I had abandoned this series for a long time, sick of some of its frustrating elements. Any good Fire Emblem fan knows he has to reset if a character dies, which is just part of the games, but it unfortunately can turn a 20 minute battle in to an hour long slog-fest. However, after taking enough time off, I was able to jump back in to Fire Emblem fresh and truly appreciate the games again. What I love about them, given the benefit of years of reflection, is that the mechanics are so simple a child can grasp them, only requiring a little bit of math. It’s actually succeeding that can be a challenge. For the most part, Fire Emblem games are pure skill: if someone dies, it’s because you put them in a bad spot or didn't read what your opponent was capable of. Given how much time meticulously doing this can take, many players make mistakes, myself included.
Radiant Dawn goes back and forth between being a traditionally difficult Fire Emblem game and near insultingly easy. The maps in which you control Micaiah’s team are challenging because of the crappy units available, but the other teams are loaded and ready to mow down enemies. I found myself enjoying this balance. It provided peaks and valleys in the challenge of the game. After a decently tough first chapter, you get to relax a while before facing the truly gruesome maps mid-game. Sadly, the endgame is the easiest section, which is all too common in RPGs, but it’s mainly because at that point you can finally use every character available and you’ll obviously choose the broken ones.
The thing I enjoyed the most about Radiant Dawn was its multiple perspectives. You get to play some chapters as Micaiah’s struggling Dawn Brigade, some as Elincia’s Royal Knights, some as Ike’s elite mercenaries from the previous game, and even more as random characters that later join other teams. This game structure gets you to actually familiarize yourself with and care about the majority of team members thrown at you. Almost all of them are useful at some point in the game, and you even get to fight some of the units you were previously using in large-scale battles. Don’t see that in every game.
Unfortunately, the plot suffers some from this schizophrenic approach to presentation. Terrible plot devices are used to construe reasons your team won’t just shake hands and join the other, including a “Blood Pact” that requires one of the armies to continue fighting regardless of how they feel. It’s pure lunacy and if it were almost any other series I’d care. Fortunately, Fire Emblem is all about combat anyway, and few of the games had remotely interesting stories. It’s a bit sad that the connected Fire Emblem 9: Path of Radiance, was one of them. You get the sense that the developers at Intelligent Systems really only cared about the gameplay and were phoning in the story, which I guess might bother some, but probably not hardcore Fire Emblem fans.
All in all, the verdict is simple. If you like Fire Emblem, you’ll like this. If you always wanted to play a Fire Emblem game with completely broken units and just smash everything in your path, you’ll LOVE this. That said, I cannot recommend it as your first look at the series. 7: The Blazing Sword and 9: Path of Radiance are far better introductions, and particularly you should play Path of Radiance to get the far better-written backstory for this game.
7.5
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