I say this with absolutely no doubt, because it really has to be said; Path of Radiance does a better job with its story than nearly any other FE. It's well-paced. It's suitably epic. It has actual, meaningful themes, and it handles them surprisingly well. It puts enough twists on the Standard FE Formula to be intriguing in its own right. The world of Tellius is marvelously realized, and you're constantly getting glimpses into a long and interesting history.
This is aided by the fact that POR pretty much perfected supports. You're not forced to sit around grinding them, characters have the right amount, and while the five-support limit gets annoying, it also means you aren't getting your head bashed in by someone's gimmick. And the cast, with a few exceptions, is really well-realized and likeable. Even characters who feel like they'd be one-note jokes have at least one bit of Hidden Depths. It hit the perfect balance between supports being possible to get without them overwhelming you, and it gives the game a lot of replay value.
Unfortunately, the core gameplay has some major issues. POR's maps love to just throw an absolute horde of pathetic-but-bulky enemies at you and make you work you way through them slowly, which also incentivizes juggernauting with a core team of overinvested units. This really isn't helped by the slow animations; even set to skip, it feels like every time I end my turn, the game plays itself for a couple minutes. Easy and Normal are a joke, while Hard and Japanese Maniac just exacerbate all the above problems. And I feel like a lot of the cast is too reliant on a 50% growth doing what it's supposed to. Ike in particular, though surprisingly intriguing in-story, ends up being incredibly underwhelming even when he's staying on his averages and given statboosters. I think his last-two-chapters performance colored a lot of impressions.
The new systems in play are a mixed bag. Forging is phenomenal. Transformations sound cool, but often aren't worth it. I like the returning skill system, but I feel a lot of them were nerfed too hard. Biorhythm is an astoundingly pointless mechanic, but Jugdral Canto coming back is pretty neat, if totally overpowered. BEXP is a great system that rewards good strategy and makes growth units a lot better, though it seems to have contributed a very lame batch of prepromotes. The promotion tweaks basically work, as do the revisions to weight. And shoving seems minor, but actually opens up a lot of possibilities.
Overall, people have a lot of suggestions for FE games they want remade—Genealogy, Thracia, Binding Blade—but Path of Radiance is mine. It feels like with a few tweaks to its design and some QOL changes, it'd be the best FE game ever. (It would also probably ensure that loose copies on eBay don't go for 200 dollars.) As it stands, I tend to find actually playing it to be more exhausting than fun, fantastic story or no.
VideoGame A Wonderful Tale, An Unpolished System
Path of Radiance's story is the best one.
I say this with absolutely no doubt, because it really has to be said; Path of Radiance does a better job with its story than nearly any other FE. It's well-paced. It's suitably epic. It has actual, meaningful themes, and it handles them surprisingly well. It puts enough twists on the Standard FE Formula to be intriguing in its own right. The world of Tellius is marvelously realized, and you're constantly getting glimpses into a long and interesting history.
This is aided by the fact that POR pretty much perfected supports. You're not forced to sit around grinding them, characters have the right amount, and while the five-support limit gets annoying, it also means you aren't getting your head bashed in by someone's gimmick. And the cast, with a few exceptions, is really well-realized and likeable. Even characters who feel like they'd be one-note jokes have at least one bit of Hidden Depths. It hit the perfect balance between supports being possible to get without them overwhelming you, and it gives the game a lot of replay value.
Unfortunately, the core gameplay has some major issues. POR's maps love to just throw an absolute horde of pathetic-but-bulky enemies at you and make you work you way through them slowly, which also incentivizes juggernauting with a core team of overinvested units. This really isn't helped by the slow animations; even set to skip, it feels like every time I end my turn, the game plays itself for a couple minutes. Easy and Normal are a joke, while Hard and Japanese Maniac just exacerbate all the above problems. And I feel like a lot of the cast is too reliant on a 50% growth doing what it's supposed to. Ike in particular, though surprisingly intriguing in-story, ends up being incredibly underwhelming even when he's staying on his averages and given statboosters. I think his last-two-chapters performance colored a lot of impressions.
The new systems in play are a mixed bag. Forging is phenomenal. Transformations sound cool, but often aren't worth it. I like the returning skill system, but I feel a lot of them were nerfed too hard. Biorhythm is an astoundingly pointless mechanic, but Jugdral Canto coming back is pretty neat, if totally overpowered. BEXP is a great system that rewards good strategy and makes growth units a lot better, though it seems to have contributed a very lame batch of prepromotes. The promotion tweaks basically work, as do the revisions to weight. And shoving seems minor, but actually opens up a lot of possibilities.
Overall, people have a lot of suggestions for FE games they want remade—Genealogy, Thracia, Binding Blade—but Path of Radiance is mine. It feels like with a few tweaks to its design and some QOL changes, it'd be the best FE game ever. (It would also probably ensure that loose copies on eBay don't go for 200 dollars.) As it stands, I tend to find actually playing it to be more exhausting than fun, fantastic story or no.