Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is a Great start for the series return to consoles
The Story starts you off with Ike, the son of the commander of the Greil Mercenaries. The first couple of chapters have Ike and a few others of the mercenary troop doing small jobs, but eventually you hear news of Daien, another country, has invaded the country the troop resides in, Crimea. Ike is ordered to lead a search party to check things out, and after a battle with Daein troops, they come across a woman who happens to be Princess Crimea. Afterwards, Ike and the troop's future is forever changed leading them on a huge quest that eventually engulfs the entire continent.
The Story is well told, and has some nice parts and memorable moments, while the ending to me seemed somewhat lacking, it did its job and concluded the epic tale. However, one the things that made Fire Emblem so memorable is its huge cast of characters, whether it's people who joing your troop or the enemies you face, each is memorable and distinguished.
Fire Emblem's battle system returns with a few tweaks and changes to bring out an even better conflict. The game uses a turn based stragedy system thats on a grid. Your turns will involve you moving your troops along the battlefield, healing, issuing attacks, and more. After each battle with an enemy, your characters will gain experience, and will gain more if they defeat the enemy rather than just damaging him/her. Another one of Fire Emblem's unique features is its death system. If one of your troops dies on the field, he/she is gone forever. There are no resurrection items or spells so this forces you to think carefully before making a move.
The Enemy AI ensures that you will have to use your head while in battle. They are good at exploiting your weak points and using those to their advantage. They will attack your healers/spellcasters, or they might all bunch up on one weak troop of yours. While they might all die in the process, they will succeed in killing of your unit. The enemy AI puts up a good fight, but it's not that difficult to make it through the campaign without losing anyone.
The new additions Path of Radiance brings include the ability to see your lock your enemy movement range so you can see it as you move your troops around. This helps so that you don't unknowingly move a healer in the range of a Laguz. The Laguz are also a new addition, they are a new unit that can transform. They will build up their bars, and when they are ready, will transform into powerhouses. However, when they are not transformed, they cannot attack. The Laguz are a nice addition but they don't totally change the gameplay formula. The last addition on the field is the ability to shove. This allows you to shove someone a space in a certain direction. It helps when you want to heal someone then move the healer out of harms way.
About 5 or 6 chapters into the game, you will visit your base after each mission. The Base allows you to equip your characters with new items, do support and info, and other things. Unlike in other RPGs, Fire Emblem's system works that weapons have a fatigue system to them. When they reach their limited number of uses, the weapon breaks. You can also go to the forge where you can make powerful weapons at a greater cost.
The Support Conversations in Path of Radiance takes place at the base rather than the field, support conversations allow you to get to know each person in the troop better, including secrets and backstory. However, each character only has 5 conversations so you have to choose wisely who they will talk with. Supports also make characters stronger on the field when they are close to each other.
A new addition to the base is bonus experience. It helps so that if you are trying to level up a character in the game but he/she is too weak, giving them the bonus will help them catch up. When a character of your troop reaches level 21, they will change classes. A Class change greatly increases the character's stats, making them much more useful on the field. You can also use a Seal to make them change quicker.
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance are both good and bad. The series has finally gone up to 3D, but not in the best way. Your characters look like the enemies in the game only with a different skin, and the 3D isn't as good as it's 2D counterpart. Hopefully in the next installment, the game will have better graphics, maybe greatly cell shaded next time.
Besides the lacking 3D, the illustrations for each character is beautiful and very colorful. Each giving them a unique look. These illustrations are used for the dialogue of the game. It is all text based, but it is still very good to read. Path of Radiance also has some some wonderful cutscenes that really make those moments shine, if the next one ever looks that good, I will be amazed.
The Sound is Fire Emblem is pretty good, you will hear the slash attacks and magic attacks. The Music is nice, but the battle music gets a bit annoying by the end of the game. Overall, the music does its job with Path of Radiance.
The game is pretty long, your first play through will be about 25 hours+, but afterwards you will probably want to go back and try the game with a different group of characters. The game also has some trial maps that allow you to unlock secret for them, but they don't affect the storyline in any way.
Fire Emlem: Path of Radiance is a great start for the series return on the console. The Story and its character is awesome, and the gameplay is wonderful as ever. While the graphics outside cutscenes and sound aren't the games strongest points, they still do a good job to keep you going to the end. If you are a Cube owner, and have never tried a Fire Emblem game, I would highly recommend that you play this. And longtime fans will enjoy this as any one.