For those of you lucky buggers playing an import copy of Smash Bros Brawl wondering who the hell the awesome sword swinging character Ike is, pay attention. Ike is a Fire Emblem character and even though you’ve used him to smash seven shades of crap out of Pikachu, you’ve barely understand how cool he really is. Veterans who played the last game in the series, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on GameCube will understand his awesomeness, plus they’re going to be in some seriously familiar waters with this new title. Firstly, because this game is a direct sequel to the events in Radiance; and secondly, despite being released on a superior console, gameplay-wise it has only taken a shuffle forward rather than a leap.
For the uninitiated, the Fire Emblem games are tactical role players; a genre that features deep plots, character levelling and turn-based combat not unlike Advance Wars. Don’t worry if you’re new to the series either, because there is an easy mode provided that mercifully assumes that you’ve never touched a Fire Emblem game before and makes in-depth tutorials available for your newbie self. Veterans will be stoked to hear that Radiant Dawn stars most of the Path of Radiance cast, including pretty much all of the previous game’s playable characters (with the exception of Largo), as well as a whole host of new faces to the Tellius universe.
Speaking of characters, Radiant Dawn is the first game in the series that uses perspective switches to allow you to experience both sides of the same war. In the later stages of the game, you’ll frequently swap control between the Greil Mercenaries and the Daein army. The game will also make you go head-to-head against otherwise playable characters as enemies, however if you defeat them they will remain useable when the perspective shifts back to their side. This is obviously a very welcome change from the series usual ‘screw up and you’re permanently toast’ rules.
The plot is set three years after the mad king’s war depicted in the GameCube game. Daein, the war’s mastermind and the victorious nation Crimea are still in the process of rebuilding themselves and while Crimea is ruled by Queen Elincia, Daein lacks a suitable successor and is instead controlled by the occupational forces of the Begnion Empire. The populace of Daein are oppressed by this corrupt senate and their imperial army and the first section of the story is about the Dawn Brigade, a band of Robin Hood-esque thieves who attempt to liberate their country.
Newbies shouldn’t worry too much about the convoluted plot because the game does a stellar job of bringing you up to speed while you’re playing it. But obviously if you can track down a copy of the previous game we’d recommend doing so to get the full experience, and if you do, the Wii version will recognise if you’ve got a memory card with a cleared Path of Radiance save on it. This then allows you to import your hard-earned coins and characters, not to mention your ‘support’ units which will become ‘Bond supports’ in Radiant Dawn.
Revisiting the past and reviving an old character is all well and good, but what does Radiant Dawn do that is new? Not much, unfortunately. On the whole the game doesn’t feel like it has embraced the extra power of the Wii, the graphics engine looks largely unchanged, and the control scheme really doesn’t take advantage of the motion sensing capabilities at all. Plus, if you play the game above anything but easy, you’re going to be milking the new ‘mid-battle save’ function for all it’s worth – because this bastard is harder than a coffin nail.
There have been some slight improvements to the old axe beats lance, lance beats sword, sword beats axe (bows shaft everything) battle system however. A unit’s height on the battlefield is now taken into account, with higher units getting an accuracy/ damage advantage. Plus human (or Beorc) characters can be promoted twice resulting in three tier classes which really come in handy later on. Lastly, the type and variety of weapons you can forge has been expanded, allowing knives to be used without a special skill, plus crossbows and bowguns which can attack and counter-attack within melee range – and as a side bonus look immensely cool.
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn isn’t exactly what we expected. The designers really didn’t attempt to ‘Wii-ify’ this sequel in any way and as a result it comes off as a game produced for an inferior machine which got lazily ported across. While there has been some definite, yet incremental, improvement with the battle and character systems, Radiant Dawn doesn’t hold a candle to the fantastic storyline witnessed in the previous game. Fans of the series will buy this regardless and appreciate the difficulty, but newcomers could very well get burnt by this particular Fire Emblem.
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Graphics:
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Good cut-scenes, otherwise GameCube standard
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Sound:
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Little in the way of next gen here
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Control:
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Doesn't make good use of the Wii controls
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Gameplay:
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Deep, engaging, long, if a little tough
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Verdict:
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A decent addition to your collection, but it hasn't evolved
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Rating:
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4/5
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