--- Reviews ---

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is a turn-based strategy RPG for the Gamecube. This is the third installment in the series here in the US. The previous 2, Fire Emblem and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, were GameBoy Advance titles. 

Fire Emblem's history runs a lot further back than what we've seen here, however. In Japan, this new Gamecube addition marks the 9th Fire Emblem release they've received. It's another example of a long running franchise that's been around since the Famicom days in the Land of the Rising Sun. But we're finally getting a piece of the action here, and that's a very good thing.

I called this a strategy RPG because it has characteristics of both. It does lean more on the strategy side than anything else. 

Here's what Fire Emblem games are all about. The games have 2 parts. They comprise of the actual missions that take place on a grid-like battlefield, and a base camp of some sort in between the missions, which is basically a 'Prepare for Battle' screen to get ready for the next mission. 

During the missions, you move all of your units and attack on your turn, and then the computer gets to do the same. It is very much like Advance Wars in this regard. You control sword fighters, cavaliers, mages, pegasus knights, thieves, archers, clerics, and many other types of units under your command. 

You usually have a single, critical main character on the field that can't die or it's game over (which is Ike in this game), but sometimes you'll have more than 1 main character that ends the game if they die. 

As for the rest of the characters, the important thing to remember in Fire Emblem games is that if a character dies, he's gone for good, with absolutely no way of bringing him back later. If a character dies, all you can do is restart that mission from the beginning if you don't want to take the loss. 

You start out with a small group of units, and you get to recruit more people into your army as the game progresses. Your mission objectives can be to destroy ALL enemy units on the map, to seize control of a particular square (normally a boss is sitting on it), to simply survive for a certain amount of turns, to reach a particular square and "escape" from the map, or to destroy a single particular boss unit.

While on the battlefield, there are a few things to be done out there. Obviously you'll be fighting enemy units more than anything else. Combat is very easy in Fire Emblem, with almost no guesswork on the outcome of a fight. When you pull up to an enemy unit and choose to attack it, a handy little chart comes up to tell you the outcome of the fight before you actually go through with it. You can cancel and do something else with that character if the outcome doesn't look favorable. 

The chart lists 4 statistics for the attacker and the defender, and that tells you everything. The stats displayed are Hit Points (how much health the character has left), Might (How many points of damage will be inflicted if the attack hits), Hit Probability (a percentage chance of actually landing the attack), and Critical Probability (a percentage chance of scoring critical damage if the attack hits). That's all you need. 

So if you can see that your attacker has a 0 Might rating and 100 Hit Probability against whatever he's about to attack, that means he's guaranteed to connect with his attack, but he'll deal 0 damage. Ya might want to attack with somebody a bit stronger! Pulling up next to someone to attack just to see the chart and then cancelling is a good way to see the statistics on what an enemy can do to you, and help you decide if you need to keep a weaker unit out of range or not. 

When combat is executed, a separate screen is brought up to show the two units in more detail, and they take turns hitting each other once or twice before returning to the main battlefield map. Combat is where all of your experience is earned. In any combat encounter, regardless of which side initiated it, if you fail to score a hit, your unit gets 1 experience point. If you do score a hit, but don't defeat the enemy, you get a small bit of experience, and if you score a hit and defeat the enemy you get a lot more. The amount of experience gained depends on what level your unit is. A Level 2 guy might get 85 Exp. for delivering the final blow to an enemy, while a Level 19 guy killing the same enemy might get 12 Exp. Characters level up at exactly 100 Exp. for every level, and there is usually a level cap of 20. There are also 'elevated' classes that are tougher versions of regular classes with extra abilities. Regular classes get promoted to elevated classes usually by using a special item later in the game.

While you're on the battlefield, you can also visit houses on the map which usually gets you an item, and sometimes recruits a new ally, and sometimes you can 'talk' to neutral or enemy characters on the battlefield (usually with just one certain character of your own), which recruits them into your party something like 99% of the time. You'll quickly learn to spot these recruitable characters; if you think a character might be recruitable, it's a good idea to move your people over and see if the "talk" command comes up in their menu. Both of these actions--visiting or talking--take up your turn, meaning you can't attack until your next turn.

In between missions, you're on a Prepare for Battle menu interface. Here you trade items between characters, sell off excess equipment, and possibly buy new equipment. There are times when managing all of your items feels like it takes as long as doing the actual missions! It doesn't have to; if you want to jump into the action fairly quickly, you can. But you'll soon find that the battles go much smoother if you've equipped everyone right. Once you've ironed out who gets what and who's participating in the next battle, it's off to the battlefield again.

There are a few new things in Path of Radiance. The most obvious difference is it's in 3D! However, even though the game is rendered in 3D, it still sticks to its 2D roots, which means the game feels and plays the same as the previous titles. It's still a 2D game, just drawn in 3D. Why mess with what works? (Ahh.. if only Intelligent Systems would get with the program on Advance Wars... I mean CUBE WARS!) Transitioning to the GameCube also means that there are now cutscenes in the game. 

Mounted units get a spiffy new function in this game. They get to move the remainder of their movement range after attacking, which is very useful! Meaning you can move a mounted unit with a range of 8 4 squares, attack, and then move 4 squares again before ending its turn. That introduces the possibility of attacking a unit multiple times from a single square, since a mounted attacker doesn't have to stay on the square it attacked from. It also means mounted units can attack strong units like bosses and then get back out of attack range so they don't die on the enemy turn (they'll still have to survive the counter-attack when they battle, though).

This game introduces a new race of people that don't fight with weapons, but instead turn into animals such as tigers, hawks, or even dragons to fight. This race, called "Laguz", can't attack at all in human form, which adds another layer of strategy to the battles. 

Another addition to this game is bonus experience. This is by far the best new addition to the Fire Emblem series. Bonus experience is awarded based on how quickly you complete a mission. You get to distribute it on the battle preparation screen. That means in between missions, if you have 300 Bonus Exp. and a half dozen characters that are within 50 points of leveling up, you can level them up BEFORE you start the next mission! Bonus experience is also handy for bringing up characters that are lagging behind, which is usually your healers. It's a very cool addition. 

Another unique feature in this release is that Support Conversations take place on the Battle Preparation screen. Support Conversations are completely optional. After certain characters spend a certain number of missions together, they can have a Support Conversation. To do this in previous games, you had to have one character walk up to the other ON THE BATTLEFIELD, and choose the Support command. They would have the conversation, and the point of doing that is the characters get certain stat boosts when they're close to each other on the battlefield. Having the conversation also consumed your turn. It was very troublesome, as you pretty much had to trial and error walking characters up to other characters to see if a Support command would show up. In Path of Radiance, there's no such thing as a Support command in a mission. Instead, there's a Support menu in the battle preparation screen that will list all characters in your party, and highlights who can have a Support Conversation. You choose who's going to start one, and pick which highlighted character they'll talk to. They have the conversation, and they'll get the stat boost in the battlefield from that point onward. No more trial and error, and no more wasted turns. It's nice to see that cleaned up, and it's still optional. 

This game also gives you the opportunity to make custom weapons that are stronger than what you can get in a store, for a hefty price. You can only do this once in between every mission, though. 

One final new addition worth noting is the ability to 'shove' units on the map. Any character can use the Shove command on any other character that's less than double their weight. This can be very useful. For example, you can shove a character out of the way that has already attacked an enemy, so that another unit can attack the same enemy.




Stuff We Like:

The 3D graphics upgrade is very nice. The grid based map and the battle engagement screens had a very pleasing transition to 3D. When you equip different weapons, it shows in the battle screen. Moving to 3D enhanced the game instead of changing it, and we like that. Now, about that Advance Wars!! AHEM! Moving on, the cutscenes are spectacular! CG cutscene quality and quantity are generally something we don't care too much about. I mean, we hate it when games are advertised on cutscenes alone with no gameplay footage. But the cutscenes in Path of Radiance could very well be the best anime-like CG cutscenes we've ever seen! It's amazing how closely the 3D models resemble the hand drawn art they're supposed to represent! There aren't very many cutscenes, but what's there looks awesome. (We have videos of them here.)The story wasn't half bad. Bonus experience kicks ass. The game simply looks good, sounds good, and plays well all around.

Stuff We Hate:

The most frustrating thing in the game has to be the random level up system. At 100 Exp. a character will level up. At that time, up to 7 of your 8 stats CAN go up a point (We've never seen all 8 go up). UP to 7. Maybe 6 stats get a point, maybe only 2 stats get a point, oh wait, I know, let's make 0 STATS GO UP A POINT! Nothing sucks more than earning a level up, only to see that your character is EXACTLY THE SAME with no improvements, other than the Level number being one higher. The concept is to try and keep each character unique, with the potential of having some super characters with high stats later along with some mediocre ones, but unfortunately, more often than not, you end up getting the shit end of the scale. 

The combat animations could use a lot of work. There isn't enough variety, and the animations just aren't as amusing as they were in the previous sprite based games. The lack of variety causes some battles to look very awkward, such as when your weapon doesn't actually hit the enemy even though you scored a hit, or your horse's head clips through a wyvern's head. 
One other minor complaint is the Fire Emblem theme song. It's the title theme for both GBA games, it's one of the best songs in Band Brothers, and it's even part of a song in Super Smash Bros. Melee! You don't get to hear it until after you beat this game, and the arrangement isn't very good. They got carried away trying to jazz it up.

Like/Hate Score:

Path of Radiance is a top notch strategy title that will appeal to those new to Fire Emblem as well as fans of the series. It's pretty easy to learn the game mechanics, and the tutorials are very informative. This is an excellent first attempt at bringing Fire Emblem into 3D. Hopefully we can look forward to more Fire Emblem games getting released. 

On our scale of 5-10, we give it an 9.3.

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