I counted up the extra chapters and found 19 of them. There were 25 regular chapters.

Oh the part where the story splits for a couple chapters... Um... I'm not really sure if I could count that but oh well. Btw you've played radiant dawn right. How hard is it on normal? Cause I've restarted quite a number of times already... well that was before I got to part 3.

Compared to what ? Radiant Dawn is harder than Awakening for example. I've found the normal mode of Radiant Dawn harder than the hard mode of Awakening...

It is pretty hard lol. I was thinking it was just because it was my first fire emblem game(I had to look up PoR's story, and later went back to play that), but I've been playing it again. I had to stop last night and am currently sulking over a lost character.

Lol wow.... makes sense. I refuse to let characters die so I restart very often.... I plan on playing through it twice so I can get all the playable characters and the true ending.

It's weird because in any of the other FE games I can breeze through without losing characters. 

You should maybe read a guide about the hidden characters, some of them are really easy to miss. Is there a false and true ending though ?

That reminds me of when I played Fire Emblem 6 and I missed a character in chapter 6, who happened to be the daughter of my favorite character in 7, which would help me get another character later in the game. Even though I was on like chapter 10-11, I restarted the game right then.

I did the same thing in Radiant Dawn ! I was at the end of the first part and learned that I missed a character in the first chapters, I restarted it. You know, an enemy you need to talk to with a certain character, and I just killed him the first time :(

I always read ahead when I do chapters. So its not an issue. I did miss one guy in POR but he is obscure as hell to recruit.  I don't think I'll have a problem recruiting everyone.