JRPG Journey 2021: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Summer Bonus Game)
June’s game: Radiant Historia
July’s game: Breath of Fire
Developed by Intelligent Systems for Nintendo Wii and released in 2007, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is the direct sequel to Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and is the tenth mainline entry in the series, as well as only the second Fire Emblem game I’ve played. While I can’t comment on how it compares to earlier games, I can compare it to Path of Radiance (which I will refer to as FE9), a game that I adored and that made me want to play the rest of the series. I finally had time to dive in to Radiant Dawn, and like FE9, it consumed my life until I finished it in a matter of days.
Unlike FE9, Radiant Dawn is divided into parts, each following one army, with little overlap in squad members until the fourth part, where you can choose from anyone in the expansive cast. As I understand, this distinguishes it from most Fire Emblem games, including FE9, the key difference being that there’s not much time to level up any given unit. Due to this, characters that start off weak are far less viable than characters with better starting stats, even if their growths aren’t as good, and the “Jagens” of the game (characters that start off pre-promoted and much stronger than your other units) are even more useful than usual—which says a lot, as Jagens typically are great units in Fire Emblem. While it’s reasonable to assume this makes the game a piece of cake, it’s far from it. I played Radiant Dawn on Normal mode, which is the same as Hard mode in the original Japanese release, and since I also played FE9 on Hard, I thought I’d be in for a similar experience. Oh-ho-ho, that was a mistake. The strength and number of enemies are cranked up to a high degree from FE9, especially in the first part, which was daunting for the first few hours. This difficulty made stages more puzzle-like than ever, and I found myself restarting frequently, so the addition of a mid-battle save feature was a godsend due to my playstyle. I’m happy to admit I abused it often—it’s how I like to play—but for my next Fire Emblem game I’m going to try to be less obsessive about playing perfectly, for the sake of my sanity. However, while Radiant Dawn’s early game is rightly known for being brutal, by the mid-game it becomes quite manageable as you get access to stronger armies, and by the final part, it’s as much of a breeze as Path of Radiance.
Radiant Dawn attempts to make a few gameplay improvements, with mixed results. For example biorhythms, which change for each character over time and have a minor influence on stats, can now be influenced by using certain items and staves, but this is never worth doing, as these stat changes can still be safely ignored. At least, it’s better to attack or use other items rather than changing a character’s biorhythm. On the positive side, bonus experience is even more useful this time around. It will always add one point in exactly three stats, and I use those qualifiers for a reason—if a character already has a few stats maxed out, bonus experience is guaranteed to increase three of their other stats, letting you round out most characters by the end of the game and create massively overpowered units with proper planning. This is a welcome change to help mitigate the threat of the game’s enemies due to their high stats. As a side note, I can’t imagine playing on the Western Hard mode, which removes the weapon triangle, enemy movement ranges, and cranks enemy stats up even further, but hey, it’s there if you’re into masochism.
As is often the case for JRPGs, I don’t have much to say about the story. It’s fine. I liked seeing the Black Knight’s storyline resolved with his final confrontation with Ike, and while the reveal of his identity spoils the air of mystery around him, I’m able to separate the “badassness” of his enigmatic actions in FE9 from his characterization in FE10, which is interesting enough, and appreciate both. Brom and Nephenee’s story of getting dragged back into the war, while a minor part of the overall plot, was a standout for me. I’m glad Brom got his happy ending, while Nephenee continued to answer the call of battle, as expected. (I’m a bit of a Nephenee fan, if you couldn’t tell.) Micaiah is a Mary Sue, but since she’s not the focus for most of the game, I don’t mind much. I’m OK with tropey, fluffy stories in JRPGs, as it’s not the main reason I play them. The plot of the warring kingdoms is also standard for the genre but had me intrigued enough not to skip cutscenes, which is all I ask from a tactical RPG.
For me, Fire Emblem is more about telling your own stories in your head about the characters you like most, and Radiant Dawn succeeds here. As mentioned, the cast is massive, and every player is sure to find at least a few, if not several, favorites. Besides Nephenee, I became a fan of Nolan, an even bigger fan of Jill, and a massive fan of Haar. Maybe I just like flyers, or maybe I enjoy broken units, but Jill and Haar became the tag-team wrecking crew of my party and carried most maps on their backs. Feeding them kills, dumping bonus experience into them, and using them whenever possible helped satisfy my flyer addiction. I’ve developed a playstyle of focusing on just a few incredibly powerful units, and Radiant Dawn makes this a joy.
That’s all I’ve got to say about Radiant Dawn. Overall, I enjoyed it as much as or perhaps a little more than FE9, which was already one of my favorite tactical games of all time. I didn’t get into much about it here so as not to repeat myself, so check out my review of Path of Radiance for more of my thoughts on the general gameplay of Fire Emblem.
See you next month, where I’ll discuss Breath of Fire, a SNES classic.
