| Riot Of The Blood said: How good is the story in this game? I'm really starting to want this game, but I want Marth. :( How good is the combat system? |
Story is very good (like all Fire Emblems).
It starts of very simple and local conflict and then spreads across the continent of Tellius towards a kind of worldwar, involving different nations and races on different sides of the conflict. The cool thing in Radiant Dawn is that you see the conflict from both sides and your often forced to defeat the group you played with before. (not the actual characters, but their alliance).
After every battle their are conversations that show the politics behind the battlefield, which get increasingly interesting and complicated throughout the game.
The battlesystem is simple. You move all your characters one by one on a "checkerboard" battlefield and have him/her perform an action (attack, use item). Attacking is also done turn based, so one strike for your character, one strike for the one you're attacking (fast characters can strike twice vs. slow characters). After all your charcters performed an action it's the enemy's turn. Attacking is simply a calculation of mainly Hit percentage and Attack points, but the fact that you have a lot of different characters, with different weapons makes it a very strategical game.
Bows can only attack from a distance, magic close and far away. You have axes and spears that can be used from a range, but they are weaker than the ones that can only be used close etc. There are also weapons that allow for 4x attacks or have a high chance on a critical hit.
You have strong and weak characters in your party, but you have to make sure that you level your weak units by letting them gain experience points (mostly by attacking/killing enemies), so you can't kill all enemies with your strong units, otherwise your weaker units will be chanceless in further battles.
There's a lot more to, because everything can be tweaked and, like you can see in this thread, everyone plays a kind of different game because everyone favors different characters. There are over 40 characters available, but normally you use a maximum of 15, so you have to make choices.
As for Marth: Ike is at least as cool as Ike and Marth.
If you're not sure yet, you can probably buy the Gamecube Fire Emblem for $15,-. That one has an even better story, but the on the whole Radiant Dawn is a more extensive game (little harder as well).
