This is possibly the best wii game ever. I haven’t had this much excitement on my Wii since Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess! I love it so much, I can’t bum it enough!
For those of you unfamiliar with the Fire Emblem series, it is a tactical role playing game made by Nintendo. It is developed by Intelligent Systems, who also made Advance Wars, and it works similiarily. The first Fire Emblem was released in Japan only in 1990 and was called Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragons
and the Blade of Light, or in Japanese: Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Tsurugi. However, the first console game to make it to the West was Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Gamecube.
To best describe the gameplay, we have to look back at an amazing game on the Sega Megadrive called Shining Force. You control multiple characters across what is essentially a battlefield and attack the enemy. In the enemies turn, they do the same. Its very hard to describe without use of picures, so here is one!
As you can see, you move your player and then attack. When you have done this for all of your characters, or choose to end the turn early, your turn is over. The enemy does the same and so on. What is really amazing about this is you can really use tactics in it. You can send a weak archer up to the front line and have him stand behind a strong ally and shoot the enemy from over your allies’ head. This simple tactic allows you to damage them, without vice versa.
Also, everytime you attack an enemy, if they have a weapon and are in range with that weapon when you attack them, they will counterattack. This makes it a whole lot more interesting. It also allows for some classic moments. On numerous occasions, I have dilebrately left a strong character at the front and the enemy has chose to atack them. Then when the enemy has done very little damage, or has missed altogethor, my powerful character has killed them from full health in one or two hits (you can two attacks if you are faster than the enemy). This is what the attack looks like, if you choose to have it on (if you have it off, the game flows faster)
The animations are brilliant and the movies just blew me away. I was in total shock that a wii game could produce such amazing quality graphics. The best picture of one of the movies I could find, does it no justice whatsoever. But I thought I’d show it you anyway. Imagine that, but less blurred and more colourful and just generally BETTER.
Ok, where was I? I’ve done: history, gameplay and graphics. Excellent.
Now the lifetime. OH.MY.FUCKING.GOD. WHOAH!! HUGE LIFETIME! I am about 60-75% of the way through and on nearly 30 hours! At this rate, this game could last even longer than Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess! Its amazing! And I love every minute of it. I suppose though, it is an RPG. And they do have huge lifetimes. The length of each battle varies depending on your objective and how you go about achiveing it. I for one, play EVERY SINGLE move meticulously, to achieve maximum damage to the enemy and achieve minimum damage to my characters. For me, a normal battle lasts between 30mins – 1hour and final chapter battles (big ones with hard bosses) lasting 2-3hours. However, if you are are a casual gamer, you will be pleased to know you can save battles halfway through and resume them later.
Something I need to comment briefly on, is Death. And you’re thinking “Of course Shrimpy, you are going to be killing a lot of enemies.” That’s true. However, they can kill you too. And if they kill one of your characters, that character is DEAD. Forever. Gone. Sayanara. And they ain’t coming back! No Pheonix Down will magically resurect them and make them fine and dandy. They’re dead, live with it. For 99% of characters, this is what happens. They die, they dissapear forever and the only place you ever see them again is on the character map where thier face is greyed out. However, in some battles, if you let an important character die, you have to start again from last save. However, you will become so attached to some characters and will find them so effective, that if they die, you restart your console anyway. On the battle I am currently on, I have had to restart five times. The first time, it was a lack of organisation, and then I rushed into things too much and took far too many risks. Thats the main reason why I am here, typing this, and not upstairs playing it.
Before I give a conclusion, and leave my own personal score for it, I have to touch briefly on characters. Characters are what makes this game. You will find yourself hating some and loving others. You genuinely build up a relationship with them. You command a whopping total of 76 characters on Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. 44 of these are ones that return from the previous game, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. You will learn to love or hate each and everyone of them. This totally enhances the game, as you start to stop taking risks for fear of losing your favourite character or having the healer heal the minimal of health of your favourite character even if another character (who you secretly hate) has barely any health at all. I have to fit this dude in somewhere, as he is fucking amazing. His name is Ike, some of you will know him form his endevours on Super Smash Bros Brawl.
And with that, I suppose that about wraps it all up.
I give this game a solid 97%.
And by god, does it deserve it. So grab your wallets, maybe a game you don’t play anymore and want to trade in, catch the bus to your nearest game shop and buy this game as IT ROCKS.
Shrimpy x
