History YMMV / FireEmblemRadiantDawn

** Every single new character in ''Radiant Dawn'' lacks any kind of CharacterDevelopment due to the removal of support conversations, and a lot of them had the potential to be interesting.

** Vika is another commonly-lamented wasted character. She has an interesting design, is the only playable Raven besides Naesala and Nealuchi (which could've offered perspective into how the "common" people of Kilvas view their king and the rest of the world), and is a member of Tormod's Laguz Emancipation Army (implying she's a freed slave like Muarim). Unfortunately the third point dooms her to even less focus than the other new characters, as they're only playable for the end of Part 1 and don't rejoin until nearly the end of the game.

* VindicatedByHistory:
** While ''Radiant Dawn'' is a ContestedSequel, it became more well-loved over time in the same way (and for the same reasons as) its predecessor, thanks to ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' reviving the franchise, and ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'', ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'' and ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'' giving Ike and his companions more exposure to new fans. The complex story and interesting gameplay elements make it one of the more interesting games in the series for those who play it, and it's often seen as having one of the better stories in the series, due to following elements from the previous game. The story has also seen less criticism since fans discovered [[{{Misblamed}} the localization is based on the abridged Japanese Normal Mode script, which cuts a lot of world-building and character motivations.]] Notably, it and the first game of the duology are often requested by fans to be remade for newer consoles due to how rare it is to get a copy.

** The localization adjusted a simple conversation between between Micaiah, Sothe, Nailah, and Rafael that mostly served to show Micaiah disliked Ike, to have her refer to him as "Father of Sothe's children", a change players liked for giving Micaiah some sarcasm and also humor.

** An early game conversation between Micaiah, Sothe, Nailah, and Rafael originally had Micaiah build up Ike's name and role in the previous game, which is a fairly basic conversation meant to show Micaiah's dislike of Ike. The localization took the chance to adjust the text to have Micaiah jokingly call Ike the "Father of Sothe's children" as a way to make it clearer Micaiah dislikes Ike, but also add humor since Sothe just spent a bit praising and talking up Ike. It's considered a really funny and endearing line on her part as well.
** The Black Knight's survival is changed to make more sense. Originally, it was stated that the Black Knight survived his final battle with Ike because his [[AWizardDidIt warp-powder malfunctioned]], causing Ike to fight his "[[WorfHadTheFlu spirit]]" instead. In the localization, his survival is written to be because he realized [[spoiler: Greil had lost the use of his sword arm, meaning his victory against him was hollow, something Ike actually tells him at the start of their fight]]. Upon learning of this, the Black Knight [[ILetYouWin threw the fight]] so Ike could become stronger and face him at his full power. This was widely accepted as better since it actually made sense and fit perfectly with both the first games story, and worked with the Black Knight's character.

** Sothe, in regards to his quality as a unit. For some players, he's a poor unit due to his mediocrity in combat in Part 3 and his terrible combat in Part 4, no matter how much investment he's given, because of his low stat caps, terrible weapon type, late third-tier promotion and terrible mastery skill, on top of being a forced unit [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou whose death will always trigger a game over on maps he's playable on]] until the final few chapters of the game. For others, he's invaluable as a unit thanks to serving as a CrutchCharacter for the generally weak Dawn Brigade in Part 1, making difficult chapters easier, as he can easily kill or weaken most enemies encountered, and that his poor combat in later parts is irrelevant due to the large amount of powerful units available to the player for the final chapters. His drop off in Act 3/4 also adds to this debate as well since for some, it makes the game forcing him to be part of the story frustrating, while for others his drop off avoids being too much of a GameBreaker like others of his archetype typically end up being.

** The Laguz Royals, who unlike regular Laguz come with the exclusive Formshift skill, which lets them remain permanently transformed with no care for the transformation gauge, while also having even higher stats than the regular Laguz of their class and a stronger strike, on top of being near their stat caps and having SS strike at base, so you don't need to invest into them at all to have them soloing maps. They can one-round near everything in the game and the only thing that can really have a shot at killing them are the Part 4 Endgame bosses (or in the case of Tibarn and Naesala, those pesky Crossbows). Special mention goes to the Hawk King Tibarn, who is a flier with ''10 movement'' for some reason (no other unit in the game has more than 9 movement), can double everything in the game (including all the endgame bosses) at base with his 40 Speed while being nearly as strong and tanky as a lion, and comes with the Pavise skill, which has a chance to completely negate any damage taken at a percent rate equivalent to a unit's Skill stat (which with Tibarn having 48 Skill at base, means he normally has a 48% chance to just not take damage from anything, even those Crossbows, and at best biorhythm has a 58% chance to activate it, and that's if he didn't just dodge the blow with his massive dodge rate to begin with). The only flaw of the Laguz Royals is that they have no 2-range attack so they can't retaliate against ranged attacks, but with their nigh-invincibility this is more an annoyance for them.

** By extension, the mastery skills that fully promoted characters receive definitely qualify. The vast majority of them are basically critical hits with additional effects ranging from status ailments to HP absorption. Considering how powerful your units should be by the point at which most of them are fully promoted, the activation of a mastery skill is more or less an instant kill the vast majority of the time. What's more is that the activation rates of these skills are based on stats, and if you have a third tier unit, the stat that the skill runs on should be in the high 20s or 30s, so you'll basically have an around 15% or so chance (plus or minus another 5-10% based on biorhythm) to instantly eliminate the enemy each time they attack.

** Bonus Experience when used properly - unlike in ''Path of Radiance'', leveling up with Bonus Experience has a special effect; it will always increase exactly three stats (provided, of course, that the unit has at least three uncapped stats), and will heavily favor the three stats with the highest growths. Normally this isn't so special, and could even be detrimental for units with no capped stats, when they could be increasing more than three stats in a level up and when they would have a much better chance at raising their stats with weaker growths in a normal level up. However once a unit has a couple stats capped, always ensuring three stats will go up will provide more fruitful level ups on average, and will force a unit's weaker stats to go up that they would otherwise struggle to increase in normal level ups (for example Haar's Speed growth is a poor 30%, but once you cap a couple of his other stats you can start forcing Speed procs from BEXP level ups). With proper usage of BEXP, you can propel units well beyond their pure growth averages and cap all important stats with about anyone easily (while it also makes units that start with high base stats already close to capping even more useful, as they can abuse BEXP to improve their weaker stats even faster).
** Are you playing on Easy or Normal Mode, and getting screwed over by the RandomNumberGod? Have no fear, SaveScumming is here to save the day! Just use the Battle Save option to save whenever you want, such as right before a battle gives a character enough experience points to level up, then keep reloading until you get the stat boosts you want! With enough patience, you can turn your scrappy underdogs into living gods and steamroll your way to victory! Hard/Maniac however replaces it with a Suspend option instead, so you won't be able to exploit mid-battle saving to rig the RNG to your favor.

** The [[spoiler:Greil Mercenaries saving Lucia]] at the end of part II. Yes, it was originally a spoiler, since it was never hinted at the beginning.

** Geoffrey is, for better or worse, a standard KnightInShiningArmor. Just how he's seen in the fanbase varies wildly on whether that is a good thing. Notably, he is the only character that can be in a relationship with Elincia at the end of the game. Whether he is a perfect match that complements her empathetic and emotional nature nicely or is a boring stiff that exists to shut off potential ship tease with characters like Ike or Tibarn is up for contention. His eventual relationship with Elincia might also seem egregious for being a breach in the chain-of-command, considering how seriously he takes knighthood. Finally, there is the near execution of his sister, which he accepts with resignation, was it symbolic of his dedication to knighthood or a wasted opportunity to give conflict to Geoffrey which would make him more human? His availability and use is also up for contention. In both games, he has very poor availability but this is somewhat balanced by having the Paragon skill which helps him level him up quite quickly.
** Gameplay-wise, there's Edward, who is at the forefront of the casual vs. hardcore anaylsis conflict for this game. To the former group of players he often gets seen as one of the best characters in the game for having some of the best growths in a great class line, while to the latter group he is considered quite bad and only useful for the first few chapters, as he has very weak base stats (especially lack of Defense) and requires significant investment to really shine on the harder difficulties. His usefulness generally depends on what difficulty you're playing; Part 1 on Hard Mode ''really'' isn't kind to MagikarpPower characters and he will become useless fast if he doesn't keep getting Speed in his earlier levelups to keep doubling the rapidly faster enemies (he starts off just fast enough to double enemies, while enemy Speed increases with nearly every map on Hard), while Edward will get off the ground really fast on Easy when he can get multiple levelups in each map and will pretty much keep doubling everyone even if he misses some Speed levelups. Hard also removes the weapon triangle, which hurts Edward a lot when he can no longer evade the early axe users well and is taking even more damage with his already poor durability. This drives the conflict, as the more casual players tend to play on the lower difficulties and will willingly spend more time/resources raising growth characters, while the more hardcore players will typically play harder difficulties with more efficiency and sometimes explicitly aiming for lower turn counts, where growth characters usually just can't keep up on their own when playing a remotely fast pace and need to offer really worthwhile payoff over competing characters to be given extra resources to keep up.

* CharacterPerceptionEvolution: Micaiah was originally seen a ReplacementScrappy for Ike, and many disliked her for being what they saw as a {{Hypocrite}} who [[SpotlightStealingSquad stole the spotlight from other characters]], with some going so far as to compare her to a fanfiction character. After the releases of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' and ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'' and the inclusion of the Avatar feature, Micaiah became much more positively received by many people who played ''Radiant Dawn'', as many found her to be one of the most unique protagonists in the series, and enjoyed the difference in views she brought to the story. Opinions began to reverse and many saw Micaiah as [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter relatively wasted]] in the story thanks to Ike, who had since become more of a divisive character. ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'' helped, as she was added relatively early in its lifespan and became one of the best units in the game, helping her go from one of the least liked Lords, to one of the most popular. In Choose Your Legends 1, Micaiah, who was not even in the game yet, was in the top ten, then went up a rank for the second year, and jumped ''all'' the way to number one for the third year, beating popular characters like Azura, Tharja, Camilla, and Female Robin.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation:

** Ashnard crossed it when he abandoned his lover, took his son hostage in order to lure in the boy's uncle, whom he turned into a mount, and then abandoned his son after that.

** Altina being added to ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'' as a Mythic hero shows that she's rather... zealous about fighting the forces of chaos. With the late-game reveal in ''Radiant Dawn'' that [[spoiler:Yune was [[PowerIncontinence unstable]] rather than [[DarkIsNotEvil evil]]]], Altina's attitude begs the question of whether or not [[spoiler:she was aware of Yune's true nature like Dheginshea was and is keeping up the act, or if she actually bought what [[OrderIsNotGood Ashera]] was selling]].

** Soren. Some fans love him for his cold and snarky personality, his tragic backstory, and the amount of HoYay he has with Ike, seeing it as valuable LGBT+ coded representation. Others take issue with his softening in ''Radiant Dawn'', and dislike the amount of ShipTease he has with Ike overshadowing the rest of his character arc.
** Heather has a lot of fans because she is a blatant and attractive lesbian that is overt about how attracted she is to the other female characters, particularly with hitting on Nephenee, creating easy [[GirlOnGirlIsHot yuri fodder]]. However a lot of people also really don't like her because of her one-note and stereotypical personality that has pretty much all her dialogue consist of either fawning over the female characters or [[DoesNotLikeMen making it clear how much she dislikes men]]. For her detractors it also doesn't help she is [[CantCatchUp one of the absolute worst combat units in the game]] and is unsalvagable no matter how much favortism she gets due to her awful Strength growth, the awful caps of the Rogue/Whisper class, and being stuck with knives, while there is also little valuable thieving she can actually do in the maps she is available in to make use of her niche.
** Ilyana just like POR, where she has her fans for her cute design and being still the only Thunder mage in the game, but many that dislike her for her personality just being a one-note joke about how much of a BigEater she is, as all her dialogue still consists of how much she eats and how hungry she always is, with absolutely no development since POR. Gameplay-wise she and Thunder magic has also been nerfed significantly since POR and she is now outright bad, while being a unit with ''negative'' incentive to train up, as since she leaves the Dawn Brigade at the end of Part 1 to join the Greil Mercernaries in Part 3, training her up in Part 1 means depriving another DB unit of desperately needed and very limited EXP for the upcoming [[ThatOneLevel Part 3 DB chapters]], for a unit that even if promoted by the end of Part 1 is going to end up really underpowered in the easier [=GMs=] chapters in Part 3.

** Sothe, in regards to his quality as a unit. For some players, he's a poor unit due to his mediocrity in combat in Part 3 and his unsalvagely terrible combat in Part 4, no matter how much investment he's given, because of his low stat caps, terrible weapon type, late third-tier promotion and terrible mastery skill, on top of being a forced unit [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou whose death will always trigger a game over on maps he's playable on]] until the final few chapters of the game. For others, he's invaluable as a unit thanks to serving as a CrutchCharacter for the generally weak Dawn Brigade in Part 1, making difficult chapters easier, as he can easily kill or weaken most enemies encountered, and that his poor combat in later parts is irrelevant due to the large amount of powerful units available to the player for the final chapters. His drop off in Act 3/4 also adds to this debate as well since for some, it makes the game forcing him to be part of the story frustrating, while for others his drop off avoids being too much of a GameBreaker like others of his archetype typically end up being.

** Part 2 has a noticeably divided reception. A significant portion of the fanbase see it as a blatant {{filler}} episode that has no real relevance to the game's overarching plot other than reintroducing the Greil Mercenaries at the end of it, and would have rather skipped straight to Part 3, while giving the Dawn Brigade a few more maps in Parts 1 and 3 in its place to flesh them out more (and give them the extra EXP ingame they desperately need). Additionally from a gameplay perspective, its few maps (other than its final one) are among the game's worst maps, and most of Part 2's cast isn't available again until late Part 3, while only Haar, Nephenee, and Elincia of the Part 2 cast are worth a damn investing into, making most of the Part 2 cast pointless to play as. However others defend Part 2, who find its plot intriguing and enjoy getting a realistic look at Crimea with its new unproven Queen in the aftermath of The Mad King's War, while also liking that Elincia gets ADayInTheLimelight and gets to show off character development as a strong ruler that quells a rebellion with little blood loss.

** Mia was already a pretty popular character in Path Of Radiance for being a cute and {{adorkable}} GenkiGirl, but her portrayal in Radiant Dawn solidified her as one of the most popular Tellius characters, as she became a much ''much'' better unit that performs well on even the hardest difficulty, and was, well, [[FanServicePack upgraded]] in [[BoobsOfSteel other areas]] too. Such is her popularity that she was one of the first Tellius characters to appear in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'', and is one of the few non-main characters that has gotten multiple variations in that game.

** Fiona is the daughter of one of the Four Riders, and she has absolutely abysmal base stats that are noticeably worse than the Green Units she rides up with, on top of being level nine, making it seem like her level was raised without adjusting her stats to match. Made even worse is that due to her join time, she only has so many chapters that puts her otherwise-significant advantage as a mounted unit to use, especially as her Third Tier caps are terrible and the last five chapters of the game are all indoors. She's easily the worst cavalier in the game, and even if coddled, really doesn't do enough to stick out, which is all the more of a let down considering she has on paper really good growths and a good Affinity.

** Vika is another commonly-lamented wasted character. She has an interesting design, is the only playable Raven besides Naesala (which could've offered perspective into how the "common" people of Kilvas view him and the rest of the world), and is a member of Tormod's Laguz Emancipation Army (implying she's a freed slave like Muarim). Unfortunately the third point dooms her to even less focus than the other new characters, as they're only playable for the end of Part 1 and don't rejoin until nearly the end of the game.

** There is something of one over how to view and respect Ike's character. Ambiguous sexuality aside, some fans like to focus on Ike's more [[NiceGuy endearing and compassionate side]], while others like to focus on Ike's [[RatedMForManly manliness]], especially in ''Radiant Dawn''. While there's a lot of overlap, there are fans who focus primarily on one side and tend to exaggerate it; at worst, the former camp can depict the Radiant Hero as overly soft and [[{{Flanderization}} flanderizes]] his ShipTease with Soren, while the latter camp can over-glorify him out of TestosteronePoisoning and likens him to over-the-top manly characters like [[VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Captain Falcon]] and [[Manga/{{Berserk}} Guts]].

** Going outside of the ''Fire Emblem'' universe, Ike is also shipped with his Smash-mate [[VideoGame/MetalGear Solid Snake]] quite a bit. Just like Ike, Snake is a RatedMForManly character with a very similar ambiguous sexuality and HoYay situation. Come ''[=SSB4=]'', and some people started shipping Ike with [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Cloud]], as both are fairly similar characters with lots of appeal to fangirls.

** Haar wasn't this in the previous game, but in this game, he's ''definitely this trope'', for being a badass riding a giant badass dragon, while being an even bigger GameBreaker than Ike, and while being available in more chapters than almost every other unit in the game. The EyepatchOfPower and [[RatedMForManly rugged looks]] help too.