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| Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance; Reviewed by Cheese_lover | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 26 2006, 07:35 PM (353 Views) | |
| Cheese_lover | Nov 26 2006, 07:35 PM Post #1 |
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The God Of All Cheeses
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By IGN: Embrace game droughts. If you've been an avid gamer over the last decade or so, you know that Nintendo systems don't always age gracefully, often leaving players starved for new quality titles as the leaves turn orange. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is the perfect example as to why game shortages aren't all bad. While Nintendo and other Japanese publishers never felt the need to translate some of their more text-heavy NES and SNES titles because of a flood of readily available software, a slowdown in releases for Nintendo's handhelds and consoles may have somewhat forced the publisher's hands to finally release franchises like Wars and Fire Emblem to audiences outside Japan. As a matter of fact, the GBA revival of Famicom Wars we all know and love as Advance Wars actually released in the west before it made it out in Japan. For those that haven't gotten on the Emblem convoy yet, here's the series in a nutshell: Advance Wars in a medieval fantasy setting with a focus on single-character units and RPG elements. The similarities aren't coincidental, of course -- both series come from Nintendo-operated development team Intelligent Systems, the same developer responsible for the well-received Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. While gameplay follows the same simple turn-based route complete with unit-specific strengths and weaknesses, the game's overall feel is distinctly more at home in the roleplaying realm. Each character comes complete with a full array of stats, experience points, abilities, equipment, and affinities, develops depending on use in battle, and dies permanently if your strategies don't work out. Instead of regurgitating all the gameplay details which you can read about here), let's get right to the point. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance doesn't reinvent the wheel; it simply takes the best elements from all its predecessors and adds some subtle, but generally positive enhancements on top. Like Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, this first console FE title since the Super Famicom days suffers from a feeling of déjà vu for returning players. Luckily, an interesting storyline, new polygonal presentation, and some nice tweaks ensure that the experience doesn't feel stale quite yet. The biggest changes come in the form of the new man/beast hybrids, known as laguz. Laguz are lycanthropic humanoids that automatically turn into cats, birds, or dragons and back again after a number of turns. While in animal form, the laguz are very powerful fighters -- but in human form they're unable to attack and thus fairly useless. You can use them to block your opponent's path since many of them are rather thick-skinned and have high defenses, but it's their laguz form that makes them a valuable addition to your army. There are of course items to speed up and prolong the transformation, but generally the laguz shapeshifting is governed by a special gauge that fills and decreases by a variable number of units every turn depending on what state the character is in and whether he/she is under attack or not. Apart from adding some interesting gameplay twists, the conflict between the laguz and the beorc (regular humans) also forms the center of the game's twisting storyline. The plot follows Ike, a blue-haired mercenary not unlike the heroes of Fire Emblems (and Smash Bros.) past. Ike's development from wide-eyed rookie to respected army commander is set in front of a backdrop of political unrest and class struggle, as the country of Daein invades the nation of Crimea. Given the subject matter and the setting, it's not surprising that the basic plot boils down to helping one faction and overthrowing the evil invaders (identified by the scowls on their faces). But Fire Emblem will toss you a few curveballs since the confusion between who's right and who's wrong will ensure that you'll bump into plenty of characters who aren't clearly good or evil. There's racism on both sides, with laguz hating beorc and beorc casually using the term sub-humans to describe their animalistic counterparts. Even the game's protagonists are essentially mercenaries for hire -- it's that spark of goodness in Ike and a secret predisposition towards making the right choices that ensures his paths are in pursuit of the general good. The story is primarily told via "barely animated" tableaus; character cutouts animated only via their blinking eyes and super-imposed over static backdrops. Apart from a handful of gorgeously animated cel-shaded CG sequences, all plot development is handled via text-based conversations between two or more characters. Intelligent Systems chose to move away from mouth animations and cartoon-style speech balloons to identify the speaker. Instead, the listening character cutouts fade slightly to make sure the player knows who is talking. It's a bit distracting to see these constant color changes on screen and it's visually inferior to the old system, but it remains a functional solution to telling the story. Like all games in the series, Fire Emblem is extremely text-heavy. If you don't like reading, this is definitely not the game for you. Because the members of your growing party are characterized almost entirely by the opinions they express during conversations, learning about their motivations, relationships, and backgrounds is as important as seeing them evolve and kick tail in battle. By following the storyline, you will not only get wrapped up in the plights of the main characters, you'll also learn important details that can help you recruit new allies during missions. For example, one of the female members in your party is searching for her brother. If you somehow miss this, you may never figure out that the somewhat troubled looking mercenary at the back of your enemy's lines could actually be a valuable ally if you send the girl in question to talk to him. Nintendo of America's translators did a great job with the localization. There are times when the conversations get a bit wordy, but overall the game flows nicely. Players can customize the speed of the text output and bypass entire conversations altogether if they choose to do so. The actual turn-based combat remains virtually unchanged. Considering how much fun the Fire Emblem games are, that's not a bad thing. Success and failure are determined by what character classes and weapons are matched against each other. Each unit can move a certain number of squares on the maps. Melee units can attack each other only from adjacent squares, while projectile units (archers, magicians, and characters equipped with throwable axes and spears) can attack from a distance. Axes are strong against lances, lances are strong against swords, swords are strong against axes, fire is strong against certain beasts, arrows are strong against airborne units, and so on. It's this basic rule set that governs over whether you emerge from combat with your team intact or whether some of your friends will fall. Attacking an archer with a swordsman means the archer will be in a world of pain, so it's up to the player to constantly remain vigilant and aware of what each character move could bring in the next round. Putting the heavily armored units in the front and backing them up with archers, magicians and healers, means playing it safe -- but there will be plenty of times where it's not exactly easy to give your weaker units the protection they require. Intelligent Systems actually came up with some great ideas on how to inspire players to be more tactical about their approach. Since a character death is irreversible, the upgraded rescue system comes in very handy. Like in previous games, some characters can pick up others in lieu of attacking and thus keep them safe until danger has passed, but the developers also added a new "shove" function that enables heavier units to push friends or foe one or more squares out of the way. It's a great way to make sure your forces form an impenetrable front at the end of your turn and none of the weaker units are exposed. But no matter what you do, casualties happen. As a matter of fact, unless you're a meticulous super-human who strategically thinks through every minor move, characters getting killed won't be a rare occurrence. Sadly, Intelligent Systems has yet to address this issue in a significant way. Only the most heartless players would sacrifice a well-liked and built-up character 30 minutes into a mission -- most of us will want to pull off the undocumented reset function by pressing X, B and Start at the same time. I can understand the decision to avoid mid-mission saves to keep tension high and force players to think more, but considering that some scenarios can easily last longer than an hour depending on whether you have combat animations turned on or off, it's high time the franchise addressed this needless chicane. Who knows, perhaps it's a conspiracy to keep Fire Emblem fans skinny? It'd be nice to see this issue solved in the future with half-way point saves or perhaps an allowance of one save per battle. The current interrupt-save (which lets you resume a mission from where you left off, but not copy or retry multiple times from the same spot) is just not enough when dealing with lengthy scenarios. Ironically, there are other elements in the game that tempt users to hit the reset button, such as the randomization of stats upgrades when characters level up -- but it's up to you to decide if you want to be greedy and hit reset in between missions to get the most out of your bonus experience points… Let's just say it's hard to accept a random 0 stats increase after spending 100 hard-earned experience points. The developers did, however, address the need for more streamlined class change and skills systems. Players can teach their characters more than 40 moves and abilities that can be used in battle by simply equipping special skills found during the missions. Each character has a limited skill capacity to keep things balanced, but some of the skills significantly change a unit's value. Skills range from drawing enemy units' attention, over stats and experience bonuses, to the ability to always attack first, deal incredible damage, or steal items. Class changes are also more clearly defined. Instead of having to chase down class-specific items, a single special item can trigger a class upgrade (which grants units such changes as higher stats, different appearance, movement range, and ability to wield more weapons) in any character level 10 or above. Additionally, any unit that reaches level 21 will automatically upgrade, rewarding players who make sure all of their characters see a piece of the action. Likewise, Intelligent Systems countered one inherent weakness in many strategy titles by which players who drag out battles the longest and kill every enemy on screen automatically end up with the strongest teams. In Path of Radiance, tactical players who follow instructions laid out in pre-mission briefings receive bonus experience points after battle that can be freely awarded to any character in the party. The bonus points beautifully play into the more varied mission objectives, which include defending characters and bases, destroying the enemy outright, clearing maps in a limited number of turns, or even fleeing from a superior opponent. Some missions suggest that Ike and team should avoid conflict with neutral units -- but it's up to the player to decide whether that's the desired course. Avoiding conflict could mean more experience points or new ally, whereas combat could yield treasures that can be used to upgrade the existing members. The outcome is a more interesting gameplay experience that offers different rewards for different play styles. On the flipside, the newly added indirect command ability that lets Ike control allied forces fails to impress. Players only have limited control by issuing standing orders such as halt, roam, target, or avoid -- but more often than not, the allied AI simply doesn't act intelligently enough. Units at times attack strong enemies instead of picking off weak ones and get in the way of units under your direct control. And since allies don't give up treasures captured from slain foes and eat up valuable experience points, it's best to try and block them from combat by telling them to stay put to begin with. The second command ability, which issues orders to units under Ike's direct control is a bit more helpful, but it'll mostly come into play when you're trying to move the entire team towards a certain spot on the map. The menu systems themselves are brilliantly simple and well-organized and the optional tutorial makes getting to grips with both menus and gameplay features a cinch. Character management in between missions is likewise intuitive and fast. It'll only take a minute to understand how to trade items or weapons between characters, assign bonus experience points, use the inter-character support system, use upgrades, buy equipment, and even have custom weapons created from scratch (for a pretty penny, of course). The only playability issue with regards to menus and presentation lies with the new 3D map displays. In most cases, the 2D map view from the predecessors actually presented a clearer view of the battlefield. In some stages, ship masts or different terrain levels can get in the way of easily being able to plan your attack or retreat. You can adjust the camera up and down, cycle through three zoom settings, or rotate the map slightly to get an isometric viewpoint, but there are a handful of missions where more control could have really helped. Here's hoping Intelligent Systems will address this with the next iteration and add full rotation control and a more developed way to quickly see the entire map at once while planning character moves. Which leads us to overall presentation. As nice as the opening cinema is, there are far too few of these beautifully rendered cutscenes for a game so focused on story and character interaction. Yes, you've heard the rant before: voices, animated scenes, narration -- these are story telling elements that have become so commonplace in modern roleplaying games, going back to the spartan, text-only days of yesteryear doesn't do much to broaden the appeal of this great franchise. The quality of the music is actually a nice step forward, however. While the classic tunes from the older console titles are still more memorable, there's no denying that the synthesized orchestral tunings of Path of Radiance sound great. Graphics, on the other hand, could use a serious upgrade. The battle maps are often very sparse looking and the polygonal characters are so stiffly animated in the polygonal combat scenes, they had us yearning for the far more dramatic hand-drawn attacks from the older games. But no matter -- once you've seen each attack a few times, you're likely to turn animations off and crank up the game speed to do less repetitious watching and more strategizing, rejoicing, cursing, and reset hitting. The game runs in progressive scan, features Dolby Pro-Logic II audio, and offers a Game Boy Advance link-up option for owners of the two GBA Fire Emblem titles that unlocks special art work. Closing Comments Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is yet another worthy installment in Intelligent Systems' venerable strategy RPG series. The text-heavy presentation is definitely not for everyone, but the well-tweaked strategy gameplay, long quest (40 hours is not an inflated estimate), challenging missions, and rewarding storyline are worth every penny. The game's highest difficulty setting is a tough nut to crack. If you're not up to the task, know that there's no tangible reward for getting through it -- then again, you're probably not bringing back snow from the peak of Mount Everest either. But you'll remember the experience for years to come. It's taken a few months to bring this game to the US, but the wait paid off. The crash bugs plaguing the Japanese release are gone and the translation is competent all around. If games like Advance Wars and Ogre Battle are your cup of tea, do yourself a favor and play this game. If you haven't tried your hand at strategy RPGs, it's the perfect time to give Fire Emblem a chance. Embrace the drought. Take the Path of Radiance. For me? I say it's the best game ever! I've played it 3 and now on my 4th time! It always changes every time! I heart FE! |
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