Firstly, forgive the odd screenshot style this time around. Being as the GBA has such tiny screens, I thought this the best way to show as many as possible whilst keeping to my normal format. Anyway, it’s been a while since I last touched on Fire Emblem, but it’s obviously a series which needs no introduction. It’s probably one of the best SRPG franchises out there, and the sheer depth and complexity that goes into the game is nothing to scoff at. Whilst it does use the old fashioned style of grid-based battling, why fix what’s not broken? By this point in time, it’s pretty much a perfected method of gameplay, and there are no complaints about it.

It’s a series of political strife, war and the time where mages went hand in hand with dragons and sword-wielding warriors. However, what makes this instalment into the Fire Emblem franchise is that whilst it touches onto the political aspect, it does a rather weak job of it, favouring the fantasy element of monsters and demons.

At first, I didn’t really know what to think of this odd change. It’s your typical war story at first, in a ‘very’ similar fashion to the first Fire Emblem, as the princess of a ruined country you have to reclaim it and the like. However, it throws the politics and the war out the window pretty damn quickly, giving in to a total fantasy styled battle against the monsters and demons in the above screenshot.  It’s a really odd choice to take for this franchise, and I think it’s what makes this game the best/worst instalment for fans of the game. Either you’ll love the new twist that it’s taken, or you’ll dislike it rather quickly and struggle to finish it.

On top of that, they’ve made even more changes. There’s now a map screen, where you can take your characters into non-story related battles to grow stronger, and you can revisit towns and the like to stock up on weapons and items. And this is, for me, the defining feature of the game. In previous games, you had to buy stupid amounts of weapons whenever you see an armoury, since you never know when the next one will be. In this game, you can play a much more fitting style to being a commander, outfitting your units according to what your expecting to fight next and ensuring they’re always in top shape.

The addition of the skirmish battles also makes almost every unit in the game viable and usable, even if they’ve gotten behind in levels. You can enter a skirmish battle and grind to get your favourite units to a point where you can use them in comparison to the god-tier units of the game.

However, this comes at a price. The difficulty in this game is actually significantly higher than the other instalments in the franchise, being able to have half your battalion wiped out by just one poor move.  Whilst you can grind other units into position to replace them, it just feels rather annoying to have to constantly replace units.

The Sacred Stones is something of an oddball in the franchise. Using a map system to travel the world and going with a method that throws the deep-rooted political staples of the game out the window is either going to make the game one of the best instalments, or one of the stranger instalments that you won’t be replaying any time soon.

Keen eyed fans will notice i’ve already reviewed this game…this is mostly a chance for me to see for myself just how much i’ve improved.

I hate to repeat myself, but I think I gave the best introduction to this game in the previous review, the review of it’s prequel: Path of Radiance. Fire Emblem is a franchise that’s capable of standing up to the biggest and baddest titles of the SRPG genre, and even the RPG genre, and that’s saying something when you consider just what is out there.

Radiant Dawn is a sequel to Path of Radiance, it’s Gamecube predeccessor. However, I don’t understand fully why it’s on the Wii; it’s almost like another Gamecube game that’s been given a little touch-up. The graphics and overall appearance remain the same, yet I don’t think that’s a bad thing…it looks just as good as it did ages ago, with that stunning CG animation and amazing voice acting returning for some very select scenes (which don’t come often enough, damnit!)

The same characters appear; with Ike, the main character of the game and his employer, Princess Elincia re-appearing, just assuming different roles this time: Elincia is the queen, and Ike has gone back to leading the mecenaries. Sothe, one of the better hidden  characters in the first game, takes the role of main character in this game, fighting alongside newcomer Miciahah, who takes it upon herself to free Daien from the aftermath of the Mad Kings War.

Oddly enough, the Fire Emblem itself features heavily in this game,with it taking on the previous role from the last game, governing the war itself and watching events unfold. But the war…well, the war becomes a huge aspect in the story, as we get to see a war from the three different sides and watch it escaulate into something of a much larger scale than ever expected. Hell, it even goes as far as to drag the Dragon laguz into the frey, the tribe that remains neutral no matter what.

The story is a politics/wartime goldmine, with characters realistically showing their own aspirations and motivations to get involved in the war, and it perfectly shows all the sides of the war marching their own way to destruction, without skimping on the character development. Sure, the bad-guys feel shallow at first, but they feel shallow for a reason…they ARE shallow. Like every good story, there’s a mastermind behind the scenes, pulling the strings with real motivation.

I described the gameplay last time around, but it uses the tried-and-tested method of grid based battling, bringing it to a point where it perfects it. Whilst admittidly, sometimes it does come down to luck of the RNG instead of skill, that’s not to say that it’s a bad thing – a true gamer would never put themselves in a position where luck of the RNG is a problem :L It even comes with gameplay difficulties which can challange the best of gamers, with things like maniac difficulty being near impossible.

Granted, it looks good, plays well and has a great plot, and it’s got that sense which sucks you into the fantasy world of Tellius, wanting more and more of it and possibly even another installment into the franchise, but it suffers from a huge issue to plague SRPG games, known as balance. Yeah, the ugly lion called balance shows it’s head again, and it hits quite hard.

Considering that you have a large number of people who join you, you’re meant to have nearly endless customization options. However, balance rears its head here, making some units so terrible they’ll never get used, and some units so good that they need to be included in every match. The laguz royals are a prime example of this, being able to experience double stats whilst transformed permanently, making some of the units relegated to the sidelines in favour of these powerhouses, Whilst you can customize and create your ideal team, the dificulty in the finale ranks up to the point where you’re almost stupid to pass over the “god tiered” units…not the best way to show balance. However, the balance remains pretty good for the first three chapters, so hey.

After finishing my third replay of this game(Need I say more?), I can safely say that it’s king of the strategy RPGs, and topples other giants from the average RPG genre. It’s such a shame that it’s almost impossible to come across nowadays, because it’s a real gem, shining alongside other Wii titles such as Xenoblade and Fragile Dreams, competing to be one of the finest games for this console.