Summary and Review of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

First, read some stuff about Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on Wikipedia.
This game starts off about a year after Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Back in PoR, after Mad Kind Ashnard of Daein was defeated, the Empire of Beignon was given control of Daein during its reconstruction. In Radiant Dawn, we learn that the senators of Beignon have been taking advantage of Daein and its citizens since Beignon was given control. The game starts out with the player learning about the Dawn Brigade led by Macaiah and Sothe, the sucky character from PoR, whose mission is to free Daein from Beignon oppression. At the end of the first part, the Dawn Brigade wins Daein's independence. In the second part, we find ourselves back in Crimea, where Queen Elincia's leadership is under question by the nobles of her country. In this part, you fight against the armies of the nobles to assert Elincia's leadership. In the cutscene at the end, one of Elincia's closest advisors, Lucia, is about to be hanged when (yay!) the Griel Mercenaries show up and save her. In part 3, Beignon abruptly and unexpectedly attacks the Laguz, and an all out war between the Laguz Army (consisting of Crimea, the Griel Mercenaries, and the forces of the beast, hawk, and raven Laguz tribes) and the Beignon Empire (who forces Daein to fight with them through a blood pact with Daein King Pelleas). In the last few chapters of the third part, you alternate between fighting with the Dawn Brigade forces you trained in Part 1, who are forced to fight for Beignon) and the Griel Mercenaries. In some chapters, you face characters from the other team. In the end of part 3, you must awaken the "dark" goddess from Lehran's Medallion and the goddess Ashera before she is awaken by war, because if she is awaken by war, she will destroy their entire world based on a contract she made with the people of Tellius (their continent) years before. With the help of the goddess that everyone considered to be evil, Yune, you must defeat Ashera because she still plans to destroy the continent. She also turns everyone into statues (except for all of the main characters... what an unexpected convenient coincidence [actually the characters attribute this to them being stronger than all of the other soldiers]), and unfreezes those who will help her. Before you face the big bad goddess you learn that Sephiran (a good guy) used the Black Knight a.k.a. General Zelgius (just research that, takes too long to explain) to orchestrate the whole war in the hopes that the goddess Ashera would destroy all people. That was a pretty big unexpected shocker, actually. Of course, in the end, you do defeat Ashera, and everything goes back to normal.

Anyway... onto what I think of the game.

Part 1: Wii-ness
Looking at it as a game for the Wii and all of the features it entails, it lacks severely. You can't even wave around the controller to do anything. It's all boring button pressing. You can even use a Gamecube controller to control the game. WTF NINTENDO?!? IT'S A WII GAME NOT A GAMECUBE GAME!! That's probably my biggest concern.

Part 2: Part 1
The characters were OK. Definitely not my favorite part of the game, but the cutscene at the beginning is really cool. Nolan and Edward are actually really good, and so is Jill (actually she's awesome as long as you don't let her die like me).

Part 3: Part 2
My least favorite part. It's short and no where near as fun and entertaining as the other parts. Two things make it worth it, though. You get the best player in the game in my opinion, Nephenee, and the cutscene at the end is awesome because you are reintroduced to the Greil Mercenaries, the real characters of the game.

Part 4: Part 3
I love this part because you get to destroy everything with the Griel Mercenaries and you get most of them up to third teir unit. In the chapters you have to play with the Dawn Brigade, you realize how weak they are compared to the Griel Mercenaries. The cutscenes in this part are really awesome, too.

Part 5: Part 4
This is the best part, even though it's much shorter than Part 3 and maybe Part 1. It contains 7 chapters: the prologue, chapters 1-5, and final chapter, but the final chapter is actually divided into five mini chapters. The battles in this part are really awesome and the final chapter is really awesome. The last part of this part, though, the epilogue, is the most boring forty five minutes of the whole game because all you do is read a bunch of text. The cutscene at the end of this part is really cool.

Overall, the game rocks. It's better than Path of Radiance and might just be better than Sacred Stones. Buy the game and play it. I could have done better in this review, but that would take way too much time.

Oh and my five best players in Radiant Dawn (as rated by the game by # of kills):
5. Mia (Griel Mercenaries)
4. Boyd (Griel Mercenaries)
3. Ike (Commander, Griel Mercenaries)
2. Gatrie (Griel Mercenaries)
1. Nephenee (Griel Mercenaries)

I give it an 8.5 out of 10.