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Worse game ever made

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 43
Date: December 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Fire Emblem is too hyped. I've played other Tactics games but Fire Emblem is the worst of the crop. Don't know why people think that a game that you can lose you character at anytime of the game forever is fun. There is no levelling up that you can control in the game, you have to go with the story flow but your enemies outgrow you in immense pace so your character will be eliminated in no time and having that annoying face showing up on the screen telling you he / she is dead. Even when you character levelled up , the stats is so random that sometimes he / she just levelled up but with no improvement in stats at all. Since most of the time they only level up inside the game, if their stats don't go up, tough, they are doomed on the battle field. The number of enemies you usually have out grow you so much that they can basically kill your characters in one or two hits. If you don't want to lose your character, time to reset and do the battle all over again. I have no idea why people find this kind of game fun and challenging. Disgaea and FF Tactics are fun because you grow with the characters. They can die but you can revive them so you won't be losing your hard work. But in Fire Emblem dying forever is just as easy as drinking water. That sucks man.

Also I could not believe that even up to now, Nintendo is still forcing people to read all the long winding dialogue instead of having actual cut scenes. The limited cut scenes in the game are pretty budget in terms of graphics.

I personally think Fire Emblem doesn't deserve the fame and hype around the franchise. If you are a gamer who enjoy hating a game to make your life meaningful, this is the type of game you should play.

Worst game I have ever played

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 35
Date: December 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Wow. Fire Emblem is one horribly designed game. 75% of it is listening to the characters talk. And by talk I mean you see pictures of them on your screen with nothing but their mouths moving and eyes blinking and written below are what they have to say. It gets boring very quickly. On top of that the fighting is almost like playing chess, you move your characters around through squares on a board and you never get to actually attack any enemies. All you do is initiate the attack command and they show a little video of your targeted character hitting the enemy and maybe them hitting you back once. It's monotonous, cheap-looking, and not very fun at all. My advice to anyone considering buying this game is to rent it first. Then you can see for yourself how bad it is before wasting your money on, in my opinion, the worst gamecube game ever.

Solid at its core, but otherwise, very disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: February 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Fire Emblem's old releases were excellent, so I was eager to see how the series adapted to a 3-d gaming console. Unfortunately, this game is little more than a 2-d game with slightly better graphics. It fails to take full advantage of the Gamecube's power, and comes out with bland, often dull graphics. What they do use the 3-d graphics for are advanced battle scenes, but these mostly only serve to slow things down and aren't that much more exciting than the game boy releases' battle scenes. They also use the Gamecube's power to add in several new features. Some of these, especially the Laguz characters and the weapon forge, are great additions, but others, like skills and biorhythm, just give the player too many things to keep track of. The music and sound effects are dull and disappointing. The game's story is very hard to get into, the characters are hard to relate to, and in the end, there are too many loose ends. The lack of a support gallery, like the ones in the GBA games, hurts replay value. I hate to sound so negative, but the fact remains that Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is unable to live up to the precedent set by the GBA games. If you can ignore everything I mentioned above, you'll see that at its core, this is still a solid strategy RPS and can be fun, but otherwise, I wouldn't recommend it.

First Impression

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: February 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Good Graphics, Ok gameplay that might get better as you play the game more, but if you are looking relive the experience of Final Fantasy Tactics this game falls short. There is not as much tactical strategy here, the system seems more based on who is stronger or has the better weapon. I have only played a few chapters, but it hasent caught my interest yet. Perhpas it will become more involved as the game progresses. Rent and Try before you buy.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 35 / 39
Date: December 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

On the field of battle, there are ultimately two outcomes: victory and death. Despite the fantastical setting, no series understands this better than Fire Emblem, where your slain comrades are beyond the power of any salve or spell to save. When you lose a loyal soldier-and you will-there won't be anyone to blame but yourself.

Besides the inevitable (but disappointing) transition to 3D, there are two minor tweaks to formula: the ability to push lighter units out of harm's way and the ability to earn bonus experience by completing a chapter quickly (eliminating the tedium of dispatching every enemy to level up).

Aside from some anime-styled cutscenes, the story is primarily handled through nearly immobile talking heads and huge amounts of text. To summarize: as the blue-haired mercenary leader Ike, you're charged with defending the sole surviving princess of a wrongly invaded nation. Soon enough you encounter the half-beast laguz, capable of becoming fearsome beasts in combat. (As in any good fantasy, real-world issues such as racism are treated within the context of the setting.) I found the concept of several diverse cultures uniting together out of necessity to be deeply redolent of the Suikoden series, which is high praise coming from me.

Still, any SRPG ultimately stands or falls based on the gameplay, an area in which Path of Radiance remains strong. This Emblem is one you'd be proud to wear.

A Good Game, But Lacking the GBA Games' Soul

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: May 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Path of Radiance marks the ninth Fire Emblem in Japan and the third in the United States, and the series has gone on strong for at least that long in both countries. The last two entries, "Fire Emblem (Blazing Sword", and "The Sacred Stones", were amazing games, featuring long main stories, deep characterization, and the need for a strategic mind rather than being a shoot-reload-shoot some more game (*cough*Halo*cough*). Path of Radiance succeeds that tradition as the first Fire Emblem in full 3D. Its story starts off a bit lackluster, but becomes more intricate and interesting than either of the previously mentioned games.
Path of Radiance, however, suffers one major problem in the transition to 3D- it became annoyingly bland. To provide possibly the most jarring example of this, Joshua, "The Sacred Stones"' Swordmaster, is capable of critical hits - for him, that means fading back into five translucent Swordmaster sprites, weapons drawn, each of which strikes the enemy one time then melds back into the real Joshua, who does the damage. Stefan, this game's Swordmaster, simply runs forwards and hits five times, lacking the ability to draw excitement that Joshua's sprite-based assault did. The graphics in the game don't exactly push the envelope for the Gamecube either. Though they're certainly bearable as games go, nothing truly made my jaw drop as I played.
If you liked one or both of the GBA Fire Emblems, I suggest you rent this one to see if you like the changes before buying it. If you don't but have a passing interest in strategy games, Advance Wars, Marth, Roy, etc. buy this one and go back to the Gameboy games afterwards.

A game with brains

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: December 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Not only does this game challenge your brain in the gameplay, but in the story as well. Inbetween strategizing, there is a an awesome story about class and race; its political and social strife, rife with emotion. While the story is complex and convoluted, it never loses its logical train of thought.

I have but one gripe: the presentation is lacking. Though the character designs are top notch (the hawk king is awesome), the music is bland, and the gameplay and character interaction animation barely scratches what is possible on the Gamecube. I lived for the cutscenes, which were drop-dead gorgeous, but few and far between.

Overall, a good game. A must for starving Gamecube owners. So buy this game and then maybe the next home console iteration (Revolution, please?) of the game has a bigger budget that could improve the presentation.

Wonderful Game, yet it could use some tweaks

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: July 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Fire Emblem is a great game on it's own. It has a good story with interesting characters. It has a fun battle system thats replayable. It even has some nice graphics once they grow on you.

I think most of the reviews have done a good job with their descriptions. The only thing I think that takes away from the game is the ability to completely unbalance everything.

One of my characters, Boyd, leveled up so fast that he could singe-handedly take any map on his own. All of the enemy units did barely any damage to him, and he would kill everyone in 1 attack. Titania, throughout the entire game, is extremely powerful. She can take any enemy on in 1 attack.

Though these characters are very strong, my mages and healers turned out to be useless. They need to be rather close to the enemy to do damage, and, once they do get close, the enemy can kill them in 3 hits or less. My main healer, Rhys, died in one move because, in the first enemy turn, a bird came from across the map and killed him.

The only other weak point about the game is the fact that the level caps aren't high enough. Ike, the main character, took maybe 6 battles to get to level 20. Then I had to wait forever until I could change him into a lord. At that point I leveled him up to 20 again in a matter of 2 or 3 battles. I think that the game does have a good string of ending battles, but they could have been better had my characters were not at their max levels so easily.

I'll simply add this

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I won't re-hash what others are saying but I'll weigh in on the perma-death issue.

This game is in fact loads of fun if you are a fan of the genre but the perma-death issue can be maddeningly frustrating. To sum it up if your characters run out of HP in battle they are gone for good. You lose them for the rest of the game because there is no way to revive them after the stage is over.

While this adds to the tactics and prohibits kamikaze runs it can royally tick you off while playing. To play a single stage for nearly an hour while advancing carefully and thinking tactfully etc only to have a character die because for one turn you made a mistake and left a weak spot in your unit's formation or some enemy got in a lucky critical that literally drains your characters entire life bar in one hit can drive you mad. I understand realism and all but this is a video game and video games are supposed to be fun and that is NOT fun.

Again I did give the game high rankings and this game is a total blast to play but I'll caution you now. The perma-death feature literally has the potential to have you throwing your controller across the room in anger and frustration.

Almost amazing, but not quite.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: January 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It's a good thing that the actual game is fun, because I would be writing a much less positive review otherwise.
Here's why: While Path of Radiance stays true to most of the things that make Fire Emblem fun to play, it has terrible voice acting (and not enough to make it valuable, either) and some slightly cheesy text. And don't buy it for its graphics-they really aren't all that great
Other than that, however, the game is definitly fun. Everything that made me enjoy the Fire Emblem games is here: the support conversations and the strategy. This may not sound like much, but don't be fooled.
Oddly enough, the developers took out some units (e.g. Cavaliers) and put in replacement units (e.g. Sword Knights). This can take a little getting used to. They also took out the exceptionally weak units (e.g. Recruits) and the ability to choose what class a unit will turn into that they had in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. Being able to give Bonus Experience is nice too.
A more positive developement is the introduction of "skills". These make Path of Radiance a little more of an RPG in that you can assign them to characters and customize them into more unique units.
Oh yes, and the "Soldier" unit, which always used to act as the worst unit ever in previous games, has been equalized to other units. You even acquire one, and she can turn into a unit called the Halberdier, a kind of fast and less heavier armored knight. I had been kind of annoyed at how much they used Soldiers as fodder in other Fire Emblem games, so this came as a pleasant surprise.
Basically, if you were a fan of other Fire Emblem games (I would say this one is much more like the first Fire Emblem for the GBA than Sacred Stones), don't hesitate to get this game. If you like Advance Wars, for instance, this game is also probably for you. If you enjoy RPGs, look over what I've written and decide for yourself. Otherwise, get it if terrible voice acting doesn't turn your stomach like a cement mixer.

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