Fire Emblem is one of the most traditional Nintendo series, but it only begun to have the desired atention on last generation. While the series draws back to the Nintendo 8 Bits, just like Advance Wars (Famicom Wars by then), it was restrict to Japan, with a smaller public.

Since the GameBoy Advance, and later the GameCube, the series begun to have its wonderful games released here, with a higher chance of conquering new players. This realization had its highest point with Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, that now generates a sequel, Radian Dawn.

You can play Radiant Dawn without playing the first game, nothing feel senseless, but you’ll lose huge references to the previous story. Considering Wii’s retrocompatibility, there’s no reason to not play Path of Radiance before.

Different from the previous version, Radian Dawn shows several arcs from the same story, with different points of view and even different wars. Crimea and Daein are still being rebuild from their war, leaving way too much space to the dirty politics that are a trademark on the franchise.

There are new characters, but the biggest part are returning GameCube characters, including Ike, now older, with its mercenary group. Ike is no longer the main character, because there’s not really a main character this time, your group is always changing, sometimes too much, changing the story and leaving you kinda lost.

This does hurt the game, cause you can never know which characters you can count on, able to waste time and effort on a character that might not be with you on the next battle. The higher dificult level doesn’t help making this problem less notable, cause it’s a lot harder than its predecessor.

Everything else doesn’t change much. This is a Wii game that could be on a Nintendo 8 Bits with the same level of depth. The gameplay is the same classic strategy model from the series, the graphics and sounds are recycled from the GameCube.

You can play with the Wii controller, horizontally or vertically, with Wii’s classic controller, or even with a GameCube control. The Wii controller does have the basics, but requires you to make combos, like holding B and pressing another button to access all the game functions, and it’s not that much recomended, unless you really have to be wireless.

The graphics are exactly the same as GameCube, which were already not that great for the console, altough, they did get some nice new animations. The game’s art is still top notch, with some beautiful CGs that actually outsell the original.

Things are no different with the sounds, the same musics and sound effects from Path of Radiance, epic and beautiful. Some voices that were choosen for some characters during the CGs, could have been better.

Radiant Dawn has some serious flaws, like being too hard for new players and at sometimes seens rushed, having a serious bug that can block data transfer from the GameCube save being imported on the Wii. We hope Nintendo fix it eventually.

In the end, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is still strong like the franchise, but there’s really no reason to not play Path of Radiance before, getting more in touch with the story and prepared for the higher difficult level from the sequel.