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Good only if you have played and enjoyed previous Fire Emblems

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 14
Date: November 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It is non-stop 5 star reviews for this game, but for me, there was just not enough customization or replayability.

Personally, I love SRPGS, Advanced Wars, Dynasty Tactics, Xcom, played them all. Recently, a batch of great SRPG games came out, Jeanne D'Arc, FF Tactics, Disgaea on the PSP, all 3 had it's specialty.

Fire Emblem - Don't see what all the hype and rave reviews are about. After just 1 week, I've already put this down to play Disgaea, it's far more fun.

Characters - too many, so many that you do not feel attached to them, and many of them are unbalanced. Which means some are crucial to the gameplay, some it's better to just leave them or let them die.

Customization - There is none, each character has specific powers. You select a weapon, but there is nothing else you can customize, no armor, nothing. Yes, there is the relationship build up and skill, but it's stil lacking.

Story itself - This is not bad, it's worth taking the time to read thru the text. Though by this generation systems, you expect a little more graphical power or design flair, it's a tad bit boring presentation.

How to generate funds / bonus items - It's done thru fixed talks with NPCs. There's no point to read thru those text, just click + and skip to the end and receive the funds or item. IMHO, this is done poorly.

Gameplay - Some characters are absolutely critital if you want to advance thru the harder levels. It's easy to get killed, and I think most of us would like to keep all charactere alive. To do so, you will need to reload the game A LOT. Here's the problem, there is NO LOAD GAME option, you have to quit to Wii menu and start over. This alone makes the whole process painful.

Overall - If this game came out at the beginning of the year where there was absolutly no SRPG games, then it would be a solid 5 star. Just in these few month, you get 3 awesome tactics games: Jeanne D'Arc, FF Tactics, Disgaea, Fire Emblem just doesn't hold it's own. If you don't have a PSP and love SRPGs, then Fire Emblem is the definitely a good choice and only choice. For sure I'll play it later when the SRPG games dry up, but for now, Disgaea is a far more fun.

Oh Look, Another Fire Emblem

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 15
Date: December 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If you're interested in the continuing story of the Fire Emblem universe - play this game.

If you've never played a Fire Emblem game before - play this game.

If you're looking for an improvement over the previous Fire Emblems games, possibly involving using the Wiimote's motion-sensitive capabilities - go find something else.

In short, this is a major disappointment. If the game had done something new, I could have forgiven the poor use of the Wiimote. If it had used the Wiimote, I could have forgiven the unchanged gameplay.

Dull, after playing Path of Radiance

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: July 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I played this game before its prequel: Path of Radiance for the Gamecube.
In the beginning the story and characters seemed uninspiring, the dialogue wooden and juvenile. How could anyone care for the Dawn Brigade? Leonardo, Edward, Nolan, so shockingly poor characters do I seldom see. Also the whole presentation seemed flawed. Outdated graphics, unmemorable music, bad voice-acting, still pictures and lifeless images.
Little by little I grew into the game, and after a while I was no longer bothered by the things which I mentioned. The story, characters and dialogue all improved as the game moved on, particularily in part III.
A new to the series, the game felt immensely difficult at times, but it was mostly for not thinking ahead and trying to move too fast. On second playthrough even hard/maniac mode is a piece of cake.

However, only after playing Path of Radiance, and then starting this game again, do I see how lackluster this game actually is. A pity they coulnd't build better on the foundation laid by the prequel.

Good game, but crashes Wii

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 27
Date: November 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have been waiting for "Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn" since I bought my Wii at launch and was pretty happy to finally get a chance to pick it up. That was until I got it home and attempted to import my data from "Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance". It seems that if you played "Path of Radiance" on easy mode and attempt to import your save game data to "Radiant Dawn" it causes your Wii to crash. This sucks because since "Radiant Dawn" is a direct sequel, you can't carry over your interactions with the character that reappear.

If you give up in frustration, like I did, and start the game without the save game data, you'll find that "Radiant Dawn" plays like "Fire Emblem" should. While it doesn't really take advantage of the Wii's controls, it still plays great.

For those who are new to the "Fire Emblem" series, you might find the game to be frustrating at times as once your character dies in game, they are gone forever. I have a ready had to start a battle over a couple of times because I have made bad moves and gotten a character killed. I think this is one of the things that make the "Fire Emblem" series great. You have to play close attention to your character placement to make sure all your characters will survive the battle.

In closing, I think "Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn" will be a great game for the tactical RPG fan. Hopefully Nintendo will find a way to fix the crashing problem so those of us who played through "Path of Radiance" on easy will be able to carry on our relationships with the characters from that game.

Excellent idea, somewhat poor implementation.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: March 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Starting this game, the first thing I discovered was just how difficult it was. It's easy to lose a unit, especially a healer or ranged attacker, in a single hit if you're not careful. This was a welcome change from many games where it's so easy that you have difficulty losing a mission.

The other major plus was the fact that units actually -perish-. This means that if a unit is killed, it actually disappears from your team forever. It makes it far more difficult to complete missions with zero losses, as a unit lost won't simply return at the end of battle.

This game is a turn-based strategy, which is one of my favorite genres. The tactics involved are fairly refined, but have a few issues.

First of all, units can retaliate an infinite number of times. Though this isn't a major concern, it is odd that you can attack an enemy with as many as twelve friendly units, and it will retaliate twelve times. It would add a level of tactics if each unit were limited in retaliations in some way; be it by character speed or positioning factors.

Secondly, weapons don't function quite the way you may expect. Though it would make sense that lances receive bonus damage on the charge, or against mounted units, this simply doesn't happen. Again, this is more of a realism issue, and can be ignored during gameplay for the most part.

The biggest problem I had in the game comes from how the teams are set up. There are multiple sections in the game with different main and secondary characters. Each section is fairly short, and you often don't get time to build a team the way you would like before they replace your team with a new one and you must start over again. Though this is a personal preference, I would far, far prefer being given a team that will persist through the entire game, allowing me to customize my group with characters that I like, and feel like there is a connection to them. In fact, in several missions sets, I wasn't able to build any support relationships in my entire team because of how quickly the mission set ended.

The game is also extremely short. I finished it in two weekends of gameplay; roughly about 15 hours worth, not counting restarts to avoid character deaths. This time would have been greatly increased if I were to sit and watch through the cutscenes that occur, but as I felt absolutely no connection to the characters (usually due to having little time with them on my team), it became a chore to watch the exceptionally long and fairly pointless cutscenes. I'm considering playing again on a higher difficulty setting, as I played through on Easy the first time; this may increase the game length, but only artificially through longer battle sequences and more restarts.

Overall, this game was passable. I'd have paid $20 or so for it, but considering how short the game was, and how there is little opportunity to customize a team, it pales in comparison to truly great games of the turn-based strategy genre such a Final Fantasy Tactics, or Fallout Tactics.

Fire Emblem

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: March 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

We are beginners w/this game and still are learning it. Once we master it a bit more, we will enjoy it more.

A solid game, in a genre where solid isn't good enough.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

"Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn" (hereby dubbed "FE:RD") is the latest in a franchise of turn-based strategy games of the "FE" brand. This is my first foray into the series, and my impression is that the game really does nothing wrong. It is solid strategy, with adjustable difficulty (and a huge "cheese" factor - more on that later), a passable story, a decent combat engine, some good extras, etc.

The problem is that turn-based strategy has been done so much better, so many other times. It is a genre that is packed to the hilt with incredible games. For example, there are the gold standards of "Final Fantasy Tactics" and "Disgaea," as well as the less-well-known, but equally impressive "Vandal Hearts." There are also unique turn-based games, such as "Dynasty Tactics" and "Phantom Brave," which don't have the "oomph" of the games cited above, but carry nice innovations which manage to distinguish them from the pack somewhat.

Unfortunately, "FE:RD" doesn't reach the upper echelon, and has no real innovation to speak of. It just...is. The story, while passable, is lackluster compared to the marvellous epic of "FFT," or the humorous but immersive "Disgaea." Moreover, the dialogue is annoying, and often juvenile. Since much of it is delivered via text, this forces one to actively read some bad writing.

The combat engine is OK, but opens itself to criticism, particularly due to the fact that battles tend to have surprise attacks out the yinyang. In the early going, it is merely annoying, as the game will end and one simply needs to replay the battle. Later on, though, it is incredibly frustrating, as soldiers will appear from a place that should have been secure and kill your healers/spellcasters, which are gone FOREVER. I like the use of battle tactics in a game, but only when the computer plays fair.

Another annoyance is the movement from map screen to battle screen. Every time I attack an enemy, I have to sit through a pointless transition to a battle screen. The time spent loading up the screen is nontrivial in the end, and adds quite a bit of unnecessary length to the game.

The graphics are pretty good, but not particularly vibrant. In fact, I still prefer the pixilated goodness of "Disgaea" and "FFT" to this - the colors were bright. Here, it's not so.

SO, my final review is this: "FE:RD" is a perfectly passable strategy game.However, for those of you who cut their teeth on the masterpieces I listed above, this will leave you wanting more.

Not for the beginner strategist!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: May 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

First of all, let me say that I grew up on what I consider true RPG games such as Zelda and Final Fantasy. I have very little experience with pure strategy games, such as FF Tactics.

That said, it may have been just me, but I found this game extremely HARD. In some cases, I felt like if I didn't perform each move EXACTLY right all the way through the complex battle, I would have to start over. This made it very frustrating to me, as even with the strategy guide, I just couldn't figure out the complex strategies of this game.

The plot was interesting, the graphics fine, and I probably would have enjoyed the strategy-based format if I hadn't been so frustrated. This game does have an easy stage and believe me - I was playing it.

All in all, this is a well made game, but it's not for amateurs. If you are a championship chess player, you'll probably love it. If you're used to handling overwhelming challenges in RPGs by taking the time to level up more, you'll likely have the same difficulties I did.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, or Path of Radiance II

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

For those who have played Fire Emblem before, most notably Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on the Game Cube, this Wii follow up to that game gets a 9/10. For those who haven't played FE:PoR, or Fire Emblem in general, this game gets a 7/10.

This turn-based tactical game returns with an installment that boasts over 70 playable characters, about half of them returning characters from FE:PoR, and too many characters overall for my taste. This game divides itself into four parts, but the latter chapters generally revolve around the returning characters from FE:PoR. You're missing out on understanding the history of the game as well as a few character backgrounds if you haven't played the previous installment. This new installment also has a few great cutscenes as well.

Also returning is the notorious "permanent character death" aspect. When a unit dies midbattle, they are gone forever, unless you reset. It becomes frustrating, but it defines the series' desire to create a chess-like challenging environment. This installment has a new "Battle Save" feature which allows the player to create a save state in the middle of a chapter, a feature sorely needed for those tired of characters dying after an hour or so of meticulous gameplay.

For those who have played Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on the Game Cube, you can expect the same feel and challenge, except longer. But for those unfamiliar with the series, this is not the game to test the waters. Rather, if you're truly interested in a game that requires strategy and PATIENCE, get the cheaper Game Cube game first, then make a decision whether or not to buy this follow up.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: January 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

According to my son. The game rocks. He recommends it to any gamer 12 yrs or younger.

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