70%Wii

I have very mixed feelings on this game. It's a solid Fire Emblem game, but a lot of levels will have a million lose conditions and the difficulty feels all over the place. I'm not a fan of how the game was structured since it not only causes several units to be under leveled, but it also pushes Micaiah out of her main character role. Once Part 2 is over, Ike becomes the objective main character. There's also massive issues with availability for many units. Take Tormod for example. He joins the Dawn Brigade in chapter 7 and he's a pretty solid fire mage that would be a main stay in any team. He leaves to do his own thing at the end of part 1 (three chapter later) and then We don't see him again until 2 chapters before the final endgame maps where he is now horribly under leveled and useless. Speaking of the endgame maps, I hate how you can only bring a couple of units with you for all 5 of them, the rest are left to defend outside. This leads to situations where you don't have replacements for good units if they die, and accidentally leaving equipment in a unit's inventory that you no longer have access to. My final negative that I can think of right now is the fact that they removed support conversations outside of a few generic lines of dialogue during battle. Supports are important, they let you learn things about your units which gets you more invested in them. How the hell am I supposed to care about units like Aran who have maybe three lines of dialogue when you recruit them and that's it? I can't bring myself to rate this lower than a seven because I did have fun despite my bitching, but it's one of the weaker entries in the series.

70%Emulated

The best way to describe this game is that it has good ideas, but is lacking in execution, both in terms of story and gameplay.

Playing through the game as two opposing armies is an interesting idea, but the plot device that they used to explain it and the comically villainous antagonists really lower the quality of the plot. Other issues arise in the fact that the main character literally gets her spotlight stolen from her, first by Elincia and Ike, and then by Yune. Furthermore, some characters never get closure on a first playthrough since their plotlines are more or less locked to a second playthrough.

Similarly, the variety of win/defeat conditions is great on paper, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The main problem with the gameplay, however, are the extremely long enemy phases. For absolutely no reason whatsoever, IS decided to lock no map animations to a second playthrough, so you will have to sit through very long enemy phases on your first. This issue is further compounded by the fact that, ostensibly in order to represent the scale of war, every mid/lategame map has tons of not only enemies, but also allied units who all take forever to play their map animations.

And for everything that IS did try to do in Parts 1-3, an interesting conflict where you play as both sides, and relatively novel gameplay with ledges and yellow units, they completely throw it away in Part 4. The conflict is miraculously solved by another plot device that conveniently has both sides working together, and the maps all just become boring open fields spammed with annoying enemies.

Overall, the Tellius duology was pretty good, but PoR is doing the heavy lifting here.

90%Wii

I have very mixed feelings on this game.

I feel like I liked the idea of FE10's plot more than the execution of it. A game that revolved around the aftermath of Ike's little crusade through Daein and shows how the empire that funded Ike's little march might've been the true evil empire all along? Awesome! One man's war hero is another man's war criminal, after all. A lot of characters from FE9 that weren't given much focus getting some shine in the first two acts of the game? Great! A big ass war that drags every country in FE9 and 10 into it? Awesome! Ike comes back in the third act and completely steals the show for the rest of the game? Uhhh...

Micaiah got robbed of the main lead role in her own game, it was so sad. Now I don't really rate her very highly as a character and think she's not very well written, but I do think she could've been a much more interesting character if she was actually given focus as you know, the main character of the game.

There's some other bones I have to pick with the plot too, like Ashera being a bad plot device to get the two groups to unite, or the fucking blood pact, lmfao. In fact, I think the blood pact singlehandedly is why I dislike Micaiah so much.

Sephiran is the main villain of this game, huh? Didn't expect that to happen. I wasn't a huge fan of the plot twist and I've never really been a fan of the power creep fighting gods by the end of the game that seems to happen often with Japanese games, but him being as powerful as one makes a lot of sense in hindsight. I liked him, it was clear that he was a good person who wanted to believe in humanity and lost faith in them along the way, I probably would too honestly.

Radiant Dawn has to be one of the most unbalanced FE games. Haar is a demigod once 2-Endgame rolls around and he ends up solo holding the castle down, Ike becomes one too by the end of act 3. Most of the Greil Mercs are ridiculous too. And then you have the flipside - the majority of the dawn brigade is starved for exp thanks to the greil mercs stealing up so many chapters in act 3, so unless you really pump xp into a few select characters, none of them will be viable for act 4. And if you do that, well, those few dawn brigade chapters that are already hard will become a lot harder, lol.

And yet, at the same time, the gameplay was so much better in RD vs PoR. Skills are much better, magic feels a bit more viable, laguz are a lot stronger in this game, and there are so many iconic maps in the game, Elincia's Gambit/2-Endgame is my favourite level in the series. The fights genuinely feel like warring army battles. I do wish the supports in this game were like FE9, but that's my only nitpick.

I don't know. It was an ambitious game for its time and I have fond memories of Radiant Dawn - I'd say it's objectively a great game that does everything extremely. The stuff it nails, it really does. And the stuff it gets wrong is so bad. I will say there is far more to like than to dislike this game, so I'll give it a 9. Definitely had 10/10 potential though, just a bunch of head scratching decisions revolving around the plot mostly.

9/10

100%Emulated

J'ai menti, c'est objectivement celui ci le meilleur opus de la saga

90%Wii

Pinnacle of the series. Combines an amazing story with simplistic but highly enjoyable combat. Also has one of the strongest cast in the entire series.

75%Wii

Extremely uneven chapters compared to Path of Radiance, but at least on the default/easy mode the returning characters feel like a force of nature. Story drags until it completely falls off the rails at the end, but a fitting conclusion to Tellius.

90%Wii

Great story, slightly improved game balance and many other improvements when compared with Path of Radiance.

However, there are many critical problems:
- First few stages are too difficult for most people. If you make a mistake, you die and the game is over. This probably scare off a lot of potential audience IMO.
- Also, the characters and their relationship is a headache, especially when combining the supporting system and FE tradition of long-long-long names (in JP version).
- The most annoying thing for me is it cannot skip enemy turns and in some stages there are 50+ enemies scattered on a fairly wide map. Waiting for enemy turns would take minutes every turn. Eventually I switched from Wii hardware to emulator only for the 250% speed...
- Outdated and rare cutscene. This is the least one you should care since c'est le SLG.

100%Emulated

10

85%Wii

Pros:
- Extended story from Path of Radiance
- Plenty of characters to choose from.
- No Wii gimmicks for controls

Cons:
- The dawn brigade becomes almost useless during the second half of the game.
- Possible to get stuck during the end of the game.
- Certain sections drag on for the battles

PLEASE USE A GUIDE!!!
I messed up during the endgame and I didn’t bring the proper items for each character. I was only able to beat the game by abusing the battle-save feature. I highly advise players to use a guide and go in prepared. Otherwise, this was a excellent experience and worth playing through.

80%Emulated

Expands on the lore of the 1st game also gameplay is a lot smoother and definitely had hype moments

hopefully there's a switch remaster one day

100%Emulated

Honestly I just really love Fire Emblem. The story was great even if a bit convoluted at times and I liked most of the characters, the lack of supports was a bit of a bummer though. The gameplay was also very good, I loved the 3rd promotion classes and the characters I used were fun. Overall an amazing time.

I did start using speed up a fair amount near the end though, the fact you can't skip turns on first playthrough is a baffling decision.

80%Wii

Hard as balls and probably not as good as Path of Radiance but I still quite enjoyed it

70%Wii

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn was O.K. but not great.

My first complaint came right away: the game won't let you play Hard mode until you've beaten it on Normal. Thus, there were only a few occasions where the game presented a real challenge. For the most part, I didn't need to put much thought into it, which wasn't really the experience I was looking for.

Also, the game seems to assume that you've played Path of Radiance. It didn't interfere too much with my understanding of the story, but every once in a while, a character would show up, and everyone would say "hey so and so, long time no see" as if I should know who it was. Unfortunately, Path of Radiance is really expensive now (and I'm cheap), but I think it's probably a good idea to play it first if you can.

That stuff aside, the story and music were average. There's not much voice acting, and it wasn't very good. There were a lot of characters, and you don't see them enough to care about most of them. People complained about the graphics when the game came out, but they didn't bother me. Even the best graphics on a Wii game are unimpressive now, so it doesn't really matter anymore.

The gameplay is about the same as always. The support system makes certain characters way better than others. The game also continually supplies you with new, temporarily overpowered characters, so there's no reason to develop any character you don't really, really want.

Overall, Radiant Dawn is a fine but easily skippable Fire Emblem. Now that I've beaten Normal mode, I might go back someday to play Hard mode, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it to anyone else.

80%Wii

The first direct sequel since Mystery of the Emblem over a decade prior, Radiant Dawn sets off to fix a great many of Path of Radiance's flaws. The difficulty is at the very least existent again, magic types are back (even Dark magic! ..although that's locked behind NG+), branching stories are back, and NG+ is back for the first time since Fire Emblem GBA, with new exclusive characters, items and events.. but only if you've also transferred yer Path of Radiance save data and have done pretty specific things in that save that you just wouldn't know about unless you actually looked it up.

Arenas are still nowhere to be seen and shops are exclusive to the preparation screen, but it's still a great leap forward compared to its predecessor

100%Emulated

10/10. Join the Meg Cult.

90%Wii

9.3

30%Wii

I put around 20 hours into this terrible, overrated game trying to get some enjoyment out of it. I heard it was difficult, but it wasn't that hard (hell, it was easier than Path of Radiance) - unless people meant difficult to tolerate its fucking bullshit design. Every single aspect of this game is designed to be as slow and tedious as possible, and even with the game speed set to maximum and battle animations turned off, it feels like it's trying to waste your time. The graphics are muddy and ugly and somehow look even worse than its last-gen predecessor. They might have more detail but you can count the polygons - it's hideous. The story is bog-standard even for a series not known for overly strong storylines; the music is better than in Path of Radiance I guess. The gameplay is fucking awful. Most maps feel small and restrictive, and almost every single map from a certain point onwards are crowded with like 50 NPC allied units that get in your way and take half an hour to do their turn with no skip feature. After a while, I felt like I wasn't playing the game so much as watching it play itself, dozing off as the allies and enemies took forever to do their turns and I could finally move my characters and navigate them through the arbitrary bullshit the game had waiting at every turn.

I don't understand why this game is highly rated. I'm just glad to be rid of it; it's too bad I spent 20 hours waiting for it to get good before I quit. The sheer gall of the developers to try to present it as a good game when they can't even be bothered to make the text cutscenes widescreen instead of 16:9 to recycle Path of Radiance assets, with an ugly-as-hell border to top it off. Having your characters do a million backflips after their attack animation doesn't hide that your game sucks, Intelligent Systems.

80%Wii

I've played all the US releases in order up to this one and I'll have to say that it is the weakest at that point but still a good game.

The story takes a nose dive when they present a weak plot device to give a reason for both teams that the player controls to keep fighting each other when on the other side, the villains, like every said, are one-dimension and interchangeable, evil just for the sake of being evil. The seeds they plant in the previous game end up yielding a rotten fruit. BUT, in Fire Emblem, it feels like the story is at the service of the gameplay, which is still solid in this entry but again, falls short in the end. The last quarter of the game you fight waves and waves of the same units with no meaning who just seem like fodder to level up for that sweet chime.

It's a shame because the pieces were there to make a good story but nothing makes much sense in the end. *spoilers ahead* Having a villain, who thinks he's a genius when he says that he wants to end the world because human sucks is such a cliche even at that point of this release that it made my eyes do a full barrel roll and that character seemed like the most interesting and mysterious up until that "reveal". ****end spoiler****

Still a solid 8 as a game, but one of the worst of the series. Do yourself a favor, play this one on the lowest difficulty, no one cares if you beat it on hard, and it is still somewhat challenging, especially the last quarter of the game.

70%Wii

This is a difficult game for me to review. First off, it is a direct sequel to Path of Radiance which is, in my opinion, one of the very best games in the franchise. However, Intelligent Systems made very few changes to the mechanics here despite this game being on new hardware. The game can be said for its presentation which, frankly, is unacceptable for the platform it was released on. The Wii was by no means a powerhouse, but the previous game was criticized for its lackluster graphics and this game doesn't make much of an attempt to address that criticism.

These criticisms are not uncommon with this franchise though, but there is one more pain point that is unique to this game for me. The length. Now, I put more than 100 hour into my first playthrough of Three Houses and I would not say that that game is too long. This game feels much longer despite me only putting half as much time into it. The pacing is all over the place with the play taking control of three separate factions across four separate parts of the story. Once Ike and the Greil mercenaries make their triumphant return around halfway through, the game hits its stride for awhile, but then Part 4 slams the brakes hard as you're forced to play through 6 repetitive battles meant to help you get all of the characters enough experience to be able to make it through the endgame. However, once you reach the final chapter, you're only allowed to choose 10 of your 60ish characters to take with you. This combination of plot derailment and grinding for little payoff is what soured me on the home stretch and turned the ending into a slog.

Without getting too into it, the plot is a solid downgrade from Path of Radiance as well. Removing support conversations hurts the majority of the cast even if base conversations regardless of support level is a good addition. The villains here have very little to them, most of them being racist aristocrats that are interchangeable. I will give Intelligent Systems credit for taking on the challenge of telling the story of three nations at war with each other within a single campaign, but it's clear to me why they wouldn't attempt this again, opting to let the player choose from multiple campaign routes in Fates and Three Houses.

Overall, there's little to say about the positives. It's the same solid Fire Emblem gameplay from the previous entry. There are some interesting chapters but many of them boil down to insurance tests on lengthy rout maps with floods of reinforcements. It's everything outside of the gamplay that brings the experience down for me. Certainly a shame in retrospect after Path of Radiance raised the bar for Fire Emblem worldbuilding and characters.

60%Emulated

great story. Splitting army through 4 separate parts was not fun.

60%Wii

Some levels are really tiresome and a pain to complete.

80%Emulated

Radiant Dawn is very much a game for veterans of the series. A conclusion to the Telius duology and set three years after Path of Radiance, very little has changed in terms of mechanics aside from the odd tweak here or there. The story is split into four parts, each taking place from a different army’s perspective that creates some stand out scenarios, but this unfortunately leads to issues with unit availability and an inconsistent difficulty. In terms of grand narrative, RD is definitely one of the best in the series, but any characters without strong ties to the plot are noticeably underdeveloped. Supports are still present, but the conversations leave a lot to be desired with little more than generic quips between units that fail to capitalize on the tense dynamics between the characters. Despite being an early Wii release, the control scheme is tame due to RD having been initially developed for the GameCube, but this last minute change in hardware doesn’t excuse the generally lackluster visuals as they would have been sub-par for the aging console anyway.

90%Wii

oh man this is a good game, sadly not perfect however as it does have some flaws. first i'd like to say that it fixed PoR's slow ass battle system so that's one thing i really appreciate.

flaw 1: one complaint that i know everyone has is that the Dawn Brigade is just full of miserable fucks. a jagen with knives, the weakest melee in the game, a light mage who i admit hit's hard with Thani but is made of tissue and has a poor speed growth to further worsen her, a lopsided archer, a 1 dimensional staff bot, fiona and meg as a whole. This makes part one actually quite difficult so this is by no means a beginner friendly FE game. it was even worse for me cause my Nolan got speed screwed with a 60% speed growth, yay.

Flaw 2: Part 4 in general was absurd with each map being a rout the enemy map. For the most part thats not a big problem but the sheer amount of reinforcements is just fucking stupid making each map drag on for WAY to long simply because the game keeps spawning in legions of enemies. And what with reinforcements being reinforcements, they can appear anywhere and immediately forces you to either completely change your strategy or pray that there aren't any squishy units nearby. A serious drag.

final flaw 3: this isn't so much a flaw as it is a complaint. At the end of the game when you need to pick your units for Asheras Tower, you get ALL the royal Laguz units as well as Renning who are all incredibly powerful units. So whats my complaint? well its the fact that this game has SO many units, many of which you had trained for ages and was hoping to bring into the tower but right at the end you just get access to so many powerful units it makes the other units you trained seem like crap in comparison. Not a complaint, but it still rubbed me the wrong way

Final synopsis: if this game had it's flaws ironed out this would be bar none, the best FE in the series in my eyes. Superb work 4.5/5

100%Wii

What a masterpiece of a game
Amazing storytelling, unit balance never seen in Fire Emblem yet
And a fantastic soundtrack

70%Wii

Micaiah sucks.

90%Wii

Great gameplay and amazing story. This is the main reason I became a fan of the Fire Emblem series, no regrets on this Christmas Gift

90%Wii

This concludes the Tellius saga, one of the best Fire Emblem out there in terms of narrative. It tackles many mature topics such as racism and agnosticism in a way that is meaningful but never boring.

Gameplay wise can be pretty difficult, especially if you are in your first playthrough, but like any other strategy game you can cheese it with a bit of knowledge.

Be sure to play Path of Radiance first, as it is the direct prequel.

80%Wii

Excelente juego, la trama está muy bien hilada con el juego anterior y cerrando todos los cabos sueltos que aquel juego dejó. Los personajes están bien desarrollados a nivel de argumento, aunque no en cuanto a la hora de usarlos, muchos casi no se pueden usar en gran parte del juego, lo que los hace bastante inútiles. La dificultad es excelente, pues exige pero no afisxia. El apartado gráfico y sonoro lo considero un poco mejor que con el juego anterior.

100%Wii

https://mybrainongames.com/2018/03/09/fire-emblem-radiant-dawn-wii-review/

100%Wii

Ah Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, the sequel to the fire emblem path of radiance on the gamecube.

Key features:

1) The gameplay is pretty standard for a fire emblem game. There really isn't anything too fancy, the laguz wit their transforming abilities are always good.
2) The maps had a lot of variety in terms of type of battle. There were chapters where you had to defend against waves of enemies such as elincia's gambit, part 3 misson at the castle with the greil mercs and the chapter on the cliff with the dawn brigade. Other missions had giant open field battles where you could bring a large army and face off against their large army. The third type of mission are the dungeon missions where there are chests and you have to fight thieves before they take the treasure. Although not as balanced as pat of radiance in terms of a balance in maps.
3) The characters are well developed in terms of personality but its a shame that the support system is pretty much non exstant in terms of fleshing out characters. The characters are memorable and cool but the interaction between them is very limited. The info section of the story is where you get the meat of conversation but that is really only limited to like a cople of conversations per character for the whole game.
4) Leveling up is really fun because there is enough exp to go around but you can also get stuck using op characters if you are not careful . The armies are split into three core groups and the dawn brigade and elincias people can fall behind from ike's group but if you properly manage your bonus exp they can easily catch up. BTW bonus exp is a little bit better than regular exp so use it wisely.
5) The story is a bit more complex than regular fire emblem games as there is a lot of actual political knowledge you need to fully understand references. Enemies like the lack knight Dheginsea and Lehran are all complex characters which is awesome.
6) The graphics are pretty good. They look more realistic and less anime like however, the textures can feel plain sometimes. The cutscenes look good for the most part and the combat animations are over the top in an awesome way.
7) The score is amazing. The vast majority of the music is epic big orchestral that suits the large battlefields. Its not too epic though where you get desensitized overtime. As you progress in the game the music gets more and more epic. The battle theme are amazing too and a lot of the characters have their own themes. While the music is great, the voice acting is pretty awful and thankfully that is limited to only a few lines in the game.
8) The menu is pretty. easy to navgate, where you can give bonus exp, arrange items, and open dialouge between missions. The armory is good as there are plenty of weapons and money isnt really an issue. The shop has bargain items which only can be bought on that chapter. They ae expensive so be careful on which ones you buy.
9) Skills are cool, everyone gets a tier 3 skill that is awesome. Other skills can be boughten or found and added and removed from characters with ease. A few skills really are better than others and there isnt too many different skills but it honestly doesn't take away from the gameplay. Mixing and matching is fun.
10) Laguz add a whole new depth or at least would have if they were actually good. Non royal laguz are pretty much useless since they take forever to transform and can't get much exp. The royal laguz are brutally op but you only get them in the last part of the game.
11) The only other problem i really have is the fact that you can easily get screwed and make the game harder for youself. What i mean is that there are a lot of things you need to do if you want to be good enough for the later game that isn't obvious. Certain characters to level up. Not knowing when your army changes to a different one. This can really throw a new player off who isn't familiar with the game.

All and all Fire Emblem Radiant dawn is an amazing game that really feels like its on a grand stage compared to others in the series. And while nothing too innovative came out of it, Radiant dawn polishes and refines the gameplay to make it as appealing as ever.

70%Wii

Bello, ma è un more of the same di Path of radiance, e dura troppo.

90%Wii

Epic story, epic cast of characters, epic soundtrack and in general just really

90%Wii

WOW! This game's great. The battle system was leaps and bounds above its predecessor. The story wasn't quite as good because of all the splits in the story (you play as different groups of characters, who come together at end for awesome final showdown.) Although from a story perspective the splits are a negative, it makes the gameplay much interesting because you have to choose character's from each group in order to efficiently utilize time spent on each chapter. The final levels were golden. Great game, but playing Path of Radiance is a must before playing this.

70%Wii

Far too long, and the last section's difficulty borders insane.

60%Wii

As a fan of advance wars and tactical rpgs in general the core gameplay is fine. The story forces too much exposition throughout the game adding in details that wont mean much except to the most die hard of Fire Emblem fans. While the story is pretty bad at first as the story progresses it gets better until part 4 of the game where it does a massive nosedive.

The main issue i have with this game however is time... specifically the fact that this game does not respect the players time at all. If a unit dies, he/she is dead forever and with a game clocking 40 hours it just isn't an option to accept the losses and move on since in addition to being a time sink, this game is also pretty tough. Because of this you will find yourself resetting again, and again....and again. That is as much of a critique of the game and the series as a whole. The game's internal clock tells me i spent 40 hours on this game, but in real world time it's probably hovering around 60-70 hours.

In the end however i still enjoyed it because of the core tactical rpg game play, however I've come to the conclusion that im much better off sticking to Intelligent Systems' other game, Advance wars. Get this game if you're a fan of tactical rpgs and have unlimited time on your hands. For everyone else this game probably wont be for you.

6/10

80%No Platform Specified

To call Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn a Wii game is to take the meaning of that statement as literal as possible. Yes, it runs on Wii, comes in a cute white box, and you'll pay $49.99 for it. From there, however, the experience is anything but Wii-like, as the game uses no motion, no IR, no Mii integration, and no online. While some gamers will scoff at this fact, diehard Fire Emblem fans already understand the choice made by Nintendo, as the series hasn't needed to change in nearly 20 years, and shouldn't be expected to now. The game supports Wii-mote control in classic NES-style, the GameCube controller, and the Classic Controller, so no matter what your setup you can still dive into one of the deepest, mature, and traditionally rooted titles on Nintendo consoles.

What you'll miss, however, is any sort of upgrade from the GameCube version which is on sale for $20 new. Radiant Dawn is a direct sequel to the Cube's Path of Radiance, and as such looks, acts, and feels identical. You'll still get very little VO, minimal animation overall, GameCube graphics, and extremely simply storytelling that makes use of only a backdrop and some character art. Why the production value in Fire Emblem has yet to be completely overhauled is beyond us, but apparently someone at Nintendo things traditional games need to not only play like a game two decades old, but also look similar as well. If you're looking for an entertaining, challenging, traditional strategy game, look no further, as Fire Emblem is as good as it gets. Just don't expect anything more than GameCube presentation, visuals, and control for $50.