look I'm not trying to say FE is bad. I completely agree that it is probably the best iteration and perhaps I haven't given it much time. (hard to play an rpg at someone else's house except for late late night)

I'm just saying that with all the really amazing games that are out there, that manage to do things very well (like the nice promotions system), and give beautiful quality at the same time. Which makes it hard for me to justify FERD. Granted the original was flabbergasting, and the gc one had awesome skill features. I just can't agree that this game is great, and I will just say its a very good game and worth every penny for a wii owner no doubt.

The Fire Emblem stuff in this thread makes me sad.

Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn is, based on gameplay features, the best of all the Fire Emblem games at release (haven't played the latest one yet). It easily has more to offer than any other Fire Emblem save Fire Emblem Sacred Stones' class-branching system and overworld map AFAIK. It also introduces many great features and abilities as well as having the most aesthetically pleasing battles in the entire series to date.

I prefer Blazing Swords because it still has my favorite cast but Radiant Dawn should be high up on any FE fan's list.

You know, I still haven't played any Fire Emblem but FE7, even though I own the Gamecube one.

Should... should I get on that? Keep in mind I like it primarily for the cast and the battle mechanics.

Matthew rules.

Oh God automatic class changes and shopping between chapters okay I'll do it

 Well, I suppose you have a point.

Nintendo are "selfish" because they are economical. Their main focus is their economy, not market share, and definitely not you. I'm not sure So&Mi are like that (as in, they might care a fair bit more about the marketshare).

Part of the reason is.

Say the average Wii owner (as in, median Wii owner) buys 3 games a year for 3 years (and that's it). Nintendo makes more money off 5 of those being first party, and 4 being 3rd party than 2 being first party and 7 being 3rd party.

Nintendo makes so many games, and they want them all to sell. For Microsoft and Sony.. Well, they release far fewer games, so that isn't the same issue.

Blazing Swords has the best cast IMO but all FE games have great characters.  Blazing Swords is also the most friendly Fire Emblem to start with so if you beat that game, you'll be set for all the others more or less. 

For battle mechanics, things change up with going from Blazing Swords to Sacred Stones because you can choose what to promote units to.  Does your archer become a Ranger (mounted archer) or a Sniper?  You also get an overworld map similar to Super Mario World and the ability to fight random battles.  I don't like that because grinding doesn't feel Fire Emblem-ish to me but you can complete the game without abusing it.  Sacred Stones also gives you a bonus dungeon which is fun.  Ephraim is a neat lord because he uses a spear and Eirika is basically a female Roy with decent stats. Neimi and Colm are neat too.  Colm is > or = to Matthew.

Taking a step back to Sword of Seals from Blazing Swords is rather painful because you lost options and the cast is meh.  Of course, it's a must-play if you want to see Roy in action even if he kind of sucks.  Radiance is good too but it doesn't do as much as Sacred Stones did (BEXP is neat though).

Radiant Dawn does a lot of things right. If you liked the Radiance cast, you'll enjoy seeing them all again.  A lot of Radiance's features are refined and improved in Radiant Dawn (skills and BEXP in particular). It's the most flexible in terms of unit type and skill allocation really allows you to tweak some units that would be meh otherwise.

I recommend Sacred Stones and Radiant Dawn most out of the 4 mentioned above you haven't played.

@Megadude: But your moneyhatting argument makes assumption that it would be the standard thing to do. If you want to think moneyhatting, think about Wii being the cheapest platform to develope for. That's similar financial incentive Nintendo offers.

Moneyhatting is a problem in the sense that once the moneyhatting ends, industry that is used to moneyhatting is ending up in trouble when the outside money goes away. The model that would carry in long term, is the one where budgets base themselves in reality of expected returns.