Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: You pulled off a critical! And you only had 1% chance!
ryu_b
95% score
This game suffers few major flaws,but apprantly there are things that still spark up some fun. There's one thing that's different from the prequel,Path of Radiance: cutscenes. Although Path of Radiance had cutscenes,they hardly had sound or significance(simply showing Lehran's Medallion and then it goes back to text cut scenes). This time,there are still quite a few CG cutscenes, but there are more. Also,there's more voicing, like the trasnsitions between chapters. Speaking of chapters, there are about fifty-something. The fifty-some chapters are divided unequally into four parts, and they all represent different sides of the continent,which I'll explain now. The story is the continent of Tellius is, entirely covered in conflict. In Path of Radiance, Crimea beat Daein, and Crimea gave the responsbility to Begnion,Tellius's biggest region. However, Begnion is treating Daein harshly, and soon a small group known as the Dawn Brigade takes on the Begnion army. In the next part, you play as the new Queen of Crimea, Elincia. She tries to take down rebels who are led by a corrupt duke who wants to replace her. In the following part, you take the role of Ike, the new commander of the Griel Merceneries, who were asked to assist the Laguz Alliance, an army full of demi-humans who can transform into feline beasts or certain birds. Finally, the medallion mentioned before in this review can't take, and forces the goddess Ashera to turn all but the strongest people(the playables) into stone. This leads to Part Four, where every playable team(Dawn Brigade,Griel Merceneries,Crimean Army,etc. if you forgot the groups) teams up,then splits into 3 groups, and then finally meet up at the Goddess's tower. Now, The story is very good, and I find no problems with it, even though other reviews claim they find laughable issues with the storyline,which I find insane because I find it actually unique,as I never heard of any continent entirely engulfed in war. The gameplay, is very addictive. You can't stop playing and shouting at the TV "Pull off critical hit,pull off critical hit...AWW DANG IT!". The gameplay involves rock-paper-scissors attack systems, like Lances beat Swords, Swords beat Axes, Axes beat Lances. ANd there's also magic. Wind,Fire,and Lightning are in the Anima category. Wind beats Lightning,Lighting beats Fire,Fire beats Wind. There is rare users who use Dark Magic,which beats Anima magic,and Anima Magic beats Light,which beats Dark. There are also bows,but they have no interference with the chain. There are also crossbows, which only certain soliders can weild.The actual battle screen is like a game of chess. However, there is one concept everyone hates but some accept:If a character falls,they're dead. Like, DEAD. You can't use them. This adds more frustration, but to the addition of Battle Save, there's less frustration than before. There are about 72 playable soldiers, and they each have different stat growths. The game allows you which characters you want to have in your army(save a few,like the commander and characters that have a huge interference with that commander). However, some soliders insanely fail, like Fiona and Oliver. So enough of depth, let's talk about graphics. There are now different animations, and they all improve. For instance, the beast laguz simple tackled "through" the enemy in Path of Radiance. Now,they bite the area around the head and jump back. The visuals don't improve much though. The sound is great, though the game has the same sound effects from Path of Radiance. The music is great,though. You can't resist the music that sounds like Indiana Jones and plays during a Griel Merceneries fight. Overall,the game succeeds as a must-buy, but doesn't reach full perfection.
