[.ca] Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

Good game, much more difficult than others in the series:
When I read that Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn was more difficult than its Gamecube predecessor, I scoffed. Surely the reviewers who were saying this hadn't played either game for more than a few minutes! But as it turns out, they were right: despite the fact that the game offers the ability to save during missions, the game is punishingly difficult. I was introduced to the Fire Emblem series with the first game brought to North America on the Gameboy Advance, and have now played and completed both GBA games twice each, and the Gamecube version of Fire Emblem three or four times. They were a challenge, certainly, but each map has a "trick," a preferential sequence that makes victory that much easier. Radiant Dawn has these tricks too, of course, but the characters in this game start off absolutely crippled in terms of attack and defense. It's somewhat telling that, of all the characters you start off with, a thief (Sothe, from the original Gamecube game) is more powerful than a warrior, Myrmidion, or mage! I do think that it's a wonderful game, but of all the Fire Emblem games released in North America, it's the most difficult. One piece of advice: the Japanese version's levels of difficulty are "Easy, Normal, and Hard," whereas the North American's difficulty levels are "Normal, Hard, and Maniac." These levels are equivalent: NA's Easy is Japan's Normal, NA's Normal is Japan's hard, and NA's Maniac is Japan's hard. Trust me on this one: start off on "easy," chalk up the name of the difficulty level to a strange translation choice on the part of Nintendo, and have fun. EDIT: One more note on the control scheme. You can use just the Wii remote, the Classic Controller, or a Gamecube controller. By far, the Gamecube controller is easier to use.

2nd part following Path of Radiance:
I play my video games starting the hardest mode all the time. I found Path of Radiance harder, probably because I only started Radiant Dawn in normal mode (you need to finish normal mode to unlock hard/maniac? mode). A solid continuation for Path of Radiance plot with interesting new (and old) characters you'll love, hate or feel sorry for... or feel undecided about!