chapter 12, assuming you don’t let all the prisoners die, which means that he does still have some room to grow. Making him do so is a pain admittedly – having those statistics in chapter 12 on higher difficulties is a bit shocking – but once you get him going he’ll grow into a semi respectable Knight.

Where he falls down is in both Skill and Speed. They’re not the lowest seen here of course, but they’re not at a high level like others in this list – we’ve often seen him top out at 15 in both and whilst that’s acceptable in many situations, higher difficulties will see him suffer.

VERDICT: An average Fire Emblem Knight that’s slightly difficult to train up. Nowhere near the best but a unit you can certainly use with a bit of extra effort.

Roger

It was close, really it was, between Roger and Dolph for second place. Roger is a return to the average Fire Emblem Knight, very much akin to Macellan, only a little better. Directly comparing the two, Roger wins in terms of Strength, Health and a significant win in terms of Luck – sure, it’s a stat that does little, but when you have as much as Roger does it starts to make a big difference.

He also joins you four chapters before Macellan, meaning you’ll be able to bring him up to speed and integrate him a bit quicker, mainly due to having weaker enemies around him at the time, something that is only amplified on higher difficulty levels.

On balance we’ve rated him above Macellan. He hits harder, takes less damage and whilst he does have a slight disadvantage in speed, we feel that this gap is made up by the ease of use and huge luck rating.

VERDICT: A good choice for your Knight, though still a fair distance behind the best.

Dolph

And so we finally come to the best starting Knight class character, Dolph. He joins you alongside Macellan in Chapter 8, but he has a one level advantage which results in better base stats. We will admit that his join time and statistics are not ideal – you’ll likely have units that feel like they’re much more useful at the time, be it movement or damage wise.

Knights and Generals are a commitment though, you fully expect to have to nurse them through some high movement levels to get to those juicy choke points. In this regard, Dolph is your best bet. He will almost certainly cap his Defence whilst remaining relevant enough in his other stats to put in some work. His Strength is high enough to do some damage, speed high enough to avoid being doubled and health high enough to survive even if he does get hit a few times.

Were we limited by class types like other Fire Emblem games, then we’d choose Dolph as our Knight & General. On balance he’ll perform the best for what the role requires. Happily however, Shadow Dragon is a game that allows class changes…

VERDICT: The best base class Knight & General, but not technically the best the game has to offer…

Avid readers may have already seen our Top 5 Best Characters in Shadow Dragon list and as such, the below entry isn’t going to be a surprise. We’ve been through every single base Knight or General and we have not yet picked our best, but for good reason: The best unit in the game.

Sedgar

Yes that’s right, Sedgar is here to take the crown. He joins you in chapter 5 alongside Wolf, Hardin and a few terrible units. We’ve detailed it before but it’s worth saying again: He and Wolf are dubbed as ‘Growth’ units – their base stats are nothing to write home about, as you can see, but their growth rates are staggeringly high, meaning they’ll gain huge amounts of statistics as the game progresses.

This is particularly good when it comes to reclassing Sedgar as a General, because he’ll gain a whopping 110% Defence growth, meaning you’ll get at least +1 Defence every single time he levels up, sometimes +2. This, combined with the base stats he’ll gain from changing to General, means he will always cap his Defence rating at 30, essentially making him impervious to physical damage. Even in the last chapter on the hardest possible mode Sedgar will take tiny amounts of damage, which is no small feat.

In reality, he’s only a little bit better than Dolph, but every little helps in Fire Emblem, and he joins you a few chapters earlier, giving you a chance to get him going. Chapter 5 in particular is ideal for a levelling Sedgar – lob him in the north west zone and watch him farm exp.

He’ll need a little babysitting early on like all Knights and Generals, but once you get him going there’s no stopping him.

VERDICT: One of the best units on offer overall and the best Knight & General in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.