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Fire
Emblem: Path of Radiance is  a turn based role-playing strategy
game, the first Fire Emblem title for the GameCube. At first
I found it very difficult to get into, having not playing the Game
Boy Advance predecessors, turn based games with lots of statistics
confuse me slightly but after getting some expert help with what I
had to do found it quite an enjoyable game to play.
In
the playable Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) demo you started
with quite a few characters, both from your own team and
‘partners’ who although not part of your immediate team would
listen to orders given to them.
You
have different classes or types of characters; mages, archers,
people on horseback and warriors all form your team, obviously with
very different abilities. Those on horseback can move further than
those on foot while archers don’t have to be right up close,
which means an opponent cannot counter. Some warriors have counter
attacks, but these tend to be weaker attacks so there’s very much
a sense of thinking involved.
One
aspect I found interesting was that if a team member dies in combat
that’s it, you lose them forever. This adds a good system
as it makes sure you keep your White Mage handy for healing spells
and means you are thinking more about the welfare of each and every
member of your party before sending one in as a sacrificial lamb.
There
are several different objectives you can work towards as the plot
progresses, from simply ‘seizing’ a level to finding an object
of killing a specific target, which would help add a variety to the
game and encourage not stepping into the trap of just using the
same tactics for each battle.
This
is the game many Fire Emblem fans have been waiting for and
I don’t think they will be disappointed. There were three
different difficulty settings in the E3 demo which will probably
convert into the final product, providing a challenge for the
hardcore and giving those just beginning some advice on how to play
and what certain phrases mean.
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