Its the minor flaws that hold this game back.
This game easily has its high points and low points. It has solid gameplay that has become a standard in the series and a good amount of replay value. But the total lack of story is what will kill it in the end. The story is more of an outline of what could really happen. Most cutscenes you see Marth talking to his advisor Malledus and that's about it.
Also there is a huge empty void with character development. In the early chapters, a trio of axe fighters will join your ranks. Two of them are named Bord and Cord, and you have to wonder "Are they brothers?" This is never explained and that is just one example. Most every character in previous games had at least a few sentences of dialogue before joining, but you just get handed new characters like candy. One chapter you get six new characters and only two had dialogue. So what about the other four? They're just there to bolster you ranks.
Now with all these new characters given to you, its hard to keep track of them all. Most likely you'll already have characters you've been building up throughout the previous chapters. For example, you'll get a Level 2 Cavalier when you already have built up a Level 15 Cavalier. The Level 2 Cavalier won't be any good either. I think this can be supported by the new gaiden chapters the game features. These are extra chapters you can only reach if you have 15 or less characters in your whole entire party. I've never gotten to these chapters because the old Fire Emblem mindset of not letting your characters die. But it seems that is the only way to achieve entrance into these chapters.
Besides those obvious flaws, the gameplay is as solid as Fire Emblem gets. Same weapon triangle, but there is only one kind of magic for all magic users. That means a Sorcerer (The Druid of this game) and a Bishop will be using the same weapons. But after awhile, this technicality is easily forgotten.
The battle scenes are well put together, with their 3D style. I only have one problem with these scenes though. The characters in the scenes can't even have their own colors! All Heroes are defaulted to purple and all Generals have blue armor just to name a few. I first noticed this when I got Navarre on my team, who is obviously wearing RED, and in the battle scene he is clothed in BLUE! I'm used to seeing in all the old games every different unit's sprite color. I'm used to identifying characters by their color, but that might sound weird to you. Oh and using Abel, who is wearing green armor, I'm expecting a green paladin once he promotes... but no! Paladins are orange, what was I thinking?!? The only way to tell the difference between SOME units is their hair color, and there are only about 5 different sprite hair colors in the game. Ok, I've ranted enough.
The sound in this game is what I've expected from a Fire Emblem game. Great classic tunes help this game out a lot.
The reclass system is something brand new to this game. This means you can take your Mercenary and make him into a Pirate or other such classes. But you can only change a character into a select handful of classes. That might be all the character sprites are only one color. If the animators had to make a color scheme for six different classes for just one character, I can see where my troubles have come from.
With so many characters to pick from and so many characters to kill off, this game is just another solid entry in the Fire Emblem series. Its not outstanding, but its not bad either. And if you think of it strictly as a remake, then this game does its past form justice.