  Combat the old-fashioned way in 'Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance'. |
Sometimes games transcend their platform; concepts so effective it doesn’t matter how smart or simply they’re dressed they’re still an astounding idea. Nintendo’s Fire Emblem series is one such example. Having become a Gameboy mainstay, FE: Path of Radiance sees the turn based strategy RPG’s first Gamecube outing, and proves to be an equally effective title.
Unfolding via on-screen text and fairly basic graphic stills, the story tells of a young warrior-to-be named Ike, and his team of mercenaries. And at first the text reads of the ludicrous situation of their role of cleaning up the countryside, but eventually the story progresses to reveal a power and land struggle when the country of Daein invades it’s neighbouring Crimean capital city. Ike’s team’s allegiance is conflicted, and must decide which cause to support.
Thankfully (for some), the story can be completely ignored and skipped through rapidly. And stripped bear what’s left is a highly effective and well-designed turn-based combat game. Ike and his team of usual RPG characters move around a grid based arena, and duke it out with what’s more often than not an overwhelming opposition.
The principle at the heart of Path of Radiance is the triangle; a rock-paper-scissors like concept that simply put means swords beat axes, axes beat spears and spears beat swords. It’s an important idea to master, as even the most leveled character can make hard and long work of disposing opposition if inappropriately equipped.
The scenarios for each battle come in various shapes and sizes and might situate Ike’s team in an all out offence position, or perhaps they have to hold their defence for as many turns as required. And this being a game of numbers, there’s many different solutions to each problem.
Obviously each character has different traits and different methods for attack. Snipers, for example, can only attack at ranged distances.
Leveling, as in any good RPG, is a major contributor force to the advancement of the team. Whilst it’s easy enough to put forward an experienced tank to bear the brunt of an onslaught, the experience gained will not be as significant as taxing an initial low level character such as Ike with the same situation. The irony of this is that between battles, some experience can be shared between team members. So whilst it might be an ideal opportunity to bring up low-level characters to a similar worth of team members lost in previous combat, it also allows the player to build up their most treasured characters at the expense of what might be a more balanced fighting outfit. However, the chance to take this possibility in either direction gives the player an added dimension of gameplay which can be no bad thing.
With what initially appears to be yet another hyperbolic storyline, the unfolding narrative wrapping Path of Radiance surprisingly creates quite an emotional attachment to its characters. Whilst they are indeed the same old traditional roles found in fantasy games (warriors, paladins, mages etc), the storyline develops their personalities in such a way that the loss of one of them in combat feels really significant.
And lose characters you will, but save for Ike – whose death spells game over, the story continues with or without a full compliment. Additional characters are met and become available as the game progresses, and as the team builds, opportunities for pitting a finely tuned team increases, rather than just holding on with what you have as in earlier battles.
What was a highly stylized series on older home consoles and more recently the comparably powered GBA, FE: Path of Radiance does lose something in the translation to the more powerful hardware of the Gamecube. Yes, the visuals are pretty, but not that pretty. The 3D battle scenes are average at best, and grow tiresome very quickly. Thankfully they can be turned off to not only relieve rapidly increasing boredom, but also to radically speed up the battles – quite a boon considering some face-offs can last over 20 minutes. The arena can be tilted to reveal grid squares obscured by the environment, but overall, in a visual sense, the leap to the Gamecube isn’t quite the evolution one might hope for. But it doesn’t matter, sometimes the ugliest of games provide the best of entertainment, and whilst in no way is FE: Path of Radiance ugly, it doesn’t provide many aesthetic delights either.
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance achieves something many role-playing
strategy games fail at. It provides a fantastically involving
adventure strategy for those who live and breath RPG, but also allows
those who just want the strategy to ignore the wrapping paper and get
straight to the gift.
