Starring Divine Prophet of Archery Shinon, and the Divine Scarlet Rider
also starring some kid cosplaying as Guts and a glass pistol.
So where to begin with this game. I loved it most of the time. I downright hated it at others. It began with me getting a game over on the very first level. That about describes how the game would play out from there.
This game is HARD. Most of the time, it's fair too. Almost any unit death or wipe I received in the first three acts and honestly most of the fourth, was my own fault, and it forced me to get better, which I liked. Actually, since I didn't have any deaths (any that I kept anyway), in the fourth act's endgame, besides the one good level in it, all of them were my own fault.
To be fair, much of this game's legacy of difficulty is because in the East, the difficulty levels are "Normal, Hard, and Maniac" while in the West, the game's difficulty is changed to "Easy, Normal, Hard," with no actual mechanical difference from Japan's "Normal, Hard, and Maniac." So I was actually going in full blind on Hard mode, which is pretty much a bad idea, for me at least.
So on to the nitty gritty. Gameplay wise, Radiant Dawn is much the same as the previous game. Turn-based, rock paper scissors weapon triangle, some units suck, some units are God (Haar, Jill, Shinon, Titania for most of the game, Ike, Kurthnaga for the 2 missions he's a Royal, the rest of the Royals), and death is permanent unless you're a scrub like me that reloads the game sometimes when some units die. There's some fine tuning here and there, and overall I love the choices they made. On paper, Laguz are much more versatile being able to "bank" their transformation, and revert to save their gauge. In action, their gauge fills too slowly, and empties too quickly. So I think Laguz have kind of been nerfed, and they don't seem to do as much damage. Mages have also been nerfed somewhat, especially with thunder magic. Other than that, I like
just about every single gameplay change.
The game is split into four acts. The first act is one of the hardest, as your characters are pretty weak and underleveled. Act two focuses mostly on some side characters to let players know what's been up with Crimea since Path of Radiance. Act three focuses mostly on Ike and the gang. GUTS IKE. Act four is split into three armies, which allows you to mix and match units to create three dream teams. Act four's endgame allows you to mix and match from all three of the aforementioned armies and is bad.
While the rest of the game is hard but fair, the final set of levels throws gimmick after cheap gimmick at the player. Going in blind, it's incredibly frustrating that Ike is cordoned off doing a 1v1 vs an enemy that is much tougher than him. It's infuriating that dozens of magic orbs can teleport from anywhere on the map and gang up on a single unit, doing chip damage until that unit is dead. It's kind of insane how many dragons are fought in a single chapter. The endgame for act four, besides the final boss, was so infuriating on my blind run, that it's the only reason I don't like this game more than Path of Radiance. Act four in general is not great. It features almost nothing but rout missions with an unbelievable amount of enemy reinforcements, which drags each mission out to inconvenient lengths. The final boss was actually very fun though, requiring strategy and thought, and not too much foresight, compared to the three previous levels which throw curveballs at you.
Graphically the game is a huge step up. Models and textures are good, especially upscaled on Dolphin. Somewhere between GameCube and 360, which makes sense, considering it's a Wii game. The battle animations are far more dynamic and actually reflect the area on the map that you are attacking from. It's such a nice touch, though the lack of characters fighting in the background still makes it feel like every battle teleports you to the fight realm. The CGI cutscenes are pretty decent looking and most of the voice acting has improved. Mist is still hot garbage and is somehow worse than the last game. Rolf is pretty not-great too. The audio mixing for the dialogue is really bad as well.
The story started off strong, dealing with the fallout of the first game, having a theme of war leading to further war. But then it kind of goes off the rails and talks about ridiculously overpowered blood pacts and gods and stuff and it just falls flat in the face of Act 1 and 2 dealing with run of the mill corruption in government and their role in the "reconstruction" of a nation. I'd put it on par with Path of Radiance's, which was more consistent overall, but didn't reach the highs of Radiant Dawn's and was fairly one-sided.
In total, I really really like this game. It's super long, and honestly feels like you're playing multiple Fire Emblem games at the same time and then they link up in the end. While that is super cool and fairly unique for a Fire Emblem game, from what I can tell, it does have its issues. Lots of units have terrible availability, leading to being terrible units for when they do show up, later on down the line, against much tougher enemies. It's most noticeable on the Dawn Brigade chapters in Act Three. They are severely underleveled compared to Ike and the gang. Miciah is also a terrible Lord, who regularly dies in one hit, compared to Ike, who is damn near immortal until Part Four Endgame. She's a glass pistol going up against tanks. Fortunately she's better at healing than dealing, but she's still one of my least favorite units in the game.
The game makes improvements to the gameplay department and the graphical department. Despite this, a weak fourth act brings the game down and even though I liked it more than Path of Radiance, I cannot say that it is a better game than it.
3.5/5
EDIT: One last edit to shout-out to my main girl Jill and my main man Tauroneo. Also Sanaki, you a real one too. And Rafiel? My number one refresher.
