Replaying this game nearly 5 years after my initial playthrough, I was kind of blown away by how good it is. I ended up loving the gameplay, as it really feels like an expanded version of the GBA games with a lot of smart additions like how they handle promotions, forges, supports, and bonus experience. The chapter designs are also great and I really enjoyed the progression of them over the course of the game. Path of Radiance's biggest strength over the rest of the series though is its worldbuilding and writing. Tellius is an incredibly fleshed out continent with so many different factions and plot threads that connect together surprisingly well. This is helped by how well done the pacing and scale of the game is, with it starting out very small and gradually building over the course of the game. One of the reasons Ike is one of the series' best protags is because of how closely we follow his journey from mercenary to hero through his point of view. He's also given an actual personality that reacts accordingly to what happens rather than being a very standard protagonist who reacts generically. Having all of the base conversations before each chapter just helps the entire world and cast feel so much more alive and connected, which is much appreciated for a series which forces most of its characters to be in the background due to permadeath's implementation. My only issue with the game is that it does start to slow down a bit in the Daien arc, as the game definitely could've cut a couple chapters, but they're still fun to play. Overall, even though the game clearly sets itself up for its sequel, this is an immensely satisfying game to beat and stands to me as the ideal Fire Emblem game.

I feel like this game is the literal textbook definition of going through the motions. It starts off pretty solid, and I appreciate it's simplicity compared to some of the more modern games, but at the same time there really isn't that much going on here strategically.

Some of the earlier chapters are kind of weighed down by the fact that it gives you some really overpowered units really early on, and you can kinda just use them to either steamroll the map, or give everyone else ample exp.

By the time you get to the midgame, while these units are mostly gone, or toned down a bit, as soon as the rest of your units get leveled and promoted, there really isn't any unit that can take any of them down unless you're positioned extremely horribly.

So it just turns into one of those cases where the further you get into the game and the more powerful your units get, it just becomes more and more trivial to play. It really wasn't that fun to get on when the entire gameplay loop is just putting a few of the many overpowered units in enemy range and looking at my phone until enemy phase is over. If I didn't have speedup on an emulator I probably wouldn't have even bothered finishing it. This problem gets even worse at endgame, where instead of being able to breeze the map with a few units, you really only need the protagonist.

Pair this with there not really being anything too interesting about any of the characters, be it their personal skills or reasons to use them outside of their mobility or some of their stats. It goes without saying that the weapon triangle doesn't really matter here that much either so that's another thing you really don't have to think about.

It's also kind of annoying to recruit characters. Whenever you see a unit that stands out among the enemies, you just have to drag each and every one of your own units next to them to see which one can talk to and recruit them.
And aside from just a few I can think of, the map design is also incredibly boring here. Not that I think there are many that are that bad, but most of them are just there. Kind of unremarkable.

If you're looking for a simple power fantasy, you probably will get some enjoyment out of this game, but if you're looking for a strategical experience I would recommend looking anywhere else.

Path of Radiance is fantastic. It’s one of the best stories Fire Emblem has told, a great gameplay experience with lots of fun tactical management elements, and well designed maps. This is absolutely one of the prime “first Fire Emblem games” for anyone looking to dive into the series.

The story is very masterfully told through the lens of Ike, a somewhat sheltered mercenary, curious about the world and lacking the prejudices many have. He has a perspective very similar to what a player would and the writing soars for it. Everything feels natural.

The map objectives and types are varied so the player’s always on their toes. I also love this game’s iteration of the Base system. Learning more about characters and the battle scenario ahead through the Info tab, dishing out Bonus EXP, managing weapons, it’s all so satisfying. I also like that this is the first entry where you can reasonably attain and read supports without spamming “End Turn” for hundreds of turns for no reason.

I don’t even want to tip off too much about the story. Its depiction of heavy topics like genocide, corrupt governing bodies, and prejudice are deftly written for the most part and beg being read through.

There are also some fantastic “story through gameplay” moments like Chapters 11 and 27! Plus, I’m one of those people that actually likes when FE used to do post-game trial maps. (I just don’t like the “do 15 playthroughs” requirements to get every character, but it’s an inoffensive side mode unlock)

A true classic that is sadly really inaccessible to a lot of people. This game deserves every bit of hype and praise.

This is my first Fire Emblem I tried to go in as blind as possible, so I looked things up as little as possible which had bolstered and also made the experience much harder. Still really enjoyed it over all with a rough start with lack of a convoy to you reach around chapter 7 or 8 till you can access it so any new items on a character with a full inventory you had no choice but the chuck an item. The mid game felt alot better as I was able to form my army more to how I liked it only issue was not realizing that class promotions weren't only tied to a master seal so I stopped using some characters when they got to 19 not knowing the now promote at 21. At the same time I feed all my bonus EXP to Sothe thinking he'll promote to an assassin or something but hes actually locked to thief and Volke would only get a promote but later in the story, that was something I wish I knew ahead of time. Outside of some chapters being a little annoying the only big issue I had was the final Black Knight fight since I did not use Mist at all not know she would be there. Adding to this I final boss was way to tanky and I don't know how anyone could beat him without Aether and alot of Physic staffs. Overall playing through the game on the hardest difficulty for the western release wasn't that bad but I wouldn't have minded just playing on the difficulty right below it.

I really wish i could say i like this game. I seriously do. Yet i cant, because even though there are parts of the story and narrative that i genuinely love, i have many more problems with them than i dont. And dont get me started on the gameplay, its horrendous. I stopped my hard mode save to start over on easy because of how boring and tedious it was. It was so bad that i just wanted to stop playing at times. I really hope that the eventual remake of this game fixes my issues with this game, because it makes me sad to say that i dont like it. It has so many good moments, but it gets dragged down by everything else.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is simply a great game. As for a return to consoles since Thracia 776, PoR hit the nail with it feeling like a console Fire Emblem experience. The story is probably my favorite 'simple' story in the series due to its execution of its themes, characters, and set-ups, and the growth of our protagonist, Ike. Gameplay is solid with shove, bonus experience, and base camp being such appreciative features that really should come back. Despite the meta of the game being more favored by mounts and fliers, all the units are viable to be used with the help of bonus experience. That help also factors in the difficulty as PoR is a lot more easier due to no part of the localized version getting rid of Maniac difficulty and adding an Easy difficulty. Despite that, I still think PoR is still a fairly fun game in terms of difficulty. Music and sound design is excellent and the character art design by Kita Senri is probably my favorite art style in the series. As for the negatives, the 3-D animates had aged as the animations aren't that exciting and flow of battle is pretty slow. Finally, the later maps in terms of Difficult mode become open season as your units become stronger, but the enemy units are barely getting any stronger. Overall, easily one of the best Fire Emblem games and easy recommendation to play through any means. 4.5/5.

Path of Radiance is another one of my favorites. I remember grabbing it just before the popularity spike with Awakening, so that was some good timing, haha. In general I have good memories of the game.

It's a slow paced game due to the speed your units move on the map- and you have to unlock the ability for them to move faster by beating the game, which is a pretty silly choice- I don't have an issue with it, but I can see why that would be a turn off. I think even today I'm impressed by the animations, I still really enjoy watching Aether go off.

The actual mechanics are pretty good at this point. Skills return from FE5- you can easily add them to your character with Skill Scrolls, though you're locked into that choice since if you decide to remove them you won't get the skill scroll back. Bonus experience helps you get new units up to speed, and is earned by doing various objectives like having NPC allies survive, not defeating specific enemies, opening chests, and so on. I'm sad this didn't return past Radiant Dawn, though I do understand this is due to how easily abused it was. New to this game is Laguz units, characters who can shift into a cat, tiger, lion, hawk, heron, crow, or dragon form to attack. They're more fleshed out in Radiant Dawn, but the baseline work that's done in this game is good, though admittedly I didn't use them much myself.

I think this game and Radiant Dawn has some of the more interesting characters in the series. All your units have pretty well-developed backstories to discover with supports, and most of them are strong throughout the game. The story is fairly good on its own, though does have a hook at the end to lead into Radiant Dawn.

In the end, it's a great game that fans of the series should try, though given the price I understand why people are hesitant to get a copy for themselves. I hope that it'll be rereleased at some point.

Y'know, I tried to like this game.
It was built up as this masterpiece and one of the best games of the series, a really precious classic that is at the height of the series, and the GC as a console.
Yeah, this was an utter disappointment.
So before anything, the story is actually great, and prob my favorite of the series so far (I have yet to play FE4 or Thracia, so subject to change), it has my second favorite FE cast and its a great one at that, music is pretty good, and the artstyle is prob my favorite on the series, also supports taking into account what part of the game you are is awesome.
A shame I don't like anything else.
So.
Map design.
Either it feels like there's barely any thought on it, or its annoying or unmmemorable.
In general I am not a fan of enemy phased centered games, cause those can boil down to "leave the strong unit there, let it kill enemies on enemy phase, rinse and repeat" and in general they don't feel like you need much thought into them, which is, how PoR feels.
So much boils down to leaving 2 unit do the work because none of the enemy units pose a threat unless something happens, and having a million of them bombard you is so boring.
Enemy phase gets meme'd to death, and there's a good reason for that, specially on a game that is even slower on getting through it than GBA FE, which also had 2/3 of the games be enemy phase centered.
Oh also the models look ugly, I don't like them much, even less when some are just recollors of other ones and look bad when they're not on the character they are (like Ilyana's sage model being just recolored Calil).
Enemy phase tends to bring imbalance because 1 - 2 range weapon is very priced, and this game is unbalanced in a bad way. You only want horses cause maps are big, or axes cause lance spam and also you want lances cause sword spam and 1 - 2 range.
Oh and we hate fun so effective weaponry only has mt be 2 times instead of 3, because where is balance of weapon escalation.
The easiness of it doesn't work well when customization is not even that high.
Without stuff like reclassing and the bad imbalance in weapons and classes, it just doesn't lead to interesting experimentation in my eyes, it really just feels like they depend on writing to carry this game, which, that alone can't carry a game when playing it is so bad.
At least some maps are good, and forging can be fun with how much money you get.
But omg, I can't look past the rest that just makes it dreadful.
And others trying to sell it as the best one made it even worse.
Yeah, I'll stick to DSFE, thanks.

I played this game a second time recently, the first time was on Normal and on Wii. It was pretty surreal as it was my gateway into some of the older FE titles. I really liked it back then. Now I got to play it on Hard Mode, thinking about Maniac Mode for another time.

I think this is a complicated game for me to rank. I really like the story of this game for one, it's nice to see a Fire Emblem story that actually stands out. From an everyday merc to a hero story with Ike, to the story of Elincia and accepting her role as a ruler and being comfortable with these mercs, the Laguz and Daein conflicts commenting on racial subjects, all of that is great and I wish we had more stories like this in Fire Emblem, feels like they play it pretty safe a good amount of the time or if they do something ambitious it kinda falls flat a good amount of the time.

The units I used are pretty fun too. I got to use Brom, Zihark, Ilyana, Nephenee, all of which were fun to use. I even got some really good supports. Zihark-Brom and Brom-Nephenee are very wholesome and cute to read and it made me appreciate them more as characters. Ilyana is kind of a gimmick character, but I thought her support with Zihark was adorable and she has some cute supports with other characters like Mia and such. Ike is awesome and is one of my favorite lords/protagonists in the series.

But... there's the gameplay. I'll get to the good stuff first. I think there are good ideas here; BEXP, the base, base conversations, being able to promote without needing a Master Seal, Laguz units are pretty interestingly designed. All of that is great. That's kind of as far as it goes though.

The unit balance is kinda bad, it sucks that Ike can't promote for such a long time so you just level him up real early so that the other units can soak up all the EXP, some classes are greatly preferred over others such as Paladins and Flying classes, swords are too weak, axes are too strong, Bio-rhythm is a bad mechanic that is only specific to this game and the sequel, the late game fights between Black Knight and Ashnard are genuine RNG fights and it's not fun to play. But I think the greatest sin of this game is that it's so... slow. Everything takes too long to load, enemy phase takes forever even on speedup if you're playing on emulator and you could not skip it at this point in Fire Emblem, the maps are huge a lot of the time which makes it feel especially really long and drawn out, and so on. It got to a point where late game felt like a chore to play.

I complained a lot, but I still don't have it in me to dislike this game or even call it mid. I still like it at the end of the day, but I think this game deserves a remake or remaster that makes it faster, give it a visual glowup. I think it would be so great to play and I'd be happy.

I almost wish I played this game first instead of binding blade because it gives a much better introduction to the (mostly) modern series mechanics and gameplay. The game makes it much easier for you to not have your main units not fall behind with the bonus xp system helping everyone stay in the same level. Supports are also simplified as its much easier to level them up compared to the gba games. The story is probably on the higher up for me (as of the writing of this review) because of the simple plot and worldbuilding of the world of the Tellius. I thought that Ike is a pretty cool protagonist and has a good cast of character with an interesting world to go with the different laguz tribes. as the first game in the series to move to 3d and have voice acting it does well to transfer the same good gameplay loop and simple plot the series is known for

At risk of beating a dead horse, I think the weakest part of Path of Radiance is easily its relatively low difficulty. To preface, this is from the perspective of a series veteran (“awakening babies” get to call ourselves vets now, how lovely) with a very intimate understanding of what’s ‘good’ in these games, but I started playing with 35% increased enemy growths, later bumped it to 55% and I still felt like I was cruising through most of the mid to lategame chapters. A lot of those chapters lack any sort of pressure to threaten your strong units or to push you to move faster (the latter camp usually being enemy thieves that a good mount can easily reach) and boil down to being very sluggish ‘fields with enemies’ that let you tackle them as risk-free as you want. Combined with how high growths are and how BEXP lets you blitz even further ahead of the curve and I think most of the game lacks bite even when the enemies are boosted to the point where they border on unfair. It has a lot of interesting things going on in theory - side objectives for BEXP, forges being limited to one per chapter, some cool gimmick chapters late on (CH22 is just a pokemon strength puzzle and I kinda love it) - but the game never has quite enough friction to bring out its own potential.

But the draw of PoR mainly comes from the strength of its writing. The majority of the character writing is very realistically grounded in the game’s settings and situations. Every support and base conversation is lovingly woven to bring out subtleties of the cast’s personalities, worldviews, personal struggles, dynamics, their growth or lack thereof. Their personalities are strong but not exaggerated (for the most part) and the interactions are full of little remarks or conversations that feel unexpectedly resonant or meaningful. It’s a lovely cast that’s very difficult not to fall for. While the story itself has a large focus on Fantasy Racism and does stumble a little into its trappings (primarily its tendency to categorise all Kilvans in one particular way), its angle towards it feels very carefully-written and used in a way that attempts to earnestly explore attitudes towards prejudice. It uses its depictions to present the importance of uprooting systemic oppression and breaking the self-perpetuating cultures of hatred that it brings, and how vital it is to do so despite how much of a Herculean task it is in reality. It all further feeds into a broader theme held up by scenes beyond how it presents discrimination - how understanding and righting past wrongs is vital to be able to truly move forward and make meaningful change or growth. It’s the *honesty* of all its explorations, more than anything, that I found so unexpectedly disarming.

It caught me off-guard with how much I ended up liking it, but it’s really easy to see why it’s so beloved. If you don’t mind it being slightly defanged on the strategy end, it’s a lovely, warm and charming game that’s surprisingly confident in its writing.

In terms of history and characters, it's undoubtedly by far the best Fire Emblem ever created. Just having Ike and Soren in the game already wins all the categories. This duo is incredible, and not only them, the amount of amazing quotes in this game is very good, not to mention that the story avoids various clichés and is pretty original escaping from what the previus fire emblems were. Obviously, it's an old Fire Emblem game, so the gameplay isn't the most satisfying, but aside from that, it's the best

Unfortunately, I only played it after the 3DS/Switch games and was therefore a bit underwhelmed. Mechanically, the game is actually pretty solid, but some of the mechanics really annoy me. Permadeath, which you can't turn off, is just a shitty idea^^ Especially in combination with units spontaneously appearing on the map as enemy reinforcements and one-shotting you. It's just frustrating and you can't prepare for it because you never know where reinforcements can come from...if you could turn off permadeath that would be forgivable, but you can't :/
Then there's the writing - it's absolutely average, not really bad but nothing special either. Some "heavy" topics like racism are dealt with, but remain very superficial. Some dialog and plot points are also downright nonsensical - e.g. At a certain point you get a recruit who belongs to the enemy and joins us. Instead of questioning her or even taking her prisoner, she's just part of the group, even though she could have super important information about the enemy's troop movements etc. :D Things like that happen all the time. Maybe I'll give it another chance but I honestly wouldn't know why, I liked the later games more.