I want to like Radiant Dawn more than I do, but I just can't. The game rubs me in all the wrong ways. I suppose my biggest gripe with it is Radiant Dawn's lack of identity.
Take a look at the box art. There is the protagonist/lord of the game - Micaiah - and her childhood friend as well as a fellow Dawn Brigade member - Sothe. Naturally, one would think that those two (and by extension other Dawn Brigade members) are the central characters to the story. But that's not what happens. The game takes a dozen chapters to introduce those characters, only to shelve them immediately and switch focus to Greil Mercenaries. Dawn Brigade spends most of their game playing second fiddle to Ike and co. saving the world in what can only be described as a true final chapter of Path of Radiance.
Another side effect of that bait-and-switch is you get essentially two games worth of playable characters crammed into one, but the availability of some of them is so bad, that they are essentially unusable. I feel bad for people who liked Tormod in Path of Radiance, because in this game he shows only for couple of chapters before the end.
The worst part is the game is actually really solid gameplay-wise. If only it was its own thing and not a glorified add-on to PoR.

I’ve been playing this game nonstop for two weeks, constantly thinking about how I want to get my thoughts out on this one. Radiant Dawn gets a fair amount of distaste these days because of what it does wrong, and it’s totally fair, but I can’t get myself to dislike this game even with the myriad of problems.
For every stupid thing RD does, it does three other things that are pure genius. The sheer scale of everything makes this the largest and most ambitious FE game to date, even outdoing Genealogy of the Holy War. There’s a huge amount of map variety, with objectives and units constantly changing to help tell the story. It’s far from being a boring FE game because the game never stops mixing things up every chapter or so. While it can be very hectic both in gameplay and story, I can’t help but admire what was done here. Every single map, even the ones I disliked, made me go “wow, that was a neat concept for a map and it feels unique compared to everything else so far!” The gameplay-story integration is also up there with the Jugdral titles, especially the finale of part 3 which is one of my favorite maps in the whole series. When in tandem with the fantastic Tellius mechanics such as shove/rescue and BEXP it also creates an immensely fun gameplay experience.
The story is mixed overall and i think PoR had a more solidly constructed narrative, but RD has a lot of interesting concepts and plot threads that are thrown around, and when combined with the ludonarrative aspects of the gameplay, makes it super engaging. There’s definitely a lot of “huh” moments closer to the end, though, and the final part is a really odd curveball after the very dense political drama the rest of the game was, but the themes it uses are probably the best use of said themes in the entire series.
I dunno man, I adore Radiant Dawn. There’s like 800 problems you could pick at with this game and I still wouldn’t give a shit. It’s the quintessential Fire Emblem game in my eyes, it has something for really any fan of the series. Maybe not the whole package will jive with someone, but I think you’ll get at least one section of the game that appeals to your tastes. Radiant Dawn is messy, ambitious, and maybe tries to bite off more than it can chew. But at the same time, I almost wouldn’t have it any other way.