Tbh I prefer to have them busted, as long as the game itself is still challenging, like FE10, it's so fun to have so many options to work with, image now if Armors were better, it be so tedious to play. I know people strive for variaty, and it is important, but we don't have to nerf to fun to make Archer (for example) usable
Personally , Radiant Dawn is my favorite of the series, the defenses maps were so much fun and u feel really that u fight a stronger opponent than you.
Definitely. I remember when playing it for the first time and was looking through the opposing units. It was at that point that I realized that I was royally screwed, and that surviving would be a miracle. It also does a great job at making you feel the costs of war. It conveys how senseless war can be and the connection between populist impulses fueling a war, though set up in the first place by political elites who benefit from such a bigoted populace.
The rajaion thing was a mistranslation on FE9's part, by the way. In the japanese of FE9 it's pretty clear he died. So it's more a case of a translation error in a previous game making things odd in FE10 than an actual writing failure.
Radiant Dawn really pushes the war aspect of the fire emblem franchise and it's the first game that actually made me FEEL like I was fighting a war. Elincia's Gambit still gets my heart racing and 3-13 is just amazing. Gameplay wise it is my absolute favorite game to play and the story while not being perfect by any means is still engaging and interesting to me and it builds on many many aspects of the PoR story. The escalation to killing a god was pretty epic and I love playing the tower cause it's such a massive undertaking. It definitely isn't friendly to new players but it's great for a veteran and so I give it a 9/10 overall but I will agree that PoR is a better game to play and it's a must play for people first getting into the Tellius series.
Sadly, they removed the defense maps in the future installment, Elincia’s gambit is also my favorite map of all the series. Radiant Dawn really feel you are in a war.
Well said. However, I'd say PoR is a better game to play "first" since Radiant Dawn is the sequel and new players first experiencing it's 4 part, split protagonists story might find it a little jarring at first. I love Radiant Dawn much more than PoR and even the new 3 Houses - Turbo857
The Tellius series does that perfectly. Radiant Dawn, however, had a story akin to Gyakuten Kenji 2, where it took more risks than its predecessor to try to make an epic story, both games fell flat on their faces in that regard. Radiant Dawn isn't quite as bad as GK2, though.
This game can be considered to have both the worst and best localization in the series. The worst for reason you described like using the shortened script and mislabeled difficulty options. The best because of gameplay differences. Those Daein National Treasures wasn't in the original game. Ed and Leo started out weaker. No auto promote to get into third tier. Several skills were chance based in addition to threshold based. In Japan, this is the only game that the fanbase considers bad not merely controversial like in the Western fanbase.
@@Kuma5655 iirc, wasn't the Japanese explanation that Ike fought like a force-ghost of the BK in PoR? Also, really surprising to hear RD is flat-out disliked in Japan. Never would have known that.
Theirs also some dumb story differences, most notably with the blood pact. I the English version they go fight lekain to get rid of the blood pact, but in the Japanese version, it just goes on its own.
Funnily enough, Ike himself has zero connection to the plot but Ike's tactican Soren is actually far more relevant than Ike since he's the real prince of Daein and son that Almeidha was looking for.
If certain requirements are fulfilled (Soren fights Micaiah in 3-7 [Rivals Collide], choosing to not *redacted* Pelleas on your second playthrough, Soren fights Pelleas in 3-Endgame [From Pain, Awakening], Soren and Pelleas survive until the end of the game), then you will see the ending where Soren is, in fact, revealed to be the true Prince of Daein.
RD is probably one of the most lopsided games in the series regarding game design and especially unit balancing but its still my favorite in the series thanks to the sheer amount of ambition behind it. You could call it a "mess", but its a mess I could never bring myself to dislike ❤
Yo Mangs, you, me, Mekkah 776, and Wolt should hit up the* hot springs and talk about how good this guys retrospectives are. After that and some booze, we can move onto another subject I had in mind... A blonde Sniper from FE7, who says she's married, but hey like Hector always says, every good goal has to get through a goalie.
The Tellius games really deserve quality remakes. There's so much unrealized potential there. If we loved these flawed first attempts this much, imagine what could be done if they were given the treatment they deserve. I hope it's an idea they're strongly considering.
It could very well occur! I think HD Remaster/Ports with redone cutscenes/art/voice acting is more likely but they could do a full blown remake. I hope they do Genealogy first however just because it hasn’t been localized and has never had the chance of being in 3D Graphics.
Tellius is incredible and it’s cast is INSANELY popular. Everyone loves ike. If they remade Path of Radiance and released Radiant Dawn a few years later it would create alot of suspense leading to strong sales. Very smart business move.
6:05 and there's the fact that Resolve doesn't boost strength anymore! The difficulty option snafu reminds me of a total reverse of Path of Radiance's go - path of radiance you think the game is harder than it really is (english hard = japanese normal). Here in Radiant Dawn hard suddenly becomes *maniac*. It stems from this larger problem (that YTer Chaz Aria LLC brought up) that difficulty modes in FE are never consistent in both name and content.
I think the reason why some skills have erroneous descriptions may be due to some skills being altered in localization. Resolve, for instance, DID require the unit be at 20% or less HP in the Japanese version, but was changed to 50% or less in western versions. Similarly, Wrath says it can only activate at 20% or less HP, which is true in the Japanese version. Western versions bumped it up to 30% or less (not too much difference, admittedly).
Radiant dawn is easily my favorite Fire emblem game. I really respect the ambition in the game, even if it fell short in some aspects it really keeps the gameplay unique and allows for a lot of replayability.
It feels like whenever I bump into someone who's played Radiant Dawn, it's usually their favorite FE game or at least in their top 3. Whenever I bump into someone who's favorite is Awakening or 3 Houses, they usually never played FE 9 or 10.
I consider FE9/FE10 one game. Ever since FE10's release, I've always played both together. It took me years to realize how to get the true ending. My only complaint was the elimination of deep supports from second half.
Radiant Dawn is my favorite from a pure gameplay perspective, but it's also it's own thing to me. I don't get a hankering to play some Fire Emblem, then play RD.
This game has some of the biggest hype scenes in the entire franchise. Ike rescuing Lucia, Sanaki rescuing Zelgius, the part 3 endgame… so, so, so good.
It’s a mess of a game, but I love it for it. I had watched let’s plays of it and I knew I was going to love it once I tried it out and so it happened. Had to wait for years till I got a good enough laptop but it was worth it.
Something else you forgot to mention on why mounted units are no longer inherently OP is that they have substantially worse stat caps than infantry units and stat caps actually matter in Radiant Dawn, especially on Hard/Maniac difficulty (e.g. Oscar has a good Speed base and growth, but his second tier Speed cap will prevent him from doubling much in later Part 3 without an early promotion, making his offense underwhelming, and this third tier speed cap gives him more doubling issues in the endgame). This is also another reason why Haar and Jill are so broken, as unlike other mounted units they don't have lower stat caps to compensate for their massive mobility advantage and in fact have some of the best stat caps of all classes (e.g. Haar in his third tier has the highest Defense cap and second highest Strength cap of any beorc class, even exceeding the Marshalls while having none of their disadvantages, and Jill's Speed cap is only one point lower than a Seraph Knight while having much better Strength and durability).
oooohh, explains why my tower of guidance team consisted of haar, jill, and other infantry units + kieran(because his strength stat is actually useable against the final bosses compared to other cavalry units)
I remeber when i played 3-6 with literally only micaiah sothe laura nolan and jill everyone else in the dawn brigade died ori didnt train and were flat out useless and my goodness when the BK showed up i was so grateful
Agreed. My largest gripe is that characters, especially new ones, don't get much further characterization, unless they are the focus of the story. It primarily builds upon Path's excellent character writing.
I mean at the very least base conversations fill that void a bit. At the same time, it’s the best game to have non existent convos seeing as it’s a direct sequel to the game with amazing character development.
Actually, unused files suggest that traditional support conversations were originally supposed to be implemented into the game. Whether they were scrapped in favor of the gameplay aspect of them (with free switching and a single partner etc.) or due to time constraints due to the size of the cast, I do not know.
I really like base conversations for fleshing out characters in a way that corresponds with the plot, but they really needed to use them more heavily if they were going to replace supports. I don't know anything about Fiona, and I've beat this game many times.
I'd say one of the most memorable parts for me was in FE10 during a base convo between Rolf and Shinnon. By that point both armies are extremely worn down. Shinnon, who is usually cold and edgy pretty much breaks down in front of Rolf, saying he's not sure how much longer he'll be around to protect Rolf, and that while he might not be a good father figure, he can at the very least make sure that Rolf has the most powerful bow. Even tough its true that the end of part 3 doesn't advance too much in regard to story, it excels in regards to character development and the theme of how terrible war can be.
I always saw the disparity of strength of the DB vs the GM similar to their strength lore wise. The GM are war veterans while the DB is literally young people off the street so it makes sense that the DB would be much weaker than the GM. I know from a gameplay perspective im sure it wasnt the most fun but i kinda saw it as making the player feel as the characters did.
This is even more understandable given that its eventually learned that the Senate pretty much manipulated the DB, whereas the GM had to claw their way up to power. It's another one of the nested dichotomies between order and chaos.
Randomly came across this video while I was supposed to be doing university work and thought it was at least a year old, but it's only a DAY old?? What a nice treat during quarantine. PoR and RD are my favorite FE games, so I'll definitely have to come back and watch this when I get the time!
Regarding Part 2, I can't help but wonder if the structure wouldn't have worked better if they'd done something more akin to FE7 or FE8 with Hector's Story or the Eirika/Ephraim split, giving players a choice whether they wanted to stay with the Dawn Brigade and Daein's post-war development, go over to Gallia for the buildup to the war (maybe fleshing out Lyre and Kyza at all and having the party looking for the Greil Mercenaries), or check in on Crimea to make fan favourites like Elincia and Nephenee available in a 2nd playthrough. Obviously this would have resulted in them having to design up to 10 more chapters' worth of maps and story, but it might have helped the pacing and power creep issues.
Honestly radiant dawn as you pretty much stated is just kinda flawed and filled with a lot of pointless scenes honestly one of the biggest reasons why i would love to see the story trimmed of that fat and then give attention where its needed and overall reimagined in a sense as a much stronger narrative with better character development (ive seen a few of these, the small informal rewrite Mangs does at the end of his first RD lp comes to mind) Nonetheless i love this game as much as anyone else but man but i do recognize a lot of its flaws it was a very ambitious game and while they did fall a bit short i do appreciate the game for trying. Great retrospective i love watching and hearing your thoughts one each of the games in the series
I actually think that they added part 2 into the game because Radiant Dawn is trying to tell the story of the entire continent falling into war and breaking their covenant with Ashera, which is what leads to part 4 which is obviously beorc and laguz finally learning to unite and defeat an unjust God. Michiah may be the main character of the game and I agree with that, but Radiant Dawn is the story of Tellius, and part 2 helps to show you that the entire continent has fallen into conflict and war, not just the battles between the Laguz alliance and Begnion. I think it adds more weight to what Ashera does, because she isn't just intervening in one war, she is attempting (from her own viewpoint) to put an end to all conflict, and even Crimea is a part of that.
I LOVE this game, horrible balancing and all. If we ever get a remake though, I think an awesome extra feature would be the ultimate defend map. When your endgame teams ascends the tower, everyone else stays outside to fend off Ashera’s soldiers. It would be so awesome to me if there was like an unlock able extra where it takes all the characters from that save and lets you use all those units in one giant defend clusterfuck. Goddamn I’ve been having dreams about how awesome that would be!
I feel I gotta mention this but on the Playlist theres a huge number of the same Radiant Dawn retrospectives & 2 PoR retrospectives , you've might of clicked the button a few too many times.
Thanks, I don't know how that happened. I am guessing it was a RUclips Studio bug, because I can't imagine how the RD video got on there so many times. In any case, it's fixed now. Thanks so much for pointing that out!
Balancing is always a difficult conversation to have with fire emblem. Sure, on one hand the Laguz Royals are insanely powerful units that are just handed to you, but on the other hard, there's nothing stopping you from just not using them. It'll certainly be hard, but difficulty here is a choice the player makes about their own experience.
I think the best solution would have been that rather than nerfing the Royals, in the Tower you get a pick of one of the Royals to bring with you, just like how you only get to bring one Heron and how they handled the Royal pick at the end of POR, with the excuse that the power of the Royals are needed to fend off Ashera's army on the outside.
radiant dawn is the easiest game in the franchise once you realize that double earth A supports are functionally invincible and you can use BEXP to cap anyone's skills
If we get the rumored Tellius remake I REALLY hope they can rebalance the laguz to be viable without being a royal. Edit: Without being the 3DS stones.
No matter how much time passes, I still can't help but feel warm and fuzzy whenever I come to revisit Tellius. Be it playing the games myself or watching videos about it. I greatly enjoyed your retrospective videos on PoR and RD, thank you for making them^^ Was very fun to revisit those dear memories :3
Put my thoughts right back into my own mouth. I enjoy the game a lot but it's undeniable there are some weird choices (unit avaliability and supports are the big ones) that makes it harder for me to truly love the game. Still, Radiant Dawn still earns a lot of respect from me for willing to try radically different ideas. And the fact that Shadow Dragon is the next entry is going to make the transition from RD extremely unusual.
Funny thing is that you can deffect your units from your current armie to other. Namely Zihark who is on of the good units of dawn brigade. And he has 3 difrent opporunities to do so. In fact it is necessary for him to do so early to have positive epilog/ending. So its either help dawn brigade and morally and spiritually kill Zihark or make it harder for dawn brigade and save Ziharks soul and give him happy epiloge.
It's kinda stupid that they didn't implement scale levelling for the Dawn Brigade, considering that puts players at a disadvantage when going back to them but maybe they chose not to do that to give players more of a challenge.
My very first Fire Emblem experience was Path of Radiance. I was 15 when it came out. Totally became my favourite Gamecube game for a very long time. Started with Radiant Dawn much later as an adult and I was not disappointed. Its first few chapter were definitely harder than Path of Radiance, but I was by that time a more seasoned FE gamer and had beaten hard mode a few times on PoR. What really wowed me is the sheer amount of chapters there was in RD compared to PoR and after Part 3 was over, I was sighing with awe with the immensity of the storyline. Many mysteries finally solved in the sequel, and many intense battles. Which one of the two is my favourite? I can't really say, to be honest. PoR had the best storytelling and pacing. But RD had incredibly better gameplay mechanics, twice the amount of units, about fifteen more chapters, better graphics, and it had an incredible climax. PoR win the round for storytelling and relaxing pacing. But RD wins for the sheer quantity of contents. All in all, I think both games represents one single game, with all loose ends dealt with, and I believe the Tellius Series need a remake with both stories within. Now, if Nintendo were ever to do thus, I would buy it in a heartbeat.
The way you talked about the whole story is basically the same problems i've been struggling with, the Elincia part felt like filler and the new characters have no character. The first part felt great, but the Dawn Brigade needed a whole game honestly. Also yeah, the Blood Pact is so dumb
They're really fun, especially first play through. My opinion, path of radiance isgreat, the plot is nice and it has cool characters, but I think it'seven easier than fe8. Fe10 has refreshing difficulty, but only unlocks after first playthrough. The second half of radiant dawn is pretty boring since the maps have tons of units and your own units like Haar, Jill, and Ike are completely broken.
Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn are the best in the series imo. The 2nd half of Radiant Dawn is where the story pick ups and battles get better. Don't entertain opinions that say otherwise - Turbo857
Goofy Gaff The only problem I have with Ashera is that she wasn’t really part of the cast of villains, as in the first time Ike met Ashera was before endgame.
THANK YOU for pointing out that your attachment to the stories and characters mainly stems from your memories of Path of Radiance. When people say they prefer the Radiant Dawn, our debates center around the fact that they like the characters better in Dawn, and I tell them that is ONLY because of their attachment built from Path. Path built a better character driven story. Radiant Dawn's story is great, but it has to be acknowledged that most of people's attachment to it stems from Path of Radiance. NOT ALL, but a lot of it. Radiant Dawn may have a better plot story (not my take, but I will concede to opinion), but Path of Radiance has a better handling of making you care about the story through its characters.
I always tell people that my favorite FE games are "The Tellius games", rather than pin down one of them. Gameplay wise, I certainly prefer RD, but you're absolutely correct that the character building is mainly centered in PoR.
Yeah, him pointing that out made me wonder how much I'd like the cast if I played RD first or if RD was self contained entirely. Plenty of characters still have fantastic dialogue or interactions like Oscar and his brothers in part 3 or Haar against literally any boss but its much more scattered than in PoR. I guess its bound to happen to a degree with a cast size that huge but the game could've used more time in the oven for at least some support conversations.
Looking at RD characters that appeared in PoR in a vacuum is not really fair. RD is a direct sequel that deliberately uses PoR as a basis to build a narrative with a larger scale. Introducing all the characters again would waste a lot of screen time, and just continuing where they left off in the last game is justified. It is a valid criticism that many of the characters see little to no further development in RD (which might be exactly what you meant, in which case my bad.)
I love this game and I think your retrospective series is one of my favorite series on RUclips, I watch the videos constantly. My biggest problem with this game is how the challenge it takes to get a bunch of the in depth story content like Ike and Soren's backstory on how they met.
This game is one of my two favorites in the series, but it’s absolutely relies on the player having already played path of radiance. I honestly can’t imagine how terrible the story and characters would be for someone who hasn’t played the previous game. It must appear a convoluted mess. Also the blood pact really isn’t *that* bad of an idea, I just wish they explained it more and gave it some history so it didn’t just seem like a plot device.
Surprisingly, for me, I never played or experienced the story of Path of Radiance, yet I absolutely loved Radiant Dawn when I first experienced it like 10 years ago. It was so cool to see a bunch of people following up on a war (that I didn't know much about) and seeing the repercussions of it. In fact, for a while, I didn't even care to learn about the events in Path of Radiance because I didn't believe that they would live up to the hints of the events in Radiant Dawn. Still can't excuse the blood pact, but I also am not offended by it as it provides some interesting situations (despite getting there due to a lazy plot device).
@@blastmako05 They actually did mention the Blood Pact in Path of Radiance but it was just in the Japanese version. They took it out in the English version and change some of Black Knight's dialogue to make him more like an evil villain. Hence the difference between Radiant Dawn Black Knight and Path of Radiance Black Knight
RD actualy made me a fan of FE and of PoR. I've played very little of PoR in 2005 when it came out and i didn't really like it cause I found it to be sploopy. 2007 I got a copy of RD to try it and fell for it. Even though I couldn't understand some of the plot revolving around PoR the game between misson does provide a decent resume to explain what is going on and what caused it in the past. I have loved this game so much that 2-3 years later I got a copy of PoR and decided to try it again and this time I loved it thx to RD!! I wish IS would make a remake of these 2.
Path of Radiance is my favorite game in the series, I wish I could say the same for Radiant Dawn. Path of Radiance had an incredible mix of everything I love in Fire Emblem, while I thought that Radiant Dawn soiled it.
59:00 I feel like a long streak of interesting decisions led to Meg being in that situation, in that armor. You must have had a lot of fun on your second playthrough.
I think it's a testament to how good the premise was that the game was still enjoyable in spite of nearly every aspect of development going wrong and being botched. EDIT: 58:46 That's F'in amazing.
The thing is Radiant Dawn is a sequel through and through. Due to this, I don't hold Ike's character arc against him because that story was already told, if anything his inclusion lowers the quality of the story. On the blood pact, the English is actually much better than the Japanese. In the original Japanese the blood pact, essentially, just stops working for no reason.
Tellius may be next to get remakes. Either this or Jugdral. The cast is EXTREMELY popular. People love Ike. Releasing a Remake of Path of Radiance would sell well with the right advertisment and would build suspense for a Radiant Dawn remake a few years later. I do agree tho that Genealogy deserves it the most. And seeing how much influence it had when making 3H, they’re probably looking at it for the next remake.
I really like the idea of controlling two armies clashing, and seeing both grow and expand, even if it didn't quite work in Radiant Dawn. I really hope this concept is explored once again in a future Fire Emblem.
I will never forget getting blown out of the water by "normal" difficulty on the day this game was released. Got my ass kicked over and over with the Dawn Brigade and had the time of my life.
The thing about Rajaion is that in the Japanese version of Path of Radicance, it's clear that he dies in the end... while in the english's version it doesn't confirm it. So it's normal for people to get surprised to know that he is dead in Radiant Dawn.
I never liked it when games does the whole "we take away your unit, but their level remains what it was since last you saw them when you get them back" thing that many games do. The best thing you can do in a system like this is to make the XP be modified by the level difference between the player characters and the enemies. Which is what I think they do in later entries in the series. That way you make grinding have diminishing return, because at a certain point there's very little ot be gained from grinding. And you have a catch-up mechanic for units who start off weak due to reasons. One of my main draws to Fire Emblem is the whole "you can use whatever characters you like, and have fun." IT seems Radiant Dawn sort of don't do that...
Genealogy and Radiant Dawn are the absolute peaks of fire emblem. They have huge downs, but I care little for the incredible heights those games reach.
I’m sorry but as much as people love the Tellius games I can’t help but really dislike the plot of Radiant dawn. The goddess stuff is cool, but I can’t help but feel like most of the war is just contrivances for the sake of having the two sides fight a war when neither really wants to.
I am so excited for this, I didn't realize these critiques were uploaded as a season and this is in my top 3 FEs. Along with Conquest and Thracia, I loved how it always felt like a harsh but fair uphill battle, overcoming huge odds
This was my favorite FE game until Three Houses which I think is the best one. However FE 10 was my favorite until I had played through all routes of 3H. I needed all 5 routes to declare it a favorite over this one.
Then I would say, Radiant Dawn is really the better game. Don't get me wrong, Three Houses is excellent (my 2nd favorite FE, tied with Path of Radiance). However, you had to play 3 Houses almost 4 times as much as Radiant Dawn to feel like it was a better game. If 3 Houses has to stand on only its single best path playthrough it can't beat Radiant Dawn - Turbo857
As an alternative to the blood contract, why not have Izuka unleash some Feral Ones on Daein and then have the senate tell Pelleas this was a deliberate attack on Daein, that would rile up the citizens and force Pelleas (who is shown to be a weak king in general) to declare war on them lest the citizen revolt over him doing nothing. To add to that part of the persuasion could include the rebellion in Crimea that was caused by them being afraid of and hating Daein for the Mad King's war (give more meaning to part 2 since the antagonists would bring up their anger at Daein being reconstructed with the apparent son of the Mad King on the throne) especially since that means Pelleas is in the same position that if he doesn't answer his citizen's anger at their old enemies "coming for them" he might have his own rebellion of the same kind on his hand, and that Gallia's "sub Humans" clearly want to see Daein fall as well due to Daein's racism towards the Laguz. Instead of forcing him with the blood contract instead it would be the citizens of Daein demanding something be done and Pelleas being pressured by the senate and his people's cries for him to do something that forces him into the war. Not sure if Naesala should be blood contract bound or not but one other option is that we can use Izuka again, he is sent to Phoenicius to attack them and uses his feral one forumla to get more Hawks and even unleash some Ravens on them (as a summoner and he has the Rewarp staff which is shown to be able to warp between countries). Tibarn is bloodthirsty and charges ahead but Naesala has some feeling that something is wrong and flies home, he sees the feral hawks attacking their own kind and acts fast, killing them and the feral ravens. Janaff and Ulki see and hear this, go to check, see Naseala with all the dead hawks there and, still harboring distrust and full of bloodlust from the war, assume the worst forcing the Raven King to flee. Only when the world is turned to stone and everyone's rage has settled is Naesala given time to explain himself and how it tore him up to see his bird breathren reduced to a feral state, Tibarn forgives him and admits he would have done the same thing to put his feral brothers out of their misery. Using Izuka a lot here but honestly he could stand to be used more to make this work. As for how Ashnard killed the Daein royal family, he could just have the "old hermit mage" engineer a plague that only ends with the death of the caster or the king. what do you think of that?
Hearing that this is considered one of the hardest FE games makes me feel good considering I beat it when I was like 10 and don't recall having many issues with it. Granted I had already beaten Shadow Dragon and Sacred Stones.
I meannnnn its not impossible. It is Path pf Radiance’s 15th anniversary this year and an HD Collection with Redone Cutscenes/Voice Acting/Character Art wouldn’t be the most difficult task. However I feel if they are to touch Tellius, full blown remakes are more likely. Considering Ike’s Popularity releasing a PoR remake would sell well with right advertisement and would build great suspense for a RD Remake a few years later. As much as I’d rather have Tellius, Genealogy deserves it more.
Radiant Dawn is...strange. Does so much right _and_ makes so many missteps simultaneously. The varied map designs, use of elevation, third tier promotions, and some of the best combat animations we've seen in 3D so far (rivaled only by Shadows of Valentia) have made it one of my favorites in the franchise...and yet, the points you make about the inconsistent story and lack of depth to its characters are legitimate flaws. You know, the Tellius games really could benefit from a remake...if it was even _possible_ to remake both at once. Path of Radiance would get the aesthetic touch ups and pace of play improvements it desperately needs, while Radiant Dawn could get its story and characters fleshed out better (and ideally with the support system of most modern titles added in for real this time). And, y'know, it'd allow so many fans who got into Fire Emblem recently to actually be able to experience the games with how rare they are nowadays. Nintendo might not even have to worry about it not selling all that well the way past FE remakes have! Not only does the series have a bigger fanbase now than ever, even casual players would recognize Ike!
Radiant Dawn's character development is fine. It's a direct sequel to Path of Radiance so if you played that game.... you know the character relationships. Sothe and Michiah's relationship is fleshed out, Sephiran and the Black Knight, fleshed out, Ashera and Yune. I don't get the character development criticisms aimed at this game at all - Turbo857
@@Level857 yeah agree but maybe more support conversations to flesh out the other characters as well would be a very nice addition. Otherwise, yeah the main characters overall had been decently fleshed out.
Beyond being difficult to raise, the Dawn Brigade just kind of... suck Put them in comparison to other early game units in other fire emblem games and they pretty much all come up short. With her pathetic speed and defense Micaiah is easily in the running for the weakest lord, with Sothe's garbage strength puts him in the running for the weakest Jeigan, Meg is somehow a worse armor knight than even Gwen, and Fiona manages to make the entire class of cavalier somehow look underpowered. When you're given control of other units, it's more of a relief that you don't have to use the Dawn Brigade than anything else.
I’ve done all dawn brigade in the tower runs and if you’re willing to invest, Edward, Nolan, and Aran can all become the best of their class IMO. Much easier to do on normal than hard mode though. It’s not too bad if you swap around Paragon strategically. You’re right that Meg and Fiona are irredeemably bad though lmao
I do agree that the blood pact thing was basically an excuse to make the groups all fight each other, but I respectfully disagree that the storyline is majorly flawed as you state. The whole point of the goddess being on the verge of purging the planet was based around mankind’s inability to hold peace for very long, even when the rulers are just and fair, as Eincia was. Part 2 basically showed the true depravity of the Crimean people, which Ike and his team fought so hard for in Path of Rad. Plus there were a lot of characters in POR that would have had no introduction for part 4 if part 2 didn’t exist. I mean, the bottom line is if the game was too short then people would complain due to the lack of content and Eincia. But since the game has too much content that’s now a drastic negative?
This is my second favorite fire emblem game behind thracia. I think this game has some of the best maps in the series and I love the fire emblems with huge casts like this one. I also think the support system gets a bad reputation. It is awful for character development but it is in my opinion the best support system purely from a gameplay perspective. Also when talking about how the games in the series gives you prepromotes that are extremely powerful you have to remember that the games up until more recent entries are designed around permadeath and they need to give you good units so you can win if you have a lot of casualties. This justifies the laguz royals specifically in this game because if a lot of the units you trained up died near the end you wouldn’t be able to beat bosses like Deghinsia without that extra muscle.
The support system is pretty awesome actually. Yeah, the personalized conversations may have been tossed out somewhat but the benefits you get are significant for strategy. Having a good support with Nolan and Aran really helps a lot especially on Chapter 3-6.
The support system is actualy incredible aka Ike/Soren A support for a juicy +30 Avoid to both (or isit 20 can't remember??). When I cleared my second game by attempting to unlock the hidden secret's (Lehran's past, Soren's background, Pellas etc.) I had to used Ulki and Janaff to sneaky drop Ike and Soren at the bottom of Part 3 episode 7 where you need to survive for 10 round in a swamp map OR kill the ennemy general which is Micaiah....who's having the BK as her main bodyguard lol. To unlock the secret's Ike need to confront the BK and not die before the end of the map and Ike doesn't have Ragnell nor is promotted at this point meaning he's underwhelm compared to the BK who could 2 shot him. I only succeeded because i've placed Ike on a strategic position in a busket providing 10% avoid with Soren not far for the support and Ike was blocking any ennemy from getting out of their little isle. I ONLY SURVIVED THE SECOND HIT OF THE BK BECAUSE OF SOREN'S SUPPORT LOL AND EVEN WITH SOREN'S SUPPORT AND THE BUSKET HE HAD 40% TO HIT ME...TWICE LOL.
Haar is more broken than Seth, but he's in a harder game so he can't just run through everything senselessly. Anyways, both Radiant Dawn and Sacred Stones are my favorite Fire Emblems, and by far the most replayable ones.
Radiant Dawn was my first Fire Emblem game, in Normal difficulty. It's a longshot but I want a Radiant Dawn remake, or at least bring the ledge mechanic back. One of the better features of FE.
I'm glad that they found something for unmounted units to do, which mounted units cannot. But "realistically" riding a WYVERN would be a tremendous upper hand.
My favorite game of all time. Best FE's level design (with FE5 in an other way), the epic of war feel is incredible. I love the fact that we play multiple armies too. RD still need PoR for the world building and chara-dev. With all of that it's for me the best Fire Emblem game even more than FE4 and FE9
Honestly, the biggest issue with the blood pacts for me is how unnecessary they are. Let's take a look at Pelleas, for example. It's not out of character for Izuka to exploit his sense of gratitude and psychologically manipulate him to help out Begnion. Same with Naesala, it's completely in character for him to backstab his allies for some petty gains, he's basically Travant but bord. This shit writes itself, seriously. Let's not forget how Burger King's survival was explained in the original Japanese version. If you haven't seen it, look it up. I got a hearty laugh out of that
I dont think someones gonna read this but whatever, i still want to write it bc i really like this game, it had so much potential. I remember that my expectations for the story prior to playing the game were kinda high. The idea of understanding a conflict from the perspective of both armies is one that has amazing potential. Also, before playing the entire game months ago, i had played like 4 chapters some years ago, and the idea of the oppression that Daein suffers after being conquered that they show in the early chapters of part 1 was also interesting. (Theres even good takes on these themes today, as you can see in the ultra popular anime Shingeki no kyojin). The thing is that Radiant Dawn (and may as well say Fire emblem in general) seems to suffer from 2 problems that are kind of related. One is that the game seems to like to talk about politics and stuff, but it's so afraid of showing these kinds of countries interactions in a deep way. Most of the time all that Radiant dawn does is saying "oh these guys are good oh these guys are bad". As i said before, the idea of how Daein is getting oppressed by the army of Begnion is really interesting, because this can show postwar grudge, violence towards the country that once menaced yours, etc. Its a complex phenomenon that has potential to talk about so many things related to war, but here all that really happens is "oh its not that Begnion is being 'bad', it's just that the senators the senators the senators". Instead of telling the story of how a country can have his reasons to be afraid, hold grudge and hatred towards another country for the atrocities that they made, all we have is a "Oh no no, what do u mean Daein is being oppressed, thats unacceptable, I, empress of Begnion, cant believe that, is not something we decided, is just evil people, the senators are bad oh no". It really saddens me how wasted of an idea this is. You can compare this to how Shingeki shows an oppressed nation in Eldia. Eldians are hated because of the crimes they committed in the war of the past, and the people is afraid of their powers, so most of them live oppressed and controlled by Marley, another country, while the rest of the Eldians still fight against Marley. Here you understand the reasons why Eldians are oppressed. You see the efforts of the Marleyans, how they just want to protect their country, how they have been educated in a one sided version of history to hate the Eldians even more. You even end up liking the Marleyan characters, you see how they are just trying to protect their families. You see that they are just humans trapped in a complex conflict. The point is not to justify such an atrocious act, but to understand it, to see how war can cause this, and how sometimes the innocent people end up paying the price. We could finally have a FE game that shows how this "bad guys" that are abusing us actually came to feel and act like that. The other problem comes from how a Fire Emblem game works. I remembered this problem when Shane talked about the typical fire emblem idea of growing your units and building a cohesive team. Sadly for the Radiant Dawn plot, RD is a Fire emblem game, so it seems like the story cant do whatever it wants with its characters. You can see this in little things, like how Lucia just cant die in that scene at the end of part 2, even if her death was the most realistic thing to happen, and even if her death could be a really good way of showing consequences, and it could make Elincia start a new arc where she has to work on accepting her death, where she questions her actions. But this a Fire emblem game, and maybe theres people that like Lucia, maybe theres people that have trained Lucia a lot in the chapters she appears, u just cant kill her :( And you can also see this problem in big points of the plot, like when Galia/Ike fights the Dawn Brigade. In a normal story, this idea is interesting because you get to know both sides of the conflict, you get to like or understand both armies, but you know that war is inevitable (at the very least up to a certain point, i dont mean that a fkin ton of characters need to die or something, the final message doesnt need to be a pessimist one). But in RD, you know that this a FE game, u have ur grown units in both armies, so when they fight theres 0 stakes in play, no one is gonna die in the story, because oh no, you just cant kill the units the player is growing so hard. (Also, i know you can argue that FE already integrates this kind of character deaths when u lose a unit in a chapter bc of your mistakes or whatever, but everyone just resets so its a strange topic. The fact is that you can -and most people do- experience the story as if no one dies). Not to mention that RD is again afraid of defining good and real motivations for a conflict, because you cant have a real war between Daein and Galia/Ike, you cant define realistic political reasons for a country like Daein, that wants to be free, but once menaced the whole continent to go to war. Nope, u just cant have that, instead we get the fkin blood pact to create a weak, forced conflict. So sad. I think this last issue also happens bc of the way RD (or FE) writes the characters that you use, everyone has to be "good" or likeable. They want you to like Sanaki, so ofc she is against the abuse of Daein ppl. They want you to like Naesala, so ofc theres his stupid blood pact. Theres probably more to say about this things but honestly i cba right now. If someone reads this, sorry for my shit way of writing, english is not my first language.
They had to find a way to get two “good guys” to fight each other, otherwise the marketed protagonists (dawn brigade) become the bad guys. The blood contract was definitely lazy though
@@Spiresbeyond Yeah i understand why they write all the characters that you use as "good guys", but honestly thats such a boring and simple way to define a story... And its not like i hate almost all FE games bc of that or smth, that rant was just bc i like this game and its potential.
The over-reliance on OP characters just to break even in terms of difficulty while trashing all of the characters you tried to train up (while dealing with the whiplash of having the perspective and roster you can play as constantly changing) except for Jill and Haar definitely soured my enjoyment of the game. I was already burned out by the end of Part 3 (the final battle 3-Endgame was awesome, though) and the massive filler battles leading up to the Tower of Guidance officially killed my desire to finish playing. I still haven't beaten Radiant Dawn to this day.
If it wasnt tor Xenoblade id be playing this for the first time. Truly enjoyed Path of Radiance as my second favourite. But 2 games left to modern era already? Its gone by so fast...
Radiant Dawn is hard asf lol. Every part one character except the jeigens can get RNG screwed and on top of that the jeigans epitomize the characteristic where they fall off insanely hard. Sadly due to unit availability the difficulty of RD is contingent upon a few part three dawn brigade chapters. This is even worse for new players because alot of guides say Nolan is the best dawn brigade unit so new players ignore Jill, Zihark and Edward. I don't recommend always using Edward but on a hard play through it would be a boon for players to recognize benificial RNG when leveling Edward. If edward gets godlike RNG plus hard mode bonuses he can easily cap dex str and sp, and can abuse base exp like no other! If edward is capping speed, dexterity, and strength super early chances are hes gonna get a ton of def from Bexp levels making the Laguz chapters in part 3 cake. Jill is also good but has wayyyyy less combat prowess so much harder to be used by new players. Personally i give Jill stat ups and leave Bexp up to the RNG. Another thing new players fail to do is pick up on is properly utilizing Beast Bane items. Getting caught mowing down laguz on enemy phase is always a death sentence in this game. RD has so many moments where im wishing my unit doesnt kill so that it can create a dead space.
"If edward gets godlike RNG plus hard mode bonuses" Your overall point is correct that people should take advantage of good RNG with early levelups if they get it with Edward, but I want to point out that no hard mode bonuses exist in RD. Also Edward still won't be that great for Part 3 on Hard even if you got a "Godward", because he still has his low Defense and HP caps meaning he'll still likely get two-shotted by Tigers, or at best three-shotted, while not achieving reliable dodge rates against them, and his propensity for getting crits can get him killed by exposing him to more enemies than you intended on Enemy Phase. Still if you get lucky with him in early levelups he'll definitely be a helpful unit in later Part 1 and not always merit in early benching. And Jill's combat is fine if she gets the Energy Drop + axe forge and will become great with investment, but newer players probably don't save the Drop for her and use it for Edward or Nolan instead.
This was my first FE game. I never owned a wii but I had a friend that did and we played through this over a weekend. I wouldn't actually play another FE game until like 5 years later when I bought FE7 and a GBA SP in college and I've been hooked ever since!
I really was hoping that hatari would be a full nation that also fight in this game more than just naila and his servent. Even npc or something it's not even on the tellius map.
After going back and watching every video of this series, I have to say: This Retrospectiove Series is some High Quality Stuff. Radiant Dawn was my very First Fire Emblem and to this day is my favourite out of the bunch. It was really interesting listening to someone Expierencing this Series completly Blind. I am already looking forward to the Awakening, and Three Houses Retrospective.
I've been playing the series for several years now, playing all the titles and replaying favorite entries many times over. Radiant Dawn is to me the most epic in scale and perspective switching between armies really fleshes out the scope. If you asked me what my favorite chapter in all of FE is Elincia's Gambit always comes to mind 1st.
I don't know if it's an unpopular opinion, but i really like Radiant Dawn,it's world development, characters, graphics, awesome cutscenes, great music and really fun Battles with fluid animation..... However at the end of it all, i like Path of Radiance the Best, i don't know, sometimes simpler is better, Path has that niche, smaller scope but works for me because of it's great characters that carry the story , Dawn is still one of My favorites, right after Path of Radiance and Mystery Of the Emblem and i'm very fortunate to have found these games for a more reasonable price a few years ago , since i never got to play them on release. Anyways both Tellius games are great games i would always reccomend trying.
I had a chuckle when you talked about Canto and IS learning how to balance it. No spoilers, but they need a reminder every decade or so.
Its funny, because whenever a game has Canto+ (except for FE9 i guess) they either balance the Cavs or the Fliers, but not both.
@@Apparoid1 3 houses be like:
3 houses didn't get the memo that fliers are the most busted units in the franchise.
Tbh I prefer to have them busted, as long as the game itself is still challenging, like FE10, it's so fun to have so many options to work with, image now if Armors were better, it be so tedious to play. I know people strive for variaty, and it is important, but we don't have to nerf to fun to make Archer (for example) usable
Nerf the fun*
Fucking yt doesn't let me edit
Personally , Radiant Dawn is my favorite of the series, the defenses maps were so much fun and u feel really that u fight a stronger opponent than you.
Definitely. I remember when playing it for the first time and was looking through the opposing units. It was at that point that I realized that I was royally screwed, and that surviving would be a miracle. It also does a great job at making you feel the costs of war. It conveys how senseless war can be and the connection between populist impulses fueling a war, though set up in the first place by political elites who benefit from such a bigoted populace.
Elincia's Gambit alone makes this game #1
The rajaion thing was a mistranslation on FE9's part, by the way. In the japanese of FE9 it's pretty clear he died. So it's more a case of a translation error in a previous game making things odd in FE10 than an actual writing failure.
Radiant Dawn really pushes the war aspect of the fire emblem franchise and it's the first game that actually made me FEEL like I was fighting a war. Elincia's Gambit still gets my heart racing and 3-13 is just amazing. Gameplay wise it is my absolute favorite game to play and the story while not being perfect by any means is still engaging and interesting to me and it builds on many many aspects of the PoR story. The escalation to killing a god was pretty epic and I love playing the tower cause it's such a massive undertaking. It definitely isn't friendly to new players but it's great for a veteran and so I give it a 9/10 overall but I will agree that PoR is a better game to play and it's a must play for people first getting into the Tellius series.
It really makes me FEEL like a child soldier. It is one of my favorite fire emblem games as flawed as it is.
Sadly, they removed the defense maps in the future installment, Elincia’s gambit is also my favorite map of all the series. Radiant Dawn really feel you are in a war.
@@Jfray252 defense maps still exist in Fates and 3H but yeah i wish they were more prevelant bc theyre my favorite map objective behind Escape
Well said. However, I'd say PoR is a better game to play "first" since Radiant Dawn is the sequel and new players first experiencing it's 4 part, split protagonists story might find it a little jarring at first. I love Radiant Dawn much more than PoR and even the new 3 Houses - Turbo857
The Tellius series does that perfectly. Radiant Dawn, however, had a story akin to Gyakuten Kenji 2, where it took more risks than its predecessor to try to make an epic story, both games fell flat on their faces in that regard. Radiant Dawn isn't quite as bad as GK2, though.
This game can be considered to have both the worst and best localization in the series.
The worst for reason you described like using the shortened script and mislabeled difficulty options.
The best because of gameplay differences. Those Daein National Treasures wasn't in the original game. Ed and Leo started out weaker. No auto promote to get into third tier. Several skills were chance based in addition to threshold based. In Japan, this is the only game that the fanbase considers bad not merely controversial like in the Western fanbase.
Let's not forget the story change with how BK "survived". That stuff was blood contract level BS in Japan.
@@Kuma5655 iirc, wasn't the Japanese explanation that Ike fought like a force-ghost of the BK in PoR?
Also, really surprising to hear RD is flat-out disliked in Japan. Never would have known that.
@@neog8029 RD is disliked in Japan? They have no taste
@@Level857 Japanese version was actually a lot worse then the Western version so not their fault.
Theirs also some dumb story differences, most notably with the blood pact. I the English version they go fight lekain to get rid of the blood pact, but in the Japanese version, it just goes on its own.
Funnily enough, Ike himself has zero connection to the plot but Ike's tactican Soren is actually far more relevant than Ike since he's the real prince of Daein and son that Almeidha was looking for.
whaaaat? Really? When do they mention that?
@@icarue993 I believe during the epilogue.
@@icarue993 It's mentioned on the epilogue, but you'll have to fulfill certain requirements. I think FE wiki will tell you how to do it.
You also have to have beaten the game at least oncd before
If certain requirements are fulfilled (Soren fights Micaiah in 3-7 [Rivals Collide], choosing to not *redacted* Pelleas on your second playthrough, Soren fights Pelleas in 3-Endgame [From Pain, Awakening], Soren and Pelleas survive until the end of the game), then you will see the ending where Soren is, in fact, revealed to be the true Prince of Daein.
RD is probably one of the most lopsided games in the series regarding game design and especially unit balancing but its still my favorite in the series thanks to the sheer amount of ambition behind it.
You could call it a "mess", but its a mess I could never bring myself to dislike ❤
I agree ive always loved both tellius games flaws and all also love your avatar
If it's a mess it's a beautiful mess. My second favorite all time SRPG after Shining Force 3 - Turbo857
Great job being vague
I enjoyed it knowing the fact that unit balancing is never an issue unless it's an onlin pvp game
Of course, interesting retrospective…
Eggman!
Yo Mangs, you, me, Mekkah 776, and Wolt should hit up the* hot springs and talk about how good this guys retrospectives are. After that and some booze, we can move onto another subject I had in mind... A blonde Sniper from FE7, who says she's married, but hey like Hector always says, every good goal has to get through a goalie.
You are only... wasting my time.
@@ozai7725 That's Dr. Eggman to you.
A pun that would make the Burger King proud
The Tellius games really deserve quality remakes. There's so much unrealized potential there. If we loved these flawed first attempts this much, imagine what could be done if they were given the treatment they deserve. I hope it's an idea they're strongly considering.
It could very well occur! I think HD Remaster/Ports with redone cutscenes/art/voice acting is more likely but they could do a full blown remake. I hope they do Genealogy first however just because it hasn’t been localized and has never had the chance of being in 3D Graphics.
What’s interesting tho is even tho Genealogy isn’t localized, I feel tellius is more likely
Tellius is incredible and it’s cast is INSANELY popular. Everyone loves ike. If they remade Path of Radiance and released Radiant Dawn a few years later it would create alot of suspense leading to strong sales. Very smart business move.
Just a remastered localize by 8bit fix the modes too
@@davidtargaryen3229 nah just Ike everybody is okay 👌 nothing special. Hero probably help bring them more pop though
6:05 and there's the fact that Resolve doesn't boost strength anymore!
The difficulty option snafu reminds me of a total reverse of Path of Radiance's go - path of radiance you think the game is harder than it really is (english hard = japanese normal). Here in Radiant Dawn hard suddenly becomes *maniac*. It stems from this larger problem (that YTer Chaz Aria LLC brought up) that difficulty modes in FE are never consistent in both name and content.
Shane understanding the memage of Oliver's beauty makes me so happy. You're one of us my guy
I think the reason why some skills have erroneous descriptions may be due to some skills being altered in localization. Resolve, for instance, DID require the unit be at 20% or less HP in the Japanese version, but was changed to 50% or less in western versions. Similarly, Wrath says it can only activate at 20% or less HP, which is true in the Japanese version. Western versions bumped it up to 30% or less (not too much difference, admittedly).
Radiant dawn is easily my favorite Fire emblem game. I really respect the ambition in the game, even if it fell short in some aspects it really keeps the gameplay unique and allows for a lot of replayability.
It feels like whenever I bump into someone who's played Radiant Dawn, it's usually their favorite FE game or at least in their top 3. Whenever I bump into someone who's favorite is Awakening or 3 Houses, they usually never played FE 9 or 10.
I consider FE9/FE10 one game. Ever since FE10's release, I've always played both together. It took me years to realize how to get the true ending. My only complaint was the elimination of deep supports from second half.
This is the most replayable Fire Emblem by far
Radiant Dawn is my favorite from a pure gameplay perspective, but it's also it's own thing to me.
I don't get a hankering to play some Fire Emblem, then play RD.
This game has some of the biggest hype scenes in the entire franchise. Ike rescuing Lucia, Sanaki rescuing Zelgius, the part 3 endgame… so, so, so good.
It’s a mess of a game, but I love it for it. I had watched let’s plays of it and I knew I was going to love it once I tried it out and so it happened. Had to wait for years till I got a good enough laptop but it was worth it.
Something else you forgot to mention on why mounted units are no longer inherently OP is that they have substantially worse stat caps than infantry units and stat caps actually matter in Radiant Dawn, especially on Hard/Maniac difficulty (e.g. Oscar has a good Speed base and growth, but his second tier Speed cap will prevent him from doubling much in later Part 3 without an early promotion, making his offense underwhelming, and this third tier speed cap gives him more doubling issues in the endgame). This is also another reason why Haar and Jill are so broken, as unlike other mounted units they don't have lower stat caps to compensate for their massive mobility advantage and in fact have some of the best stat caps of all classes (e.g. Haar in his third tier has the highest Defense cap and second highest Strength cap of any beorc class, even exceeding the Marshalls while having none of their disadvantages, and Jill's Speed cap is only one point lower than a Seraph Knight while having much better Strength and durability).
oooohh, explains why my tower of guidance team consisted of haar, jill, and other infantry units + kieran(because his strength stat is actually useable against the final bosses compared to other cavalry units)
I remeber when i played 3-6 with literally only micaiah sothe laura nolan and jill everyone else in the dawn brigade died ori didnt train and were flat out useless and my goodness when the BK showed up i was so grateful
Radiant Dawn would have been so tight if support conversations mattered.
Agreed. My largest gripe is that characters, especially new ones, don't get much further characterization, unless they are the focus of the story. It primarily builds upon Path's excellent character writing.
Supports are the only major flaw i have with this game. Its still my favorit tho
I mean at the very least base conversations fill that void a bit.
At the same time, it’s the best game to have non existent convos seeing as it’s a direct sequel to the game with amazing character development.
Actually, unused files suggest that traditional support conversations were originally supposed to be implemented into the game. Whether they were scrapped in favor of the gameplay aspect of them (with free switching and a single partner etc.) or due to time constraints due to the size of the cast, I do not know.
I really like base conversations for fleshing out characters in a way that corresponds with the plot, but they really needed to use them more heavily if they were going to replace supports. I don't know anything about Fiona, and I've beat this game many times.
I'd say one of the most memorable parts for me was in FE10 during a base convo between Rolf and Shinnon. By that point both armies are extremely worn down. Shinnon, who is usually cold and edgy pretty much breaks down in front of Rolf, saying he's not sure how much longer he'll be around to protect Rolf, and that while he might not be a good father figure, he can at the very least make sure that Rolf has the most powerful bow. Even tough its true that the end of part 3 doesn't advance too much in regard to story, it excels in regards to character development and the theme of how terrible war can be.
The healers using their staves to atack was awful and good at the same time like laguz giving punches and kicks.
It was incredibly necessary, so Mist could put her bizarrely good Strength to use.
Smol staff girl is swole af
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 She's also Greil's child, heck imagine Mist as a War Cleric.
Also fun fact, she can wield Alondite.
With how you explained it, Michaih's story could have been its own game.
I have another idea. Mini campaigns like Part 1 as DLC for other games.
Micaiah deserve better
@@d_d1721 the dawn brigade deserved better
@@thebravegallade731 Aside from Micaiah, Sothe and maybe Nolan, they are very forgettable.
Especially compared to the Greill Mercenaries.
Imagine if the blood pact didn't exist, then micaiah would've gotten less hate than she had.
I always saw the disparity of strength of the DB vs the GM similar to their strength lore wise. The GM are war veterans while the DB is literally young people off the street so it makes sense that the DB would be much weaker than the GM. I know from a gameplay perspective im sure it wasnt the most fun but i kinda saw it as making the player feel as the characters did.
This is even more understandable given that its eventually learned that the Senate pretty much manipulated the DB, whereas the GM had to claw their way up to power. It's another one of the nested dichotomies between order and chaos.
Thought the same honestly. Never had a problem with it either, given how the only unviable units were Fiona and Meg (Leonardo on hardest difficulty)
Randomly came across this video while I was supposed to be doing university work and thought it was at least a year old, but it's only a DAY old?? What a nice treat during quarantine. PoR and RD are my favorite FE games, so I'll definitely have to come back and watch this when I get the time!
Regarding Part 2, I can't help but wonder if the structure wouldn't have worked better if they'd done something more akin to FE7 or FE8 with Hector's Story or the Eirika/Ephraim split, giving players a choice whether they wanted to stay with the Dawn Brigade and Daein's post-war development, go over to Gallia for the buildup to the war (maybe fleshing out Lyre and Kyza at all and having the party looking for the Greil Mercenaries), or check in on Crimea to make fan favourites like Elincia and Nephenee available in a 2nd playthrough. Obviously this would have resulted in them having to design up to 10 more chapters' worth of maps and story, but it might have helped the pacing and power creep issues.
Honestly radiant dawn as you pretty much stated is just kinda flawed and filled with a lot of pointless scenes honestly one of the biggest reasons why i would love to see the story trimmed of that fat and then give attention where its needed and overall reimagined in a sense as a much stronger narrative with better character development (ive seen a few of these, the small informal rewrite Mangs does at the end of his first RD lp comes to mind) Nonetheless i love this game as much as anyone else but man but i do recognize a lot of its flaws it was a very ambitious game and while they did fall a bit short i do appreciate the game for trying. Great retrospective i love watching and hearing your thoughts one each of the games in the series
The game could have benefited from having 3 paths TBH
Back when I played this game in 2009, I didn't build my strategy around Haar, Haar WAS my strategy
Haaaar, this game is being a meanie, they took my good units, heeeeeeelp
There's even a legit explanation why Haar is such a monster in RD, he hates the senators from Begnion, in short he's motivated.
I actually think that they added part 2 into the game because Radiant Dawn is trying to tell the story of the entire continent falling into war and breaking their covenant with Ashera, which is what leads to part 4 which is obviously beorc and laguz finally learning to unite and defeat an unjust God. Michiah may be the main character of the game and I agree with that, but Radiant Dawn is the story of Tellius, and part 2 helps to show you that the entire continent has fallen into conflict and war, not just the battles between the Laguz alliance and Begnion. I think it adds more weight to what Ashera does, because she isn't just intervening in one war, she is attempting (from her own viewpoint) to put an end to all conflict, and even Crimea is a part of that.
I LOVE this game, horrible balancing and all. If we ever get a remake though, I think an awesome extra feature would be the ultimate defend map. When your endgame teams ascends the tower, everyone else stays outside to fend off Ashera’s soldiers. It would be so awesome to me if there was like an unlock able extra where it takes all the characters from that save and lets you use all those units in one giant defend clusterfuck. Goddamn I’ve been having dreams about how awesome that would be!
The problem os you would have to top Elincia's Gambit
I feel I gotta mention this but on the Playlist theres a huge number of the same Radiant Dawn retrospectives & 2 PoR retrospectives , you've might of clicked the button a few too many times.
Thanks, I don't know how that happened. I am guessing it was a RUclips Studio bug, because I can't imagine how the RD video got on there so many times. In any case, it's fixed now. Thanks so much for pointing that out!
Balancing is always a difficult conversation to have with fire emblem. Sure, on one hand the Laguz Royals are insanely powerful units that are just handed to you, but on the other hard, there's nothing stopping you from just not using them. It'll certainly be hard, but difficulty here is a choice the player makes about their own experience.
I think the best solution would have been that rather than nerfing the Royals, in the Tower you get a pick of one of the Royals to bring with you, just like how you only get to bring one Heron and how they handled the Royal pick at the end of POR, with the excuse that the power of the Royals are needed to fend off Ashera's army on the outside.
Can't wait for this vid. What a pleasant surprise on my birthday of all days
Happy Birthday!
@@partyharry7585 thanks man
I adore this game despite its flaws
radiant dawn is the easiest game in the franchise once you realize that double earth A supports are functionally invincible and you can use BEXP to cap anyone's skills
Also Glare allows you to make the Dawn Brigade absolutely deadly in Part 1
If we get the rumored Tellius remake I REALLY hope they can rebalance the laguz to be viable without being a royal.
Edit: Without being the 3DS stones.
No matter how much time passes, I still can't help but feel warm and fuzzy whenever I come to revisit Tellius. Be it playing the games myself or watching videos about it. I greatly enjoyed your retrospective videos on PoR and RD, thank you for making them^^ Was very fun to revisit those dear memories :3
28:50 you mean the legendary hammer that clashed with the alondite, right?
Put my thoughts right back into my own mouth. I enjoy the game a lot but it's undeniable there are some weird choices (unit avaliability and supports are the big ones) that makes it harder for me to truly love the game. Still, Radiant Dawn still earns a lot of respect from me for willing to try radically different ideas.
And the fact that Shadow Dragon is the next entry is going to make the transition from RD extremely unusual.
Funny thing is that you can deffect your units from your current armie to other. Namely Zihark who is on of the good units of dawn brigade. And he has 3 difrent opporunities to do so. In fact it is necessary for him to do so early to have positive epilog/ending. So its either help dawn brigade and morally and spiritually kill Zihark or make it harder for dawn brigade and save Ziharks soul and give him happy epiloge.
It's kinda stupid that they didn't implement scale levelling for the Dawn Brigade, considering that puts players at a disadvantage when going back to them but maybe they chose not to do that to give players more of a challenge.
My very first Fire Emblem experience was Path of Radiance. I was 15 when it came out. Totally became my favourite Gamecube game for a very long time. Started with Radiant Dawn much later as an adult and I was not disappointed. Its first few chapter were definitely harder than Path of Radiance, but I was by that time a more seasoned FE gamer and had beaten hard mode a few times on PoR. What really wowed me is the sheer amount of chapters there was in RD compared to PoR and after Part 3 was over, I was sighing with awe with the immensity of the storyline. Many mysteries finally solved in the sequel, and many intense battles.
Which one of the two is my favourite? I can't really say, to be honest. PoR had the best storytelling and pacing. But RD had incredibly better gameplay mechanics, twice the amount of units, about fifteen more chapters, better graphics, and it had an incredible climax. PoR win the round for storytelling and relaxing pacing. But RD wins for the sheer quantity of contents.
All in all, I think both games represents one single game, with all loose ends dealt with, and I believe the Tellius Series need a remake with both stories within. Now, if Nintendo were ever to do thus, I would buy it in a heartbeat.
The way you talked about the whole story is basically the same problems i've been struggling with, the Elincia part felt like filler and the new characters have no character. The first part felt great, but the Dawn Brigade needed a whole game honestly.
Also yeah, the Blood Pact is so dumb
Path of Radiance was my first FE game and Radiant Dawn is currently my most recently played entry
Tellius is my favourite
(Nephenee is my MVP)
I still have both of my copies of the tellius games. I'm so happy I kept them.
Hey man thank you for convincing me to try FE 9-10 :)
I don't know why but I never felt particularly interested in those titles
They're really fun, especially first play through. My opinion, path of radiance isgreat, the plot is nice and it has cool characters, but I think it'seven easier than fe8. Fe10 has refreshing difficulty, but only unlocks after first playthrough. The second half of radiant dawn is pretty boring since the maps have tons of units and your own units like Haar, Jill, and Ike are completely broken.
Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn are the best in the series imo. The 2nd half of Radiant Dawn is where the story pick ups and battles get better. Don't entertain opinions that say otherwise - Turbo857
Perhaps my favourite FE, but it's very divisive. Interested to see what you think of its unique structure.
Fingoloid I liked how PoR played out but this ones story got a little over the top near the end. Killing a god? Really?
Goofy Gaff The only problem I have with Ashera is that she wasn’t really part of the cast of villains, as in the first time Ike met Ashera was before endgame.
Partyharry yeah thats hat u was pointing at it’s just there was no connection or character build up to the final boss like there was for Ashnard
THANK YOU for pointing out that your attachment to the stories and characters mainly stems from your memories of Path of Radiance.
When people say they prefer the Radiant Dawn, our debates center around the fact that they like the characters better in Dawn, and I tell them that is ONLY because of their attachment built from Path. Path built a better character driven story. Radiant Dawn's story is great, but it has to be acknowledged that most of people's attachment to it stems from Path of Radiance. NOT ALL, but a lot of it.
Radiant Dawn may have a better plot story (not my take, but I will concede to opinion), but Path of Radiance has a better handling of making you care about the story through its characters.
I always tell people that my favorite FE games are "The Tellius games", rather than pin down one of them. Gameplay wise, I certainly prefer RD, but you're absolutely correct that the character building is mainly centered in PoR.
Agreed since, I find it impossible to recommend playing RD first because its an imcomplete story that way.
Yeah, him pointing that out made me wonder how much I'd like the cast if I played RD first or if RD was self contained entirely.
Plenty of characters still have fantastic dialogue or interactions like Oscar and his brothers in part 3 or Haar against literally any boss but its much more scattered than in PoR. I guess its bound to happen to a degree with a cast size that huge but the game could've used more time in the oven for at least some support conversations.
Looking at RD characters that appeared in PoR in a vacuum is not really fair. RD is a direct sequel that deliberately uses PoR as a basis to build a narrative with a larger scale. Introducing all the characters again would waste a lot of screen time, and just continuing where they left off in the last game is justified.
It is a valid criticism that many of the characters see little to no further development in RD (which might be exactly what you meant, in which case my bad.)
I love this game and I think your retrospective series is one of my favorite series on RUclips, I watch the videos constantly. My biggest problem with this game is how the challenge it takes to get a bunch of the in depth story content like Ike and Soren's backstory on how they met.
This game is one of my two favorites in the series, but it’s absolutely relies on the player having already played path of radiance. I honestly can’t imagine how terrible the story and characters would be for someone who hasn’t played the previous game. It must appear a convoluted mess.
Also the blood pact really isn’t *that* bad of an idea, I just wish they explained it more and gave it some history so it didn’t just seem like a plot device.
Maybe they could have had the Blood pact appear in PoR? The ravens were bound to one so maybe they could of had it foreshadowed then.
Surprisingly, for me, I never played or experienced the story of Path of Radiance, yet I absolutely loved Radiant Dawn when I first experienced it like 10 years ago. It was so cool to see a bunch of people following up on a war (that I didn't know much about) and seeing the repercussions of it. In fact, for a while, I didn't even care to learn about the events in Path of Radiance because I didn't believe that they would live up to the hints of the events in Radiant Dawn. Still can't excuse the blood pact, but I also am not offended by it as it provides some interesting situations (despite getting there due to a lazy plot device).
@@blastmako05 They actually did mention the Blood Pact in Path of Radiance but it was just in the Japanese version. They took it out in the English version and change some of Black Knight's dialogue to make him more like an evil villain. Hence the difference between Radiant Dawn Black Knight and Path of Radiance Black Knight
@@jamesphillabaum1970 I'm curious where it was mentioned in Japanese version of PoR.
RD actualy made me a fan of FE and of PoR. I've played very little of PoR in 2005 when it came out and i didn't really like it cause I found it to be sploopy. 2007 I got a copy of RD to try it and fell for it. Even though I couldn't understand some of the plot revolving around PoR the game between misson does provide a decent resume to explain what is going on and what caused it in the past. I have loved this game so much that 2-3 years later I got a copy of PoR and decided to try it again and this time I loved it thx to RD!!
I wish IS would make a remake of these 2.
Path of Radiance is my favorite game in the series, I wish I could say the same for Radiant Dawn. Path of Radiance had an incredible mix of everything I love in Fire Emblem, while I thought that Radiant Dawn soiled it.
Amazing video and work, congratulations
59:00 I feel like a long streak of interesting decisions led to Meg being in that situation, in that armor. You must have had a lot of fun on your second playthrough.
Soren being the rightful heir to the throne of Goldoa and Daein is my favorite thing about this.
I think it's a testament to how good the premise was that the game was still enjoyable in spite of nearly every aspect of development going wrong and being botched.
EDIT: 58:46 That's F'in amazing.
The thing is Radiant Dawn is a sequel through and through. Due to this, I don't hold Ike's character arc against him because that story was already told, if anything his inclusion lowers the quality of the story.
On the blood pact, the English is actually much better than the Japanese. In the original Japanese the blood pact, essentially, just stops working for no reason.
Tellius may be next to get remakes. Either this or Jugdral. The cast is EXTREMELY popular. People love Ike. Releasing a Remake of Path of Radiance would sell well with the right advertisment and would build suspense for a Radiant Dawn remake a few years later. I do agree tho that Genealogy deserves it the most. And seeing how much influence it had when making 3H, they’re probably looking at it for the next remake.
RIP ledge mechanic. We miss you so.
I pray every day these games are remade
God is busy doing things that actually matter
@@rosema7909 oh yea like letting cancer run free and causing floods, this is a fire emblem video don't fucking preach here
You brought up praying. Calm down Karen .lol look how mad you are! Lol
@@rosema7909 yea over a year ago if you don't like fire emblem why you on one of they videos
I really like the idea of controlling two armies clashing, and seeing both grow and expand, even if it didn't quite work in Radiant Dawn. I really hope this concept is explored once again in a future Fire Emblem.
Part 2 was my favourite part of the game and I hadn't even played path of radiance. Also the final battle elincia's gambit was amazing
I will never forget getting blown out of the water by "normal" difficulty on the day this game was released. Got my ass kicked over and over with the Dawn Brigade and had the time of my life.
Same, this was my second FE game after sacred stones. To this day I remember struggling with Elencia’s gambit over and over. Still one of my favs.
The thing about Rajaion is that in the Japanese version of Path of Radicance, it's clear that he dies in the end... while in the english's version it doesn't confirm it. So it's normal for people to get surprised to know that he is dead in Radiant Dawn.
I never liked it when games does the whole "we take away your unit, but their level remains what it was since last you saw them when you get them back" thing that many games do. The best thing you can do in a system like this is to make the XP be modified by the level difference between the player characters and the enemies. Which is what I think they do in later entries in the series.
That way you make grinding have diminishing return, because at a certain point there's very little ot be gained from grinding. And you have a catch-up mechanic for units who start off weak due to reasons. One of my main draws to Fire Emblem is the whole "you can use whatever characters you like, and have fun." IT seems Radiant Dawn sort of don't do that...
Genealogy and Radiant Dawn are the absolute peaks of fire emblem. They have huge downs, but I care little for the incredible heights those games reach.
I’m sorry but as much as people love the Tellius games I can’t help but really dislike the plot of Radiant dawn. The goddess stuff is cool, but I can’t help but feel like most of the war is just contrivances for the sake of having the two sides fight a war when neither really wants to.
I never knew there were 2 scripts and English has the simplified.
I am so excited for this, I didn't realize these critiques were uploaded as a season and this is in my top 3 FEs. Along with Conquest and Thracia, I loved how it always felt like a harsh but fair uphill battle, overcoming huge odds
This was my favorite FE game until Three Houses which I think is the best one. However FE 10 was my favorite until I had played through all routes of 3H. I needed all 5 routes to declare it a favorite over this one.
Then I would say, Radiant Dawn is really the better game. Don't get me wrong, Three Houses is excellent (my 2nd favorite FE, tied with Path of Radiance). However, you had to play 3 Houses almost 4 times as much as Radiant Dawn to feel like it was a better game. If 3 Houses has to stand on only its single best path playthrough it can't beat Radiant Dawn - Turbo857
As an alternative to the blood contract, why not have Izuka unleash some Feral Ones on Daein and then have the senate tell Pelleas this was a deliberate attack on Daein, that would rile up the citizens and force Pelleas (who is shown to be a weak king in general) to declare war on them lest the citizen revolt over him doing nothing. To add to that part of the persuasion could include the rebellion in Crimea that was caused by them being afraid of and hating Daein for the Mad King's war (give more meaning to part 2 since the antagonists would bring up their anger at Daein being reconstructed with the apparent son of the Mad King on the throne) especially since that means Pelleas is in the same position that if he doesn't answer his citizen's anger at their old enemies "coming for them" he might have his own rebellion of the same kind on his hand, and that Gallia's "sub Humans" clearly want to see Daein fall as well due to Daein's racism towards the Laguz. Instead of forcing him with the blood contract instead it would be the citizens of Daein demanding something be done and Pelleas being pressured by the senate and his people's cries for him to do something that forces him into the war.
Not sure if Naesala should be blood contract bound or not but one other option is that we can use Izuka again, he is sent to Phoenicius to attack them and uses his feral one forumla to get more Hawks and even unleash some Ravens on them (as a summoner and he has the Rewarp staff which is shown to be able to warp between countries). Tibarn is bloodthirsty and charges ahead but Naesala has some feeling that something is wrong and flies home, he sees the feral hawks attacking their own kind and acts fast, killing them and the feral ravens. Janaff and Ulki see and hear this, go to check, see Naseala with all the dead hawks there and, still harboring distrust and full of bloodlust from the war, assume the worst forcing the Raven King to flee. Only when the world is turned to stone and everyone's rage has settled is Naesala given time to explain himself and how it tore him up to see his bird breathren reduced to a feral state, Tibarn forgives him and admits he would have done the same thing to put his feral brothers out of their misery.
Using Izuka a lot here but honestly he could stand to be used more to make this work. As for how Ashnard killed the Daein royal family, he could just have the "old hermit mage" engineer a plague that only ends with the death of the caster or the king.
what do you think of that?
Meg is in the game, 10/10.
The Tellius games still have the best atmosphere and artstyle out of all Fire Emblem games.
Hearing that this is considered one of the hardest FE games makes me feel good considering I beat it when I was like 10 and don't recall having many issues with it. Granted I had already beaten Shadow Dragon and Sacred Stones.
Sure you did jr
The 3-13 archer art is amazing
FE: Tellius Saga Definitive Edition, please Nintendo make it happen. How HUGEEE would it be? i can only dream about it!!...
70+ chapters? A man can dream.
I meannnnn its not impossible. It is Path pf Radiance’s 15th anniversary this year and an HD Collection with Redone Cutscenes/Voice Acting/Character Art wouldn’t be the most difficult task. However I feel if they are to touch Tellius, full blown remakes are more likely. Considering Ike’s Popularity releasing a PoR remake would sell well with right advertisement and would build great suspense for a RD Remake a few years later. As much as I’d rather have Tellius, Genealogy deserves it more.
Thank you for including the FE7 commercial, i laughed quite a bit
Hahaha yup Haar was my number one too in my first playthrough. I believe Nephenee was up there in the top 5 too
Radiant Dawn is...strange. Does so much right _and_ makes so many missteps simultaneously. The varied map designs, use of elevation, third tier promotions, and some of the best combat animations we've seen in 3D so far (rivaled only by Shadows of Valentia) have made it one of my favorites in the franchise...and yet, the points you make about the inconsistent story and lack of depth to its characters are legitimate flaws.
You know, the Tellius games really could benefit from a remake...if it was even _possible_ to remake both at once. Path of Radiance would get the aesthetic touch ups and pace of play improvements it desperately needs, while Radiant Dawn could get its story and characters fleshed out better (and ideally with the support system of most modern titles added in for real this time). And, y'know, it'd allow so many fans who got into Fire Emblem recently to actually be able to experience the games with how rare they are nowadays.
Nintendo might not even have to worry about it not selling all that well the way past FE remakes have! Not only does the series have a bigger fanbase now than ever, even casual players would recognize Ike!
Radiant Dawn's character development is fine. It's a direct sequel to Path of Radiance so if you played that game.... you know the character relationships. Sothe and Michiah's relationship is fleshed out, Sephiran and the Black Knight, fleshed out, Ashera and Yune. I don't get the character development criticisms aimed at this game at all - Turbo857
@@Level857 yeah agree but maybe more support conversations to flesh out the other characters as well would be a very nice addition. Otherwise, yeah the main characters overall had been decently fleshed out.
Beyond being difficult to raise, the Dawn Brigade just kind of... suck
Put them in comparison to other early game units in other fire emblem games and they pretty much all come up short. With her pathetic speed and defense Micaiah is easily in the running for the weakest lord, with Sothe's garbage strength puts him in the running for the weakest Jeigan, Meg is somehow a worse armor knight than even Gwen, and Fiona manages to make the entire class of cavalier somehow look underpowered. When you're given control of other units, it's more of a relief that you don't have to use the Dawn Brigade than anything else.
Agree. They.All.Sucks lol except for Nolan and Edward and even then you have to grind alot to make them viable lol
I’ve done all dawn brigade in the tower runs and if you’re willing to invest, Edward, Nolan, and Aran can all become the best of their class IMO. Much easier to do on normal than hard mode though. It’s not too bad if you swap around Paragon strategically. You’re right that Meg and Fiona are irredeemably bad though lmao
I hope they do special battle music for certain units in future titles. The Laguz Royals + Oliver felt so much cooler because of their music.
Is it the dawn brigade
No, it was just a retrospective.
I do agree that the blood pact thing was basically an excuse to make the groups all fight each other, but I respectfully disagree that the storyline is majorly flawed as you state. The whole point of the goddess being on the verge of purging the planet was based around mankind’s inability to hold peace for very long, even when the rulers are just and fair, as Eincia was. Part 2 basically showed the true depravity of the Crimean people, which Ike and his team fought so hard for in Path of Rad. Plus there were a lot of characters in POR that would have had no introduction for part 4 if part 2 didn’t exist. I mean, the bottom line is if the game was too short then people would complain due to the lack of content and Eincia. But since the game has too much content that’s now a drastic negative?
Where is this cute little convo with Lehran and Ashunenra cuz I have not seen this
This is my second favorite fire emblem game behind thracia. I think this game has some of the best maps in the series and I love the fire emblems with huge casts like this one. I also think the support system gets a bad reputation. It is awful for character development but it is in my opinion the best support system purely from a gameplay perspective. Also when talking about how the games in the series gives you prepromotes that are extremely powerful you have to remember that the games up until more recent entries are designed around permadeath and they need to give you good units so you can win if you have a lot of casualties. This justifies the laguz royals specifically in this game because if a lot of the units you trained up died near the end you wouldn’t be able to beat bosses like Deghinsia without that extra muscle.
The support system is pretty awesome actually. Yeah, the personalized conversations may have been tossed out somewhat but the benefits you get are significant for strategy. Having a good support with Nolan and Aran really helps a lot especially on Chapter 3-6.
The support system is actualy incredible aka Ike/Soren A support for a juicy +30 Avoid to both (or isit 20 can't remember??). When I cleared my second game by attempting to unlock the hidden secret's (Lehran's past, Soren's background, Pellas etc.) I had to used Ulki and Janaff to sneaky drop Ike and Soren at the bottom of Part 3 episode 7 where you need to survive for 10 round in a swamp map OR kill the ennemy general which is Micaiah....who's having the BK as her main bodyguard lol. To unlock the secret's Ike need to confront the BK and not die before the end of the map and Ike doesn't have Ragnell nor is promotted at this point meaning he's underwhelm compared to the BK who could 2 shot him. I only succeeded because i've placed Ike on a strategic position in a busket providing 10% avoid with Soren not far for the support and Ike was blocking any ennemy from getting out of their little isle. I ONLY SURVIVED THE SECOND HIT OF THE BK BECAUSE OF SOREN'S SUPPORT LOL AND EVEN WITH SOREN'S SUPPORT AND THE BUSKET HE HAD 40% TO HIT ME...TWICE LOL.
Haar is more broken than Seth, but he's in a harder game so he can't just run through everything senselessly. Anyways, both Radiant Dawn and Sacred Stones are my favorite Fire Emblems, and by far the most replayable ones.
Radiant Dawn was my first Fire Emblem game, in Normal difficulty. It's a longshot but I want a Radiant Dawn remake, or at least bring the ledge mechanic back. One of the better features of FE.
I'm glad that they found something for unmounted units to do, which mounted units cannot. But "realistically" riding a WYVERN would be a tremendous upper hand.
My favorite game of all time.
Best FE's level design (with FE5 in an other way), the epic of war feel is incredible.
I love the fact that we play multiple armies too.
RD still need PoR for the world building and chara-dev.
With all of that it's for me the best Fire Emblem game even more than FE4 and FE9
Honestly, the biggest issue with the blood pacts for me is how unnecessary they are. Let's take a look at Pelleas, for example. It's not out of character for Izuka to exploit his sense of gratitude and psychologically manipulate him to help out Begnion. Same with Naesala, it's completely in character for him to backstab his allies for some petty gains, he's basically Travant but bord. This shit writes itself, seriously.
Let's not forget how Burger King's survival was explained in the original Japanese version. If you haven't seen it, look it up. I got a hearty laugh out of that
I dont think someones gonna read this but whatever, i still want to write it bc i really like this game, it had so much potential.
I remember that my expectations for the story prior to playing the game were kinda high. The idea of understanding a conflict from the perspective of both armies is one that has amazing potential. Also, before playing the entire game months ago, i had played like 4 chapters some years ago, and the idea of the oppression that Daein suffers after being conquered that they show in the early chapters of part 1 was also interesting. (Theres even good takes on these themes today, as you can see in the ultra popular anime Shingeki no kyojin).
The thing is that Radiant Dawn (and may as well say Fire emblem in general) seems to suffer from 2 problems that are kind of related.
One is that the game seems to like to talk about politics and stuff, but it's so afraid of showing these kinds of countries interactions in a deep way. Most of the time all that Radiant dawn does is saying "oh these guys are good oh these guys are bad". As i said before, the idea of how Daein is getting oppressed by the army of Begnion is really interesting, because this can show postwar grudge, violence towards the country that once menaced yours, etc. Its a complex phenomenon that has potential to talk about so many things related to war, but here all that really happens is "oh its not that Begnion is being 'bad', it's just that the senators the senators the senators". Instead of telling the story of how a country can have his reasons to be afraid, hold grudge and hatred towards another country for the atrocities that they made, all we have is a "Oh no no, what do u mean Daein is being oppressed, thats unacceptable, I, empress of Begnion, cant believe that, is not something we decided, is just evil people, the senators are bad oh no".
It really saddens me how wasted of an idea this is. You can compare this to how Shingeki shows an oppressed nation in Eldia. Eldians are hated because of the crimes they committed in the war of the past, and the people is afraid of their powers, so most of them live oppressed and controlled by Marley, another country, while the rest of the Eldians still fight against Marley. Here you understand the reasons why Eldians are oppressed. You see the efforts of the Marleyans, how they just want to protect their country, how they have been educated in a one sided version of history to hate the Eldians even more. You even end up liking the Marleyan characters, you see how they are just trying to protect their families. You see that they are just humans trapped in a complex conflict. The point is not to justify such an atrocious act, but to understand it, to see how war can cause this, and how sometimes the innocent people end up paying the price. We could finally have a FE game that shows how this "bad guys" that are abusing us actually came to feel and act like that.
The other problem comes from how a Fire Emblem game works. I remembered this problem when Shane talked about the typical fire emblem idea of growing your units and building a cohesive team. Sadly for the Radiant Dawn plot, RD is a Fire emblem game, so it seems like the story cant do whatever it wants with its characters.
You can see this in little things, like how Lucia just cant die in that scene at the end of part 2, even if her death was the most realistic thing to happen, and even if her death could be a really good way of showing consequences, and it could make Elincia start a new arc where she has to work on accepting her death, where she questions her actions. But this a Fire emblem game, and maybe theres people that like Lucia, maybe theres people that have trained Lucia a lot in the chapters she appears, u just cant kill her :(
And you can also see this problem in big points of the plot, like when Galia/Ike fights the Dawn Brigade. In a normal story, this idea is interesting because you get to know both sides of the conflict, you get to like or understand both armies, but you know that war is inevitable (at the very least up to a certain point, i dont mean that a fkin ton of characters need to die or something, the final message doesnt need to be a pessimist one). But in RD, you know that this a FE game, u have ur grown units in both armies, so when they fight theres 0 stakes in play, no one is gonna die in the story, because oh no, you just cant kill the units the player is growing so hard.
(Also, i know you can argue that FE already integrates this kind of character deaths when u lose a unit in a chapter bc of your mistakes or whatever, but everyone just resets so its a strange topic. The fact is that you can -and most people do- experience the story as if no one dies).
Not to mention that RD is again afraid of defining good and real motivations for a conflict, because you cant have a real war between Daein and Galia/Ike, you cant define realistic political reasons for a country like Daein, that wants to be free, but once menaced the whole continent to go to war. Nope, u just cant have that, instead we get the fkin blood pact to create a weak, forced conflict. So sad.
I think this last issue also happens bc of the way RD (or FE) writes the characters that you use, everyone has to be "good" or likeable. They want you to like Sanaki, so ofc she is against the abuse of Daein ppl. They want you to like Naesala, so ofc theres his stupid blood pact.
Theres probably more to say about this things but honestly i cba right now. If someone reads this, sorry for my shit way of writing, english is not my first language.
They had to find a way to get two “good guys” to fight each other, otherwise the marketed protagonists (dawn brigade) become the bad guys. The blood contract was definitely lazy though
@@Spiresbeyond Yeah i understand why they write all the characters that you use as "good guys", but honestly thats such a boring and simple way to define a story... And its not like i hate almost all FE games bc of that or smth, that rant was just bc i like this game and its potential.
The over-reliance on OP characters just to break even in terms of difficulty while trashing all of the characters you tried to train up (while dealing with the whiplash of having the perspective and roster you can play as constantly changing) except for Jill and Haar definitely soured my enjoyment of the game. I was already burned out by the end of Part 3 (the final battle 3-Endgame was awesome, though) and the massive filler battles leading up to the Tower of Guidance officially killed my desire to finish playing. I still haven't beaten Radiant Dawn to this day.
If it wasnt tor Xenoblade id be playing this for the first time. Truly enjoyed Path of Radiance as my second favourite.
But 2 games left to modern era already? Its gone by so fast...
Radiant Dawn is hard asf lol. Every part one character except the jeigens can get RNG screwed and on top of that the jeigans epitomize the characteristic where they fall off insanely hard. Sadly due to unit availability the difficulty of RD is contingent upon a few part three dawn brigade chapters. This is even worse for new players because alot of guides say Nolan is the best dawn brigade unit so new players ignore Jill, Zihark and Edward. I don't recommend always using Edward but on a hard play through it would be a boon for players to recognize benificial RNG when leveling Edward. If edward gets godlike RNG plus hard mode bonuses he can easily cap dex str and sp, and can abuse base exp like no other! If edward is capping speed, dexterity, and strength super early chances are hes gonna get a ton of def from Bexp levels making the Laguz chapters in part 3 cake. Jill is also good but has wayyyyy less combat prowess so much harder to be used by new players. Personally i give Jill stat ups and leave Bexp up to the RNG. Another thing new players fail to do is pick up on is properly utilizing Beast Bane items. Getting caught mowing down laguz on enemy phase is always a death sentence in this game. RD has so many moments where im wishing my unit doesnt kill so that it can create a dead space.
"If edward gets godlike RNG plus hard mode bonuses"
Your overall point is correct that people should take advantage of good RNG with early levelups if they get it with Edward, but I want to point out that no hard mode bonuses exist in RD. Also Edward still won't be that great for Part 3 on Hard even if you got a "Godward", because he still has his low Defense and HP caps meaning he'll still likely get two-shotted by Tigers, or at best three-shotted, while not achieving reliable dodge rates against them, and his propensity for getting crits can get him killed by exposing him to more enemies than you intended on Enemy Phase. Still if you get lucky with him in early levelups he'll definitely be a helpful unit in later Part 1 and not always merit in early benching.
And Jill's combat is fine if she gets the Energy Drop + axe forge and will become great with investment, but newer players probably don't save the Drop for her and use it for Edward or Nolan instead.
This was my first FE game. I never owned a wii but I had a friend that did and we played through this over a weekend. I wouldn't actually play another FE game until like 5 years later when I bought FE7 and a GBA SP in college and I've been hooked ever since!
I really was hoping that hatari would be a full nation that also fight in this game more than just naila and his servent. Even npc or something it's not even on the tellius map.
ShaneBrained: I hope you're ready for a long one
Me, having just finished the Fates retrospective: but it's just an hour?
After going back and watching every video of this series, I have to say:
This Retrospectiove Series is some High Quality Stuff.
Radiant Dawn was my very First Fire Emblem and to this day is my favourite out of the bunch.
It was really interesting listening to someone Expierencing this Series completly Blind.
I am already looking forward to the Awakening, and Three Houses Retrospective.
I’d love to see you do a similar type video for golden sun series
I've been playing the series for several years now, playing all the titles and replaying favorite entries many times over. Radiant Dawn is to me the most epic in scale and perspective switching between armies really fleshes out the scope. If you asked me what my favorite chapter in all of FE is Elincia's Gambit always comes to mind 1st.
3:10 the xbox actually sold just as poorly
I don't know if it's an unpopular opinion, but i really like Radiant Dawn,it's world development, characters, graphics, awesome cutscenes, great music and really fun Battles with fluid animation..... However at the end of it all, i like Path of Radiance the Best, i don't know, sometimes simpler is better, Path has that niche, smaller scope but works for me because of it's great characters that carry the story , Dawn is still one of My favorites, right after Path of Radiance and Mystery Of the Emblem and i'm very fortunate to have found these games for a more reasonable price a few years ago , since i never got to play them on release. Anyways both Tellius games are great games i would always reccomend trying.
Never thought I'd see the day someone would talk about the game's story and barely mention the Blood Pact. This was excellent.
It gets too much attention. It's lame, but it doesn't overshadow much
Agree
@@GamesBrained agree