Well, after all that time, all those mages killed, all those paladins abused, I finally beat Path of Radiance.
Here's a review
What I liked:
- General gameplay loop was enjoyable, not incredible, but enjoyable
- The story involving Ike and his family was really well done. I loved the dialogue between Mist and Ike after Greil died and twist involving their mom was great. That part ties into the other aspect of the story I liked in the game, which was the vast political conspiracy that was unraveled throughout. It gave the story a grand stature that I expect out of RPGs.
- Some of the characters were really good and I enjoyed engaing with their supports (Marcia, Kieran, Haar, Reyson, Oscar)
- The gamble mechanic was good as something just for fun. No real reason you would ever rely on it, especially late game, but it was fun.
- The shove mechanic gave the gameplay a good amount of depth to it.
- Level design had some good peaks. My personal favorite was chapter nineteen, I enjoyed having to manuever my units away from not just the bows, but Naesala, and the fact that you have to get one of the bird tribe members to talk to him otherwise he would be completely unstoppable was good.
- The Black Knight, even though I got spoiled on who he is.
- Forgining broken javelins.
What I didn't like:
- I don't get the hype around Soren, but I killed him early on, so he probably had something well written that I just completely missed out on. He just seemed like a character designed to give the game appeal to people who formulate their politics around video games and "quotes that go hard".
-The elements of the story which revolve around stopping heckin' racism. The funniest that happened to me while playing this game was that I got Tormod killed by a member of the bird tribe in chapter nineteen. To draw a historical parallel, it would be like if one of the white guys who supported the ZANU was killed by a random black guy the Rhodesian army just happened to have on duty that day.
-Certain units becoming window dressing. Yeah I know, "Well why didn't you use all your units to get the supports". Because Paladins and Flying Knights were so broken throughout the game that I didn't want to handicap myself. It's not like Mia or Makalov or Muarim would be more useful on a particular level than Oscar or Kieran or Tanith. The good units, tend to be good throughout all levels of the game. But even in a game where character development is locked behind the support system, it was off putting when certain characters just become completely irrelevant to the main story and get no dialogue in any important scene. Take Boyd for instance, in the beginning him and Ike have a good back and forth relationship in the main story scenes, but as the story progesses, he gets nothing to do. We hear from Bastian, Lucia, and Geoffrey all the time after they're recruited, so would it have killed the devs just to give Boyd one thing to say near the end of the game. He was also fighting this war for nearly a year. The complete lack of acknowledgement when a unit dies is also really dumb to me. The one excpetion to this rule is Makalov's C support with Astrid, but that was it.
-The end game maps are pretty samey and don't have a ton of gravitas to them. The final level is just a generic castle. Even Pokemon has it so that their final set pieces have a distinctive look to them.
I like JRPGs, so I liked this game, but I don't know if I would ever play another Fire Emblem game after this. If I would I'm torn between Radiant Dawn and Geneaology of the Holy War.
