Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance Review

• System: GameCube
• Year: 2005
• Region: North America
• Developer: Intelligent Systems
• Publisher: Nintendo

Back in 2005, I visited the local Gamestop with my brother-in-law. We were checking out the GameCube section when I spotted a game from a series that I had never seen before called Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough money to spend on a brand new game at the moment, so I said, “This looks really cool.” and placed it back on the shelf. My brother-in-law then grabbed it and said he would buy it for me. Not only was I happy with the surprise gift, but I was even happier when I popped it in my GameCube.

Developed by Intelligent Systems, and released by Nintendo in October of 2005, Path Of Radiance was the first console game in the series that was released in North America. We did get two entries for the Game Boy Advance prior to this game’s release, but this series actually dates all the way back to the Famicom in Japan.

The story centers around a young man named Ike, the son of the leader of the Greil mercenaries. When the Daein army starts attacking their Crimean homeland, the princess is forced to flee and hires the mercenaries to lead her to safety. Their escape takes them out of Crimean territory and into a land occupied by the Laguz, which are half-man, half-beast. These beastmen generally do not like Beorc (another name for humans). In the past, the Beorc enslaved the Laguz, and many humans still harbor prejudice towards the beastmen, often referring to them as sub-humans. Ike must somehow find a way to unite the humans and the various beastmen clans to stand against the Daein army.

What really makes the story stand out in this game is the large cast of playable characters. You can recruit over 40 different party members, and you can also get some bonus characters later on which we will discuss in a bit. The characters that do join your party are very likable and have interesting (but brief) backstories as well.

The graphics are a bit of a mixed bag. The 3D graphics are pretty average. They’re not bad, but there are much better looking games on the system. The 2D portraits that are displayed whenever characters or enemies converse with one another are beautiful though, and very nicely detailed. The animated cutscenes are gorgeous as well. There may not be that many because of a lack of storage space on the Gamecube’s minidiscs, but these are always a treat to watch.

The combat is where this game really shines. You can move your party members around a grid-based map in any order you choose, and of course have to try and take out any nearby enemies. That won’t always be easy though, since you have to pay attention to your terrain, the enemy’s level, and also what weapon your opponent has equipped. The Fire Emblem series uses a Weapon Triangle where swords are stronger than axes, axes best spears, and spears are better than swords. There are also archers, flying units, and mages that each have their own pros and cons. A neat feature of combat is that you can highlight enemy movement and attack ranges and leave them visible throughout your turn, which will enable you to move your team to safe locations on the battlefield. You will definitely want to take advantage of this feature, since there is no way to revive a dead party member. This means that every decision you make during battle is extremely important. If you blindly charge the enemy, you may lose someone that could have helped you in later battles. The gameplay is relatively simple, but also very challenging and rewarding when you conquer a tough map.

One huge improvement to the gameplay is that you can now buy weapons and outfit your party between chapters; No more wasting turns going to shops during battle. You can do several other things between chapters such as assigning bonus experience points and skills, and you can use the support conversations feature to talk to certain party members. Support conversations reveal a little bit about certain characters, and will also grant stat boosts whenever the two party members are close to each other on the battlefield.

One thing I didn’t like about the game was some of the bonus content. When you beat Path Of Radiance or link up with the Game Boy Advance titles, you unlock some Trial Maps. Sounds cool, right? Well, not totally. While there’s nothing wrong with the way the Trial Maps are handled, the bonus characters are a complete waste of time. After the third playthrough (yes you read that correctly), you start unlocking bonus characters. While 3 playthroughs of such a lengthy game is already a huge requirement, a couple of the later characters require a whopping 10 to 15 playthroughs, which is just plain insane. To make matters worse, these bonus party members are only available for the Trial Maps. I’m not going to play through the game 15 times just to unlock a character that can only be used in a handful of battles.

Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance is an amazing strategy RPG featuring a great cast of characters, an interesting story, and some challenging gameplay. Would I recommend this title? Well that’s a tough one. As I said before, the game is great, but what isn’t great is the ridiculous price that it now sells for. Less than a decade ago, you could easily find copies of this game for around 40 bucks, but now, you could pay as much as 150 dollars! It’s hard to justify paying that much for any game, so I would recommend playing this on an emulator until you can find a better deal. Maybe if this game ends up on the Nintendo Switch we’ll see a price drop on the physical version.

9.0 out of 10