Fire Emblem: Goddess of Dawn is a tough game to review. On one hand it’s a great turn based RPG that is both hard and lengthy. On the other it’s clearly a Gamecube game and it uses none of the Wii’s motion sensing technology. That being said, if you’re a Turn-Based Strategy RPG fan who doesn’t mind some serious difficulty then it’s an easy purchase. Although if you’re not a hardcore gamer or interested in SRPG’s then you should steer clear of this one.


The intro does look great.
Upon starting a new game you’ll be treated to the first of many “cutscenes.” They pretty much amount to anime character portraits with text bubbles. While they do deliver a decent story, it’s pretty underwhelming presentation in this day and age. You can pretty much expect these before and after every stage and even during when you move close to or attack an important unit in the field. Unfortuneatly there are also absolutely no voiceovers to speak of making the story presentation even worse. The only saving grace in the story department is the very rare CGI cutscenes that look great but suffers from terrible compression.

As for the actual gameplay, this is pretty much a sequel to the Gamecube version of Fire Emblem. If you'd like to find out how this one plays go rent the GC one and you'll have a grip on probably around 98% of what the Wii version offers. Basically it's an expertly crafted SRPG from those geniuses over at Intelligent Systems that recently had their hands all over the development of Super Paper Mario.