*Bows.* ALL HAIL FIRE EMBLEM!!!! IT HAS DONE IT AGAIN!!!
The story is great, if convulted. You have to pay attention and read EVERYTHING if you want to know what's going on. But its well worth it. You quickly grow to love your characters and refuses to let one die.
Speaking of characters dying, this game is bloody hard because of that. One character dies, he or she is gone for good. They won't be coming back. But since you grow so attatched characters, you want to keep restarting till you win with no loses. This can be a pain when you replay the same level five, ten times to win it.
The game has been streamlined and made a LOT easier to play out then the others thanks to the bonus XP and skills systems. Skills, particularly the special ones you get from Occult, are amazing and worth it. Ike's Aether, Volke's one hit kill move, they are all incredibly powerful. The bonus XP is great for leveling up your healers or weaker characters. And with the automatic class change at 21, along with the large number of Master Seals, makes it a LOT easier to hit classes like Sniper, Paladin, General, and Wyvern Lord.
Two new character types, at least to the U.S. version, are also of major value. The soldier class is really just a faster, slightly weaker and less armored version of the Knight. But give them a Knight Seal and they can shrug off damage with ease and have insane hit and critical rates, particularly when they reach Halberder. There only flaw is that they can only use lances.
Laguz are by far my favorite though. About the only things that can really hurt them are Laguz specific weapons and there element specific weaknesses. Wind for Bird, Fire for Beast, and Thunder for Dragon. Arrows are also highly effective against Bird laguz. They're only weakness is that they can only stay in beast form for so long. Once they turn back into there more human forms, they can't attack or counter attack. But with there awesome evasion and defense levels, there's nothing to really worry about.
The only real area it takes a hit in is graphics. They are no where NEAR the power the Gamecube has. But the battles are realtively well animated and some are very impressive, like Ike's Aether skill in effect. No voice over work except for the few cutscenes are also a hit to them, but a minor one.