Great Game, but Lacking Compared to the Game Before it
Customer Rating: 
Fire Emblem is a game in the category of video games known as "strategy role-playing-games". This particular game has you play with your characters chess style in many fun ways on intricate maps with many obstacles and opposing forces. When you attack, you go to a cutscene-style battle where the two characters do a quick hit on the other.
The gameplay is solid as ever, like all Fire Emblem games, with solid strategical elements while keeping the gameplay fresh and fun every time you push a button. War, simply put, is the strategy. You spend around 30 or so hours to play the game, but if you go at it recklessly you might lose a unit, and if you lose a unit, it's gone for ever, so it makes you want to restart the level and get that character back, or if you miss an item, you wanna go get it back, so it makes for a game that will spend most of your free-time, like all of the Fire Emblems.
Fire Emblem, like many RPGs (role-playing-games) has a wonderful storyline. Some say that the story is not well written, but myself and many others whom I represent in this review thing otherwise. True, is some of the dialogue cheesy or juvenile? Yes, but it goes by without any notice for anyone actually interested in the story (as you will be) or in the game.
Some people complain that this game makes you read too much, not enough cut-scenes etc. They think they should get to watch most of, or a lot of, the story like many RPGS. But what better way to immerse yourself in the storyline than to create your own voices in your head, and to read it on your own? Is reading a book any different? Or have all teenagers besides myself not like reading anymore whatsoever? *
Difficulty settings are very good. Lots of variation in the levels between the difficulties, but in Radiant Dawn, it seems the computer player will not play fair. For instance, an enemy archer comes up to your soldier. The soldier can't hit back right now. The archer has a 1% critical chance (a critical is where you deal 3x damage than a normal strike). The archer pulls back his bow, and criticals your unit, killing it. And this can happen multiple times. Or, in an area that was or should be secure, reinforcements will show up, therefore killing important units and destroying your current strategy. I wish the computer would play more fair, and many people complain of this. (game loses half of a star point)
Though this is a really good game, it stands sub-par to the game before it. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, that started the storyline for Radiant Dawn, makes Radiant Dawn look lackluster, poorly made, and not nearly as compelling. (Radiant Dawn loses other half of point) Radiant Dawn is a five star game, don't get me wrong, but it seems four star compared to Path of Radiance. Get Path of Radiance, then Radiant Dawn, so that you can experience the storyline correctly, and play another great game.
But please, to anyone who reads this, GET BOTH! THEY'RE BOTH AMAZING!!
* This little star is for those of you who have complained about Fire Emblem having too few cutscenes. Well, I've got one reason for ya why they don't have more than they do. Characters. It is optional for almost every single character to live, so imagine all the voices they would have to record, all the sprites they would have to make, and how many different versions of the cut-scenes they would have to make to accommodate for this fact! Personally, cut-scenes don't make a story anyway.
An Excellent Find!
Customer Rating: I bought this game from a bargain bin for about $10. I thought it looked interesting and I'd give it a try. After I finished playing it I proceeded to hunt down and play all of the other Fire Emblem games. I'm hooked!
A few basics:
1) This is a turn-by-turn strategy game. Once one of your characters meets an enemy, you get to sit back and watch them bash out who wins using excellent graphics and sound effects (plenty of eye-candy here).
2) You have a hero (the Dawn Maiden, then Ike, then the Dawn Maiden etc.) and the hero's bandmates who you get to choose from a list of people who joined you or you recruited (unless certain ones are necessary for the storyline, then you're stuck with a couple of specific ones in addition to the ones you can choose).
3) If your hero dies the game ends but of course you can just reload.
4) If a bandmate dies he/she stays "dead", which affects the storyline and stops you from recruiting certain potential bandmates (if this is too aggravating, you can just reload and change your strategy to prevent the character from dying).
5) If certain characters spend a lot of time standing next to each other they gain "support" levels which give them hit/magic/defense/speed/etc bonuses. If they are of different genders and have high enough support levels (and it is part of the storyline) then they get married at the end of the game.
6) As you move from chapter to chapter you gain more knowledge of the Fire Emblem world and its characters
which helps you to identify the more important (for the storyline) characters and which can "support" each other.
7) The ending is pretty straightforward overall but the characters who are "alive" affect it and you will get an "ending" for each character.
8) You can save the game whenever you want. In this game you don't have to choose between a lot of boring replay and trying to quickly play 'til you can save. I always appreciate it when the game industry thinks of the consumer!
9) The game changes when you replay it. Nothing that drastic, but the storyline IS altered. Even without the slightly different storyline, the fact that the killed characters stay "dead" will always make for a change in gameplay and endings. Which all-in-all makes this game very re-playable.
While you play this game you will always want to know "What happens next?" and so find yourself playing for much longer than you intended. For me, that's a good game! How about you?
