I think locking Radiant Dawn's Hard mode behind a second playthrough isn't any worse than how it is in Binding Blade, and nowhere near as bad as Blazing Blade where you need to finish Lyn normal, Eliwood normal and Hector normal, all of which are way easier than Radiant Dawn's normal mode, just to unlock Hector Hard mode. I will not defend how they locked BEXP requirements (which, imo you should be able to see at the beginning or during each chapter instead of the end) or the ability to disable battle animations, those should have been unlocked from the start. As for the story differences (spoilers below), I think not having the ability to save Pelleas and Sephiran in your first playthrough was a justified decision because most players would otherwise choose to save them and miss out on a sadder version of Radiant Dawn's story (well at least most would save Pelleas, the game doesn't exactly make it clear how to save Sephiran, but that's its own issue). However, I don't think there was any good reason to lock Ike's memory scene at the end of 4-E-2, and consequently the Soren base conversation, behind the same requirements needed to recruit Sephiran.
So I agree that locking HM behind a second playthrough isn't worse than how it's done in Binding Blade, and I definitely agree that it's nowhere near as bad as FE7. Still... it's not a decision that I defend for either of those games (though I haven't yet made reviews of either of them since I played them a while ago, before I started the channel), so it's also not one that I'll defend here Re the story stuff... I don't know. I don't really think it's that much sadder following those deaths, and I think it's an egregiously long game to play in full for those tiny tidbits, especially with specific actions like with Sephiran. I agree on the memory scene and Soren base conversation though for sure
FE10 holds a special place in my heart. It is a game that obviously has flaws and character balance has been thrown right out of a window (I mean Fiona and Haar both exist in this game somehow and there is map in chapter 1 where you get not one, but TWO Athos units SOMEHOW???) but it also feels so special and unique of the Fire Emblem titles that I can't help but love the highs of it far more than I hate the lows. EDIT: Also while it's a map that really just drags on after your first playthrough and the novelty has worn off I still find it hilarious that Geoffrey's Charge is just like "Hey what do I do?" "Did you read the name of the chapter?" "Geoffrey's Charge? Yeah, why?" "Yeah, do that."
That makes complete sense, thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts! I agree on the highs being higher than the lows, hence my ultimate conclusion that I like the game. It's definitely very unique, though I haven't remotely gotten close to finishing Thracia, some of the choices made in this game do kinda remind me of the more different mechanics there And Geoffrey's Charge... I can imagine it drags on repeat playthroughs, given that I already didn't like it the first time (though I guess some bonus points for catching me by surprise with the moving boss who absolutely obliterated Astrid lel), but that is really funny for sure
I agree with the overall assessment of the lows, but the highs of RD absolitely carry the game into favorite tier alongside Genealogy to me. This is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. More than any other game in the series (except 4, perhaps), the game has a gravity to its story, world and gameplay unrivaled by any other. Enemy quality being high across the board, multiple long campaigns with different groups scattered across Tellius, third tier classes, the absolute BEST soundtrack in the series, and the endgame stakes. Everything booms with power and scale, this game is, for a lack of a better word, epic in its scope. Great review.
Understandable. In the video, I did say "if I play Radiant Dawn again," but frankly... given that I seem to be committed to this weekly analytical video moment and I still have a bunch of FE mainline, Kaga Saga and romhack games to play... I have no clue when it would be doable lmao
Software uploading is apparently once again my worst enemy, even though I listened back to it properly and everything and there aren't any issues in the actual editing software. I have no idea what happened, so uh... full sentences cut off in the video as below. Fortunately nothing actually important got cut out, so I'm not gonna do a reupload, and have instead identified the problem areas to cut them out. Thanks to everyone who pointed out any of these moments 6:30 Overall, I do think that these changes and tools make the laguz as a whole better, not least because transformed grounded laguz typically have the highest Mov of any units other than Fliers. Even then, on some maps, transformed laguz may have higher Mov than both Fliers and Cavalry, since indoor maps impose a 2 Mov penalty on the mounted units. 17:50 TL;DW for this section: if you’re gonna play Hard Mode, get yourself a patch that reenables enemy ranges. And regardless of difficulty setting, get clear save data so you can turn the animations off. You will thank me for it.
Wonderful review that was thoroughly presented in a way that many could understand and relate to your issues and your positives regarding Radiant Dawn. This Review also starts on a more positive note which makes it easier to go through as a fan of the game. This is probably one of my favourite reviews of an FE game. By the way, you seem to have cut your conclusion of the Laguz Gameplay point right around 6:30. I don't know if it was intentional or not.
Thanks for watching it, I'm glad that you enjoyed it! Yeah, my Path of Radiance review was very not positive so I can imagine it could be hard for a fan of the game to listen to, so I'm happy to hear that this one is different, especially since I did overall actually enjoy the game And no, it was not intentional... I have no idea what my editing software is doing. I've now written a pinned comment with the full sentence and also just removed the weird cutoff moment, since it wasn't that important. Thanks for the spot though, I greatly appreciate it and your continued interest :>
Its funny, someone loving part 1 the most is the one unusual take in the fanbase at large but it is true that its the part that requires the most actual strategy in this strategy game instead of just haar go brrrr I also find hard mode BEXP too restrictive, its my least favorite part (aside from ranges which you can patch), it promotes funneling to juggernaut too much and not using fun units like mia Also as someone who rates this game highly I can confirm part 4 is complete trash, rout maps are cringe and tower is boring
Yo Zeph! Yeah I remember you saying this in Cheese's server, but I feel like a good chunk of the people I know like Part 1 the most, so it doesn't seem like an unusual take to me. I don't think I've met anyone who actually likes Part 4 excluding Tower though, so I think that might be the actually unusual take here lmao Though obviously I've only done one playthrough of the game, I can imagine that being the case for HM Bexp for sure. Just generally, resource funnelling seems like it should really be focused down on, especially since the Tower bails you out with Renning and the Royals anyway from having to actually train that many units. It's funny though that you cite Mia as an example, because I feel like a lot of people are pretty high on her in RD? That might be my mistaken impression though But yeah, thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts! Especially your criticisms of the game, given that you've said you rate RD highly :>
6:30 BEXP formula is actually interesting it rolls stats in order of Highest stat growth>lowest with ties being broken in reverse order they show up on screen (HP is last RES first), and always tries to give 3 stats a level. So it's really good once you have 1-3 stats capped, and you can give units BEXP to x.99 so they can grow faster (since most units have growth totals above 300). It's also really strong with seraph robes since HP tends to be a high growth and capped HP makes other stats much more likely to proc. 9:00 it's more like units like Nolan and Jill are trainees than a 3 tier class system. It just names the classes the tier 1>2>3 instead of using the 0>1>2 naming scheme 12:00 this map is making me die in meme%. 12:30 I think it's best to think of RD as roughly 3-4 different very small games smashed into 1 The Dawn Brigade (15 maps) Every map in part 1, 3-6, 3-12 and 3-13 The GMs (11 maps), Every map where Boyd is deployable The CRKs (2 maps) Every map where Geoffery is lord The Nephenee brigade (3 maps) every map where Nephenee is Deployable pre part 3 (did you know Nephenee and Geoffery share 0 maps?) Part 4 (11 maps) Pre tower part 4 being much different from tower, Tower is more of a Scar/Mufasa stomp though) 15:29 it's basically a crit bonus. Only meaningful when stacked among other proc skills to make units like zihark/mia "reliably unreliable" I agree for the most part with your review, though I'll mention the juggernaut to juggernaut gameplay gets even MORE prounounced when looking at "informed" playthroughs. There's a joke where RD on 0% is easier than RD with growths because you don't fall for noob traps. This isn't strictly true mainly bc of Ike but if you got 2 robes 2 dracoshields, a speedwing and an energy drop in the 4-e-2 base convos it would actually be easier on 0%
Yo Gordon, it's taken a second to hop onto comments, but will respond now that I have time to do so properly That's really interesting re BExp. I know that the two digit stat levels for Byleth and students in Three Houses slightly skews the actual growths of units with particularly lopsided growths, like Lysithea and Constances's Magic stats, so I wonder what the numbers look like under the BExp constraints... Definitely makes sense re the Trainee interpretation, so I can see that for sure. Same also for the 3-4 different games moment. That part about Neph and Geoffrey having zero overlap is hilarious though lmaoooooo And yeah, Tier 3 Class Skills are basically crit in every sense, both in terms of the proc and also most of them doing the triple the damage shtick. I agree on the reliable unreliability thing, so there isn't anything else to say Thanks for sharing your thoughts! You explained the juggernaut thing briefly over in Akiracord as well, which I'm also inclined to agree with. The 0% growths moment I mentioned to someone else one time and they told me that they thought it might actually be the case for all of the pre-Awakening games due to not investing/bothering with training projects that may not pay off, so I would be curious what you think about that
@@akirasou Fe12 is insanely hard without growths so We'll assume he meant games released in english Fe7: Growths mainly help marcus and heath, there are definitely many maps where you feel the pain with heath, tbh having fewer deployment slots helps you more than it hurts in HHM so idk Fe8 : you really need growths seth and growths myrrh, killing Lyon2/Demon king sucks without them. Fe9: Killing Ashnard sucks without growths ike RD: Shadow dragon: Mostly true, though you'll need to know how to kill medeus beforehand. I guess it's more that if you know a few key rules then it's easier on 0%, though I think it's more important to say "Just train your lord and otherwise play like it's 0% growths and you'll be fine" is true for most FE games.
Good video! RD is one of my favourite FEs, but I agree it's not perfect for the reasons you touched on. Whilst it does have some low lows, I would argue the Highs are some of the highest in the franchise, and they more than make up for the game's shortcomings. I'm not sure if you're aware, and really this is just useless trivia lol, but the English version of RD is by far the superior version from both a plot and gameplay standpoint. The former fixes some contrived plot points that were in the Japanese version, and the latter removes some unfun mechanics (you had this arcane "forging point" system that you needed to forge weapons, and you also HAD to have a master crown to promote to Tier 3). Just thought I'd mention since learning this made me appreciate the localisation team more lol. As an aside, I've only played RD on normal until now. I may give Hard Mode a try now, since my main issue with it was the arbitrary feature removals and the early game being a literal luckfest. If a patch fixes those, it could be worth a try!
Yo Silver, thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts, I'm glad that you liked it I definitely agree on the highs being high, having really loved 3-6 and 1-4 (and just the Dawn Brigade parts of the game generally). Also agreed on them making up for the game's shortcomings, hence my ultimate conclusion that I do like this game And yeah, it's my understanding that the Japanese version of Radiant Dawn says something like... the Black Knight survived the Path of Radiance encounter due to his warp powder having malfunctioned, meaning that Ike just fought his empty armour??? Or something like that?? And huh... I'm guessing that Master Crowns must have been far more plentiful in the JP version. Or I'm hoping so, at least lmfao And yeah, I'd recommend giving it a go, I enjoyed my Hard Mode blind playthrough a lot! The randomiser should be able to fix all of those things for you, so if you do end up giving it a go, I'll be curious to hear how you find it :>
@@akirasou Master Crowns _were_ much more plentiful in the Japanese version. Unfortunately, a whole lot of them were on-map hidden items, so dealing with that system was even more necessary.
I agree with most points, especially with Hard Mode enemy ranges, balancing and certain Maps. However, most GBA Games except FE8 lock Hard Mode behind a completed save. And, sorry but Bonus Experience is awesome and needs to return.
It's definitely true that FE6 and FE7 both have the difficulty mode moment (especially FE7...), but I don't like it there, so I also don't like it here And interesting that you think that... I'm thinking of eventually doing a video on the bonus experience mechanic, so I would be curious to hear what you like about it. Of course, would be happy to credit you if that's something you'd want
Mad respect for appreciating the Dawn Brigade and actually bringing up that Ike's presence brings down other perspectives. People stan the guy so much it feels you can't say anything remotely negative about him without getting pounced on. I was pretty noob going into this game for FE, seeing as I started with PoR and found it somewhat unsatisfactory. Was a kid who'd play basically anythig he got his hands on and the box art looked interesting lmao. Grabbed RD because I wanted something new to play and, again, I liked the box art, and remembered playing the prequel. Turns out, I liked RD overall despite its flaws. It's probably my second favorite FE game even after all these years. I never got around to playing Hard Mode since I'm not much of a HM guy. I especially liked the maps with lots of ledges. They were the ones that best captured the feeling of two massive forces clashing and using everything they have to tear each other down. Watching this video is kind of making me want to replay it lol.
Thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts! Interesting that you found PoR somewhat unsatisfactory, do you know what about it got you that way? I ask partly because I didn’t love it myself lel (least favourite FE game thus far moment…) If you end up replaying it, I’d be curious to hear how you find it, especially if you try playing it on Hard Mode, since I know people have some pretty strong opinions on it. And what’s your top favourite FE game then, out of interest?
@@akirasou I'd say my view on it is partly influenced by my youth at the time. Even as a teen I was already more into text-based media but I wasn't particularly digging into games for deeper meanings. In terms of gameplay, I've never particularly cared about graphics as a metric. Finding PoR to be decent but not special in any way as a game or story (this was my first FE), I moved on from the experience mildly curious about the series but didnt revisit that until RD, and I was paying a lot more attention then. Just about everything about RD was a lot more interesting to me, from the moral quandary faced by Micaiah and co to the background doomsday plot to the callbacks to stuff in PoR to the enhanced systems to the higher difficulty. I don't even mind the game being split in parts that much as a game design (not so much for how it cuts into Dawn Brigade screentime). With hindsight I do regret the lack of proper Supports in RD though, and I have Awakening to thank for that (that's my favorite FE overall btw, more so because of how much characterization everyone has). Thouh something memorable about my time with PoR is that I actually lost units on the way and didn't restart to save em. I didn't get into the common FE mindset until RD lol. I'm not sure if that speaks to my lack of attachment to PoR characters or not really understanding the consequences of permadeath as a whole-game feature.
17:30 exact way I feel about ambush spawns Also Akira there’s some parts of this vid that just cut out before you finish a sentence like at the end of the slide at this time stamp. Idk if you wanna reupload but it might be worth considering
Yeah, I feel the same way about ambush spawns. I can like... imagine some ways to make them less intrusive, since I understand why people like having reinforcements that you can't just mow over. I actually think the Kitsune Lair illusion moment from that one CQ chapter could work really well as a status that's only there during the first Player Phase of reinforcements being there, so that you can't just sweep them. Since you're a Fates head, I'm curious what you would think of that way of managing reinforcements And thanks for pointing it out! There weren't any issues in the recording, so it must have been an upload issue... Thankfully nothing of actual importance got cut out, but I've since gone and trimmed those parts out of the video (it'll update eventually) and made a pinned comment with the full lines that got missed out
@@akirasou I think that ambush spawns are kind of a lose lose on both the player and the developer’s part. Yes you could do some things to make them less egregious, like show where they’re going to spawn and their stats but don’t let them attack you by spawning them in as green units the turn before, but even then, a good enough player can still camp ambush spawns by just camping them further into the map, whereas a less experienced player will have a worse time. At the end of the day I just think there’s more interesting and effective ways at creating fair difficulty that still challenges the player. CQ lunatic is the third hardest difficulty in series history and there’s zero ambush spawns so it’s clearly possible. Basically, yea I think that showing you the enemy that’s going to spawn in some capacity (like with the leaf mechanic if the enemy was a bit further away) before they ambush you is fine and not a horrible solution, but I’d just prefer it if developers tried more interesting and unique ways to create difficulty, because if the new ways go wrong at least I can understand but if you fuck up ambush spawns it feels horrible because they’ve been fucking up ambush spawns since the dawn of time
I'm surprised you didn't mention the week-long gaslamping we did to you that Rafiel could one-shot Oliver. Crazy. Anyway my opinions of RD match up fairly well with your own. A silly goofy aaah video game I'm not likely to ever play again but it was fun while it lasted.
...I completely forgot about that exact event, though that did technically happen in both senses... But yeah, I would say that I'm glad I've played RD. Also, I have no idea when I'll have the time to replay it, given that I still have so many FE games left to play...
Act 1 is also my favorite and Act 4 (esp. the first half) my least favorite. I'd say you've done a very fair review overall. RD has some big changes in the western release. In J-RD, the Dawn Brigade got NO Prfs on their return in Act 3, and you had to sell weapons in order to Forge. The game is not very popular in Japan as a result, but I agree that they should have changed even more; like the QoL stuff you had to patch in.
That makes sense, the pre-Tower part of Act 4 is... really, really dreadful. I'm glad that you think overall it was a fair review! I have heard about some of those changes in the Western release, yeah, which I definitely think that they did well in changing upon localisation. I'm not sure whether I would say that RD didn't do well in Japan as a result of that though. I think that the nature of Radiant Dawn being so fundamentally weird and hinging a lot on Path of Radiance (which I believe didn't do well in Japan either) already makes it massively hit or miss. Agree on the QoL stuff though
Im still sad no game has done ledges since its one of the most intresting game play mechanics for me. Also while it can seem hard to meme in this game i do think most meme units are capable of being genuinely useful members of your army. Fiona being a fun unit due to free rescue and if trained suprisingly hard to kill and kyza being a fun middle ground between a cat and tiger, there are tons of other examples if you play.
Yeah, ledges are great so I would be very happy to see them make a return in a future FE game. And that makes sense, there are very rarely I find units that are completely unusable once trained, it's more a question of how painful it is to train them. So thanks for sharing some of those details about those units, someone I know who's playing RD HM for the first time will probably be glad that someone thinks Fiona can turn out genuinely useful if trained
Me when i played hard mode vanilla: Let's put Haar there and let him kill every last one of them Why? It's simple, he is broken, and I'm lazy to count squares
I have a different take on radient dawn. I think Mechiah's actions do not match her personality, more drastically when comparing part 1 and 3. The game doesn't do anything with how Dein views Mechiah as some sort of deity and are finatical about her. The way that Soren or Titania talk about it as if she way a very dangerous person was very intriguing. Honesty i feel like that the game is worse when Mechiah is involved and peak fiction when she is not there. Part 2 is a direct response to the events of part 1 (part 3 as well). Not having it there would be a massive glairing hole in the story after a major event that takes place in Crimea's most recent enemy. While I do agree that Elincia should of had more importance in the overall plot, removing part 2 is stupid. Ok personally i think that people over exaggerated the bridge maps by a massive margin. First of all, enemies never mover on to squares that have any pitfalls on them. So just by looking at their positioning and how they move toward you is a pretty obvious indicator of where the pitfalls are at. With the shine barriers, it is a obvious indicator of where the pitfalls are at. With all of the knowledge of where the pitfalls are at, you are intended to position your flyers over the spaces where a pitfall is located at so your unit can move pass that space freely. Or even just Rescue them over too. The game gives you 2 flyers in this map for that reasion. On top of that you are able to have a max of 8 flyers by this point to do this not counting the npc characters.
Having a different take is a-okay! I'll respond to the points briefly I think they match her personality pretty well because of her vague lack of worldliness, which I mentioned in the video. And then especially once the Blood Pact gets involved, I do think it leads to her best character moments. Like when before 3-12, Micaiah says that if being just means letting Daein perish, she'd rather be hated and feared like Ashnard... it's such a good line Re her being dangerous... I agree they don't really explore it as much as they could have, but like... they kind of cover her being dangerous in Part 1 - making that kind of comeback for Daein in the situation it was in under Begnion is wild. Then knowing the strength of the Dawn Brigade units, it's also impressive that they can do as much damage as they do in 3-6, and again in 3-12. It's a case of the gameplay reinforcing the narrative since the DB chapters are generally harder than the CA or GM ones, so the player's victories with that army does reflect her strategic prowess Removing Part 2 comes more from a plot bloat perspective. The script already didn't have room to really explore Miccy being dangerous. Then I don't think it did particularly well with the Elincia subplot within the broader narrative of the story, and the gameplay for the most part is also painful to me, so I would have preferred it if the whole Part were just not there And then the Bridge Map... I think it's unreasonable to expect people to be able to work out precisely where the pitfalls are without a guide and frankly, I consider the flier pitfall cover moment to be an exploit. Not a cheat, but there because you can't have two units on the same tile, so I can't agree with the intention part. And in combination with the Shine Barriers and the Flier-dropping, it all just really serves to slow the tempo of the map. So I really don't think it's being exaggerated here But yeah, though I disagree with most of what you said, thanks for watching the video and sharing your thoughts! I do find opinions that differ from mine interesting to hear, especially since this is based on a first playthrough and all. So it's greatly appreciated :>
@@akirasou yeah Radiant Dawn is like my top 3 fire emblem games. I have basically the same opinion as the video title. Just reverse the acts of the game you liked more/ liked less and you have my opinion (aside from part 4)
The game with the best story and worst plot points. But IMO, the best Endgame. Gathering a team of your strongest and favorite characters to slay Dragons and a God is so worth it that it almost makes up for the Blood Pact. Almost.
As I said, I really don't mind the Blood Pact that much. The Tower is cool. Mind, not so cool that I think it was worth playing the earlier parts of Part 4 for, but... Part 4 is real bad lmfao
Personally I think RD is one of my personal least liked games in the series. Not the worse, certainly not bad, but so much of it doesn't click with me. I hate the blood pact, I hate no supports and just how weak new characters characters are, I hate how LONG some turns are, and I think the switching perspective is just kind of sloppy at points, feeling like when I started enjoying a group it'd switch over so it never felt 'smooth' to me. I acknowledge those are me though, I've discussed this game with other people that also don't like it, and with people that love it. But those are just the feelings I've always felt with this game.
That's completely fair. I'm not a story person, so the switching perspective doesn't actually bother me other than from a gameplay introductory moment point of view, but I can see it for sure. And then turn length... yeah, some of the turns were really, really long for sure. So I definitely understand your gripes with the game and they are valid. Thanks for sharing your feelings on it!
This was actually the first FE game I experienced because my brother got it back when it came out (and yes, neither of us played or knew about path of radiance). I didn’t actually beat it till much later, but I remember the game fondly for that reason alone. Unfortunately this is probably the most polarizing game in the franchise for me so far, outside of maybe Echoes. I love the atmosphere, music, aesthetics, sound effects, and a good chunk of the gameplay. But I absolutely despise the direction the story takes after part 3 and the way it’s implemented is even more frustrating. All the best characters in the game also get shafted in favor of Ike and Ike himself sucks in Radiant Dawn. And then there’s part 4, which is easily the worst section of gameplay in the entire franchise that I’ve personally played. Despite all of that, I still rate the game highly and would definitely play it again, even though I play it Wii or Wii U without QoL mods.
Oh interesting! I do know there are people who played Radiant Dawn before having played Path of Radiance, so it makes sense that it would hold some nostalgia value for you for that reason Polarising I can definitely see and would agree with for sure. I share your gripes with the story after Part 3, Ike being favoured as much as he is, and then Part 4... Part 4... Also similarly to you, I did conclude that I like the game in the end. Eventually I'll find it in me to play it again with some other units. It will be with QoL mods though, so I salute your patience lol. But yeah, thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts!!
Gonna have to say that I love this game enough to overlook its flaws, the highs really outweigh the lows for me. Glad you got some enjoyment out of it at least :D
That's completely fair! The highs definitely had to be high for me to still ultimately conclude that I like the game after... some of those lows, so I can understand why you can overlook its flaws for sure. Thanks for being glad I got some enjoyment out of it, and thanks also for watching this review and sharing your thoughts on it :>
Radiant Dawn was my entry point into the franchise. Bit of a weird place to start in retrospect, but at the time, young teenage me really enjoyed it. I think I've done around 6 playthroughs. It's still a game I am fond of. If you were disappointed by the mages in RD, you may be interested to know that Reverse Recruitment gives you a veeeeeery good one. It also lets you play around with things like dragon tide skills and Volke's Stillness (which is basically the 3H Stealth skill).
Yo FlashingFire, funny to see you here! I don't think it's weird, people come into different series from all kinds of points other than the start. And as with many things, feeling fondness for your first experience of something is pretty common too Funny that you mention Reverse Recruitment, because I've actually spent some time thinking about and watching gameplay thereof. Not your 0% growths LTC of it, funnily enough, but for another thing that I'm not able to talk about fully yet. So I've gotten to see the Tide Skills planning and Laguz meter management in action, it's really cool, plays hella differently and reminds me a lot of like, post-Awakening gameplay where key skills and positioning to take advantage of them is of utmost importance. So probably once that's concluded or at least moved further along, I'll watch your LTC of it!
I'm sure I'm not the _only_ person who likes part 4's gameplay pre-tower, but man, a lot of people are really harsh on it! I think I'm a lot more forgiving of slowness in games than most people in general, though. Even desert maps don't bug me much. Sure, you're not moving a lot per turn, but that also means that the turns go by fast because they're not loaded with complex decisions. In fact, hottest of hot takes, there should be _more_ desert maps in Fire Emblem. At least two or three per game. Just make the hidden items guaranteed pickups for everyone. Actually, the part that annoys me the most about RD is probably the tower, and that's because mages start falling off really hard, for the final time, due to the painfully low speed caps for archsages. (Not that sages are that much better TBH, but at least the enemy quality is enough lower that they can still double things. You know, things like armor knights. Sometimes.) Honestly, it's to the point where I actually really enjoyed my one playthrough on Easy, precisely because the blessing there gives +5 to all stats and thus puts my beloved archsages at a good enough speed to be genuinely good in the final boss fight. Not that it actually matters on easy; I just hate the fact that Ilyana caps speed at 30 in her tier 3 class, Soren at 32, and Pelleas at 31. _Capped Jill doubles capped Ilyana! What the heck!_ In case you hadn't guessed from the above already, I love magic users, and will go out of my way to use them. Usually in FE, this is a good thing. In RD, it is very, very bad, and I get very, very annoyed at how much rigging I have to do to make them merely mediocre. It's like if every mage were FE6 Sophia, but some of them were normal mode Sophia, and some hard mode Sophia. I've played a _lot_ of Radiant Dawn over the years, all the way back to when it first came out. I know it quite well. Mostly, I love it. But sometimes, like with those mage speed caps...*shakes fist*
Hello! I have seen your comment on the PoR vid, and I will get around to responding to it eventually! Still... it's 1138 words, I'm gonna need a lot more energy than I currently have in order to respond to it lmao Yeah, I definitely think you're in the minority when it comes to that desert map take lol. I don't mind some of them. FE8's Scorched Sand and Engage's Chapter 12 I like the most, but both of those either provide ways for the sand to not hinder your grounded units' movement, or have substantial non-sand areas. We are agreed on the guaranteed pickup chances for everyone though, so at least that That's interesting that that's the part where you feel that Mages start to feel especially bad. Because I... felt like they were pretty underwhelming basically the entire time lol. I have to admit though, that's said as someone who doesn't have a particular attachment to any specific unit, tending to just go for whatever's funniest, easiest or forced upon me. So given that you said that you really like using magic users, it makes sense that you'd pay more attention to that And that's cool! I started playing Fire Emblem as an adult (and less than two years ago), so I find it really cool when people are interested in the series for such a long period of time, or have played a not-recent FE game close to release. RD especially I feel is funny to have played early, because of how... different it is to a bunch of the other games. Makes it really weird to discuss unit comparisons involving RD Thanks for commenting! As said, I will get around to responding to your comment on the Path of Radiance vid eventually. Just... give me up to five business days to summon up the energy lol
@@akirasou Of course, of course, no pressure! Honestly, I love playing mages in anything that will let me. (Well, mages and dragons. Really, Fire Emblem is a fantastic fit for me.) Fire Emblem, Elder Scrolls, or anything in between, doesn't matter. When mages are good, I'm happy. When mages are bad, I get really annoyed with the game. Probably a rather large part of why I don't mind desert maps, actually. Seriously, try playing a desert map when a third or more of your army is mages. The movement penalties are much less significant then. In fact, it makes foot mages feel really good to use compared to the rest of the army. My first Fire Emblem was actually Path of Radiance, and that was near release. Second was Sacred Stones, then I went back and played Blazing Sword. I haven't actually been a part of the broader FE community until now, though. Until this past year (the one that just ended), I hadn't played anything later than Shadow Dragon (FE11, that is) or earlier than Binding Blade. So it's been an adventure.
I think the exp cut is the main reason Hard Mode is locked off on a fresh file. It makes it so you kind of *have to know* which Dawn Brigade Units are worth investing in if you don’t want to have a really tough time. On normal you can give them all some exp until their roles stick out and then pick your favorites. On hard each level is a big investment, so this experimentation is really unwise
I have to admit... in hindsight, I'm not sure that it would be that much of an issue? I say that as someone who used the heck out of all of Sothe, Tauroneo, BK and Nailah during Part 1, and who managed to get through Part 3 even with a rather criminally underlevelled Zihark and Jill according to folx on VC. Mind, I guess for anyone who doesn't want to use any of those units for whatever reason, it could end up feeling constraining, so I get your point for sure
I think Radiant Dawn is good plot wise, but gameplay wise the game is just waaaaay too long and the Dawn Brigade is painful later in the game. The maps are good sometimes but the pacing in battle is still slow. Love the characters tho, super strong cast overall.
Yeah the game is REALLY long, and if you do want to actually try bringing the Dawn Brigade to endgame, I can imagine it being potentially painful to do so. Plot-wise... I think it's decent by Fire Emblem standards, but that doesn't exactly mean much to me I'm curious though, when you say super strong cast, do you mean the new characters introduced here in RD, or more the PoR cast who reappear here?
@hylianfelldragon1308 Yeah, we're friends on discord, and I told him I was gonna leave this comment. I'm an fe9 > fe10 fan, but he can like bad games if he wants.
While I'm still worried about what could happen with this comment I want to leave it regardless of its fate. I"ll try putting things on importance order: The skill activation, I saw being skill% and not half in most on FEWoD. Even though they could be wrong I thought them as true making flare more reliable than Aether, still being half %, to make up for being a worst version of it. I had issues whether to rank this game over FE9 due to the improvements or rank FE9 due to the basis it provided. I choosed RD due to difficulty probably. Caps do matter for BEXP, and spd cap for endgame. 34 spd is my ideal. Mages are slow but the main issue, despite the endgame, is the low availability. I sure think Tormod could be a good unit with Rexflame. As for Soren, He's one of the few units in all FE I would early promote for utility: spd, staves and flare. With that in mind I should mention that base on how BEXP works, units with high specific growths or low caps are the best users of it to obtain other stats. I wonder if you would have a different opinion on difficulty if you actually played normal mode as hard mode isn't designed to be a first playthrough. I said that not only due to having an easier time but also because things as no seeing enemy ranges becomes less important when you get to know enemy max movement from a previous playthrough. Speaking of which, I think taking the time to count tiles makes the game easier by forcing people to not rush and be careful. I feel the same about not having weapon triangle. Finally, Haar, I am not a believer of Haar making the game easier than with other units like Soren. Even though I"ll probably deploy him for every map available he's usually slow to the point of not doubling. A unit that isn't one rounding enemies late game is hard to consider great. That said this was your first playthrough and mine on easy had Haar as the MVP.
It didn't get held for review! So you're good. Plus even if it had, I probably would have noticed it at some point anyway and responded, so thanks for continuing to share your thoughts There are many points here, so I guess I'll respond to them vaguely linking together the relevant points Mages... I genuinely think the issue is the Spd, as well as the fact that if you're worried about a Staffer, Micaiah already has you covered in the Tower and then if you do need magical damage, then Sanaki is there as well. I did early promote Soren due to Rhys and Mist both having died, but that was just for the staves. He didn't really do anything other than use Staves. Availability isn't the problem here, because Ilyana is the most available character in the entire case Bexp I agree with your assessment of, so I have nothing else to say on that front Difficulty, I think my view could only go down if I played it on a lower difficulty. Simultaneously with me playing Radiant Dawn, one of my Discord friends also was, albeit on Normal, and they were far more bored during it than I was on my playthrough. And I tend to be more complementary towards games that I find I have to think about my actions in, especially since I did think that one of the strengths of the game was when I did have to move my units tactically Lastly, Haar. On Hard, he did double some things for me throughout the run, and I also didn't do the Bexp trick to have him level Spd even though it was advised. Yeah, he didn't oneround things lategame, but he made all the maps along the way easier to do, and the game gives you the Royals etc for the Tower anyway. I don't doubt that other units are also contributing, especially if the benchmarks are less challenging to meet as they would be on Easy. But higher difficulties tend to be better at highlighting the comparative differences between units, and though it was only a first playthrough, I would very much say that he made the game easier But yeah, basically comment came through, and I disagree with a lot of your thoughts, which is cool, we can agree to disagree. So thanks for taking the time to write them out :>
@@akirasou I'm glad to hear it. Yliana has the problem that exp and BEXP is very limited on Hard for Dawn Brigade. Even on normal mode I couldn't made her be higher in level than base Soren. Also, she is so slow, so so slow. I don't mind Haar too much. Only that is just convenient to have around, not a must by any means. And of course, probably all topics I haven't mentioned I could agree with you.
Thanks for pointing this out! Since nothing important was cut out, I've just trimmed it off and left a pinned comment saying what precisely was missed. I appreciate it a lot :>
Brace yourself Akira i'm gonna infodump As someone outside looking in, I can totally understand how Fe9/10 wouldn't resonate with you. It's a game I highly recommend to others, but with heavy caveats: it's not a great game. it's a great STORY, at least to me. I do wish old supports were kept, but with a cast of *80* i can understand why it was made this way. I feel that the massively revamped base convos do make up for the lack of characterization, but it does mean you lose out on a lot of small moments that makes supports great in exchange for more focus on the plot. I think it was an ultimately acceptable choice because the story is juggling a lot of balls and ensuring that the cast of thousands are all talking about the main plot so that it's always on the player's mind. I'm a big defender of the blood pact because of what it means symbolically. Begnion is a theocracy, and very coded as christian and *western.* And it's an *empire.* FE10's story is made much more interesting when you remember that all the Beorc nations were once parts of Begnion that won their liberation from the empire. So to me, Blood Pacts are wonderful symbolic representation of how IRL empires use politics, sanctions, and non-overt leverage to make the 2nd or 3rd world subservient to their wishes without overtly relying on brute force: It's a magical version of politics that mirror our very real geopolitical world. I can' t speak for your take of Ike, but one thing that I have grown to enjoy about him over the years is how... autistic [complimentary] he is? he's very socially oblivious and not the most emotionally intelligent, has no use for manners and propriety, and he cuts through social conventions and calls things like he sees it. And it makes him a good everyman in a series known for main characters being princes. But one of the best things about Ike's character, to me, is that he's clearly *meant* to be an everyman but he's also not racist. It's a very clear signal from the story that hatred and bigotry are *taught* not inherited, and he represents a sort of uncorrupted ideal of the Beorc, one without the cultural biases that sow strife throughout Tellius. Also, Ike is the ideal ally to the marginalized: he's not perfect, he missteps all the time when it comes to the laguz, especially in FE9, but when he's told he's wrong he ALWAYs apologizes, corrects himself, and then is ready to throw hands at anyone who willfully repeats a mistake after being corrected. He's a genuinely great model of how to be anti-racist. In general, i like how pretty much all of Tellius' problems are sourced back to Begnion. everything from Daein's Racism, Crimea's political and military weakness, the Laguz racism, and even the lie that the Branded are cursed children, they are all LIES propagated by a Theocratic Empire. It's such a biting critique of colonialism and dominionism, and how bad choices made by bitter, power-hungry fools a millenia ago ripple through time and cause conflict in the modern day. And the story approaches the subjects with a bravery i've not seen in modern media release 10 years after FE10. it doesn't quibble and waste your time with both-sidesisms: any time a marginalized group "acts out" in the story it's always in reaction to a *systemic* wound inflicted upon them by the powerful. Ultimately, why I adore the Tellius Duology so much is because Fe9's thesis is "building a better world is hard: you will stumble, you might not get it right the first time, but it's work worth doing." Fe10's thesis and call to actions are "Build a world where the old men in power are dead." And i think that's beautiful.
Oh lord, at least you were honest about the infodump. 646 words is a lot, thanks for going to the effort for writing it all out. I'm sorry to say that I definitely don't have the knowledge or energy in me to actually respond to it all fully, so you're gonna have to forgive me for that Definitely it's an ultimately acceptable choice. I say that as a self-proclaimed not story person (and also not really huge on characters a lot of the time either, or at least it's not actually something that I really care about while playing the game provided that I like the gameplay). And given how bloated I find the plot can feel... I think that it's good they didn't add on additional fluff. For folx who do like the non-plot important characters introduced in this game though, I can imagine the lack of characterisation feeling sad for them So Ike doesn't really work for me personally as an everyman or with all of his specific ways of misstepping around the Laguz, though that's going into minutiae. Generally though, I get what you're saying and like the idea, I know that it's similar to how some of my friends feel about Ike as well And then the stuff about Begnion... I'm not sure how much of it is adding stuff to the text, and I also don't think all of it is true to the text. Speaking about the both-sideism point specifically, isn't a big part of both Jill and also Lethe's character arcs in Path of Radiance the idea that not only does Jill have to get over her prejudice against the Laguz (which I agree with), but that Lethe has to move past her distrust of the Beorc? Like that case I would describe as being a both-sideism because like... actual marginalised groups have understandable mistrust of privileged groups, and definitely don't have to move past that in the same way, or really, at all Then the modern media release moment... I feel like the moment of 'the source of racism is a millennia old lie' is a pretty common fictional and fantasy approach to racism. So I wouldn't describe it as brave personally, more brave and interesting I think (though notably not more salient to and should not be applied to real life) are cases where there are biological differences that lead to discriminatory structures. But that's obviously just me, I can't speak for your own experiences with media I guess TL;DR: I can see what you're going for with Ike, I'm not sure how much I agree with the rest of it, and disagree on a couple of points as well? I don't say this to dunk on the effort that's gone into the comment or anything, if anything, I feel like since you took writing it so seriously, that I should give it a somewhat serious response of my own
While people complain about story stuff being locked to a 2nd playthrough, I think the tragedy in Pelleas and Sephiran's deaths is a lot better than saving them.
So having read through the dialogue of both them dying and living, I am inclined to agree. That still doesn't mean that I like the fact that the possibility of them living is locked off (though lmao getting Sephiran to live sounds like a colossal pain and I have no idea how someone would figure it out naturally)
Yeah it's the kind of thing where if you told me beforehand that Kaga was involved in this game, I would believe you. There's a lot of weird experimental stuff in Tellius I feel like, and I feel like it kinda culminates in RD. So some things really work, and other things... really, really do not lmfao
Hey!! Would you look at that, compared to the PoR one i actually agree a lot with this review. RD is a game i'm very split on, sometimes you'll see it at like 3rd place on my FE tier list because i did have a lot of fun with it, other times tho i'm reminded of all the questionable design choices like the ones you mentioned (i'm particularly salty about story bits missing), and i wonder if i truly like this game that much, or it's my Tellius bias kicking in. Anyways my opinion is generally a bit lower than PoR mostly because i find the story and characters, which where the strongest points of the previous game, a bit lacking in this one. No support conversations means that character interaction is much less present and while i do think that the base conversations here are better than in PoR's they aren't enough to make up for it. This means that if you are a character introduced in RD and aren't named Micaiah or Skimir you may as well be replaced by a generic soldier and the narrative would stay the same. They also reduced the relevance of previous main PoR characters like Titania and Soren in favour of others like Sothe or Skimir, which would be cooler if not for the fact that the new characters they are focusing on aren't nearly as interesting in my opinion (What have they done to my boy Soren he barely has screen time 😭). For the parts themselves my opinions would be: Part 1: my favourite, i really enjoyed seeing Micaiah's little rebel band rise to the top! The inclusion of Izuka, a character you know is evil but you are forced to ally with, was very endearing to me! Part 2: Cool side-plot, loved seeing some returning characters and made me appreciate Elincia more, doesn't serve much purpose in the grand scheme of things tho. Part 3: generic war conflict really, it's fine but i really don't understand why the majority prefers it over part 1 Part 4 and Endgame: Nice wrap up, i like it. I'l be more brief on the gameplay side since this comment is already so long. I do enjoy the concept of split armies a lot, it made me play with so much more units that i wouldn't have cared about in the slightest if the game wasn't structured like that, however this does come with a lot of unit balancing issues, part 1 units in particular suffer a lot because they have very little time to grow. Then of course there's the occasional meme units like Lyre. Aside from a few outliers i find the majority of the maps to be really enjoyable and i definetly think that the gameplay side is very much an improvement over PoR. As an additional note, i want to mention how much i LOVE this game's soundtrack something i haven't seen you rate in your videos, tracks like "The Mind of Izuka", "Sorrowful Prince Pelleas", "Comfort's call" and map OSTs like "Conviction", "Bearer of Hope" and "Ascent" were SO good to listen to made me feel much invested in the game's narrative even with it's afromentioned problems. Overall i'd say i like Path of Radiance much more, but it's sequel still managed to secure a spot in my top 5
Yo Max, thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts! Makes sense on the narrative side to think of it less highly than PoR, given that as you said, the new characters don't really get given much. Funnily enough, I think that I agree with most of your general thoughts on each of the Parts, which is neat The split army thing... definitely it did make me use a lot more units than I normally would have, since I tend to be partial to the "pick a few units and have them do everything while everyone else sits on the bench" approach, so I can appreciate that at least. It doesn't really bother me though that the Part 1 units don't have the time to grow, since I don't need units to last for the entire game for me to value them, if that makes sense? You're right that it does make a lot of them harder to use long-term, like Ilyana's availability in Part 1 means that she's weaker in Part 3, for instance. Gameplay generally I agree is a huge improvement over PoR Music... I'm really not good at rating music, partly because my hearing doesn't differentiate it well from other sounds. FE games generally I think of as having good music, so I don't feel the need to mention music being good, but would rather make note of it if I disliked to hated it. I do remember thinking that the more environmental/ambient tracks were cool though, like with A Gathering of Storms, for instance All in all, that makes sense! Thanks for your detailed thoughts, it's cool seeing what people think about different FE games, whether they agree or disagree with me on various points :)
radiant dawns story is the worst thing to happen since fire emblem was made in my opinion. so clearly i disagree. cant believe you have a different opinion, unsubscribed.
12:53 hmm i know this is personal but to think i already dislike the dawn brigade arc this graph made me hesitate to pick up this game again. My concern also how long RD is. I am afraid if i dropped it again (already dropped it twice). Like recently i just realized how i often getting tired (and probably bored) when i reached chapter 20 of any fire emblem game. Maybe this is just a sign of getting older but i start to appreciate how short crimson flower campaign is. Anyway this video is very insightful review. Maybe i am gonna start to see the story from let's play first before playing it by my own. Gonna find something to motivate me to play RD.
Yo, thanks for watching the video and commenting! I think that it's fine to say that much for sure, like I enjoyed using the Dawn Brigade but definitely that doesn't seem to be an ironclad consensus and even if it were, it's completely fine to disagree with the common opinion The burnout in FE games past a certain point is definitely something that I've experienced before. It's part of why I like FE8 as much as I do, since Chapter 20 is the last one before the two-part Finale. And then Crimson Flower is partly my favourite route for that reason, said as someone who doesn't particularly like Edelgard as a character. So I get where you're coming from for sure, and think it makes complete sense Glad that you found it insightful, at least! In the same way that I think that PoR would be fine to just watch the story bits for on a UA-cam playthrough, if you think that might be something that would motivate you to give RD a shot (or even if it confirms for you that it isn't for you), that sounds sensible!
@@akirasou FE burnt out was truly something i hope it can be addressed in future FE game. Like the first time i played fe7, i was shocked how long to beat this game. Like it had 30+ main chapters (The game forced Lyn mode for the first timer). I just wished to see the ending as soon as possible. Fe8 definitely had perfect length imo. The game also not too hard so it was very comfy to play it. Definitely one of my favorite fe game in pre-awakening era.
actually radiant dawn is the worst thing to spawn from this world and i cant believe you would ever even think to praise this. i resign effectively immidiately smh my head
Radiant dawn is my favorite fe game and its not close. Personally I really enjoy the no enemy range on hard mode for Ironman purposes. I would say the bxp is more powerful in rd than por on a large macro scale units are easily reaching caps through growth and rd caps actually matter. Ive never liked the support system in any fe game other than rd small passive bonuses with minimal effort are great. Every unit can be used in all difficulties but some, mainly fiona, are just pain. Also, horses are overrated. That said the person who thought biorythm was a good idea should be removed from the gene pool before they can spawn more of themselves
Interesting, if you don't mind me asking, what makes you enjoy the no enemy ranges for Ironmanning purposes? And I agree, the concept of Cavs being good I think is mostly a staple of the GBA games (which... PoR is basically just like FE7 really). I don't mind them being weaker, but... making Fliers, especially Wyverns, better in the process is a strange way of tackling that imo Good to see that we agree on biorhythm though lol. Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts!
Yeah... at the very least, Part 1 is first, which means that we can ingest all the stuff we like about the game and then abandon the savefile lmaoooooooooo
7:52 I completly forgot this thing existed in the internacional versions. It was at the same time so useless, frustrating and boring. --BTW, the JP version of RD you needed coins to forge. Yeah, there is a reason RD wasn't well receive in JP.-- Edit: Check davey comment below
you didn't need coins, you needed forge points, which were obtained by selling weapons. There are a lot of things that were a lot worse in the JP version though, like how unshifting with a Laguz emptied their gauge, even if they had some points left. It also didn't have the Nico base conversation in 3-6, which is one of the most important moments for Micaiah as a character to me.
I think locking Radiant Dawn's Hard mode behind a second playthrough isn't any worse than how it is in Binding Blade, and nowhere near as bad as Blazing Blade where you need to finish Lyn normal, Eliwood normal and Hector normal, all of which are way easier than Radiant Dawn's normal mode, just to unlock Hector Hard mode. I will not defend how they locked BEXP requirements (which, imo you should be able to see at the beginning or during each chapter instead of the end) or the ability to disable battle animations, those should have been unlocked from the start. As for the story differences (spoilers below),
I think not having the ability to save Pelleas and Sephiran in your first playthrough was a justified decision because most players would otherwise choose to save them and miss out on a sadder version of Radiant Dawn's story (well at least most would save Pelleas, the game doesn't exactly make it clear how to save Sephiran, but that's its own issue). However, I don't think there was any good reason to lock Ike's memory scene at the end of 4-E-2, and consequently the Soren base conversation, behind the same requirements needed to recruit Sephiran.
So I agree that locking HM behind a second playthrough isn't worse than how it's done in Binding Blade, and I definitely agree that it's nowhere near as bad as FE7. Still... it's not a decision that I defend for either of those games (though I haven't yet made reviews of either of them since I played them a while ago, before I started the channel), so it's also not one that I'll defend here
Re the story stuff... I don't know. I don't really think it's that much sadder following those deaths, and I think it's an egregiously long game to play in full for those tiny tidbits, especially with specific actions like with Sephiran. I agree on the memory scene and Soren base conversation though for sure
FE10 holds a special place in my heart. It is a game that obviously has flaws and character balance has been thrown right out of a window (I mean Fiona and Haar both exist in this game somehow and there is map in chapter 1 where you get not one, but TWO Athos units SOMEHOW???) but it also feels so special and unique of the Fire Emblem titles that I can't help but love the highs of it far more than I hate the lows.
EDIT: Also while it's a map that really just drags on after your first playthrough and the novelty has worn off I still find it hilarious that Geoffrey's Charge is just like
"Hey what do I do?"
"Did you read the name of the chapter?"
"Geoffrey's Charge? Yeah, why?"
"Yeah, do that."
That makes complete sense, thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts! I agree on the highs being higher than the lows, hence my ultimate conclusion that I like the game. It's definitely very unique, though I haven't remotely gotten close to finishing Thracia, some of the choices made in this game do kinda remind me of the more different mechanics there
And Geoffrey's Charge... I can imagine it drags on repeat playthroughs, given that I already didn't like it the first time (though I guess some bonus points for catching me by surprise with the moving boss who absolutely obliterated Astrid lel), but that is really funny for sure
I agree with the overall assessment of the lows, but the highs of RD absolitely carry the game into favorite tier alongside Genealogy to me.
This is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. More than any other game in the series (except 4, perhaps), the game has a gravity to its story, world and gameplay unrivaled by any other.
Enemy quality being high across the board, multiple long campaigns with different groups scattered across Tellius, third tier classes, the absolute BEST soundtrack in the series, and the endgame stakes.
Everything booms with power and scale, this game is, for a lack of a better word, epic in its scope.
Great review.
I love RD but I haven't played it in like 10 years because it's just so LONG.
Understandable. In the video, I did say "if I play Radiant Dawn again," but frankly... given that I seem to be committed to this weekly analytical video moment and I still have a bunch of FE mainline, Kaga Saga and romhack games to play... I have no clue when it would be doable lmao
Software uploading is apparently once again my worst enemy, even though I listened back to it properly and everything and there aren't any issues in the actual editing software. I have no idea what happened, so uh... full sentences cut off in the video as below. Fortunately nothing actually important got cut out, so I'm not gonna do a reupload, and have instead identified the problem areas to cut them out. Thanks to everyone who pointed out any of these moments
6:30
Overall, I do think that these changes and tools make the laguz as a whole better, not least because transformed grounded laguz typically have the highest Mov of any units other than Fliers. Even then, on some maps, transformed laguz may have higher Mov than both Fliers and Cavalry, since indoor maps impose a 2 Mov penalty on the mounted units.
17:50
TL;DW for this section: if you’re gonna play Hard Mode, get yourself a patch that reenables enemy ranges. And regardless of difficulty setting, get clear save data so you can turn the animations off. You will thank me for it.
Wonderful review that was thoroughly presented in a way that many could understand and relate to your issues and your positives regarding Radiant Dawn.
This Review also starts on a more positive note which makes it easier to go through as a fan of the game. This is probably one of my favourite reviews of an FE game.
By the way, you seem to have cut your conclusion of the Laguz Gameplay point right around 6:30. I don't know if it was intentional or not.
Thanks for watching it, I'm glad that you enjoyed it! Yeah, my Path of Radiance review was very not positive so I can imagine it could be hard for a fan of the game to listen to, so I'm happy to hear that this one is different, especially since I did overall actually enjoy the game
And no, it was not intentional... I have no idea what my editing software is doing. I've now written a pinned comment with the full sentence and also just removed the weird cutoff moment, since it wasn't that important. Thanks for the spot though, I greatly appreciate it and your continued interest :>
Its funny, someone loving part 1 the most is the one unusual take in the fanbase at large but it is true that its the part that requires the most actual strategy in this strategy game instead of just haar go brrrr
I also find hard mode BEXP too restrictive, its my least favorite part (aside from ranges which you can patch), it promotes funneling to juggernaut too much and not using fun units like mia
Also as someone who rates this game highly I can confirm part 4 is complete trash, rout maps are cringe and tower is boring
Yo Zeph! Yeah I remember you saying this in Cheese's server, but I feel like a good chunk of the people I know like Part 1 the most, so it doesn't seem like an unusual take to me. I don't think I've met anyone who actually likes Part 4 excluding Tower though, so I think that might be the actually unusual take here lmao
Though obviously I've only done one playthrough of the game, I can imagine that being the case for HM Bexp for sure. Just generally, resource funnelling seems like it should really be focused down on, especially since the Tower bails you out with Renning and the Royals anyway from having to actually train that many units. It's funny though that you cite Mia as an example, because I feel like a lot of people are pretty high on her in RD? That might be my mistaken impression though
But yeah, thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts! Especially your criticisms of the game, given that you've said you rate RD highly :>
6:30
BEXP formula is actually interesting
it rolls stats in order of Highest stat growth>lowest with ties being broken in reverse order they show up on screen (HP is last RES first), and always tries to give 3 stats a level. So it's really good once you have 1-3 stats capped, and you can give units BEXP to x.99 so they can grow faster (since most units have growth totals above 300). It's also really strong with seraph robes since HP tends to be a high growth and capped HP makes other stats much more likely to proc.
9:00 it's more like units like Nolan and Jill are trainees than a 3 tier class system. It just names the classes the tier 1>2>3 instead of using the 0>1>2 naming scheme
12:00 this map is making me die in meme%.
12:30 I think it's best to think of RD as roughly 3-4 different very small games smashed into 1
The Dawn Brigade (15 maps) Every map in part 1, 3-6, 3-12 and 3-13
The GMs (11 maps), Every map where Boyd is deployable
The CRKs (2 maps) Every map where Geoffery is lord
The Nephenee brigade (3 maps) every map where Nephenee is Deployable pre part 3 (did you know Nephenee and Geoffery share 0 maps?)
Part 4 (11 maps) Pre tower part 4 being much different from tower, Tower is more of a Scar/Mufasa stomp though)
15:29 it's basically a crit bonus. Only meaningful when stacked among other proc skills to make units like zihark/mia "reliably unreliable"
I agree for the most part with your review, though I'll mention the juggernaut to juggernaut gameplay gets even MORE prounounced when looking at "informed" playthroughs. There's a joke where RD on 0% is easier than RD with growths because you don't fall for noob traps. This isn't strictly true mainly bc of Ike but if you got 2 robes 2 dracoshields, a speedwing and an energy drop in the 4-e-2 base convos it would actually be easier on 0%
Yo Gordon, it's taken a second to hop onto comments, but will respond now that I have time to do so properly
That's really interesting re BExp. I know that the two digit stat levels for Byleth and students in Three Houses slightly skews the actual growths of units with particularly lopsided growths, like Lysithea and Constances's Magic stats, so I wonder what the numbers look like under the BExp constraints...
Definitely makes sense re the Trainee interpretation, so I can see that for sure. Same also for the 3-4 different games moment. That part about Neph and Geoffrey having zero overlap is hilarious though lmaoooooo
And yeah, Tier 3 Class Skills are basically crit in every sense, both in terms of the proc and also most of them doing the triple the damage shtick. I agree on the reliable unreliability thing, so there isn't anything else to say
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! You explained the juggernaut thing briefly over in Akiracord as well, which I'm also inclined to agree with. The 0% growths moment I mentioned to someone else one time and they told me that they thought it might actually be the case for all of the pre-Awakening games due to not investing/bothering with training projects that may not pay off, so I would be curious what you think about that
@@akirasou Fe12 is insanely hard without growths so We'll assume he meant games released in english
Fe7: Growths mainly help marcus and heath, there are definitely many maps where you feel the pain with heath, tbh having fewer deployment slots helps you more than it hurts in HHM so idk
Fe8 : you really need growths seth and growths myrrh, killing Lyon2/Demon king sucks without them.
Fe9: Killing Ashnard sucks without growths ike
RD:
Shadow dragon: Mostly true, though you'll need to know how to kill medeus beforehand.
I guess it's more that if you know a few key rules then it's easier on 0%, though I think it's more important to say "Just train your lord and otherwise play like it's 0% growths and you'll be fine" is true for most FE games.
@@ussgordoncaptain yeah, everything tracks at least for the games that I've played before. So I can buy the general tenet. Thanks for your thoughts!
Good video!
RD is one of my favourite FEs, but I agree it's not perfect for the reasons you touched on.
Whilst it does have some low lows, I would argue the Highs are some of the highest in the franchise, and they more than make up for the game's shortcomings.
I'm not sure if you're aware, and really this is just useless trivia lol, but the English version of RD is by far the superior version from both a plot and gameplay standpoint. The former fixes some contrived plot points that were in the Japanese version, and the latter removes some unfun mechanics (you had this arcane "forging point" system that you needed to forge weapons, and you also HAD to have a master crown to promote to Tier 3). Just thought I'd mention since learning this made me appreciate the localisation team more lol.
As an aside, I've only played RD on normal until now. I may give Hard Mode a try now, since my main issue with it was the arbitrary feature removals and the early game being a literal luckfest. If a patch fixes those, it could be worth a try!
Yo Silver, thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts, I'm glad that you liked it
I definitely agree on the highs being high, having really loved 3-6 and 1-4 (and just the Dawn Brigade parts of the game generally). Also agreed on them making up for the game's shortcomings, hence my ultimate conclusion that I do like this game
And yeah, it's my understanding that the Japanese version of Radiant Dawn says something like... the Black Knight survived the Path of Radiance encounter due to his warp powder having malfunctioned, meaning that Ike just fought his empty armour??? Or something like that?? And huh... I'm guessing that Master Crowns must have been far more plentiful in the JP version. Or I'm hoping so, at least lmfao
And yeah, I'd recommend giving it a go, I enjoyed my Hard Mode blind playthrough a lot! The randomiser should be able to fix all of those things for you, so if you do end up giving it a go, I'll be curious to hear how you find it :>
@@akirasou Master Crowns _were_ much more plentiful in the Japanese version. Unfortunately, a whole lot of them were on-map hidden items, so dealing with that system was even more necessary.
I agree with most points, especially with Hard Mode enemy ranges, balancing and certain Maps. However, most GBA Games except FE8 lock Hard Mode behind a completed save.
And, sorry but Bonus Experience is awesome and needs to return.
It's definitely true that FE6 and FE7 both have the difficulty mode moment (especially FE7...), but I don't like it there, so I also don't like it here
And interesting that you think that... I'm thinking of eventually doing a video on the bonus experience mechanic, so I would be curious to hear what you like about it. Of course, would be happy to credit you if that's something you'd want
Mad respect for appreciating the Dawn Brigade and actually bringing up that Ike's presence brings down other perspectives. People stan the guy so much it feels you can't say anything remotely negative about him without getting pounced on.
I was pretty noob going into this game for FE, seeing as I started with PoR and found it somewhat unsatisfactory. Was a kid who'd play basically anythig he got his hands on and the box art looked interesting lmao. Grabbed RD because I wanted something new to play and, again, I liked the box art, and remembered playing the prequel.
Turns out, I liked RD overall despite its flaws. It's probably my second favorite FE game even after all these years. I never got around to playing Hard Mode since I'm not much of a HM guy. I especially liked the maps with lots of ledges. They were the ones that best captured the feeling of two massive forces clashing and using everything they have to tear each other down. Watching this video is kind of making me want to replay it lol.
Thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts!
Interesting that you found PoR somewhat unsatisfactory, do you know what about it got you that way? I ask partly because I didn’t love it myself lel (least favourite FE game thus far moment…)
If you end up replaying it, I’d be curious to hear how you find it, especially if you try playing it on Hard Mode, since I know people have some pretty strong opinions on it. And what’s your top favourite FE game then, out of interest?
@@akirasou I'd say my view on it is partly influenced by my youth at the time. Even as a teen I was already more into text-based media but I wasn't particularly digging into games for deeper meanings. In terms of gameplay, I've never particularly cared about graphics as a metric.
Finding PoR to be decent but not special in any way as a game or story (this was my first FE), I moved on from the experience mildly curious about the series but didnt revisit that until RD, and I was paying a lot more attention then.
Just about everything about RD was a lot more interesting to me, from the moral quandary faced by Micaiah and co to the background doomsday plot to the callbacks to stuff in PoR to the enhanced systems to the higher difficulty. I don't even mind the game being split in parts that much as a game design (not so much for how it cuts into Dawn Brigade screentime). With hindsight I do regret the lack of proper Supports in RD though, and I have Awakening to thank for that (that's my favorite FE overall btw, more so because of how much characterization everyone has).
Thouh something memorable about my time with PoR is that I actually lost units on the way and didn't restart to save em. I didn't get into the common FE mindset until RD lol. I'm not sure if that speaks to my lack of attachment to PoR characters or not really understanding the consequences of permadeath as a whole-game feature.
17:30 exact way I feel about ambush spawns
Also Akira there’s some parts of this vid that just cut out before you finish a sentence like at the end of the slide at this time stamp. Idk if you wanna reupload but it might be worth considering
Yeah, I feel the same way about ambush spawns. I can like... imagine some ways to make them less intrusive, since I understand why people like having reinforcements that you can't just mow over. I actually think the Kitsune Lair illusion moment from that one CQ chapter could work really well as a status that's only there during the first Player Phase of reinforcements being there, so that you can't just sweep them. Since you're a Fates head, I'm curious what you would think of that way of managing reinforcements
And thanks for pointing it out! There weren't any issues in the recording, so it must have been an upload issue... Thankfully nothing of actual importance got cut out, but I've since gone and trimmed those parts out of the video (it'll update eventually) and made a pinned comment with the full lines that got missed out
@@akirasou I think that ambush spawns are kind of a lose lose on both the player and the developer’s part. Yes you could do some things to make them less egregious, like show where they’re going to spawn and their stats but don’t let them attack you by spawning them in as green units the turn before, but even then, a good enough player can still camp ambush spawns by just camping them further into the map, whereas a less experienced player will have a worse time.
At the end of the day I just think there’s more interesting and effective ways at creating fair difficulty that still challenges the player. CQ lunatic is the third hardest difficulty in series history and there’s zero ambush spawns so it’s clearly possible.
Basically, yea I think that showing you the enemy that’s going to spawn in some capacity (like with the leaf mechanic if the enemy was a bit further away) before they ambush you is fine and not a horrible solution, but I’d just prefer it if developers tried more interesting and unique ways to create difficulty, because if the new ways go wrong at least I can understand but if you fuck up ambush spawns it feels horrible because they’ve been fucking up ambush spawns since the dawn of time
I'm surprised you didn't mention the week-long gaslamping we did to you that Rafiel could one-shot Oliver. Crazy.
Anyway my opinions of RD match up fairly well with your own. A silly goofy aaah video game I'm not likely to ever play again but it was fun while it lasted.
Technically he does 1 shot oliver by simply existing
...I completely forgot about that exact event, though that did technically happen in both senses...
But yeah, I would say that I'm glad I've played RD. Also, I have no idea when I'll have the time to replay it, given that I still have so many FE games left to play...
Act 1 is also my favorite and Act 4 (esp. the first half) my least favorite. I'd say you've done a very fair review overall.
RD has some big changes in the western release. In J-RD, the Dawn Brigade got NO Prfs on their return in Act 3, and you had to sell weapons in order to Forge. The game is not very popular in Japan as a result, but I agree that they should have changed even more; like the QoL stuff you had to patch in.
That makes sense, the pre-Tower part of Act 4 is... really, really dreadful. I'm glad that you think overall it was a fair review!
I have heard about some of those changes in the Western release, yeah, which I definitely think that they did well in changing upon localisation. I'm not sure whether I would say that RD didn't do well in Japan as a result of that though. I think that the nature of Radiant Dawn being so fundamentally weird and hinging a lot on Path of Radiance (which I believe didn't do well in Japan either) already makes it massively hit or miss. Agree on the QoL stuff though
Im still sad no game has done ledges since its one of the most intresting game play mechanics for me. Also while it can seem hard to meme in this game i do think most meme units are capable of being genuinely useful members of your army. Fiona being a fun unit due to free rescue and if trained suprisingly hard to kill and kyza being a fun middle ground between a cat and tiger, there are tons of other examples if you play.
Yeah, ledges are great so I would be very happy to see them make a return in a future FE game. And that makes sense, there are very rarely I find units that are completely unusable once trained, it's more a question of how painful it is to train them. So thanks for sharing some of those details about those units, someone I know who's playing RD HM for the first time will probably be glad that someone thinks Fiona can turn out genuinely useful if trained
Me when i played hard mode vanilla:
Let's put Haar there and let him kill every last one of them
Why? It's simple, he is broken, and I'm lazy to count squares
I had the patch and so didn't have to do the square counting, but yeahhhhh you know that I got a ton of usage out of Haar lmao
I have a different take on radient dawn.
I think Mechiah's actions do not match her personality, more drastically when comparing part 1 and 3.
The game doesn't do anything with how Dein views Mechiah as some sort of deity and are finatical about her. The way that Soren or Titania talk about it as if she way a very dangerous person was very intriguing. Honesty i feel like that the game is worse when Mechiah is involved and peak fiction when she is not there.
Part 2 is a direct response to the events of part 1 (part 3 as well). Not having it there would be a massive glairing hole in the story after a major event that takes place in Crimea's most recent enemy. While I do agree that Elincia should of had more importance in the overall plot, removing part 2 is stupid.
Ok personally i think that people over exaggerated the bridge maps by a massive margin. First of all, enemies never mover on to squares that have any pitfalls on them. So just by looking at their positioning and how they move toward you is a pretty obvious indicator of where the pitfalls are at. With the shine barriers, it is a obvious indicator of where the pitfalls are at. With all of the knowledge of where the pitfalls are at, you are intended to position your flyers over the spaces where a pitfall is located at so your unit can move pass that space freely. Or even just Rescue them over too. The game gives you 2 flyers in this map for that reasion. On top of that you are able to have a max of 8 flyers by this point to do this not counting the npc characters.
Having a different take is a-okay! I'll respond to the points briefly
I think they match her personality pretty well because of her vague lack of worldliness, which I mentioned in the video. And then especially once the Blood Pact gets involved, I do think it leads to her best character moments. Like when before 3-12, Micaiah says that if being just means letting Daein perish, she'd rather be hated and feared like Ashnard... it's such a good line
Re her being dangerous... I agree they don't really explore it as much as they could have, but like... they kind of cover her being dangerous in Part 1 - making that kind of comeback for Daein in the situation it was in under Begnion is wild. Then knowing the strength of the Dawn Brigade units, it's also impressive that they can do as much damage as they do in 3-6, and again in 3-12. It's a case of the gameplay reinforcing the narrative since the DB chapters are generally harder than the CA or GM ones, so the player's victories with that army does reflect her strategic prowess
Removing Part 2 comes more from a plot bloat perspective. The script already didn't have room to really explore Miccy being dangerous. Then I don't think it did particularly well with the Elincia subplot within the broader narrative of the story, and the gameplay for the most part is also painful to me, so I would have preferred it if the whole Part were just not there
And then the Bridge Map... I think it's unreasonable to expect people to be able to work out precisely where the pitfalls are without a guide and frankly, I consider the flier pitfall cover moment to be an exploit. Not a cheat, but there because you can't have two units on the same tile, so I can't agree with the intention part. And in combination with the Shine Barriers and the Flier-dropping, it all just really serves to slow the tempo of the map. So I really don't think it's being exaggerated here
But yeah, though I disagree with most of what you said, thanks for watching the video and sharing your thoughts! I do find opinions that differ from mine interesting to hear, especially since this is based on a first playthrough and all. So it's greatly appreciated :>
@@akirasou yeah Radiant Dawn is like my top 3 fire emblem games. I have basically the same opinion as the video title. Just reverse the acts of the game you liked more/ liked less and you have my opinion (aside from part 4)
The game with the best story and worst plot points. But IMO, the best Endgame. Gathering a team of your strongest and favorite characters to slay Dragons and a God is so worth it that it almost makes up for the Blood Pact. Almost.
As I said, I really don't mind the Blood Pact that much. The Tower is cool. Mind, not so cool that I think it was worth playing the earlier parts of Part 4 for, but... Part 4 is real bad lmfao
Did you check your bio rythem?
My permanent biorhythm state would be worst biorhythm, always for real
Personally I think RD is one of my personal least liked games in the series. Not the worse, certainly not bad, but so much of it doesn't click with me.
I hate the blood pact, I hate no supports and just how weak new characters characters are, I hate how LONG some turns are, and I think the switching perspective is just kind of sloppy at points, feeling like when I started enjoying a group it'd switch over so it never felt 'smooth' to me.
I acknowledge those are me though, I've discussed this game with other people that also don't like it, and with people that love it. But those are just the feelings I've always felt with this game.
That's completely fair. I'm not a story person, so the switching perspective doesn't actually bother me other than from a gameplay introductory moment point of view, but I can see it for sure. And then turn length... yeah, some of the turns were really, really long for sure. So I definitely understand your gripes with the game and they are valid. Thanks for sharing your feelings on it!
This was actually the first FE game I experienced because my brother got it back when it came out (and yes, neither of us played or knew about path of radiance). I didn’t actually beat it till much later, but I remember the game fondly for that reason alone.
Unfortunately this is probably the most polarizing game in the franchise for me so far, outside of maybe Echoes. I love the atmosphere, music, aesthetics, sound effects, and a good chunk of the gameplay.
But I absolutely despise the direction the story takes after part 3 and the way it’s implemented is even more frustrating. All the best characters in the game also get shafted in favor of Ike and Ike himself sucks in Radiant Dawn.
And then there’s part 4, which is easily the worst section of gameplay in the entire franchise that I’ve personally played.
Despite all of that, I still rate the game highly and would definitely play it again, even though I play it Wii or Wii U without QoL mods.
Oh interesting! I do know there are people who played Radiant Dawn before having played Path of Radiance, so it makes sense that it would hold some nostalgia value for you for that reason
Polarising I can definitely see and would agree with for sure. I share your gripes with the story after Part 3, Ike being favoured as much as he is, and then Part 4... Part 4...
Also similarly to you, I did conclude that I like the game in the end. Eventually I'll find it in me to play it again with some other units. It will be with QoL mods though, so I salute your patience lol. But yeah, thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts!!
Gonna have to say that I love this game enough to overlook its flaws, the highs really outweigh the lows for me.
Glad you got some enjoyment out of it at least :D
That's completely fair! The highs definitely had to be high for me to still ultimately conclude that I like the game after... some of those lows, so I can understand why you can overlook its flaws for sure. Thanks for being glad I got some enjoyment out of it, and thanks also for watching this review and sharing your thoughts on it :>
Radiant Dawn was my entry point into the franchise. Bit of a weird place to start in retrospect, but at the time, young teenage me really enjoyed it. I think I've done around 6 playthroughs. It's still a game I am fond of.
If you were disappointed by the mages in RD, you may be interested to know that Reverse Recruitment gives you a veeeeeery good one. It also lets you play around with things like dragon tide skills and Volke's Stillness (which is basically the 3H Stealth skill).
Yo FlashingFire, funny to see you here! I don't think it's weird, people come into different series from all kinds of points other than the start. And as with many things, feeling fondness for your first experience of something is pretty common too
Funny that you mention Reverse Recruitment, because I've actually spent some time thinking about and watching gameplay thereof. Not your 0% growths LTC of it, funnily enough, but for another thing that I'm not able to talk about fully yet. So I've gotten to see the Tide Skills planning and Laguz meter management in action, it's really cool, plays hella differently and reminds me a lot of like, post-Awakening gameplay where key skills and positioning to take advantage of them is of utmost importance. So probably once that's concluded or at least moved further along, I'll watch your LTC of it!
@@akirasou Very cool! Looking forward to hearing about what's in the works.
I broke the 776 views I am sorry
It is okay, I forgive you lol. Increases in the watch count are always a-okay with me
No Akira, you're wrong. Here's why Radiant Dawn is a misjudged masterpiece:
Sooooooooo true, bestieeeeee
I'm sure I'm not the _only_ person who likes part 4's gameplay pre-tower, but man, a lot of people are really harsh on it! I think I'm a lot more forgiving of slowness in games than most people in general, though. Even desert maps don't bug me much. Sure, you're not moving a lot per turn, but that also means that the turns go by fast because they're not loaded with complex decisions. In fact, hottest of hot takes, there should be _more_ desert maps in Fire Emblem. At least two or three per game. Just make the hidden items guaranteed pickups for everyone.
Actually, the part that annoys me the most about RD is probably the tower, and that's because mages start falling off really hard, for the final time, due to the painfully low speed caps for archsages. (Not that sages are that much better TBH, but at least the enemy quality is enough lower that they can still double things. You know, things like armor knights. Sometimes.) Honestly, it's to the point where I actually really enjoyed my one playthrough on Easy, precisely because the blessing there gives +5 to all stats and thus puts my beloved archsages at a good enough speed to be genuinely good in the final boss fight. Not that it actually matters on easy; I just hate the fact that Ilyana caps speed at 30 in her tier 3 class, Soren at 32, and Pelleas at 31. _Capped Jill doubles capped Ilyana! What the heck!_ In case you hadn't guessed from the above already, I love magic users, and will go out of my way to use them. Usually in FE, this is a good thing. In RD, it is very, very bad, and I get very, very annoyed at how much rigging I have to do to make them merely mediocre. It's like if every mage were FE6 Sophia, but some of them were normal mode Sophia, and some hard mode Sophia.
I've played a _lot_ of Radiant Dawn over the years, all the way back to when it first came out. I know it quite well. Mostly, I love it. But sometimes, like with those mage speed caps...*shakes fist*
Hello! I have seen your comment on the PoR vid, and I will get around to responding to it eventually! Still... it's 1138 words, I'm gonna need a lot more energy than I currently have in order to respond to it lmao
Yeah, I definitely think you're in the minority when it comes to that desert map take lol. I don't mind some of them. FE8's Scorched Sand and Engage's Chapter 12 I like the most, but both of those either provide ways for the sand to not hinder your grounded units' movement, or have substantial non-sand areas. We are agreed on the guaranteed pickup chances for everyone though, so at least that
That's interesting that that's the part where you feel that Mages start to feel especially bad. Because I... felt like they were pretty underwhelming basically the entire time lol. I have to admit though, that's said as someone who doesn't have a particular attachment to any specific unit, tending to just go for whatever's funniest, easiest or forced upon me. So given that you said that you really like using magic users, it makes sense that you'd pay more attention to that
And that's cool! I started playing Fire Emblem as an adult (and less than two years ago), so I find it really cool when people are interested in the series for such a long period of time, or have played a not-recent FE game close to release. RD especially I feel is funny to have played early, because of how... different it is to a bunch of the other games. Makes it really weird to discuss unit comparisons involving RD
Thanks for commenting! As said, I will get around to responding to your comment on the Path of Radiance vid eventually. Just... give me up to five business days to summon up the energy lol
@@akirasou Of course, of course, no pressure!
Honestly, I love playing mages in anything that will let me. (Well, mages and dragons. Really, Fire Emblem is a fantastic fit for me.) Fire Emblem, Elder Scrolls, or anything in between, doesn't matter. When mages are good, I'm happy. When mages are bad, I get really annoyed with the game. Probably a rather large part of why I don't mind desert maps, actually. Seriously, try playing a desert map when a third or more of your army is mages. The movement penalties are much less significant then. In fact, it makes foot mages feel really good to use compared to the rest of the army.
My first Fire Emblem was actually Path of Radiance, and that was near release. Second was Sacred Stones, then I went back and played Blazing Sword. I haven't actually been a part of the broader FE community until now, though. Until this past year (the one that just ended), I hadn't played anything later than Shadow Dragon (FE11, that is) or earlier than Binding Blade. So it's been an adventure.
I think the exp cut is the main reason Hard Mode is locked off on a fresh file. It makes it so you kind of *have to know* which Dawn Brigade Units are worth investing in if you don’t want to have a really tough time. On normal you can give them all some exp until their roles stick out and then pick your favorites. On hard each level is a big investment, so this experimentation is really unwise
I have to admit... in hindsight, I'm not sure that it would be that much of an issue? I say that as someone who used the heck out of all of Sothe, Tauroneo, BK and Nailah during Part 1, and who managed to get through Part 3 even with a rather criminally underlevelled Zihark and Jill according to folx on VC. Mind, I guess for anyone who doesn't want to use any of those units for whatever reason, it could end up feeling constraining, so I get your point for sure
I think Radiant Dawn is good plot wise, but gameplay wise the game is just waaaaay too long and the Dawn Brigade is painful later in the game. The maps are good sometimes but the pacing in battle is still slow. Love the characters tho, super strong cast overall.
Yeah the game is REALLY long, and if you do want to actually try bringing the Dawn Brigade to endgame, I can imagine it being potentially painful to do so. Plot-wise... I think it's decent by Fire Emblem standards, but that doesn't exactly mean much to me
I'm curious though, when you say super strong cast, do you mean the new characters introduced here in RD, or more the PoR cast who reappear here?
Actually, I think you're wrong, but I'm not going to explain myself. Just play fe9 instead smhing my head
@hylianfelldragon1308 Yeah, we're friends on discord, and I told him I was gonna leave this comment. I'm an fe9 > fe10 fan, but he can like bad games if he wants.
Jacob casually looking like he's talking to himself be like
@@akirasou I do it enough irl. Why not on yt too?
@@casualjacob776 and you're so real for that
While I'm still worried about what could happen with this comment I want to leave it regardless of its fate.
I"ll try putting things on importance order:
The skill activation, I saw being skill% and not half in most on FEWoD. Even though they could be wrong I thought them as true making flare more reliable than Aether, still being half %, to make up for being a worst version of it.
I had issues whether to rank this game over FE9 due to the improvements or rank FE9 due to the basis it provided. I choosed RD due to difficulty probably.
Caps do matter for BEXP, and spd cap for endgame. 34 spd is my ideal.
Mages are slow but the main issue, despite the endgame, is the low availability. I sure think Tormod could be a good unit with Rexflame. As for Soren, He's one of the few units in all FE I would early promote for utility: spd, staves and flare.
With that in mind I should mention that base on how BEXP works, units with high specific growths or low caps are the best users of it to obtain other stats.
I wonder if you would have a different opinion on difficulty if you actually played normal mode as hard mode isn't designed to be a first playthrough.
I said that not only due to having an easier time but also because things as no seeing enemy ranges becomes less important when you get to know enemy max movement from a previous playthrough. Speaking of which, I think taking the time to count tiles makes the game easier by forcing people to not rush and be careful. I feel the same about not having weapon triangle.
Finally, Haar, I am not a believer of Haar making the game easier than with other units like Soren. Even though I"ll probably deploy him for every map available he's usually slow to the point of not doubling. A unit that isn't one rounding enemies late game is hard to consider great. That said this was your first playthrough and mine on easy had Haar as the MVP.
It didn't get held for review! So you're good. Plus even if it had, I probably would have noticed it at some point anyway and responded, so thanks for continuing to share your thoughts
There are many points here, so I guess I'll respond to them vaguely linking together the relevant points
Mages... I genuinely think the issue is the Spd, as well as the fact that if you're worried about a Staffer, Micaiah already has you covered in the Tower and then if you do need magical damage, then Sanaki is there as well. I did early promote Soren due to Rhys and Mist both having died, but that was just for the staves. He didn't really do anything other than use Staves. Availability isn't the problem here, because Ilyana is the most available character in the entire case
Bexp I agree with your assessment of, so I have nothing else to say on that front
Difficulty, I think my view could only go down if I played it on a lower difficulty. Simultaneously with me playing Radiant Dawn, one of my Discord friends also was, albeit on Normal, and they were far more bored during it than I was on my playthrough. And I tend to be more complementary towards games that I find I have to think about my actions in, especially since I did think that one of the strengths of the game was when I did have to move my units tactically
Lastly, Haar. On Hard, he did double some things for me throughout the run, and I also didn't do the Bexp trick to have him level Spd even though it was advised. Yeah, he didn't oneround things lategame, but he made all the maps along the way easier to do, and the game gives you the Royals etc for the Tower anyway. I don't doubt that other units are also contributing, especially if the benchmarks are less challenging to meet as they would be on Easy. But higher difficulties tend to be better at highlighting the comparative differences between units, and though it was only a first playthrough, I would very much say that he made the game easier
But yeah, basically comment came through, and I disagree with a lot of your thoughts, which is cool, we can agree to disagree. So thanks for taking the time to write them out :>
@@akirasou
I'm glad to hear it. Yliana has the problem that exp and BEXP is very limited on Hard for Dawn Brigade. Even on normal mode I couldn't made her be higher in level than base Soren. Also, she is so slow, so so slow. I don't mind Haar too much. Only that is just convenient to have around, not a must by any means. And of course, probably all topics I haven't mentioned I could agree with you.
17:54 another audio glitch
Thanks for pointing this out! Since nothing important was cut out, I've just trimmed it off and left a pinned comment saying what precisely was missed. I appreciate it a lot :>
6:31 glitch in audio
Noted! I am ever grateful for your vigilance o7
Why did you make your first playthru of this on maniac mode?
Brace yourself Akira i'm gonna infodump
As someone outside looking in, I can totally understand how Fe9/10 wouldn't resonate with you. It's a game I highly recommend to others, but with heavy caveats: it's not a great game. it's a great STORY, at least to me.
I do wish old supports were kept, but with a cast of *80* i can understand why it was made this way. I feel that the massively revamped base convos do make up for the lack of characterization, but it does mean you lose out on a lot of small moments that makes supports great in exchange for more focus on the plot. I think it was an ultimately acceptable choice because the story is juggling a lot of balls and ensuring that the cast of thousands are all talking about the main plot so that it's always on the player's mind.
I'm a big defender of the blood pact because of what it means symbolically. Begnion is a theocracy, and very coded as christian and *western.* And it's an *empire.* FE10's story is made much more interesting when you remember that all the Beorc nations were once parts of Begnion that won their liberation from the empire. So to me, Blood Pacts are wonderful symbolic representation of how IRL empires use politics, sanctions, and non-overt leverage to make the 2nd or 3rd world subservient to their wishes without overtly relying on brute force: It's a magical version of politics that mirror our very real geopolitical world.
I can' t speak for your take of Ike, but one thing that I have grown to enjoy about him over the years is how... autistic [complimentary] he is? he's very socially oblivious and not the most emotionally intelligent, has no use for manners and propriety, and he cuts through social conventions and calls things like he sees it. And it makes him a good everyman in a series known for main characters being princes. But one of the best things about Ike's character, to me, is that he's clearly *meant* to be an everyman but he's also not racist. It's a very clear signal from the story that hatred and bigotry are *taught* not inherited, and he represents a sort of uncorrupted ideal of the Beorc, one without the cultural biases that sow strife throughout Tellius. Also, Ike is the ideal ally to the marginalized: he's not perfect, he missteps all the time when it comes to the laguz, especially in FE9, but when he's told he's wrong he ALWAYs apologizes, corrects himself, and then is ready to throw hands at anyone who willfully repeats a mistake after being corrected. He's a genuinely great model of how to be anti-racist.
In general, i like how pretty much all of Tellius' problems are sourced back to Begnion. everything from Daein's Racism, Crimea's political and military weakness, the Laguz racism, and even the lie that the Branded are cursed children, they are all LIES propagated by a Theocratic Empire. It's such a biting critique of colonialism and dominionism, and how bad choices made by bitter, power-hungry fools a millenia ago ripple through time and cause conflict in the modern day. And the story approaches the subjects with a bravery i've not seen in modern media release 10 years after FE10. it doesn't quibble and waste your time with both-sidesisms: any time a marginalized group "acts out" in the story it's always in reaction to a *systemic* wound inflicted upon them by the powerful.
Ultimately, why I adore the Tellius Duology so much is because Fe9's thesis is "building a better world is hard: you will stumble, you might not get it right the first time, but it's work worth doing." Fe10's thesis and call to actions are "Build a world where the old men in power are dead."
And i think that's beautiful.
Oh lord, at least you were honest about the infodump. 646 words is a lot, thanks for going to the effort for writing it all out. I'm sorry to say that I definitely don't have the knowledge or energy in me to actually respond to it all fully, so you're gonna have to forgive me for that
Definitely it's an ultimately acceptable choice. I say that as a self-proclaimed not story person (and also not really huge on characters a lot of the time either, or at least it's not actually something that I really care about while playing the game provided that I like the gameplay). And given how bloated I find the plot can feel... I think that it's good they didn't add on additional fluff. For folx who do like the non-plot important characters introduced in this game though, I can imagine the lack of characterisation feeling sad for them
So Ike doesn't really work for me personally as an everyman or with all of his specific ways of misstepping around the Laguz, though that's going into minutiae. Generally though, I get what you're saying and like the idea, I know that it's similar to how some of my friends feel about Ike as well
And then the stuff about Begnion... I'm not sure how much of it is adding stuff to the text, and I also don't think all of it is true to the text. Speaking about the both-sideism point specifically, isn't a big part of both Jill and also Lethe's character arcs in Path of Radiance the idea that not only does Jill have to get over her prejudice against the Laguz (which I agree with), but that Lethe has to move past her distrust of the Beorc? Like that case I would describe as being a both-sideism because like... actual marginalised groups have understandable mistrust of privileged groups, and definitely don't have to move past that in the same way, or really, at all
Then the modern media release moment... I feel like the moment of 'the source of racism is a millennia old lie' is a pretty common fictional and fantasy approach to racism. So I wouldn't describe it as brave personally, more brave and interesting I think (though notably not more salient to and should not be applied to real life) are cases where there are biological differences that lead to discriminatory structures. But that's obviously just me, I can't speak for your own experiences with media
I guess TL;DR: I can see what you're going for with Ike, I'm not sure how much I agree with the rest of it, and disagree on a couple of points as well? I don't say this to dunk on the effort that's gone into the comment or anything, if anything, I feel like since you took writing it so seriously, that I should give it a somewhat serious response of my own
While people complain about story stuff being locked to a 2nd playthrough, I think the tragedy in Pelleas and Sephiran's deaths is a lot better than saving them.
So having read through the dialogue of both them dying and living, I am inclined to agree. That still doesn't mean that I like the fact that the possibility of them living is locked off (though lmao getting Sephiran to live sounds like a colossal pain and I have no idea how someone would figure it out naturally)
Hope you've had a good day
Thank you, I hope that you've had a good day yourself!
6:26 Overall I do too
Kehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh thanks for the spot. The point was mostly there though, so I think it's fine... probably
RD is such a fascinating game, its soo gooood, but its also like so not good
Yeah it's the kind of thing where if you told me beforehand that Kaga was involved in this game, I would believe you. There's a lot of weird experimental stuff in Tellius I feel like, and I feel like it kinda culminates in RD. So some things really work, and other things... really, really do not lmfao
Hey!! Would you look at that, compared to the PoR one i actually agree a lot with this review. RD is a game i'm very split on, sometimes you'll see it at like 3rd place on my FE tier list because i did have a lot of fun with it, other times tho i'm reminded of all the questionable design choices like the ones you mentioned (i'm particularly salty about story bits missing), and i wonder if i truly like this game that much, or it's my Tellius bias kicking in. Anyways my opinion is generally a bit lower than PoR mostly because i find the story and characters, which where the strongest points of the previous game, a bit lacking in this one. No support conversations means that character interaction is much less present and while i do think that the base conversations here are better than in PoR's they aren't enough to make up for it. This means that if you are a character introduced in RD and aren't named Micaiah or Skimir you may as well be replaced by a generic soldier and the narrative would stay the same. They also reduced the relevance of previous main PoR characters like Titania and Soren in favour of others like Sothe or Skimir, which would be cooler if not for the fact that the new characters they are focusing on aren't nearly as interesting in my opinion (What have they done to my boy Soren he barely has screen time 😭). For the parts themselves my opinions would be:
Part 1: my favourite, i really enjoyed seeing Micaiah's little rebel band rise to the top! The inclusion of Izuka, a character you know is evil but you are forced to ally with, was very endearing to me!
Part 2: Cool side-plot, loved seeing some returning characters and made me appreciate Elincia more, doesn't serve much purpose in the grand scheme of things tho.
Part 3: generic war conflict really, it's fine but i really don't understand why the majority prefers it over part 1
Part 4 and Endgame: Nice wrap up, i like it.
I'l be more brief on the gameplay side since this comment is already so long. I do enjoy the concept of split armies a lot, it made me play with so much more units that i wouldn't have cared about in the slightest if the game wasn't structured like that, however this does come with a lot of unit balancing issues, part 1 units in particular suffer a lot because they have very little time to grow. Then of course there's the occasional meme units like Lyre. Aside from a few outliers i find the majority of the maps to be really enjoyable and i definetly think that the gameplay side is very much an improvement over PoR. As an additional note, i want to mention how much i LOVE this game's soundtrack something i haven't seen you rate in your videos, tracks like "The Mind of Izuka", "Sorrowful Prince Pelleas", "Comfort's call" and map OSTs like "Conviction", "Bearer of Hope" and "Ascent" were SO good to listen to made me feel much invested in the game's narrative even with it's afromentioned problems.
Overall i'd say i like Path of Radiance much more, but it's sequel still managed to secure a spot in my top 5
Yo Max, thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts! Makes sense on the narrative side to think of it less highly than PoR, given that as you said, the new characters don't really get given much. Funnily enough, I think that I agree with most of your general thoughts on each of the Parts, which is neat
The split army thing... definitely it did make me use a lot more units than I normally would have, since I tend to be partial to the "pick a few units and have them do everything while everyone else sits on the bench" approach, so I can appreciate that at least. It doesn't really bother me though that the Part 1 units don't have the time to grow, since I don't need units to last for the entire game for me to value them, if that makes sense? You're right that it does make a lot of them harder to use long-term, like Ilyana's availability in Part 1 means that she's weaker in Part 3, for instance. Gameplay generally I agree is a huge improvement over PoR
Music... I'm really not good at rating music, partly because my hearing doesn't differentiate it well from other sounds. FE games generally I think of as having good music, so I don't feel the need to mention music being good, but would rather make note of it if I disliked to hated it. I do remember thinking that the more environmental/ambient tracks were cool though, like with A Gathering of Storms, for instance
All in all, that makes sense! Thanks for your detailed thoughts, it's cool seeing what people think about different FE games, whether they agree or disagree with me on various points :)
radiant dawns story is the worst thing to happen since fire emblem was made in my opinion. so clearly i disagree. cant believe you have a different opinion, unsubscribed.
Lmaoooooooooooooooooooooo
12:53 hmm i know this is personal but to think i already dislike the dawn brigade arc this graph made me hesitate to pick up this game again. My concern also how long RD is. I am afraid if i dropped it again (already dropped it twice). Like recently i just realized how i often getting tired (and probably bored) when i reached chapter 20 of any fire emblem game. Maybe this is just a sign of getting older but i start to appreciate how short crimson flower campaign is.
Anyway this video is very insightful review. Maybe i am gonna start to see the story from let's play first before playing it by my own. Gonna find something to motivate me to play RD.
Yo, thanks for watching the video and commenting! I think that it's fine to say that much for sure, like I enjoyed using the Dawn Brigade but definitely that doesn't seem to be an ironclad consensus and even if it were, it's completely fine to disagree with the common opinion
The burnout in FE games past a certain point is definitely something that I've experienced before. It's part of why I like FE8 as much as I do, since Chapter 20 is the last one before the two-part Finale. And then Crimson Flower is partly my favourite route for that reason, said as someone who doesn't particularly like Edelgard as a character. So I get where you're coming from for sure, and think it makes complete sense
Glad that you found it insightful, at least! In the same way that I think that PoR would be fine to just watch the story bits for on a UA-cam playthrough, if you think that might be something that would motivate you to give RD a shot (or even if it confirms for you that it isn't for you), that sounds sensible!
@@akirasou
FE burnt out was truly something i hope it can be addressed in future FE game. Like the first time i played fe7, i was shocked how long to beat this game. Like it had 30+ main chapters (The game forced Lyn mode for the first timer). I just wished to see the ending as soon as possible. Fe8 definitely had perfect length imo. The game also not too hard so it was very comfy to play it. Definitely one of my favorite fe game in pre-awakening era.
actually radiant dawn is the worst thing to spawn from this world and i cant believe you would ever even think to praise this. i resign effectively immidiately smh my head
The Morsode agenda for a new video called 'Radiant Dawn Review: Low Lows, Low Lows' begins...
Radiant dawn is my favorite fe game and its not close. Personally I really enjoy the no enemy range on hard mode for Ironman purposes. I would say the bxp is more powerful in rd than por on a large macro scale units are easily reaching caps through growth and rd caps actually matter. Ive never liked the support system in any fe game other than rd small passive bonuses with minimal effort are great. Every unit can be used in all difficulties but some, mainly fiona, are just pain. Also, horses are overrated. That said the person who thought biorythm was a good idea should be removed from the gene pool before they can spawn more of themselves
Interesting, if you don't mind me asking, what makes you enjoy the no enemy ranges for Ironmanning purposes? And I agree, the concept of Cavs being good I think is mostly a staple of the GBA games (which... PoR is basically just like FE7 really). I don't mind them being weaker, but... making Fliers, especially Wyverns, better in the process is a strange way of tackling that imo
Good to see that we agree on biorhythm though lol. Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts!
I'm so torn on RD - Part 1 is great but 2-4 is.....
Yeah... at the very least, Part 1 is first, which means that we can ingest all the stuff we like about the game and then abandon the savefile lmaoooooooooo
Congrats on 1000 subs, Akira!
Thanks Cindy!! I appreciate it a lot :>
First owo Also congrats on the 1K subs!
Thanks for the congrats, and for your continued support! Hopefully here's to eventually 1K more :>
7:52 I completly forgot this thing existed in the internacional versions. It was at the same time so useless, frustrating and boring.
--BTW, the JP version of RD you needed coins to forge. Yeah, there is a reason RD wasn't well receive in JP.--
Edit: Check davey comment below
you didn't need coins, you needed forge points, which were obtained by selling weapons. There are a lot of things that were a lot worse in the JP version though, like how unshifting with a Laguz emptied their gauge, even if they had some points left. It also didn't have the Nico base conversation in 3-6, which is one of the most important moments for Micaiah as a character to me.
Having read davey's comment below... those are... interesting design choices. I am glad that they were changed in the port overseas lmfaoooooo