Most Nintendo fans nowadays have at least heard of the Fire Emblem series, thanks mostly to Super Smash Brothers, but there are still many who have no idea what it is. For those unaware, Fire Emblem has been a long running series of Japanese Strategy-RPGs that deal with the political aspects of LotR-style worlds. The politics, like in most games, are mainly just a way for the game to give your cast members reasons to fight as often as possible. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is the tenth game in the series (hence it's alternate title, Fire Emblem 10), and it deals with this theme of political warfare as much, if not moreso, than its predecessors.
Before I get into specifics and details, I'm forced to bring up something that many of you are probably wondering. No. Marth and Roy are not in this game. Sorry, but they just aren't. Is that clear? Okay, on to the review.
The game is a direct sequel to Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (FE9) for the Gamecube. Normally I would say that FE9 should be played first, but the storyline was relatively simplistic and most of it you should be able to pick up from where the game leaves you. Personally, I never actually played FE9, but I was able to pick up what was going on because the general crisis and many of the starting characters are seperate from those of the last game. I should give props to Intelligence Systems for starting off slowly, even if there were some moments where the game believes everyone knows the original cast.
The gameplay, as mentioned, hasn't changed it's core components since it started, but it still works out to be entertaining. The game is grid-based and you control a squad of units that each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Each character levels up independently, and because stat gains are essentially random, even two units of the same class can work out to be completely different in the end. This does mean, though, that a unit can get what the hardcore FE players refer to as RNG-screwage and become extremely weak compared to what their abilities should normally be. Luckily, the game incorporates an additional way of leveling up where you can give units Bonus EXP gained at the end of a fight, and because you always gain a certain number of stat boosts with each of these level-ups, you can train weaker units to become halfway usable and units with capped stats to become unstoppable killing machines (this is very satisfying).
Combat in Fire Emblem is handled using random numbers as well, with the ability to hit, dodge, and score critical hits (also very satisfying) determined by a score out of 100 that is shown to you on the combat screen, allowing for better strategic decisions. While they might seem to be useful in deciding who to attack what with, it should be known that the numbers can lie. If the enemy only has a 19% chance of hitting, that doesn't mean they're never going to hit you. This randomness can often lead to unpleasant situations where you have to sit and pray for your unit to not die. This brings me to another important point about the game: character death is absolute. Fire Emblem tradition dictates that when a character dies in combat, they're gone for good. This is usually done for a sense of realism, but FE10 is one of the more difficult games in the series and when you have healers and herons (fancy word for bards) that can die in a single hit, it is most often the stupid mistakes that have you starting over.
The Fire Emblem series as a whole is known to make changes to its gameplay over time, with the addition, subtraction, and alteration of various aspects. The big addition in this version of the game is Battle Saves, which means you can actually save during combat. Good for more that just saving to play again after school, it means you can reset from a later point if you lead one of your characters to their early grave. While this is very welcome, and hardcore players can choose to not use it, this creates the unfortunate side effect that anyone playing will be much more reckless, being less careful and often making more stupid mistakes than if they were playing a different Fire Emblem. This sense of recklessness over careful planning is not what Fire Emblem games are usually about, and it goes so far as to beg the question as to why even have permament character death if it doesn't mean anything to the player.
This brings me to where FE10 manages to drop the ball, then step on it and slip and fall. You see, even though the plot of this series is world-driven instead of character-driven like most JRPGs, character development has always been given it's place amongst the carnage and death. Each character in the games is usually given their own quirky personality and these can be backed up by one of various support conversations that occur during battle, which does a good job telling backstory and development at a rate and between people chosen entirely by the player. FE10 has none of that. It decided that not only would they make most of the new characters have little personality and even less lines, but the support conversations were torn up and replaced with a half-assed rethinking of them. The idea was that rather than only certain characters having supports, they would let you pair any character with any other character.
This sounds good on paper, but there are SEVENTY-TWO characters in total, and nobody can create that many support convos, so they were replaced with a single stock phrase that the characters say to each other if they speak in combat. Not only are these hardly worth your time and totally unoriginal, but they make hardly any sense. On one occasion, one of my swordsmen asked one of my healers if he could learn some of her fighting moves. '...the hell?' was what I thought at that moment.
Even worse, these new support convos can't even do their job right. The purpose of them in this game is to increase that stats of the characters when they stand close to each other, but because you can't tell which characters are good or bad until late in the game, you'll often be forced to erase them and start over with newer, better characters. Add to this that a lot of characters either suck or become outclassed later on, and you get a failed experiment at taking apart some otherwise good characters. I mean, one of the females is a lesbian (she barely hides this). I wanna see her hitting on other women and their humorous responses!
There is one other area where this game fails, especially in regards to it's predecessors. Before FE10, the only games in the series I actually played were FE5 and FE7 (the later is Fire Emblem for the GBA, the former is Japanese-only). FE5 was incredibly difficult and bordering on cheapness, but FE7 had a brisk, enlightening difficulty and mood that was just hard enough to keep me strategizing. FE10 has a difficulty that is basically a cross between these two. No it isn't because the difficulty is in between them, but because it frequently shifts back and forth between the two like a phoneline in a hurricane.
You see, someone at Intelligence Studios decided that the plot for this game would switch between several different viewpoints throughout. You start off with Micaiah and her band of merry men who start off hardly knowing how to wield a sword, bow or book (yes, book, thats how spellcasters fight) and their journey has them fighting waves of soldiers who the game assumes are at their level, but can still two-shot almost anyone. The only really good units they get are Jeigans, which is another way of saying 'unit who can kill everything when you get him, but takes all the EXP and has nothing to show for it later'.
Team Ike, on the other hand, contains a moderate number of freakishly powerful units who make the first team look like nameless NPCs. Partway through, the game likes to switch between them, and that's where you truly start to notice the difference in difficulty. Even worse than this is that the constant switching makes fine-tuning your units incredibly difficult, because you can only work on units that take place in the upcoming fight, so unless you remember everything your units need, you'll find yourself going into battle, breaking all your weapons, and praying for death (theirs, specifically).
As previously stated, the characters are often imbalanced, with some being large burdens as soon as they join. The good news is that the game gives you enough powerful units to make the later chapters accomplishable, and this becomes even more the case in Part 4 when Team Micaiah starts gaining levels like they were falling from the sky, even if it is a little too late. While some are statistically better than others, most people who don't abuse the game to get better levelups (and it is possible and there are people) will find themselves with a diverse cast of usable characters to chose from when the final chapters start. The Battle EXP makes this even easier, as a low level unit can catch up, or nearly catch up, to the others and start pulling their own weight again. However, one type of unit that will likely not get a lot of playtime are the Laguz units. These are a species of character that can turn into animals and attack with increased stats, but the time during which they can do this is short and it takes far too long to do so again.
One other gameplay trait than can make characters better is that they gain special skills which cause a number of effects, from heightened stats at near death to the ability to move through enemies and steal their items. Some have less versatility, though, like increased stat gains in exchange for less EXP. Also, when a character gets to a high enough level, they gain a super-powered ability which basically lets them instantly slay whatever enemy they are fighting at the time. Even if this sounds like a must-have skill, it is very out of place in a game like Fire Emblem, where they can only be triggered by random chance and can put a hole in whatever strategy may be formed.
Overall, I still have to say that Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a very good game. I recommend that you play it, but if possible it would be better to play one of the other games in the series first. They have all the good qualities of this game, but with a shallower learning curve (too shallow, in the case of Sacred Stones) and actual character development. I don't think this is the kind of game that should be rented, based on how long it takes to finish most maps, but renting may be good for those afraid of challenge or JRPGs.
Before I get into specifics and details, I'm forced to bring up something that many of you are probably wondering. No. Marth and Roy are not in this game. Sorry, but they just aren't. Is that clear? Okay, on to the review.
The game is a direct sequel to Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (FE9) for the Gamecube. Normally I would say that FE9 should be played first, but the storyline was relatively simplistic and most of it you should be able to pick up from where the game leaves you. Personally, I never actually played FE9, but I was able to pick up what was going on because the general crisis and many of the starting characters are seperate from those of the last game. I should give props to Intelligence Systems for starting off slowly, even if there were some moments where the game believes everyone knows the original cast.
The gameplay, as mentioned, hasn't changed it's core components since it started, but it still works out to be entertaining. The game is grid-based and you control a squad of units that each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Each character levels up independently, and because stat gains are essentially random, even two units of the same class can work out to be completely different in the end. This does mean, though, that a unit can get what the hardcore FE players refer to as RNG-screwage and become extremely weak compared to what their abilities should normally be. Luckily, the game incorporates an additional way of leveling up where you can give units Bonus EXP gained at the end of a fight, and because you always gain a certain number of stat boosts with each of these level-ups, you can train weaker units to become halfway usable and units with capped stats to become unstoppable killing machines (this is very satisfying).
Combat in Fire Emblem is handled using random numbers as well, with the ability to hit, dodge, and score critical hits (also very satisfying) determined by a score out of 100 that is shown to you on the combat screen, allowing for better strategic decisions. While they might seem to be useful in deciding who to attack what with, it should be known that the numbers can lie. If the enemy only has a 19% chance of hitting, that doesn't mean they're never going to hit you. This randomness can often lead to unpleasant situations where you have to sit and pray for your unit to not die. This brings me to another important point about the game: character death is absolute. Fire Emblem tradition dictates that when a character dies in combat, they're gone for good. This is usually done for a sense of realism, but FE10 is one of the more difficult games in the series and when you have healers and herons (fancy word for bards) that can die in a single hit, it is most often the stupid mistakes that have you starting over.
The Fire Emblem series as a whole is known to make changes to its gameplay over time, with the addition, subtraction, and alteration of various aspects. The big addition in this version of the game is Battle Saves, which means you can actually save during combat. Good for more that just saving to play again after school, it means you can reset from a later point if you lead one of your characters to their early grave. While this is very welcome, and hardcore players can choose to not use it, this creates the unfortunate side effect that anyone playing will be much more reckless, being less careful and often making more stupid mistakes than if they were playing a different Fire Emblem. This sense of recklessness over careful planning is not what Fire Emblem games are usually about, and it goes so far as to beg the question as to why even have permament character death if it doesn't mean anything to the player.
This brings me to where FE10 manages to drop the ball, then step on it and slip and fall. You see, even though the plot of this series is world-driven instead of character-driven like most JRPGs, character development has always been given it's place amongst the carnage and death. Each character in the games is usually given their own quirky personality and these can be backed up by one of various support conversations that occur during battle, which does a good job telling backstory and development at a rate and between people chosen entirely by the player. FE10 has none of that. It decided that not only would they make most of the new characters have little personality and even less lines, but the support conversations were torn up and replaced with a half-assed rethinking of them. The idea was that rather than only certain characters having supports, they would let you pair any character with any other character.
This sounds good on paper, but there are SEVENTY-TWO characters in total, and nobody can create that many support convos, so they were replaced with a single stock phrase that the characters say to each other if they speak in combat. Not only are these hardly worth your time and totally unoriginal, but they make hardly any sense. On one occasion, one of my swordsmen asked one of my healers if he could learn some of her fighting moves. '...the hell?' was what I thought at that moment.
Even worse, these new support convos can't even do their job right. The purpose of them in this game is to increase that stats of the characters when they stand close to each other, but because you can't tell which characters are good or bad until late in the game, you'll often be forced to erase them and start over with newer, better characters. Add to this that a lot of characters either suck or become outclassed later on, and you get a failed experiment at taking apart some otherwise good characters. I mean, one of the females is a lesbian (she barely hides this). I wanna see her hitting on other women and their humorous responses!
There is one other area where this game fails, especially in regards to it's predecessors. Before FE10, the only games in the series I actually played were FE5 and FE7 (the later is Fire Emblem for the GBA, the former is Japanese-only). FE5 was incredibly difficult and bordering on cheapness, but FE7 had a brisk, enlightening difficulty and mood that was just hard enough to keep me strategizing. FE10 has a difficulty that is basically a cross between these two. No it isn't because the difficulty is in between them, but because it frequently shifts back and forth between the two like a phoneline in a hurricane.
You see, someone at Intelligence Studios decided that the plot for this game would switch between several different viewpoints throughout. You start off with Micaiah and her band of merry men who start off hardly knowing how to wield a sword, bow or book (yes, book, thats how spellcasters fight) and their journey has them fighting waves of soldiers who the game assumes are at their level, but can still two-shot almost anyone. The only really good units they get are Jeigans, which is another way of saying 'unit who can kill everything when you get him, but takes all the EXP and has nothing to show for it later'.
Team Ike, on the other hand, contains a moderate number of freakishly powerful units who make the first team look like nameless NPCs. Partway through, the game likes to switch between them, and that's where you truly start to notice the difference in difficulty. Even worse than this is that the constant switching makes fine-tuning your units incredibly difficult, because you can only work on units that take place in the upcoming fight, so unless you remember everything your units need, you'll find yourself going into battle, breaking all your weapons, and praying for death (theirs, specifically).
As previously stated, the characters are often imbalanced, with some being large burdens as soon as they join. The good news is that the game gives you enough powerful units to make the later chapters accomplishable, and this becomes even more the case in Part 4 when Team Micaiah starts gaining levels like they were falling from the sky, even if it is a little too late. While some are statistically better than others, most people who don't abuse the game to get better levelups (and it is possible and there are people) will find themselves with a diverse cast of usable characters to chose from when the final chapters start. The Battle EXP makes this even easier, as a low level unit can catch up, or nearly catch up, to the others and start pulling their own weight again. However, one type of unit that will likely not get a lot of playtime are the Laguz units. These are a species of character that can turn into animals and attack with increased stats, but the time during which they can do this is short and it takes far too long to do so again.
One other gameplay trait than can make characters better is that they gain special skills which cause a number of effects, from heightened stats at near death to the ability to move through enemies and steal their items. Some have less versatility, though, like increased stat gains in exchange for less EXP. Also, when a character gets to a high enough level, they gain a super-powered ability which basically lets them instantly slay whatever enemy they are fighting at the time. Even if this sounds like a must-have skill, it is very out of place in a game like Fire Emblem, where they can only be triggered by random chance and can put a hole in whatever strategy may be formed.
Overall, I still have to say that Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a very good game. I recommend that you play it, but if possible it would be better to play one of the other games in the series first. They have all the good qualities of this game, but with a shallower learning curve (too shallow, in the case of Sacred Stones) and actual character development. I don't think this is the kind of game that should be rented, based on how long it takes to finish most maps, but renting may be good for those afraid of challenge or JRPGs.