Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

"To ARMS! The fires of War Rage!"

Introduction: Ever since I first saw Marth & Roy in Super Smash Brothers Melee I knew I wanted to play a Fire Emblem game. I nearly got my hands on the first two Fire Emblem games for the GBA but ultimately I decided to pass wanting to see the full power of the Game Cube put to the task of rendering a chapter in this long series. Finally, my call was answered and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance was released. Much like those games that preceded it, this game is a turn based Medieval Fantasy Strategy game focused around a small core group of characters and a wide variety of units they pick up along the way.

Game Play: 9/10 The game play in this game is all of what you have come to expect from previous Fire Emblems and perhaps a little bit more. You can choose which units to have in a battle, how they are positioned, what they are equipped with, and how to move them about the field. Careful strategy is required to ensure the survival of your troops, as they will forever die should they fall in battle, but it is only realistic and I rather like this aspect of Fire Emblem. However, moving your troops safely about the field is greatly aided by being able to select enemy units and see exactly how far they can move and attack and leaving this “overlay” on the field while you position your troops, this feature makes avoiding unnecessary casualties much easier. The results of combat are nicely spelled out for you when engaging any enemy before you decide to attack and all in all it is rather simple to command your forces with an expert touch. When you get the ability to use your base camp you can also forge custom weapons with their own names and color a feature that I feel is very useful and rather fun despite the high cost of such forging. These factors along with the addictive nature of the game for those of us who love this sort of thing make it very fun to play and hard to let go.

There are two rather annoying parts of game play however. First is the fact that not only do your weapons wear down and eventually break but there is only one way in the entire game to fix them and it only can do this 3 times. This means all those uber cool weapons you made will eventually shatter, tomes will burn, and unique weapons with a few exceptions will rust away. I can certainly agree that weapons need to be repaired and sharpened after some time but rarely are they so completely abused as to be beyond repair, especially when you have a traveling SMITH with your convoy! That aside, there is one other major annoyance in all the game play and that is the randomness of levels. It is bad enough that the first time you go through your characters gain almost random status improvements with every level but what is worse is that some levels may only see improvement in just one stat or worst of they may see absolutely no improvement at all. I think the latter at the very least could be done without. No level, especially after class change has occurred, should be so absolutely wasteful of hard earned EXP as to see absolutely NO improvement whatsoever. I also thought that more types of terrain could have had an effect on the people standing on them, as there seemed to be only two real types of terrain, those that gave +10 to Avoid and +1 to Defense and those that did not.

Plot: 9.9/10 The plot in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, is not the most unique of plots but it IS very well written. It is a very captivating plot that holds your interest throughout the game and leaves you wanting to know more of the story even when it is over. Add to this the numerous conversations between characters in the “Support” portion of the game and even more depth and personality flows throughout the story making it a true epic in its own right. I believe the writers for the conversations and the plot line itself can take great pride in a job well done and far superior to many other games that have come out for the Big 3. However, there is one tiny nit picking plot hole that does exist even in this superb bit of writing. There is a part of the story revolving around an imprisoned Evil God and while I will not go into detail let us just say that I cannot imagine why in the WORLD anyone in their right mind would want to keep around the key to allowing the Evil God to be set free and furthermore why they would give that key to the only person who could use it. I mean, why would you EVER want to let the Evil God out if he was so horrible? It just does not make sense.

Graphics: 7/10 I am definitely a bit torn on the issue of graphics in this game. There are a few cut scenes that are absolutely beautiful and very well done. The actual battle scenes are also very beautiful with plenty of flashy special effects and well rendered units. I especially love how the behemoth Generals make the ground shake when they slowly clank towards their unfortunate victims. However, despite the expertise and wonderful visage that are these scenes the normal “map view” of your units could have been a bit better. The ability to swing the Camera a full 360 degrees as well as Zoom control would have been a very nice touch. The graphics for the maps themselves could have been bumped up a bit both on the models of the characters and the landscapes themselves but were not too bad considering the GBA versions. However, the thing that REALLY brings this score down is the insistence of keeping with tradition in having slightly animated portraits usually in the exact same pose do a lot of speaking to one another instead of even animating the conversations with the Map Graphics Engine. Any sort of real 3D animation for those conversations would have really made them far more entertaining to watch and have bumped the graphics score up to 8 or 9 especially if there were a few more cut scenes.

Sound: 5/10 This is perhaps my biggest annoyance of them all. I played Tales of Symphonia and Star Fox Adventures so I am fully aware that not only can the Game Cube handle a fully voice-acted game but can handle full 3D rendering the whole way through. Certainly it would take more time and money to accomplish but it would have been WORTH IT. My eyes nearly bled from reading ALL that darned plot material and conversations between characters. If Nintendo had seen fit to have this game completely Voice Acted I would have to call it one of the best games I have ever played in my life and I have played a LOT of great games. Furthermore, there could have been a lot more cut scenes during crucial plot-material than there was with full voice acting and 3D rendering. The sparseness of these scenes was truly disappointing. The musical score for the game is rather well done not Black Mages quality, but still nice listening and good for emphasizing the point. The voice acting and sound effects that are included in the game are very nice but they will leave you wishing there was more of them included.

Replay: 9/10 Oh yeah, you are going to want to go through again if only to do things right you messed up on the first time. Alternatively, you might go back through this game to see characters get more the stats they deserve or make use of characters you did not touch much the first time through. It is a real challenge beating the higher difficulty levels and adding the secret characters to your party in the Trail maps can be an interesting change of pace. The other thing that might have you coming back is knowing the plot ahead of time you might suddenly begin to see things fall into place that you missed the first time, much like when any good movie or book.

To buy or not to buy…That is the question: The answer is fairly simple, if you can rent this game for a couple days on end and play the hell out of it in that time then you may as well just rent it. If you cannot secure it for a long period of time or really intend to beat all the difficulties and use all the characters etc. you had better plan on shelling out the cash and buying a copy, but not to worry it is money well spent in my opinion as this one game that should not be missed.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/30/05