Full Review for Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn by Volke

Introduction

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a strategy game released in Europe for the Wii in March 2008. Despite the utterly ridiculously long wait (it was released over a year beforehand in Japan, and five months beforehand in the USA) this game is pure genius.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is divided into four Parts. Part 1 sees you as the Dawn Brigade, trying to free their homeland of Daein from the Begnion Occupation Army. Part 2 sees you as Queen Elincia of Crimea, trying to quell a rebellion and stop it from turning into a civil war. Part 3 sees you as the Greil Mercenaries for the majority of it, fighting with the Laguz Alliance against Begnion. Part 4 sees all three of your armies united, with the goal of defeating the Goddess Ashera.

All four Parts involve a very deep, emotional and mesmerising storyline. It's just like reading a novel, and taking control of every battle that occurs from beginning to end.

Graphics

The graphics are quite pleasant. The cel-shaded cut-scenes are very will animated and about as good as the Wii can get graphics-wise. The dialogue scenes feature nice character art and detailed backgrounds. The battle scenes feature some nice special effects and good character models.

What knocks the graphics down a point is that the battle maps could have had slightly better graphics. It's easy to make out what everything is and who is who, and the maps are relatively well-detailed (a few maps even have birds on the field, which fly away when one of your units approach), but they don't look like anything special.

Overall, I feel that the graphics for Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance are underrated. For the most part, the graphics look just like they need to - overdoing it would most certainly result in a lower score. A nice eight out of ten here.

Sound

The sound is almost perfect. The music is brilliant, with mesmerising tunes that suit the game perfectly (I especially like the Eternal Bond battle map music). In the dialogue scenes, the music captures the mood of the story fantastically, even better than it did in Path of Radiance. Each team has its' own battle scene theme music, too.

The sound effects are excellent too. Battle scenes contain some very satisfying clashes and smashes as your character hacks at an enemy unit with a gigantic axe. Brilliant.

However, there is one problem the prevents the sound from getting ten out of ten. Just like in Path of Radiance, the voice acting was terrible and it was carried out by American voice actors. The producers were stupid enough not to learn from Path of Radiance that American accents simply do not suit this type of game whatsoever. It's an even bigger problem than it was in Path of Radiance too, as there is a lot more voice acting this time around.

Overall, brilliant music, excellent sound effects, but terrible voice acting which prevents the sound from getting ten out of ten. Sadly, no Life Returns, though. Dawn Awakens isn't as good an ending song as Life Returns was.

Gameplay

The gameplay is fantastic. There are many who complain the Radiant Dawn is "too difficult", which is basically an indicator that they are rubbish at games and should stick to playing Mario Kart on the 'Easy' difficulty using unlimited speed boost cheats or something. I won't lie though - Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn is a hard game. The Easy difficulty is equivilant to the Normal difficulty in Path of Radiance, in terms of difficulty levels. Hard mode is an absolute terror - don't play it until you're confident enough and you are seriously sure of what you will be doing. But tougher games bring better gameplay scores, in my opinion.

The controls are very simple, and that's all they really should be. This isn't the type of game where you'd randomaly mash the buttons in strange combinations or anything. I recommend that you use a Gamecube controller though, if you have one. They're exactly the same as using the Wii Remote, except that you don't need batteries.

On the battlefield, the gameplay is heaven. There's nothing better than ploughing through hordes of enemies with your elite units. Cutting them down one by one only to find there's more who are stupid enough to head in your direction is immensely satisfying. It isn't that simple, of course, but it's great. The harder chapters that force you to think more strategically are equally as amazing, and they really force you to think too.

Overall, gameplay gets a perfect ten. There's seriously nothing wrong with it unless you find it too hard. And if you do, there's always the 'Easy' difficulty, which I recommend you play through once when you first get this game to begin with, just so you get the right feel for it.

Lastability

The game will take about forty-five to fifty hours to complete once. And you'll want to play through at least twice for all of the extras that are available in a second playthrough, including some more in-depth dialogue that you couldn't previously access and two extra characters you can possibly recruit, amongst numerous other extras! So you'll want to play through at least twice. And then there's Hard mode.

Even if you skip all the dialogue, the combined time to beat every single chapter will hit about thirty-five hours. That's still longer than Path of Radiance was, which hit about thirty hours without skipping any dialogue, and far longer than the two GBA titles.

Overall, you'll probably be playing this game for months on end. I played Path of Radiance for about eighteen months straight, and I'm sure Radiant Dawn will get a similar playtime. Even when you take a break, you'll come back later in time to play it. I mean it! A well-earned ten out of ten here.

Overall

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is absolutely amazing, and has my vote for the best game ever made, topping its' prequel, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, which is also a brilliant game that you should pick up if you can (you'll understand more about Radiant Dawn if you play through Path of Radiance first, although it isn't essential. Plus, there's the transfer bonuses).

Radiant Dawn is no doubt the best game that's currently available for the Wii. It completely beats the crap out of overrated games such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I strongly recommend this game to anyone, unless strategy gaming isn't your thing or if you like your games to be easy - this isn't!

Ten out of ten, no doubt! Although I personally don't think there should be a sequel. Path of Radiance begged for a sequel, Radiant Dawn doesn't.

Final Score: 94%