Ok, so finally my most anticipated game is in my Wii and it's great! Everyone that loves strategy and RPG's should play this game.

A few impression from the first few hours (spoiler free, won't describe new members):

1) Is's HARD!!! In the prequel Path od Radiance I can't remember dying until chapter twenty-something, Radiant Dawn is a lot harder, I had to replay chapter 3 and 4 several times. (Playing on normal of course). I think it's like PoR on hard.

2) Graphic wise it's worse than PoR. The movies are very beautiful, much better than PoR, but the it's harder to distinguish the characters on the battlefield. Maybe because in PoR there was more diversity in the party from the beginning.

3) Sothe is like Volke on cocaine. This guy is amazing, but steals a lot of stat points by killing everyone that attacks him. His evasion is amazing as well. I forgot he was in PoR as well, probably because he didn't make the team even once.

4) The stats of the others are very weak, even Nolan can't survive 3 attacks in a row, Micaiah, Leonardo and Laura are terrible. Edward somewher in between, but his attack is damn low. 

5) Can't say a lot about the story yet, though it's interesting to play with Daein after playing PoR. Also nice to meet some characters from the GC game already.

I'll continue playing now, but if it continues this way, I'll spend way over 40 hours to complete this one. 

Question: In all my anxiety to start playing, I forgot to load my PoR save file. Does anyone know what the benefits of this are? If it only increases support I won't bother redoing the chapters, but if it triggers better endings I'll start again. 

If two units that got an A support from FE9 and you do a transfer data to FE10, then get a +5 to crit/dodge when standing next to each other.

You need to get to lv 20/20 on FE9 to do stat transfer (aswell as having maxed caps)

Say if you get maxed HP in FE9 for say Soren, then Soren will start off with 5 more HP then he does in FE10 without transfers.

Max HP = 5 HP in FE10
Max other stats = 2 to that stat in FE10.

Yes this game is ridiculous hard in the beginning. Here are some tips:

1) Forget Sothe. Do not kill anything with him untill everyone else is near lvl 18-19. Killing an enemy that is below lvl 18 for him is a waste of exp. He gets more exp from stealing from enemies and opening chests (I got him to level 2 in chapter 3 just doing that). The best thing you can do in the initial missions is to use him to lure the enemies. Move them unequip you weapons so that he doesn`t rape the enemy units in the counter attack. In the later chapters he is not so good anymore.

2) Focus on levelling Eddie and Nolah. They are pretty weak at the start (especially eddie) but their growth is great and you will need them in later chapters. Also watch out for when the female dragon rider with red hair joins you (trying to avoid spoilers). She is one of the best characters in the whole game statwise.

3) You can level your other crappy units by doing something else than killing. I like to abuse the Micaiah-Laura healing trick. Just use sacrifice with Micaiah on a unit and then heal her with Laura. If you have 5 units with even one health point missing, that is 50 xp for Micaiah and Laura.

4) Save that battle xp for the later parts of the game, you will need it.

5) If you are really cheap, battle save before levelling up and keep reloading until you get at least +5 stat ups.

 Yeah it is harder than Path of Radiance. From my understanding its because they renamed the difficulty levels in the western release. Easy is really Normal, Normal is really Hard, and Hard is really Maniac. Your transfer save loads your supports which gives turn into bonds. Bonds give stat benefits in addition to your supports. Also they give stat bonuses. My Sothe was nearly stat capped in my first PoR save so when I tranferred that save file he was nearly stat camped in RD. I didn't realzie the difference until my second playthrough, I used a different save file for that playthrough. On my other save file and I didn't build Sothe up because I knew he could be promoted. My Sothe had significan't stat differences which made the first part of the game even harder. Basically if your characters final stats in PoR are higher than the initial bases stats of that character in RD, they get higher of the two stats. You can't get one of Ikes endings unless Soren is an A support in both games as well. I am not sure if that effects other endings though.

Another little thing: avoid using Lagulz units. They are awful. They have a very high move range and great hp, but their growth is just sad.

Except the Laguz royalty, they rock. :)

yeah picked it up yesterday after a lot of people on this site recomended it so highly. now i've never played a fe game before but i gotta say so far i quite like it although i've only played for an hour. gonna try and get a few hours in tonight and see whether my opinion remains the same.

Another Tip to help you level Micaiah is to Chain Heal, i term i just made up, Use Micaiah's Sacrifice to heal the unit and then heal Micaiah with Laura, Both healers will gain exp for effectivly healing 1 unit.

I'm really liking it.  Gameplay is great, difficulty just right.

The graphics and story are just meh, which hurts enjoyment slightly.

Overall, my favorite game I've played on the Wii so far (but I'm a MASSIVE RPG FREAKOID).