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Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn was a fine game. It was fun, it was usually engaging, there were some very good parts, and I played it through to the end. Twice for the second playthrough extras.

However, I believe that it doesn't hold a candle to Path of Radiance. Skrimir shares this notion. There are some head-smackingly stupid aspects of Radiant Dawn that regularly enter my thoughts. The game was nowhere near as subtly written as as PoR, and treats the player like an idiot. It feels like the game thinks very little of it's audience. It had some very well written parts, but those make the low parts of the game look all the more stupid. The gameplay was more difficult, but had some infuriating aspects as well. Sometimes, I feel like this game insults me!

These rants are common talk between Skrimir and I. I brought PoR with me to college for Skrimir to play, and then she played RD with one of our neighbors. Every now and then, we will go back and fourth about things in the game that bother us. Neither of us hate the game, or even dislike it. It just... bugs us. We will use this thread to post our rants as they come and talk about them with FEF.

We will try to keep things intelligent, analytical, and relatively bile-free.

If you get a bunch of people killed in Blazing Sword or such, the final chapter would be really, really difficult. Either that, or you would have to get lucky or be amazing. Sure, they give you Athos or Gotoh or whatever, but that one unit didn't make the final chapter winnable.

If you screw yourself over in Radiant dawn? They give you all of the freaking Laguz Royals. Ha hah! Who cares about the units you have been leveling up? We've got your team right here!
I personally never use more than three royals in the final chapter. Usually two. I like to think that my units mean something. Sure, the team jumping makes it tough to level certain people up, but that's another rant.

I didn't really use Laguz in PoR, other than Reyson, Nasir, and the occasional Ranulf or Mordecai. However, Laguz in PoR were very usable. In Radiant Dawn, however, most of the Laguz are pretty useless. They level up like slugs, and even though transformation items are more abundant, you could still be using a better unit that won't sponge up EXP and become useless in a few turns. One of the reasons why the Royals are so good is because they have formshift, so they screw the Laguz system all together!

Way to add variety, RD!

And yes, there is the transfer glitch. I believe that only happens if you transfer easy mode clear data. Normal and hard mode should be fine.

As for not liking PoR as much, I couldn't care less about the system the game was on. I try judge the games by their own merits, although comparison is inevitable. Path of Radiance is my favorite game in the series thus far, with Blazing Sword a close second. Hell, PoR is one of my top 3 favorite games of all time. I'm not gonna lie, that is one of the reasons why RD disappointed me so much. But again, I like and dislike aspects of the game on their own.

Talking about what I like about PoR is a different kettle of fish. It isn't a perfect game, but it is my favorite. I'm not gonna talk about it here.

I prefer RD to PoR. Primarily because of difficulty, but there are quite a few things I don't care for in PoR. It might also have to do with the fact that I played RD BEFORE PoR.

The difficulty is probably one of the biggest reasons, though. PoR is bullshit-easy, like, Sacred Stones easy (if not more so). I consider the fact that they had to dumb down the difficulty for Americans much more insulting than RD's poorly constructed plot at times (and on the note of plot, PoR might not have all the holes that RD does in it, but RD did seem less cliche on a number of levels, which I appreciated). RD wasn't dumbed down for America, and damn do I love it for that fact. It's a lot more fun for me due to the difficulty.

I also love how skills are handled in RD. The fact that you can unequip them from people without them being destroyed is great (and because I played RD before PoR, when I learned you couldn't do the same in PoR I was pretty annoyed). Same for custom weapons - learning I was limited to one per chapter in PoR did not make me a happy player.

I also have to disagree with the idea that Laguz got unbalanced in RD compared to PoR - I think the opposite. The introduction of a vast supply of available Olivi Grass made Laguz much more easily usable then they were in PoR. The fact that you can use Olivi grass while a Laguz is still transformed allows you to ensure you can continue to use Laguz throughout a chapter. And if people want to say that's a waste of money or resources... maybe they shouldn't buy their Beorc units weapons - it's the same principle.

And there are a good deal of perfectly usable Laguz in RD:
-Volug (rape offense)
-Ulki (rape offense)
-Janaff (rape offense)
-Ranulf (rape offense)
-The Herons, of course
-Mordecai (he out tanks Gatrie for the longest time with just his base stats - definitely one of the least appreciated Laguz).

The ones listed above are the most easily usable non-royal laguz (unless you don't consider Skrimir a royal, which can go both ways). But a number of others are usable with more effort, such as Muarim, Lethe, and the like are certainly usable. I'll put it like this: it takes more effort to raise most members of the Dawn Brigade to third tier.


And Bexp made leveling Laguz cake. In fact, it's sometimes the prefered method, since a good number of Laguz have under 300% growths, making the guaranteed 3 stat ups a benefit. Pump Ulki/Janaff/Ranulf to level 30, slap a Satori Sign on them, and they suddenly start becoming some of the best fighters you have, outpacing the majority of the Greil Mercenaries.

I also find the fact that Micaiah's group and Ike's group had to fight each other very enjoyable, and innovative for a FE (even if it detracted from the plot). It's tons of fun killing Micaiah with one of my own units. The switching around makes specific units quite complicated, but overall, I'd say I like it. It gave the game a depth no other FE has.

Of course, I, like many others, don't care for how the support system was changed in RD. THAT irks me. But the new system allows for pacing through the game more easily without having to wait around to build supports up, which is more in tune with my playing style.

I also HATE Micaiah and Pelleas. A couple of dumbasses, those two are.

RD is probably my second favorite FE, behind Blazing Sword. That's mostly from a gameplay, perspective, though. Blazing Sword had EVERYTHING IMO, gameplay, good difficult, plot, character development, etc...

Oh, and Athos CAN solo the end of Blazing Sword. Just throwing that out there.

I totally agree. It's a matter of what you value most in FE. I'm sometimes an efficiency b***h, and love a challenge, especially in RD where there aren't support libraries to build. I do rank runs for FE6/7 regularly. Story's definitely important, and definitely detracts from RD, but I like it enough despite the many flaws. I play a lot of games for story, but I play RD for difficulty.

Of course, that's not to say I don't value gameplay. Again, Blazing Sword's gameplay, namely its replay value, is a huge reason why I like it so much. Anyone can be good in that game. You can take a number of different approaches, unlock different chapters, and even take the perspective of a different lord, which opens up new chapters and puts new spins on old chapters.

Games like Radiant Dawn don't mesh with the gameplay as well, since certain parts take you out of the experiance. And games like Shadow Dragon can't be saved by it. That game wasn't bad either. Just a bit jarring.

Also, I think you should be allowed to disagree in here. It has to be interesting conversation, and not just bile. In fact, in order to portray my disappointedness, I need to later point out everything the game did right. I can't spew bile. I'll look like an idiot.

I'm just going to bring up the ridiculous points that nobody mentioned...

Honestly, the main story wasn't bad imo. I liked the concept, though they really didn't characterize any of the newcomers besides the obvious ones at all. The battles were fun, and I'm a sucker for massive amounts of characters...

That being said, it was little things that annoyed me the most. The voice acting was clearly bottom-of-the-barrel, and a lot of the minor plot details didn't make sense - Zelgius being so loyal to the Senators that he would die for them, for example. It seems to make sense at the time, but once you know he was following Sephiran's orders it falls apart - how would him dying allow him to serve Sephiran at all? The same goes for Sephiran himself; the one who originally CREATED the anti-war pact with the Goddess decides to break it so that he can commit suicide. And.... why couldn't he have just had Zelgius kill him? it doesn't make any logical sense.

But the biggest flaw of the entire game, that everyone should notice.

Tibarn is the Hawk King. But in the CGs, he is a ******** BALD EAGLE WTF