Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

I like Fire Emblem games alot. They're not my favorite Strategy RPG series, but they're up there. In some ways, I like Radiant Dawn more than Path of Radiance. For one, the missions are bigger and tougher, the CGI cutscenes are AMAZING.

There are a few things I preferred about Path of Radiance though. In Path of Radiance, you followed Ike and his mercenary group. The story was alot easier to follow. In Radiant Dawn, you follow three groups. The stories intertwine and get really confusing. Radiant Dawn takes place 3 years after Path of Radiance. I don't think you would NEED to play Path of Radiance to play this, but it wouldn't hurt. The graphics haven't been updated at all. They could have put a LITTLE more effort into the character animations and backgrounds.

It's still a good game, and I still recommend playing it. I just wish they put a little more effort into it.

----------Battle System----------
Fire Emblem is a turn-based Strategy RPG. The turns are round based. So you move all of your characters, then the enemy gets a chance to move all of theirs at once. The advanced of going first means you can strike first, and strike one enemy with multiple characters. If you strategize correctly, you can even have an advantage while defending.

Each time you attack or use an item, you lose 1 point of it's durability. When you exhausted that weapon, then it breaks. You can easily buy more weapons and items between fights though. The more you use a certain type of weapon, the better you get at using those weapons. The higher your weapon level also means the better weapons you can equip too.

You gain experience for each battle, but not each move. For example, if you get attacked or you attack, then you'll gain experience, even if you miss. If you use an item though, then you won't gain experience. You gain a level after each 100 experience points. When you gain a new level, then your stats are randomly boosted by 1 point. It's different each time. Some stats can be maxed out though.

The human characters change their job classes three different ways. Some of them will change their job if they get to their 20th level. Once they hit the next level, then they will change their job and start back at level 1 with the new job. Some characters will change their jobs during storyline moments. The final method is by acquiring an item which can change your job prematurely if you want. When you change your job classes, you gain between 2-5 stat points for each stat.

Missions are pretty predictable for a Fire Emblem (or Strategy) game. You either have to kill a boss, defeat EVERYTHING or seize a certain spot. This is probably the hardest Fire Emblem I've played. You usually have to kill 80+ characters on an entire map. They even send in reinforcements most of the time. Which means, you might fight 100+ characters per map. This can be TOUGH.


----------Characters / Story----------
Radiant Dawn doesn't focus on a single character's journey, like in Path of Radiance. Actually, it bounces between 3 groups of characters for the most part. You start off with Minaiah, the Silver Maiden. She has the ability to heal people without using magic, this makes her an oddity. She forms a rebel group called the Dawn Brigade, and tries to save her fallen empire.

Ike is back with his Greil Mercenaries, fighting for what he sees to be right. Ike sides with the Laguz Alliance against the Daein Empire. Queen Elincia is the third perspective. A rebel group forms within her country and tries to over throw her rule. She squashes the rebellion and decides to join the war.

I think Suikoden III did the multiple perspectives thing a lot better. Radiant Dawn is just REALLY confusing actually. It's more confusing than Final Fantasy Tactics. They throw so many characters and plots and settings at you, it just gets hard to follow. It's not a bad story by anyways, but a game like Path of Radiance was easier to follow since it didn't jump from group to group.


----------Graphics----------
Oh.. ouch. The graphics are horrible. Path of Radiance didn't even look good. This looks roughly the same as Path of Radiance, but now everything is in widescreen! First gen PS2 titles like Summoner have better graphics than this. However, I LOVE the CGI cutscenes. They look like a mix of celshading and CGI, and it blends perfectly. There are a ton of cutscenes (for some reason, they're mostly shown in the later chapters). The scenes are also pretty long and fleshed out too, which is pretty cool. I like the anime-cells of the characters on dialog scenes, but I wish they had just a LITTLE bit more animation.

The battle animation isn't anything special either. You can choose to turn them off though. I did after a few hours because it just took so long to load. Some cutscenes use the battle system engine for action. They're terrible to look at.



----------Sound----------
There's alot more voice acting in this game, however, there is none during dialog scenes or even battle. That is my biggest pet peeve. I WISH they included full voice work. I know there is a TON of dialog and branching dialog paths, but a game like this needs voice acting. Like Path of Radiance, they include full voice work over the CGI cutscenes. They also toss in a narrator between missions (I'm not sure if that was in Path of Radiance or not). There are also alot of Dream sequences that include voice work too.

The music is good, but sounds familiar, so it's probably rehashed stuff from Path of Radiance. Not that it really matters or not.


----------World Map----------
There isn't technically a world map in this game. The progression is hardly unchanged from Path of Radiance. Which is a shame because I really enjoyed the Sacred Stones map. The game flows linearly, stage to stage. In between stages, you can buy weapons or items, change your skills, equip items, and award experience points to your characters. You gain bonus experience if you complete hidden objectives from previous missions. Then you can level your characters up with this bonus experience. This was done to eliminate the extra encounters from Sacred Stones.

There's also the "Info" mode, which gives you optional dialog sequences. Most of the time you get an item, skill or even a character out of the deal. You can also set your "connections" with characters. Only two characters can connect in this game though. When a character connects with another one, they can chat on the battle field. They also get bonus stats if each character is close to each other.



----------Time to Complete Game---------
38:19:16

Holy crap, that was a long game of Fire Emblem. Seriously, there was more missions than I could count and most of them lasted an hour. My longest mission was about 1:30h, my shortest was about 14 minutes. My most used characters in terms of kill rate was Sothe (100), Tibarn (102), Titania (119), and Ike (121).

After you beat the final stage, you are treated with possibly the longest ending sequence ever implemented in a video game.