Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn Characters
Ortiz Ullery
Grab a chair because this is going to be a long one. So you've probably heard people rave about Tellius and how much they love it. I'm not going to sugar coat anything despite Radiant Dawn being my favorite game in the series and pretty much my favorite Wii game. This is the game that nearly killed the franchise and they should never do something like this ever again. There's a lot of good ideas that have come and while it would be cool to see them, I feel like it would sell horribly to today's market. There is a lot to talk about why this game was a failure and why fans pretty much hated it when it came out. Though over time this one suddenly became a classic and well recieved and often gets praised being the second half of the Tellius games. And if you thought Fates brought bad ideas, Radiant Dawn has some "what the hell were you thinking moments." It's a good game worth picking up, but it is a mess. So let's dive in and for those who haven't played the game you are in for a treat.
So Radiant Dawn is an odd duck when it comes to how it works. It's kind of like FE1 and FE3 where the second game takes place a few years after the first. And while you don't need to play Path of Radiance, it is highly recommended as many of the old plot elements are tied in and answered in the sequel. One of the biggest issues with these games is that they are rare and at the time, they both were on different consoles. Fortunately the Wii was backwards compatible which solved one issue, but there would be many newcomers who wouldn't be able to find Path of Radiance being first introduced in Smash. This was one of the biggest mistakes they made with the game and it caused the game to bomb in sales. FE11 and FE12 didn't do much better but they sold at least more than Radiant Dawn when they needed to make a new game to bounce back over remakes. A lot of people hate on Awakening and the direction FE is taking not realizing the route they were was going to bring their demise. I don't really blame them for milking on Awakening for Fates when death was knocking on their door. I'm not here to bring doom and gloom, but I do have to acknowledge every mistake this game made and this was the biggest sin especially with how connected the two stories are.
Edited Note: So I went back and RD sold just under half a million which isn't too bad coming off of PoR's 600,000 copies. That's a pretty big drop from FE8 being closer to 900,000. Tales of Symphonia sold 1.1 million units which really just kind of shows the sudden gap. There's a lot more factors such as the Wii being much more popular, but it was not good given how expensive the game probably was to make. It's not a good number for a Nintendo big named game. It would be interesting to jump into a what if Awakening didn't happen, but that's for another day. I do not believe Fire Emblem would have died, but we may not have gotten anymore FE in the west.
Since the games are so connected, I have to mention Path of Radiance and while I don't feel I'll need to do a review, I'll at least give you a short one on my thoughts. Path of Radiance is the FE7 of the console releases. It has everything that there is that makes what fans feel is a true Fire Emblem game with a really, really good plot for FE standards, a very likable lord, great supports and cast, the classic gameplay, and a wide variety of maps and missions. The thing about it is that it's catered more as a gateway game and veterans will feel it's way too easy. The biggest issue was the graphics certainly didn't age well on top of how slow the game is. The games before and after the Tellius all focused on being swift and flashy making PoR feel quite laggy in return. It really needs a port with updated graphics and a speedup button and I think it'd do quite well. Most of the mechanics and everything else is in Radiant Dawn, but they added some extra layers. I really recommend doing a hard mode run of PoR if you're a big FE fan as there's so many little things that make the run worth the while. Just don't expect the greatness people make it out to be.
I'm going to say this as a disclaimer. Everything I say from now on is my own opinion and many of the things I'm going to say may make an saying "Fire Emblem Awakening is a masterpiece" to an elitist of the older games look tame. Whenever you see me say something, just let me finish before you burn the forums. Also, I'll be talking about PoR a lot since the two are similar, but pretty much what Fates is to Awakening.
The best way to describe this game is that it's huge and this is the only small area to cover. If I had to describe the best looking Fire Emblem from style, graphics, and animations, it'd be Radiant Dawn second to none. Fates and SoV may look cleaner and both have their own amazing styles, but this game really has everything...except forts. The best way to describe it is that enemies look like they come from hallways and stairs when appearing as reinforcements. Everything is in 3d and even the elevation really adds depth. We'll get into that later. I think the character portraits are the best looking in the series and look so, so much better than PoR's kind of ugly ones. The animations actually look good and while crits and abilities aren't flashy like in all other titles, they looked cool to me and I love when a peg dashes off the screen at high speed. My favorite it the halbedier pretty much doing flips when entering combat. It's not as streamlined as Fates or SoV, but characters felt very alive and you could now make out a number of details on them.
I liked how everything looked and moved...though I can see why people would be really annoyed with armor knights. Whenever they attack, they move pretty slow in combat slowly walking up to the opponent then beating them up. I think the game looks great, but the mapping absolutely destroys anything seen in the 3ds titles. So an issue I have with most Fire Emblem games is that many maps have graphics that feel rather samey at points. Radiant Dawn I couldn't even tell you what map kind of reminded me of what. Some maps take place at night which look different then ones fought in the daytime. There's even one fought in the sky. And if you hated a map, you wouldn't ever see it again such as the mud pit. It used a lot of assets from PoR which maps looked really good, but I just recall more RD maps from design over that one. And there's no issue with depth perception compared to fates where I sometimes couldn't tell if something was a walkable tile or not. And don't get me started on the Mila tree.
We'll get into story later, but I will say the Tellius games managed to do a lot with only a little. Fates and Awakening focused on many scenes being similar to a clipscene in video games, but Radiant Dawn tells its stories in 3 different perspectives. The first is the tried and true "sprites" talking to each other in a standstill more or less using their portraits. Though in RD and PoR they use their full torso instead of focusing on the head. The second is using the maps to tell the story which I think is pretty well done sometimes using mechanics in clever yet amusing ways such as shoving people into the pits. The Tellius games do a lot of neat things with their maps which isn't seen much in other games. Pretty much Fate's Dragon Veins done right in most cases. Anyways, my favorite are the murals I have always thought the murals topped cutscenes. It's certainly better than scenes of Corrin swinging his sword hitting someone then getting hit back...all the time. These things are gorgeous and really give vivid imagery of what is happening and really express what a character is feeling.
Oh yeah I guess there's cutscenes, but those are very few and far inbetween. While the voice acting isn't stellar, the scenes look really good and are a step up from Path of Radiance. I'll end this saying that the cutscene at the end of part 2 is one of the most iconic moments in Fire Emblem history. There's actually a lot of things that happen in part 2 one of which is graphical related, but I'll save that for the story. One problem with talking about Radiant Dawn in certain aspects is that everything feels connected and that's really important. Things will feel like a mess but just bear with me.
When you think of Fire Emblem music, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it the medley from Smash Bros Melee? Id (Purpose)? Ocean's Gray Waves? FIRE EMBLEM HEROES!!!!! We all have our own opinions and what Fire Emblem music should be is different for everyone. This is the song that often comes into my mind:
I'm not going to say RD's ost is a pure masterpiece or the best one. RD has the Fire Emblem like soundtrack or at least an OST geared towards what FE was. There are many great and memorable songs including the player phase jingle for Part 1. It's been a very long time since I've touched RD and I remembered this theme so fluidly. Sometimes the music can just go to the back of your mind but never had I said a song was bad or not fitting. It doesn't have any of my favorite songs, but I think it does it's job damn well really, really is a beautiful soundtrack to listen to while playing the game. Oh wait it has my favorite recruitment theme. I will say that going from PoR to RD soundtrack wise is like going from RSE to Pokemon Coliseum.
I really do think the way the game sounds probably was my favorite part of the game. The soundtrack really fits and basically every time you hit an enemy, a thundercloud sound would be heard when you do damage. I prefer this over most sounds weapons make because it makes your attacks feel more powerful. You really have to play it to understand what I mean as listening to it alone doesn't really convey the feelings they are meant for. I'm done fanboying this game now as I wanted to get these two topics out of the way since the game looks and sounds great and it really should be acknowledged. You don't hear these things too much when people talk about RD instead...