This cumbersome title is not a very good representation of the Fire Emblem franchise.
One peculiar note is the split in reviews of this game. There seems to be people who think its superb and those who were dissapointed. The difference may not be that we are playing different games, but on different TVs. It also likely depends on if this is your first or one of your first Fire Emblem games. Those who've played the others are more likely to hold higher standards and may experience a sense of "more of the same."
That said, if you played Path of Radiance (GC) then expect the same game here. Here you will run into the same controls, same grid-based system, weapons, units, and so on. If you enjoyed POR then you will probably enjoy Radiant Dawn. However, if you're like me and found POR to be rather mediocre by Fire Emblem standards then expect to be similarly dismayed by the Wii title.
The presentation is the weakest point of the game. If you're using a standard definition TV or AV cables then the game probably looks at least somewhat decent. However, if you are using a widescreen HDTV it looks downright ugly. Pixels are displayed horrendously during the battle cut-scenes and the static images with the painted backgrounds don't even fill the entire screen. Instead, there's merely a wallpaper in the background.The graphics are sadly severely outdated. The GBA games, though technically inferior, boasted a better presentation with its limited hardware capabilities. With no added Wii-functionality or support this truly was a game that made no difference as a Wii or GC game. The full $50 price is also a bit mesmerizing.
I actually found the game so boring that I have yet to finish it, I don't know if I can. It literally puts me to sleep, which doesn't bode well for a strategy game where you need to be on top of your game.The sound effects are almost none-existent. Nothing has any impact. Characters remain practically silent throughout all the battle scenes, swords make mild noises, and characters are so slow moving in the battle scenes... The criticals, which really had some impact on GBA, feel strangely bland in the console versions.
The gameplay is the real kicker too. It's not really a difficult game, it just has a tendency to be incredibly cheap at every opportunity. It's like playing with someone who has no expectation of winning, so they go to extremes to merely agitate you by indiscriminately sacrificing their own units to take a single weak unti of your own. It's just cheap, and not fun. Part of this dilemmia is due to the oversized range units can travel in a single turn. I assume this was meant to speed up traveling in the game but what it really did was force you to move your team in a constant defensive state. It's incredibly annoying to see CPU units completely go past your frontline fighters. What's worse, is apparently your weaker units have poor evasion (or at least poorer than the GBA versions). When I recall playing the GBA games, yeah you had some weak units but their evasion helped to counteract that. Here, it just doesn't seem to work that way.
Which brings me to another issue. The game feeds you false hit percentage indicators. Several times I have had a 90% hit miss, while I have seen CPU units land hits with less than 50% odds. How can you form any strategy if you're constantly being feed false information? You can never get your weaker units out to the battle field because you are too afraid they're going to get wiped out (which in Fire Emblem is permanent). So I guess that's what the bonus EXP is for after battle right? Wooo exciting. It's like you don't even get to play the game, you just wait for the CPU units to come to you, let your powerful units do all the work, and wait for the next slide-show to start.
Well, I have to give the game some credit. The portraits and backgrounds truly look as though they were painstakingly created from scratch. The artwork is good, and the text is decent. The gameplay and presentation are just way too standardized. You can create some weapons, buy this or that, but it just isn't enough. The game lacks, at least initially, anything inspiring to keep me wanting to play it more. Drop the once dead always dead feature - it doesn't add to the difficulty, only the frustration.
I'm a big fan of these Fire Emblem games so I have to be extra critical. I recommend that new players to the Fire Emblem universe pick up the GBA Fire Emblem or Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones (also for the GBA). The advancements in gameplay and design of those two games were apparently lost when being adapted to the console titles. The use of static images and backgrounds worked for the GBA because it was the best way to present the series on THAT system. It's time for the series to innovate, reinvent itself so that it can best be represented on the next generation of consoles. Merely copying the GBA format to the GC or Wii is obviously going to have an outdated feel to it because the GBA is outdated.