The first DS installment of the legendary Fire Emblem series is a compelling turn-based strategy experience. From Intelligent Systems, the same developer that brought us Advance Wars, it brings a strategy classic up to date for Nintendo's current hand-held system, without forcing you to make use of any of its control gimmicks. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon not only rewards strategic thinking, it demands it — but its finicky inventory management is a nuisance, even when one is in the thrall of utter addiction.

Each chapter is a fantasy battle where every unit moves once per turn, with the outcome decided by a heady cocktail of statistics. The most important factor is a variation on rock/paper/scissors: sword beats axe, axe beats spear, and spear beats sword. Yet there's more to victory than putting your armoured units up front to soak damage, and your archers and fireball-spitting sorcerers in the rear. You also have to consider which units to level up, which to sideline — and which to sacrifice.

A distinction of every Fire Emblem game is that each individual unit is a major character in the plot. If they die in battle, they die for good, their demise wracking the survivors with angst. The tutorial even forces you to choose one unit for a suicide mission so that the hero, Prince Marth, can escape.

It seems callous, but that's just the beginning. Pore over any play-guide, and amongst the spoilers you'll see that many characters — some of them quite wicked — only become available if you let other characters croak. To schemers, this feature is a Machiavellian delight. It makes for stacks of replay value, too.

Robust, deep, and varied, the tactical combat of Shadow Dragon is a delight to play. Yet there are flaws.

The most conspicuous wasted opportunity here is in the art used for the cut scenes. Browse through the manual, and you'll notice that they hired legendary manga artist Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed) to do the character illustrations. Alas, in the game itself all the characters are displayed with a pre-rendered, psudo-3D look, like in Donkey Kong Country. They look like dazed mannequins, even when their generic lip-flap animations are in play.

It's not just the talking heads — the cathartic battle animations that are triggered by each skirmish are also illustrated in faux 3D. Back in the days of the Game Boy Advance, the character art of the Fire Emblem games had a distinctive hand-drawn look; the series is weaker for it's passing. Let's hope they don't try this kind of malarkey in the next Advance Wars.

Because this is a remake of the very first Fire Emblem game (from way back in 1990!) Shadow Dragon lacks some features introduced later in the series, like character supports. By way of compensation, this is the first game in the series to support versus play over wi-fi. There’s also an online store where you can spend your gold on rare in-game items.

Deeper than Advance Wars, yet more accessible than Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics, the latest Fire Emblem is an engrossing strategy experience.