A few weeks ago I felt like playing a turn-based RPG and didn’t really want to replay Final Fantasy Tactics for the umpteenth time. So I instead decided to try out the Fire Emblem franchise and after a bit of research settled on numbers 4 (Genealogy), 8 (Sacred Stones), 9 (Path of Radiance) & 10 (Radiant Dawn).
First up was Genealogy. This was apparently a mistake. Unlike the later games, this one seems to have you do most of everything on the same map. It’s almost RTS-like in a way and the large-scale maneuvering just didn’t appeal to me at all.
Sacred Stones is much more like FFT and Tactics Ogre and so ended up far more appealing. That said, it gets extremely tedious rather quickly due to the large numbers of faceless enemies you have to kill and the grinding required to level-up certain characters (that you require rare, limited, items to promote your characters to a higher class was also a turn off). So I ended up abandoning this one as well.
After having the first two not turn out so hot I went into Path of Radiance with a bit of trepidation. This turned out to be unfounded as it’s quite a bit of fun. The problems present in Sacred Stones are absent here (Bonus XP can be used to level-up weak characters, most Promotions are automatic, & battles have a sane numbers of opponents). I ended up playing through it twice; once on Easy and once on Hard. Normal is probably the best way to go, as Easy has you drowning in Bonus XP while the final battle is extremely tedious on Hard.
Unfortunately, Radiant Dawn takes a number of steps backward. There are ludicrous numbers of enemies you have to hack through, the availability and power levels of your characters is all over the map, and Items/Money/Bonus XP are not shared between chapters. It’s a disjointed mess. The key draw of a RPG, to build up your characters/team, is effectively completely absent here since half your characters are near-useless, a quarter come with godlike power right out of the box, and only the remaining quarter can actually be developed. That the roster you’re allowed to use from chapter to chapter and part to part is severely restricted just compounds this issue.
So:
- Genealogy of the Holy War – A little too macro.
- Sacred Stones – Pretty good, but a bit tedious.
- Path of Radiance – Lots of fun.
- Radiant Dawn – A chore to play. Not fun at all.