Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a strategy role-playing game where the emphasis is on tactics and teamwork. Each of the more than 40 chapters in the Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn story centres on an important battle, and the storyline is affected according to whom survives that battle. Once a hero is slain in the Fire Emblem universe, that hero is gone forever.

At its most basic level, gameplay in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn works in two stages:
1) Select and move a character
2) Choose an action for the character

Use the +Control Pad to move the cursor to a character on the map grid. Press the 2 Button to select that character. Some of the grid squares will change to blue and orange. The blue areas represent spaces where your character can move. The orange squares are spots on the grid that show where your character can attack. For direct attacks, you’ll move your character to a blue space adjacent to where an enemy is standing in an orange space.

Once you’ve moved your character, a Command Menu will appear, giving you a choice of actions to perform. Although some command menus will change depending on a character’s skill set, the basic commands are to Attack, use an Item, Trade items, Shove a character to another square or simply Wait. After you perform an action, that character’s turn ends. When all your characters have had their turns, it’s the computer’s turn to move its units.

Once you defeat all enemy units or meet a specific victory condition, you advance to the next chapter. Throughout the battle, your characters will gain valuable experience points for each battle success, becoming stronger as you progress through the chapters.

As a special bonus, you can import completed save data, or “clear data,” from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for Nintendo GameCube. Some characters from the GameCube game make appearances in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, and your clear data can give them special bonuses.

For example, these characters can receive extra skills bonuses based on how they performed for you in the GameCube game. If a character’s weapon level in the GameCube game reached a high-enough ranking, bonuses are given there as well. Plus, Support conversations that occurred between specific characters in the GameCube game can be viewed in the transcript library in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Some Supports in the GameCube game may have effects on the storyline in the Wii sequel.