I’m mostly writing this review because I do not think that this game has gotten a fair one, especially among the more mainstream game review sites. I also write it because the game was unfortunate enough to get released at the same time as Super Mario Galaxy, a high-profile game that most are going to be focusing on. As such, I want to bring attention to a game that is otherwise very likely to get overlooked.
	Now, the first thing to make clear is that I am a fan of the Fire Emblem franchise. I have played every game in the series except for the first two for the NES, first of which I’ve played the remake of in the third game, and the second one is much more like a traditional RPG than the strategy RPG formula that the series is known for. I’ve seen how the series has evolved over time, and everything that is good and bad about each one. I’ve seen changes that have balanced the game better, changes that made the games unique, and changes that have totally broken the game. I’m also part of the English fandom’s main hub (which you can visit at forums.grandbell.net), so I have access to all of the details when it comes to what the game has, even for the stuff I haven’t yet experienced. So with that in mind, let’s get started.
	For those who have never played a Fire Emblem game before, I’ll sum it up by saying that it is a strategy/tactical RPG game much like Tactics Ogre, Super Robot Wars/Taisen, and Final Fantasy Tactics. The game controls a lot like Advance Wars, but that’s about where the similarities end with that game. The playable units are individual characters, each with their own distinct personality and quirks, so naturally there is no simple “unit production”. Another notable thing about Fire Emblem is that if any character is killed, that’s it. Much like a couple of the other mentioned games, there is no way to revive fallen allies, and as such, most games require you to either reset the mission in order to get them back, or simply continue on without them. However, Radiant Dawn has a Battle Save feature that allows you to save at any time during a mission (unless you are on hard mode, but that is locked from the start… I’ll get to that later). As such, you can always save before doing anything dangerous and therefore avoid hairy situations altogether. That said, you can still reset the mission entirely if you accidentally save after something terrible happened (or where something terrible happening is inevitable), a mission is just going badly in general, or things like that. Fire Emblem has always been a game of trial and error sometimes, and as such it can occasionally be easier to restart from the last battle save (or the mission completely) to make use of what surprises that you found out the mission has in store for you. It can be frustrating at times, but Battle Saves make it much, much more tolerable (not to mention that it promotes experimenting and, most of all, just plain having fun). Another thing to note is that weapons in the game are limited use (for the most part), and since stronger weapons tend to have less overall uses, it adds more strategy in considering whether you want to buy and use a weaker weapon that has more uses, or a stronger one that breaks more easily. In general though, weapons should last a good few maps before needing to restock, so while it’s something to take note of, there isn’t a real need to obsess over it.
	Because Fire Emblem is a strategy RPG, plot is a significant part of the game. Now, first of all, it should be noted that Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is the sequel to Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Gamecube. Rest assured, however, that although playing Path of Radiance first is probably a good idea, you need not play it in order to get the full experience of Radiant Dawn. Anytime something from Path of Radiance is brought up, or is relevant to the subject at hand, at least one character takes the opportunity to recap and explain exactly what went on back then and how it is important now. It even has a chart showing everyone’s relationship with one another and short bio of each character (both of which are added to once you meet the character, regardless of whether or not they join you). As such, even if Radiant Dawn is your first FE game, you can enjoy it without missing anything important.
	And since we’re on the subject, let me just point out that if you have played Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, you can use an extra called “Data Transfer” in Radiant Dawn. What this does is that it unlocks a few extra scenes based on whether or not a select few couples had an A support with one another, a support room to read the support conversations from Path of Radiance (I’ll talk about what supports are later on), and lastly, to avoid spoilers, will basically reward you for playing with your favorites. However, there is a slight glitch in the Data Transfer where if you have any Easy Mode saved data, the game will lock up and you will not be able to transfer the data. To do so, you must delete all Easy mode saves and transfer either normal or hard mode saves. It’s incredibly annoying, but at least it’s not particularly game-breaking (and luckily Nintendo has addressed this, as announced that they will have a fix for it come mid-December (at the time of writing)).
Continuing on, the story that Radiant Dawn tells is very complex, and because of this I’ll try to avoid as many spoilers as possible, only mentioning things told to you at the start of the game (though if you really don’t even want to know that, simply skip this paragraph). It starts out with you as Micaiah, a light mage who is part of the Dawn Brigade in Daein. People who have played Path of Radiance will remember that at the end, Ike defeated the “Mad King” Ashnard, leaving Daein with no ruler. With Crimea rebuilding after the sudden invasion of Daein that took place at the start of Path of Radiance, they had no choice but to give control over the conquered country to their ally, Begnion. However, the ones in charge of ruling over Daein quickly started to oppress the citizenry, and so the story begins. It starts out simple, but gradually gets quite a lot of depth to it.
The game jumps around a bit in the first few missions before stabilizing on where the story is going, but it’s not too bad. In terms of telling the story, it must be noted that it is mostly told in dialogue with fairly little animation. Most may not like the idea of so little animation in cutscenes, but to be honest this is actually a good thing since because most of the game’s story is told through text, little animation makes it easy to focus on what they are saying, which is naturally important to understanding what’s going on.
That said, there are some CGI-style cutscenes. They are generally few and far-between, but they at least look pretty nice. The voice acting used during these scenes is… actually pretty average. I realize that voice acting is generally one of the other, but this time around I can’t really describe it any other way. It’s not hard on the ears, but at the same time it’s not perfect… It’s passable, and I guess that’s all that you can really ask for from cutscenes like that.
Since we’re on graphics, I might as well point out that unlike previous Fire Emblem games, every character has a custom model, both on the map and in the realtime animations. A few wear helmets, which make it hard to tell, but no characters are merely recolors of generic class models. If you can clearly see their face, you can clearly tell that it matches their portrait. It’s still nothing special compared to most games these days, though. As such, this is probably the game’s weakest point.
	In total, the game is split into 4 parts, all of varying story and characters. Each part has a pretty good amount of story to it, and can really get you into it at times. Normally, when I play an FE game, I will sometimes go, “Well, that was a fun chapter. I think I’ll do the next one a bit later. Maybe tomorrow...” However, Radiant Dawn made me go, “I can’t wait to play the next chapter!” for the most part, with food, sleep, and roommates kicking me off the TV being more or less the only things keeping me from playing it continuously. There were plenty of times where it wasn’t afraid to bend, or even break the usual FE formula, and the level designs were absolutely great. Part 3 has some interesting parts where you swap sides for a bit, and while you’d think it’d be nice playing as the bad guys for a bit, there’s really nothing… driving you. To take down the very army you just spent the last several chapters trying to save? It basically made me feel, “I don’t like this chapter… Can I move on to the next plot point?” Granted, that was probably the idea, and it still doesn’t stop part 3 from being a very nice part in all.
	Part 4, however, is where things really start to slow down. Naturally, it being the last part, everyone is joined together… and then you must split your forces into 3 teams. Now, this is both a unique experience as well as a flaw, because you’re given no idea as to what each team faces. For example, you’re going to be pulling your hair out once you realize team 2 is going to have an indoors mission with chests, with your thieves being on other teams. Sure, there are chest keys, but they cost a pretty penny… A thief is far more convenient to use, especially since all the thieves in Radiant Dawn are fairly low-maintenance (unlike most games where they start as glass and need constant handholding in order to get trained up to par). Another example is that team 1 is going to play on a desert chapter, where mounted units are near-useless and spellcasters reign supreme since they don’t feel the movement penalties from the sand that other units do. Naturally, you’ll likely try to balance out the teams with a healer on each and a couple strong characters that can block enemy advances with ease, and luckily, that’s probably going to be at least sufficient enough for your first try. However, you’ll still probably wish you knew what kind of thing each team would go through.
The story also slows down, as it can basically be summed up as “this person’s team got closer to the goal” for several chapters. I realize I should probably be thankful for a time to take a break after it kept me interested for the past 3 parts, but that doesn’t change that it was going so well for some time. It was a unique part, and was indeed still fun, but just didn’t have the pull the rest of the game had. That said, it still answers questions that were leftover from events that have gone on, and still has some more interesting events. The plot points that it makes are also pretty nice, but it still could have been better. The Endgame fixes this and makes things interesting again, and also makes you realize that the game was not kidding when they warned you to bring the best of the best, because it’s going to test all your skills as a tactician in order to get through. Of course, it doesn’t warn you that your time at the base before starting the chapter is the last chance you have to buy supplies before facing the final mission, so it’s possible to accidentally come in unprepared for the battles ahead, which could have easily been avoided simply by having someone mention that once you start, there’s no looking back. The final boss has some tricks up their sleeve as any good one should, and will definitely give you a run for your money. They’re hard, but satisfyingly so, but it must be noted that if you don’t land the final blow with a specific character, they will resurrect themselves to full HP and you must beat them down again (which a friend of mine was unfortunate enough to not realize, resulting in them defeating the final boss 4 times over with no end in sight). Once the final boss finally kicks the bucket and have thus beaten the game, you’re going to feel that although the ending is good, it’s only average because it feels like something is missing, and… Well, actually, there is…
	Fire Emblem has been a series that has had replay value in the fact you can replay using different characters since there’s always so many available to you and you can only bring so many into the final mission (heck, Radiant Dawn has 71 playable characters in total!). However, due to the way the parts are split, just about everyone is going to be getting at least some use for a while since the amount of people you can bring into a mission is exactly the same as the ones you have available to you (unless someone was killed, of course) for some time. You can still focus on some more than others once a decent amount of allies join, but for a while you’ll probably just want to get through the chapters rather quickly to get to a point where you can actually use some different characters. Luckily, the game allows you to turn off the detailed realtime animations in exchange for map animations, and upon beating the game you can turn those off as well. Upon beating the game, you get the chance to start another playthrough on the same file, and doing so allows for a couple different events to occur, including the potential for recruiting two more allies and the scene in the ending that you knew was there, but didn’t get to see the first time around (the reason you couldn’t see it at first is because one of the new allies you can recruit the second time around is needed in order to see this scene). I’m quite honestly not sure why they did this, but I’m assuming it’s either because they wanted you to see what happens if the characters are not recruited, and how this affects the story (since the internet makes it so you can always just look up how to recruit the characters and get them all in one run or something like that… though I should probably mention that they’re not the only characters who can alter events. Several conversations and events in the game will either change or not take place at all based on whether or not some characters are dead or not recruited), or because they were trying to create more replay value. Frankly, either one makes sense, so I honestly don’t know which it is.
	Here’s the part where I get to make those Otakus that remind one of Francis from Super Paper Mario cry. Radiant Dawn is one of those games that is actually more difficult in the North American version than in the Japanese version. I know, it sounds insane, but it’s true. You can check Youtubes if you so wish, but the final chapter enemies that I faced most definitely have higher offensive and defensive stats compared to the Youtubes of the final chapters enemies of the Japanese version (though the rest of their stats aren’t too different). Don’t let the fact the difficulties are called Easy, Normal, and Hard fool you, those are actually just the Japanese difficulties of Normal, Hard, and Maniac renamed. Luckily though, “Hard” mode is locked until you beat “Normal” mode, so there will be no picking Hard mode thinking it’s on par with Path of Radiance’s hard mode and ending up biting off more than you can chew… although Normal mode is still probably going to leave most FE newbies frustrated enough to delete the file and start again on Easy. It’s a pretty tough game, which is nice since most Wii games don’t always offer the kind of challenge that many players would like.
I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t yet managed to play Hard mode, but even so, I already know it has several changes from normal mode that were retained from the Japanese version. Normally, there are three triangles in the game. One is the weapon triangle (swords > axes > lances > swords), one is a magic triangle (anima(elemental) > light > dark > anima), and an anima triangle (wind > thunder > fire > wind). Winning or losing the triangle results in a gain/loss of accuracy and attack power, so it’s generally in your best interests to win it whenever possible. However, Hard mode removes the triangles, which in the opinion of my friends that have played it, not only removes an element of strategy, but overall makes things a lot more annoying. Also, Battle Saves are gone, which means no more experimenting, and no more risks can be taken. I’d say it sounds to be definitely worthy of its name, but to be honest, I can’t really say that. Renaming the difficulties makes sense on one hand since there’d be people complaining that there’s no easy mode, but on the other, it means that the existing difficulties are incredibly misleading in their names. Normal mode is going to lay newbies to waste because it’s actually Hard mode, and Hard mode is insane because it’s actually Maniac mode. I’m not sure what kind of stance to take on the subject, because I can’t really win either way.
Lucky for those of us who speak English, there have been other changes to the game to compensate for the slightly added difficulty. For example, the weapon forging system is easier. In the Japanese version, you had to sell a certain amount of weapons before you could forge a custom weapon (what weapon rank they were decided how much they contributed to the amount you needed to forge). In the NA version, you can forge at any time granted you have the money. It’s a fun system, because you choose a weapon (what kind of tomes and what rank of weapons are available to make customs of depends on where you are in the game) and, for a price, can make it stronger in might, more accurate, increase critical chance, and lower the weight. You can also make it weaker, less accurate, reduce critical chance (if it started with some), and make it heavier if you so wish, but that costs money and there is little reason to do so. You even get to change the color it uses in the Realtime animations and name it whatever you’d like, Because custom weapons can be pricey, it’s best you not do this very often (unless you just want a bunch of weapons with custom names and colors, since changing the color and name doesn’t cost anything, obviously). However, it can come in good use for training units that start out fairly weak, since you can somewhat compensate for lower stats by giving them a stronger weapon.
Since we’re on the subject of weapons, let’s talk about weapon levels. Allies gain weapon levels simply by using a specific kind of weapon, even if the attack misses or does no damage. After using them for a while, their weapon level goes up and they can use higher-ranked weapons. The limit for what rank they can reach depends on their class and tier. Unpromoted (tier-1) units can only have an A-rank in whatever weapon they use. Promoted (tier-2) units can have up to an S in one weapon. If they have any others they can use, they can get up to an A in those. Likewise, Tier-3 units (which are a new innovation Radiant Dawn has compared to other games), can have up to an SS rank in one weapon and an S in the rest. What weapon they can get an SS rank in depends on the unit, however. For example, there are about 5 mages in the game (not counting Micaiah), but of them, 2 can get SS ranks in fire, two can get SS ranks in wind, and only one can get an SS rank in thunder magic.
Since we’re on the subject, allow me to explain what the tiers are. There’s not too much to say about them, but basically, when a unit hits level 21, they go through a class change and go up one tier. When this happens, they get awarded some stat bonuses for the class change and their level is reset back to 1 so that they can get even stronger (they also have the caps for how high their stats can go get raised, but that’s pretty obvious). There are exceptions to this, however. Specifically, characters like Micaiah only promote through events, and therefore simply stop gaining experience once they hit level 20. Likewise, some units do not promote at all, and as such count as a 3rd tier classes from the start. The Laguz are another exception, as they work considerably differently.
Laguz are a new type of unit that was first introduced in Path of Radiance. Basically, they were powerful units that could only fight when their transformation meter was full and they shape-shifted into their animal forms. In Radiant Dawn, they have been revamped so that rather than have stats similar to the human units (called “Beorc” units in-game) and gain slight bonuses upon transformation, their stats simply double whenever they beast out. Because of this, their untransformed stats are generally terrible, and as such they won’t want to see very much combat while in human form. Unlike in Path of Radiance, however, they can kick or punch while in human form and do fairly minimal damage. It seems somewhat pointless since they do not use weapons, but Laguz have weapon levels, as well. They are called “Strikes”, but since Laguz do not use weapons, they need a way to get compensation for the fact that the Beorc units can always equip stronger weapons if they need more power. As such, Strikes do not allow use of stronger weapons when the Laguz upgrade it, but rather, it makes their innate weapon (claws, fangs, punches/kicks, etc.) stronger whenever they reach the next rank. Laguz do not promote, but as compensation they can level up to level 40.
However, there are a few things about Laguz that make it so that you probably won’t want more than one or two on your team. First of all, they gain experience very slowly. There is a skill that can help fix this that I’ll get to later on, but you’ll probably end up feeding them Bonus Experience to help them level a bit (which I will also get to a bit later on). Their growths are also fairly low compared to most Beorc units, however, when one remembers that all their stats but HP and luck double when in animal form, it suddenly makes sense since that means that each stat they gain is a +2 gain for all intents and purposes. The transformation gauge is another annoying part, as they are as durable as a block of wood while they wait to transform, so they must be protected until they can do so. If you are impatient, however, there are items like Olivi Grass (which fills up their gauge by half the total) and Laguz Stones (which make them transform immediately) to help deal with this. However, when the meter is full they transform whenever you tell them to, rather than automatically like they did in Path of Radiance. You can also have them revert back to human form prematurely if they are going to be standing idle for a few turns, or the action is over. This allows you to preserve what is left of the meter so that it takes a shorter time for them to build it up naturally. They take some real strategy to make the best use out of, but then again, the game is a strategy RPG, so maybe that’s not exactly a bad thing…
The only notable exceptions to the Laguz rules of combat are the ones from the heron tribe. They are incapable of fighting, but instead are capable of using magical songs to assist allies. The one they have innately is the one that allows units that have already performed an action that turn to move again, and will learn other songs as they level up. How many units that they can sing to at a time depend on which one you are using and whether or not they are transformed. You get to use all of the available options throughout the course of the game, and although the final mission only lets you bring one in, by then you should have a good idea for which one of them you prefer.
Next up we have skills. Generally, skills range from being incredibly useful to near-useless depending on who they’re on. There are skills that range from simple bonuses like Fortune, which negates the enemy’s critical rate, to almost always useful skills like Wrath, which increases critical hit rate when a unit’s HP is below a certain point. This is not the first FE game to have special skills, in fact Path of Radiance has them as well. However, even in the days of the SNES games when they were first introduced, skills have been incredibly difficult to balance. The best example is Astra, which in the SNES games was absolutely broken since it gave 5 consecutive hits in one combat round with each having a chance of critical and only taking up one weapon use. In Path of Radiance it was 5 consecutive attacks at half damage, each taking up a weapon use and having a chance of critical. This time around it does full damage for all 5 hits, but still takes up a weapon use each and cannot critical. It’s not horribly broken, but it’s a decent skill that gets the job done when it comes to taking down enemies, and I suppose that’s really all you can ask for.
If you don’t think a skill is particularly useful on one unit, or you feel another could make even better use of it, you can remove a skill from a unit and it will turn into a scroll in their inventory where you can give it to another unit to use. Innate skills that characters start out with generally take up no capacity for them. However, removing them erases this advantage and makes the skill have to take up capacity in order to apply to anyone again, including the one that it was originally innate to. This means that unless it’s a skill you’ll want to pass around like Paragon (which doubles the rate of experience a unit gains), you’ll want to be absolutely sure you want to remove it.
In order for a unit to equip a new skill, he or she must have enough remaining capacity for it. How much capacity a unit has for skills depends on what tier they are at, as tier-1 units only have 15, tier-2 units have 30, and tier-3 units have 60. There are a couple exceptions to this, however, the most notable one being that Micaiah, despite starting as a tier-1 Light Mage, has 20 Capacity. However, class skills such as Shove (allowing you to push another unit, ally or enemy, one square away if your unit is close to or larger in physical size to an enemy unit), Critical +??% (boosts critical % by listed amount), and Canto (if a unit has any remaining movement after taking an action, this skill allows them to use the rest of it to move elsewhere if they so wish) cannot be removed, nor can Mastery skills (which are very powerful abilities learned when a unit reaches the 3rd tier, of which Astra is one example). As stated before, Laguz do not promote, so instead, their capacity depends on their level. Level 1 to 14 Laguz have 20 capacity, level 15 to 29 ones have 35, and level 30 to 40 ones have 70. The only exceptions to this are the royalty Laguz, which all have 30 added to their base capacity. To teach a Laguz their mastery skill, you use a Satori Sign on them once they hit level 30. Like Beorc Mastery skills, these are very powerful and incredibly useful abilities to help them fight (the obvious exception being the heron Laguz, who can’t learn a Mastery skill since they do not fight).
Next up is the Bonus Experience… In Path of Radiance, Bonus Experience (abbreviated as BEXP among the fandom, and how I’ll be referring to it from now on) could be given to a character to bring them closer to, or perhaps even hit, their next level-up. While in Path of Radiance, levels gained using BEXP were no different from gaining levels on the battlefield, Radiant Dawn mixes it up a bit by making characters gain a point in 3 of their stats for each level gained through BEXP. No more, and no less. This sounds like a bad thing, especially since most units have growths that would give them more than 3 total stat gains each level, but in reality, this can be used to your advantage… later on. Most units generally have high growths in a couple specialty stats, and as a result will hit the caps for those stats fairly easily before they hit the next class change. This means that you can use BEXP to make sure that they gain stats in areas they normally wouldn’t, such as defense for a mage or speed for an armored knight. It takes some good strategy, but you can make some very good all-around units through clever use of BEXP.
How BEXP is earned depends on the mission that you are on. For the most part, completing a mission as fast as you can generally earns you the most BEXP at the end, although if one of the characters mentions an additional objective, such as “don’t kill certain enemies,” or “set some NPC units free,” you will also be awarded additional BEXP for completing these objectives. And lastly, if there are any yellow “Ally” units, any experience they gain when fighting enemies will be dumped into your vat of BEXP, along with an additional bonus based on how many survived once you complete the mission.
Since we’re on the subject, I’ll be quick and note that aside from blue player units and red enemy units, there are green NPC units and yellow ally units.  Green NPC units generally try to run away and tend to be sitting ducks that enemies will try to go after since they’re usually quite vulnerable. Usually getting them out alive grants you some bonus experience, so protecting them is usually a good idea. It must be noted, however, that if they are capable of fighting, any kills they get are lost experience. Yellow  ally units are sometimes generic units that you can somewhat control by giving them general orders based on whether you want them to just roam based on what their AI tells them to do, tell them to go to a specific target area, avoid enemies best they can, or just stop moving altogether. As stated before, any experience they get from combat (if they can fight, of course… sometimes they’re as defenseless as green NPC units) is added to your BEXP total, so having them fight isn’t a bad idea, especially if you don’t want to risk any of your normal units in fighting a particular group of enemies or something. Of course, I should probably mention that although they usually are, NPC and ally units are not always generic units and are sometimes characters who will probably join your team later on (though don’t worry if such a unit is defeated… they’ll usually just “retreat” and pick up the fight again later, although you still lose any BEXP you would have gained from their survival).
Last up we have supports… Because each unit in Fire Emblem is an individual character with an individual personality, it is not unusual that they would want to socialize with one another. Supports are where two units talk to one another and as a result get stat boosts based upon what their personality affinities are whenever they are within 3 spaces of one another. Supports range from C to A in rank, and naturally the higher in rank the support is, the greater the benefits for both units. In previous games, characters could only support with a select list of people and as a result would be a source of major character development. However, in Radiant Dawn, anyone can support with anyone else, and as such they only have a few copy and pasted messages with each other (which while I admit sounds bad, one must remember that there’s 71 characters and 3 levels for each, and as such having them write that much is asking quite a bit, even for people being paid to create the game since there’s only so much that characters can talk about... If you disagree, well, I’d like to see any one of YOU try writing the ~7455 conversations that would be required to make them work like the classic style of supports…).
Lastly, we have my final thoughts… Well, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is no doubt a very fun game, and is overall pretty good despite being among the more challenging games available in the series. It has its share of flaws of course, but it’s a nice change of pace from the previous FE games if you’ve played them before, and for those who haven’t it can still serve as a decent introduction to the series since it still keeps what makes Fire Emblem… well, Fire Emblem. All in all, if you like games that put your thinking cap to the test, you cannot go wrong with Radiant Dawn.