By the traditional meaning of the term, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light is a bad game. From a modernized perspective, this game has pitifully slow gameplay, clunky battle mechanics, actually garbage item management, and a plethora of laughably confusing design decisions.
...And all of that would be right.
But it definitely has redeemable factors. First of all, the balance is great. The characters you get closer to the start are almost always the best ones of their class. For cavaliers, the best are Cain and Abel, then Hardin, and then Matthis, Roshea, and Vyland. So better players get to use the better units, those being Cain and Abel, if they don't get them killed. Worse players will be forced to use units like Roshea and Vyland the worse they play. It's kinda great, and it's less talked about than other aspects of the game, specifically the bad ones you see at surface level. The same is true with mercenaries. Ogma and Navarre are the best, then Radd, then Caesar. And the gameplay, when you get down to it....it's Fire Emblem. Plain ass, simple ass Fire Emblem, stripped down to it's core, and despite a fair amount of jank, it's fun.
Am I saying that people should play Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light as their first game in the series? Hell no. Quite frankly, you are insane for thinking that. But should a fan of the series try it out? Definitely. And if this doesn't convince you, then this should.

Oh, and if the person reading this ever plans to play this game, do me a favor...do an Ironman run. Trust me, it makes the game way better.

Anyone who says this game isn't good is just plain wrong. Anyone who says this game is better than Super C...is also just plain wrong. While it's definitely inferior to it's NES sequel, this is still a classic game, and a blast in multiplayer.

First of all, let's get the most insignificant part out of the way. The story. Contra has zero story. That is, if you don't have the manual. (Edit: Apparently, the Japanese version has things such as cutscenes, a map in between levels, numerous graphic changes, etc. You can see them all here)). Even then, it's a few paragraphs, that's it. But genuinely, who in their right mind would play Contra, fuckin' CONTRA for the story? It's a game about buff men with guns who kill a bunch of aliens. Need I say more?

Next is the music. Contra easily has an inferior soundtrack to it's sequel, in my opinion. But I can see why many people would disagree. Contra is a much more popular game, and much more people have nostalgic thoughts of it. Inferior, though, does NOT mean bad. Far from it. This still has one of the coolest soundtracks on the system. The title theme is hype, Jungle is iconic and awesome, Base is headbanging, Waterfall is slapping, Snow Field is just plain cool, Energy Zone is energetic and exciting, Alien's Lair is foreboding and atmospheric, yet gritty, and the Credits theme is truly rewarding after a game like that.

Onto the difficulty. It's no surprise to anyone that Contra is a hard game. When people say "Nintendo Hard", this is what they mean. And yet, unlike many NES games, Contra is at a very good difficulty level. Despite so many deaths, so much trial-and-error, it doesn't feel unfair. There are exceptions, as always. But it really does have a well designed difficulty level, which thankfully carried over to Super C.

And finally, the big one. GAMEPLAY. This is what you play Contra for. For the normal levels, the controls are tight. Jumps are sometimes stretched fairly far, but it's no Castlevania: The Adventure. But what good are good controls if the stages aren't designed around those good controls?(cough cough scv4 i meant uh anyways) But fear not, this is no problem. The controls are designed around the stages and vice versa. On the topic of stages, they are very well designed. Let's take the first stage as an example. In the first stage, better guns like Spread Shot(our lord and saviour) and Machine Gun are on top paths, after the bridges. If you play better, you will get the better guns. If you fall off the bridges, you will get guns like Fireball(coming from Super C as I played that first, it's such a "look how they massacred my boy" despite the fact that this iteration came first) and Laser. It's not just the first stage that has this type of game design, it's recurring, most of the game is designed in this way. Now, for the hallway stages, these are much different. There are only two in the game, and these are stage 2 and 4. Honestly, I question the decision to put them both close to the start, but I digress. These stages...are weird. They take a lot of getting used to, mostly because of the odd angle. But I assume these types of stages worked much better in the arcades; I can see how it would be difficult to move something over to a much weaker console. These are the games' "gimmick stages", the counterpart to Super C's top down stages. And...if I'm being brutally honest, which of course I am: these stages are kind of lame. The top down stages are streets ahead of the hallway stages. It's certainly one thing I think they could have improved if it was kept in the sequel, but I'm glad it was swapped in favor of the top down stages.

Phew. That was a long one. All I'm trying to say is this:
Contra is a great game. Unfortunately, because of my history with playing its sequel first, I can only see it as an inferior game to Super C. But it's still an awesome game with great stages, slappin' music, and amazing gameplay.

[Revisitation of my Childhood, Part 2]

Okay, what..? This was honestly a crazy experience for me because my whole life, I was thinking that this game was definitely the better out of the two LEGO Indiana Jones games. But this is...much worse. Not saying it's actually bad, but there is a clear drop in quality from the first game. The best way I can describe it is "undercooked additions, baffling exclusions." Example: Hub world. Definitely the most notable new feature of this game from it's predecessor, the hub world is probably the biggest example of an undercooked addition. Everything besides playing levels, including unlocking characters, vehicles, bonus levels, and actually going to the story/treasure levels is done in the hub world. And uh...it's not fun. The minikit equivalents are basically dropped, and everything is unlocked through the hub world, which gets VERY annoying after a while, because of how much slow transportation you have to do during it. Another example of this game motto of sorts is the shorter levels. All of the levels in the game are shorter than they are in the previous game, and while many would argue that doesn't mean a drop in quality of those levels, in this case, it most certainly does. Oh, also, after you beat the story of an episode, in the hub world there is now treasure levels(basically replaying the story levels with changes to the level design and sometimes appearance of the stage) and bonus levels(custom levels made in the level builder VERY LOOSELY based off of moments in the story not in the story levels, which just comes off as lazy of all things) to do as well, which means a total of NINETY levels to do, EXCLUDING the stupid million stud levels. Other examples of this are the level builder, and the vehicle levels. Oh god, the vehicle levels. Not only are they super annoying to actually play, but the True Adventurer stud counts are stretched SO FAR that you're better off just going for that after you've gotten stud multiplying red bricks. The only new additions that I actually enjoy are end-of-episode boss battles. Most of them ROCK, like Raiders, Temple of Doom, and Crystal Skull 2 and 3. Also the Green Brick extra "Snake Whip", all my homies love Snake Whip.
Also, THERE'S NO BOULDER TEMPLE LEVEL IN RAIDERS STORY. HOW DO YOU HAVE RAIDERS WITHOUT BOULDER TEMPLE

[Revisitation of my Childhood, Part 0.5]

This game and it's followup were not the first LEGO games I played, but they...were also not the ones I remember the most. While it is a game from my childhood, I have some semblance of nostalgia for it, indeed. But that does NOT mean I like the game. It has very little merits, and even someone with the most nostalgia for this game can agree with that. I believe my file said 100%, as as far as I know all you need for that to be accomplished is to complete all levels. So I could technically say I mastered this game...but I don't think anyone wants to master this game.

[Revisitation of my Childhood, Part 0.5]

(copy-pasted from LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game)
This game and it's predecessor were not the first LEGO games I played, but they...were also not the ones I remember the most. While it is a game from my childhood, I have some semblance of nostalgia for it, indeed. But that does NOT mean I like the game. It has very little merits, and even someone with the most nostalgia for this game can agree with that. But what I can say is that this game is definitely better than the first, from what I remember. My file on the game was at 76%, so I was definitely going for 100%. Still can't be bothered to replay it though.

[Revisitation of my Childhood, Part 1]

Yes. You saw that rating correctly.
This game is ALSO not my first LEGO game. But it is one of the ones I remember the most from. Not from playing it with siblings or anything, I just mean I remember the levels. From my memory of the levels, it seems I beat Raiders, got most of the way through Doom, and got about halfway through Crusade. Despite my last playthrough of this game easily being at least 6 or 7 years ago, one of the levels I most remember was this horrid Last Crusade motorcycle level. And replaying it, I realized...actually, it was still pretty bad. But it wasn't as bad as I remember. Definitely the worst level in the game, as with most of Crusade. It's quite funny to me that, when I'm older and have actually watched the movies, Last Crusade, in my opinion, is by far the best one. But in the game, it has probably the worst set of levels, while still being great. It's mostly just the shudders motorcycle level that brings it down. Raiders and Doom both have really good levels too. The bonus levels are okay, with Young Indy being awesome, and the other two being really boring. But they are the classic LEGO 1,000,000 stud levels, so, it's fine I guess. Anyway, this was a blast to 100%, and a great time.