This means you'll either need to plan ahead, or restart battles often if you want to make it through the game. What will come to a surprise for many, however, is that this is a game that embraces "permadeath", so any unit that falls in battle is gone, and gone forever. As with Advance Wars, each unit has different attack abilities, movement space, and ranged or local attacks.
Battle movement and strategy revolves around the same staples the series has since the beginning, with all control being done turn-based around a huge grid. Corrupt government, group of rebels, you with a controller… go. Basically if you just read the preceding paragraph, you're already good to go. And while this is a 100% sequel to the last game, players that haven't had a chance to pick up Path of Radiance for GameCube won't be left in the dust, as you'll get tons of backstory, character reintroduction, and an all new story. Taking control of a group called the Dawn Brigade - a medieval Rebel Alliance, if you will - players will scour the countryside in search for allies, aiming to take down the corrupt leadership that has - and continues - to plague Daein. As an odd move for Radiant Dawn, players are actually assuming the role of members of Daein, previously the enemy in Path of Radiance. After the defeat of Mad King Ashnard three years ago, the country of Daein is now falling to pieces, as a corrupt government strives to keep control over a public body that is now thrown into chaos. Players will eventually take control of nearly every character from the last game, work within the same world, but now see a totally different side of the story. In fact, chances are if you already know you want this game before reading our review, as Fire Emblem hits a very specific, mature, traditional crowd.įire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a direct sequel to last generation's Path of Radiance on GameCube.
The downside to that? Fire Emblem inherently feels like a GameCube title, with nearly identical interface, style, graphics, audio (or lack of), pacing, and general appearance, so while the game may come in a white box and burned onto a DVD, it's about as far from a traditional Wii experience as you can get. It is what it is, and Fire Emblem plays identical to its GameCube counterpart, who in turn still drew inspiration from the very beginning nearly two decades ago. There's no Mii integration, no online, no waggle, and no IR aiming. What you won't get with Fire Emblem, however, is any motion control or IR experience. The involving story is still there, the classic turn-based strategy originating on Famicom Wars (the 19 year old inspiration for Advance Wars) is at large once again, and players of a whole new generation have a chance to experience exactly what Fire Emblem is all about. It should come as no surprise, then, that Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for Nintendo Wii does very little to change a formula that's been around for nearly two decades. Over the years the systems have changed, but Fire Emblem remains a steady constant, offering the most hardcore strategy gamers out there some of the deepest strategy and difficulty with the most minimal control scheme possible. The game got its start in Japan 17 years ago on the original Famicom, and has since seen over ten iterations across Famicom, Super Famicom, GBA (the game's USA debut), DS, GameCube, and now Wii. As far as classic strategy games go, Fire Emblem pretty much harks back to the beginning of time.