Radiant Dawn will give you raw challenge, but one that is worth endure untill the end.
GRAPHICS:
The graphics are hugely unimpressive. They are virtualy the same from its predecessors, which wasn't that impressive to begin with. There is not a lot of detail, and the animation in the cutscenes is incredibly scarse, making some reactions feel unatural. The highlight are the cel shaded 3D cutscenes, which do look fantastic, and have a lot of detail, and are just plain beautiful; definitely the highlight of the presentation. 3/5
SOUND:
The music, as you would expect, is fantastic. The themes fit very naturaly, and are very nicely composed, and a lot of times just plain fun to listen to. The sound bits, like when you phase begins, are also pretty catchy. In the cel shaded cutscenes the is also voice acting, which is a mixed bag. Some voice feel very fitting and show some emoton, while others are the absolute oposite, feeling horrible, not exposing any emotion and simply not fitting. 4/5
STORY:
This game takes place 3 years after the events of PoR. Ater the Mad King's war, the world of Tellius is recomposing itself, specily the country of Crimea. Daein, who lost the war, is struggling to keep up, since the enemy country Begnion is ocupying it. A group of character, the Dawn Brigage, leaded by the Silver Haired Maiden, Micaiah, is trying to free its country from the domination.
What I have said is only the first part of the story. The game is divided in 4 parts, varying in length and story, but all finish the same, and the characters are all related in some way. It is definitely an interesting way to tell the story, and the game changes the perspectives in nice ways.
Now, most critics say the story is worse than it is. It is a nice story, with interesting plots and all concludes in an interesting way, but does have some notable problems. First of all, since the plot of this game follows directly PoR, characters from the previous game make appearences - in fact, you can play with all the characters from the previous game except one - , older character do have some impact on the story, and quite often plot twists regarding this characters appear, and they are just plain studpid. As a spoiler, you find out who the Black Knight (one of the main villains in the game) actualy is, and that a character that helped you a lot in the previous game is actually a bad guy. It is just stupid.
Besides that, enemies in the game are very one dimensional, being bad just for being, and just get on your nerves. And to end, on Part IV, the story takes a very weird shift, and doesn't handle that smoothly it, specially due to the lack of interection of the leaders from the different teams, which is kind of enerving. But all in all, it is a nice story to follow.
3.5/5
GAMEPLAY:
The game is a turn based strategy RPG. As I said before, the game is broken up in 4 parts, and in the first three, you will play as three diferent teams. It is a nice feature, since it gives the game a lot of variety on the character you can use, but makes the teams feel unbalanced, since the third team (Greil Mercenaries) have much more play time that any of the others, and are very strong when you get them, making most of the others redundant. Also, the first group, the Dawn Brigage, ends up very weak, and the second, the Crimean Army, just has very limited time to play with. Despite that, with care into raising the characters, they all can become good, and it still is a nice feature of the game; mostly from a story point though.
The gameplay itself is identical to previous Fire Emblem game, with very few diferences. You have to maintain an army of characters, and as you play through the chapters, you kill the enemy's army. You do so by moving a character up to an enemy character, attacking it and draining its life points. When you do so, you get experience points, and by getting 100 of them, you level up.
Characters can get up to level 20, and another level up will promote them, which is like them evolving, meaning they get stronger. A new feature of the game is that characters can promote twice. Say you have a myrmidon (who uses swords). He will first promote to a swordmaster, and at level 20, he will promote to a trueblade. That is a very interesting feature, which works since the game is so long, and there is a lot of time to play with the character, so a majority of them will be on the thrid tier. It will take you about 30 hours to beat the game, and replay value is found on diferent dificulty settings and new characters on a second playthough.
However, you will not really use the first feature, since the game is ridiculosly tough, and playing it on Hard is for masochists. While Fire Emblem games have been hard most of the way, Radiant Dawn is by far the hardest of all. The game will give you a tough time, mostly for the ridiculous amout of enemies it throws at you who are very tough. And as another kick in the teeth, your characters start out very weak, and about 2 attacks will kill them. This is mostly true for part 1 characters, which is by far the hardest, but the chalenge maintains all the way. Thankfully, you have an option to do a battle save, which is something you really should abuse, and will save you quite often.
The base, where you can distribute bonus experience for level ups, and do other stuff, is back, and serve the same fuction, but one will be notorious to old player of the game. The supports, which give some bonuses to characters and function as side stories, are completely gone, instead substituted by simple talks, like "Hey, good luck buddy!", which have to be done on the battle field. That is a huge bumer, since the supports where often quite funny and interesting to see.
There really isn't much else to say, since, if you have played any other game in the series you will know what to expect, and due to the difficulty level, it isn't recomended as a way to start the series. Maintaining balanced army with mages and fighters still is a blast, but the high level of dificulty hinders it.
4.5/5
OVERALL:
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn maintaints what was good about the series: addictive gameplay, great music and chalenge. But also is too chalenging, and the story is not what all it could have been. It is very much worth playing for veterans of the series, but one should proceed with caution.
The good:
-Fantastic cel shaded cutsceces
-Awesome soundtrack
-Some nice voice acting...
-Gameplay still is very addictive
-Story is, all in all, good...
-Gamplay additions are nice
The bad:
-Poor graphics
-Ridiculoustly hard quite often
-...some awful voice acting
-... but has lot of stupid points
-Some changes in gameplay are not for the best