I haven't seen anyone post any significant reviews on this game so thought I'll write one up for those who might be interested.
Background:
For those who aren't aware, Radiant Dawn is a direct sequel to Path of Radiance on the gamecube. The FE games typically do paired games, so every 2 are related. Its a tactical game along the lines of Final Fantasy Tactics and Ogre Battle, this is not a straight RPG like the final fantasies. You move your characters along a turn based battle grid casting spells, attacks, and then the enemy does their moves, etc. The goals vary from holding your position to killing certain number of enemies to killing all the enemies, etc.
Graphics & Sound:
The graphics and sound is...well it is what it is. You've seen it from other review places likely but its true, this is essentially a gamecube game released on the wii (without motion support period). Things look a little bit better than PoR but not much more. There's a bit more variant in animations and such but nothing big. This is a tactical game so is there a big need for it? No. As long as you don't expect too much from it, then you're fine. It gets the job done and thats all I ask for. That said, I'm expecting them to do a bit more than this for the next Fire Emblem.
Presentation & Story:
The story I have to say is excellent. If anyone ever says Nintendo can't do a plot driven story, reference this game. Maybe its just my taste but the plot twists and the motivation behind some of the fighters are great. The fact that its broken up into multiple parts, each having their own separate fight before colliding together works really well.
At some points in the story, you'll actually end up fighting on both sides so in one battle you'll fight and decide to retreat. The next battle, you'll take up the enemy that is going to ambush your retreating troops. There is a few points where things are kinda cliche but overall it works very well. The FMV's are gorgeous though and the voice acting/narration is actually pretty good. They definitely add a nice flair to the game every once in a while. Unfortunately the text based discussions can get a bit boring after a while but they get the point across. It'll be nice if they work on improving that for the sequel but that's just a plus.
Gameplay:
As can be expected, the gameplay is very similar to PoR and its a case of not broken, don't fix it but add a couple things. The game can be pretty harsh on you, death is permanent in this game (but the new battle save feature saves sooo much frustration). There's battles that I've started and restarted 10+ times because I refuse to have certain characters die. And unlike PoR where they took out maniac mode from JP version and made the JP easy the US normal and etc, in RD they made JP maniac mode US hard and JP hard mode US normal. This means that the first few chapters are much harder than in PoR. Doesn't help that IMO the first chapter characters are weak. Which brings me to the point, there's tons and tons of characters in this game. However due to the separate parts, you still end up playing all of them to an extent (at least until they combine forces later in the game). There's added variety from PoR with new promotion levels and small changes overall.
Overall
I say this is a must own game for people interested in strategy/tactics battle games. This is the type of game that I consider essential to a successful platform. Every system has some of their AAA games that appeal to mainstream (Halo3, SMG) but its these types of games that give the systems the true variety of unique experiences and round things out. You can play SMG all you want but every once in a while, you will want to play these types of small budget but extremely fun games for that specific niche. I would prolly give this a 9/10 just to make the point that they could've given it a bit more work when moving to the Wii in terms of battle animations/graphics/presentation and whatnot. But those are minor concerns cause the core gameplay is there and its fun.
