Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

Everyone constantly talks about Nintendo’s franchises; but one that you don’t hear as much about as you should though is the Fire Emblem series. This would be because strategy RPG games are much more popular inside Japan than in PAL land. That said, more and more of these quirky games are hitting our shores of late, such as Final Fantasy Tactics, or the other game by Intelligent Systems – Advance Wars.

If you have played Advance Wars, then you have a fair idea of what to expect, as the two titles share a lot of game ideas. Of course, Fire Emblem trades in tanks and soldiers for archers, knights and mythical beings. For those who are completely new to the strategy genre though, the game revolves around turn-based combat like that seen in Final Fantasy games but with more control over your character and more depth to the battles.

Personally I have found that the Fire Emblem series (aside from mountains of text) flows better than other strategy RPGs. You don’t endlessly replay missions to grind your characters’ levels up; instead they evolve as you progress throughout the game. Shaping your party is still a big part of the game, but it doesn’t slow down your quest or ever bog you down with statistics. Perhaps then Fire Emblem is a good place for people interested in the genre to start?

Battles are turn-based with character stats dictating who does what when. Each time you control one of your characters, a grid comes up with movement and attacking range. Now, everyone pretty much took it for granted that Fire Emblem on the Wii would take advantage of the controller, letting the player point to where they wanted to move. Unfortunately the game shuns this feature (would be nice as an option at least), and to add insult to injury, the game’s graphics really don’t look much better than the GameCube title. Sure the graphics are nice and not the most important part of the game, it would have been great to have seen character detail and animation taken up a level.

If you are new to the series, or even genre, then make sure you are aware that Fire Emblem games involve heaps and heaps of text. Much more than your typical Nintendo game, this isn’t a puzzle/exploration game. Fans of the series were already going to buy this anyway.