Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

As war rages across Tellius, young Ike’s battle is about to begin!

JP release: 20th April 2005
NA release: 17st October 2005
EU release: 4th November 2005
Developer: Intelligent Systems, Nintendo SPD
Publisher: Nintendo
NGC Magazine Score: 91%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

This is my first Fire Emblem game. Outside of Super Smash Bros appearances, I know very little about the franchise. I do know that it took until this game to get a release outside of Japan, and that it’s a turn based strategy game similar to the Advance Wars series, but fantasy based. Upon starting the game, I realised that a big difference is that you’re controlling individual characters instead of groups of soldiers.

Your main character is Ike, a mercenary working for his father. It doesn’t take long until they get swept up in a war, helping out the princess from a nearby kingdom. You’ll need to team up with members of various “beast tribes”, called Laguz. These come in different forms that can transform into things like cats, birds and dragons. There’s a lot of history regarding humans enslaving the laguaz, but the kingdom you work for was attempting to improve relations.

It’s a fascinating story, one that enthralled me throughout, with plenty of twists and turns – some in the middle of battles. This story kept me going throughout the whole game – not that the gameplay is bad, but because it isn’t my kind of thing.

It’s a turn-based strategy game where you move units around the grid. There’s a basic rock paper scissors advantage system with swords, shield and lances, but an immense amount more depth that’s beyond my comprehension. The characters are the key point, and you’ll meet up and recruit a lot as you progress through the game. You’ll need to look after them, too. I had one nasty turn where I lost both my healers early on due to leaving a gap in my line (it turns out the enemy always targets weak players) and it wasn’t until after my save that I realised they were lost forever.

I was able to survive on healing items until I levelled enough another character to become a healer, but if you’re not careful it’s possible to end up in a situation where it’s extremely difficult to progress due to loss of characters. There can also be some issues with levelling up. While there is a great feature where you can assign bonus XP to characters that don’t get involved in much combat, the stat increases are random. My Ike was quite weak by the end of the game,

Of course, experienced players can work around this and you can find and unlock extra abilities, and you are given more characters than you can use in any battle. That said, the permadeath means that most characters mostly vanish from the story once they’re introduced, and if a character dies that is a major part of the story, they’ll still remain part of the story, but you can’t select them in battles. To make up for this, each character has a selection of “support” characters. Using both characters in a battle unlocks conversations between the two as well as bonus abilities.

All in all, it’s a great game. Most of the shortcomings I encountered are either due to mistakes I made or simply because I’m not good at this style of game.

Great

Admittedly it’s an acquired taste, but there’s something about the painfully slow growth of character statistics that can really suck you into a game. Hours pass like minutes, a quick afternoon’s play runs through the evening into the wee-small hours of the morning.
Geraint Evans

Remake or remaster?

A remaster with proper widescreen adaptation would be get.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to buy it, but it’s available on Nintendo Switch Online.