IGN Wii’s Anoop Gantayat has recently picked up Fire Emblem: Akatsuki no Megami for the Wii, giving his two-page preview up on their site. As previously announced via magazine, Fire Emblem will indeed be able to use the Wii remote, the GameCube controller, or preferably the Classic Controller. Akatsuki no Megami is a true sequel to Path of Radiance – even down to the visuals and technology. The games in-game graphics and cutscenes are only marginally improved, though the cutscenes apparently suffer from compression such that they match the quality of Path of Radiance’s FMVs (which isn’t bad by any means, it’s just disappointing it hasn’t been improved).

The game is just like every other Fire Emblem in terms of general gameplay – it’s a strategy RPG that demands you take charge of a small band of units on a map against an enemy army. Though unlike Path of Radiance, which was one long story where you led Ike through 29 chapters, Akatsuki no Megami is more like The Sacred Stones, Rekka no Ken, and even Seisen no Keifu in that the game is split into multiple parts, each part having you take on the role of a different character. In contrast to those games listed, however, Akatsuki no Megami is made up of four different sections, totaling a massive 44 chapters in overall length. If that isn’t enough, Gantayat claims that Akatsuki no Megami is considerably more difficult than its GameCube predecessor.

If you’re looking for huge upgrades to the Fire Emblem formula, you might be disappointed. Hopefully this isn’t the case, and the Fire Emblem games for Game Boy Advance have shown you that Intelligent Systems likes to reuse engines without significant improvement as long as it can. That’s not to say the game isn’t great though. Path of Radiance was magnificent, and all signs point to Akatsuki no Megami surpassing it in every way.

IGN Wii