RD master race! In all honesty, I love RD because it's a game that at first looks incredibly difficult and is not beginner friendly at all. They don't tell you how important Micaiah, Sothe and Sanaki are. They don't tell you that Ilyana gets the most chapters and can be an inventory swap or that Tormod and is group are gone for most of the game or that Zihark and Jill can get more chapters with higher leveled, more rewarding enemies or ANY of the hidden treasure locations.
The game just drops you off and lets you fend for yourself. It at least has the courtesy to give any beginner who makes it to the tower the over powered laguz kings to breeze through the end if you lost any units. After numerous playthroughs, the game becomes far easier with knowledge of each chapter and knowing how the characters and parts and teams work. Battle Save helps too.
Hard mode isn't really that much harder. The lack of a weapon triangle actually makes the game easier imo, namely the interactions between sword and axe users becoming more in the favor of the axe user. Lack of battle save just means don't mess up and the more powerful enemies just limits what units you can use. Bosses stay the same.
What I love about RD though is all the little details to learn and the replayability. Each playthrough is different since certain units are stuck with certain teams. Using Nolan? Parts 1 and 3 are easy. Not using anyone from Micaiah's team? You're stuck relying on decently leveled Micaiah and Sothe. There's the aforementioned Ilyana inventory swap where anything from part 1 can go to Ike's team, namely the Brave Sword. There's Endgame part 3 which is full of optional challenges like killing Kurthnaga or Nailah. Heck, I did the math and it's difficult but possible to kill the Black Knight in Rivals Collide. Much easier to do with Boyd rather than Haar but with a high enough level getting speed and strength and using a Hammer, you can kill him! It doesn't prove anything and it actually screws you out of getting the last dark mage, possibly even both of them but it's a neat thing to know that can be done. Also, there's the infinite exp grind with Heather in part 2 and the near infinite exp grind for any staff user in Incandescent Glow.
PoR was a decent game as were Sacred Stones, Shadow Dragon and Awakening. But I've spent far too much time with RD and it's larger and heavier plot along with replayability and neat little things here and there, easily my favourite game of the entire series and my favourite game of all time.
Currently playing Awakening on Lunatic and it's making me appreciate the game more. Story is bland imo though.
TL;DR RD is the best game ever made.