Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

• Unlike Path of Radiance, you can add and remove skills without discarding them. Feel free to use Paragon on the entire Dawn Brigade, for instance.

• On the other hand, skills that characters start with are generally "free", and don't cost any skill points unless transferred to someone else. Be sure that you don't want to use the character in the future before removing and transferring a starting skill.

• The game shifts perspectives a lot, focusing on different groups of characters. This means that you can transfer items and skills between different groups, and (more importantly) that you may want to unequip certain valuable items at the end of certain chapters, as your characters will be AI controlled and happy to waste them next time you meet:
  • Ilyana (end of act 1), Lethe, Mordecai, Heather, Brom, Haar and Nephenee (end of act 2) will transfer between groups at the ends of their respective chapters. All the Crimean Knights (Marcia, Astrid, Makalov, Calill, Danved, but NOT Geoffrey) will join after chapter 3-9. Zihark and Jill may be recruited via a conversation with Lethe and Mordecai for the former, Haar and Mist for the latter during both 3-7 and 3-13 (act 3 endgame).
  • You want to trade your important items (Psysic staffs etc) to characters that can't use them at the end of 3-6, 3-9, 3-11 and 3-13.

• You are sometimes reinforced with generic soldiers from your army. These guys will generally run around, steal your XP, get in the way of your tactical positions, and generally mess things up. They're only useful for killing the occasional stray enemy and healing via Psysic staffs. Here's the thing: any order you issue them via "Direct" other than Roam - Halt, Avoid, Target - will mean they'll never attack, even when enemies are directly in front of them, and will never heal, even when well in range.

• By the time the endgame starts, the only use for stat boosts is indulging your perfectionism - most characters you use during the endgame should have capped their important stats. If anything, stat boosts applied the instant you find them can probably make your Dawn Brigade characters slightly more survivable.

• You get a discount card in chapter 3-2. The game emphasizes that it's a one-off, and isn't kidding. The card disappears once you start your next battle, so sell it once you've finished shopping.