Path of Radiance has my favorite story by far. Its not a prince trying to reclaim a throne just a guy who is tryimg to lead his mercenaries the best way he can.
The Power scaling is also done very nicely. The obstacles Ike faces have a nice gradual build up and even while "winning" every map you feel like an underdog until endgame. Fire Emblem was always a character driven game, but I'd like to experience a FE Story where the worldbuilding is even more fleshed out as in Path of Radiance
For Radiant Dawn, a BIG point that is worth mentioning is the color pallet attributing to the tone. Radiant Dawn uses more muted pastels in each character's, as well as the entire game's, pallet making them appear more dingy and old compared to Path of Radiance's brighter colors that pop more, and give off a more cheery vibe in opposition to Radiant Dawn's dreariness.
The game definitely has a slowness to it but that never bothered me. It's understandable if you're playing on maddening mode but I don't end up playing maddening mode that often I like to have fun and not to have headaches.
Same. I've only played on hard mode (not maniac), I never got the feeling that the field animations were slow. It'd be nice if they give option to completely remove all field animation but it's not deal breaker for me.
Seriously one of my favorite games ever, despite the flaws. I feel like it’s really great at establishing tone early on, esp with chapters like ‘Despair and Hope’
Path of Radiance is the FE game I've had the most fun with. I haven't touched Normal at all so I'm talking about the hard difficulty. The speed isn't really bothersome, and I think a majority of the maps are fun and well designed. I think even though while mounts are certainly busted, the general design of the game does allow for infantry units to have some form of use because your mounted units can't be everywhere at once. Even then though, I do think the general imbalance of mounts-infantry doesn't stop the game from not being fun. It is fun just using all the mounts you can, and using the infantry units you can. There are balances to be had for sure, but I think it works. I think one thing though that Tellius and Judgral have highlighted to me though from a gameplay perspective that I want is just mounted archers having super canto. I've always had the view that mounted archers should have the super canto we see in these games and foot locked archers having Close Counter, it allows for some fun gameplay imo and Astrid having Super Canto makes her one of my absolute two favorite units in fe in general because the hit and run tactics she has. (Midir is the other one for the same reason.) The slowness hasn't been an issue for me either but that's a tolerance thing. I wish the game could be faster though, I think it would make if even more fun. Overall though this to me is just the most fun fe asides like Radiant Dawn maybe. And it does have my favorite story in the franchise.
I actually like the slag. It makes the crits and skills nice to look at and the music is able to play a descent bit for the battle to go on just a little longer. I love the music!
I find a charm to the PoR animations, so I kept animations on for pretty much the entire game when I first played it this year. The only reason I turned off animations in the final map was because my emulator kept crashing in the middle of the map as my laptop is pretty weak. What helps is that the battle music is fantastic, so I actually like watching the enemy phase in action. Of course, I put the game speed on Fast, and I’m typically a slow and methodical player anyways, so I enjoy the suspense. As for mounts being too strong, I do agree that cavs are busted in this game, but it’s not nearly as severe of an advantage as in FE4. The difference in FE9 compared to FE4 is that the maps in FE4 are enormous. Over the course of 40-50 turns, your infantry units will be half a country behind and essentially useless, especially with the road tiles. The maps in FE9 are smaller, so infantry units won’t be nearly as disadvantaged. Rescue also allows your mounts to carry infantry units, so if those foot units aren’t attacking on player phase, you can just use Canto to carry them across the map (which you can’t do in FE4). Plus, FE9 introduced shoving, which allows you to pull off some cool movement strategies with your infantry units. Shoving can make a huge difference as it could help put units in place to attack on player phase or even get in range for a support bonus.
Not gonna lie, I feel like the whole Fire Emblem series is what I would consider a flawed masterpiece. But I think this game along with its sequel, Genealogy and Three Houses are where I tend to find myself enjoying the series the most despite all of their flaws.
For some reason this games slowness never really bothered me. I always played with animation off but I almost found it relaxing how nice it was just sitting back and watching how my strategy played out, sipping on some tea I brewed. I dunno this is a pretty subjective point, and being a student I probably have more time than others.
What makes this hurt so much is that these problems are so easy to fix. If FE9 ever gets a remaster or even a simple port, I have no doubt they’d speed it up and balance accordingly, effectively making it a...masterpiece. Great cast, best support system in the series, damn good story, imagine (better) voice acting and more cutscenes? It’s my favorite in the series by far, and the thing with FE10 because I know obvious connections are going to be made is that game requires a LOT more touchups to reach that near-perfect status. Most problems FE9 has are in FE10 to a lesser extent, but with the added caveats of (even) worse unit balance, weakened cast/no supports, and awkward story structure imo. But hey they are different games with different people preferring one or the other lol
Please no voice acting. Voice acting is awful (3h). I like to read and picture the voice, personnality and attitude of each chatacter in my head. Old FE are better for this reason imo.
I really don't think that's enough to call the game "flawed" lmao. It's a little too slow sure, but it's plenty fine with animations off. Also, I think the difficulty is more relevant than the balance for the overall rating of the game. EDIT: For perspective, a game that I would call a "flawed masterpiece" is Xenoblade Chronicles X and that has WAY more issues in both significance and quantity.
Playing FE9 when it first came out back then, after spending a lot of time on FE7 & FE8, it is different in style and pace of play. I loved all three but for different reasons; FE7 because it was my first and I got very attached to many of the characters such as Nino & Matthew, FE8 because I thought trainees & skills were awesome, FE9 because the story, themes, and skills came together in a grander way, including the more epic soundtrack. I can see now that it plays slow, but back then I was the only reason it took so long to play through 😅 but that's just how I enjoyed playing it.
not to mention a EXPENSIVE masterpiece. on Amazon, a disk only, and this is the cheapest one available at the moment mind you, will set you back 320 bucks. and that's not including shipping!
I agree that it is really hard to replay the games where you cant skip enemy phase but I feel like, and agree, that thats a series issue overall about not engaging the player. So yeah. I love PoR but I dont really go back to it like I do 3H. As far as balance. I feel like thats just FE in general. I just finished Valentia blind for the first time and it felt like Dread Fighter's and Bow Knights just hard carry. We know player balance is jank in 3H but I am curious how you feel about enemy quality on maddening overall.
I just beat this game yesterday on hard so good timing: I just wanna start off by saying I agree I think the story, it’s themes and the world building are excellent. It’s main theme really resonated with me and for that reason alone I loved it. However playing the game itself... was rough at times because the game’s map design was kinda bad imo. From chapter 23 onward, i realized just how poorly designed the enemy density was. They stack a ridiculous amount of enemies in corners. Then there’s so much empty space in the middle so you basically just do nothing when you clear one side and then there’s just another massive stack of enemies in another corner. This on top with the game feeling SLOW as crap like you mentioned made the game feel like a HUGE slog. And especially me trying to use Mia with Soren and Ike. Using even 3 footlocked units made the game feel that much SLOWER 💦 Imagine all of these issues and playing chapter 23 (the lol pitfall meme bridge) and then 25 (the ha ha boulder chapter). I can’t imagine how people play this game with more infantry units outside of Ike (forced deployed) & Soren (since he’s the only one really worth it IMO). Mounted units are too ridiculous yeah, but the best part about them is they at least get through the maps much faster
this feels like an extreme over exaggeration, you going on about the game being slow when it really doesnt take much time feels like just complaining. Never felt slow to me and I'm not rushing to beat a game cause that defeats the whole point of even playing a game.
I tried training Nephenee and Rolf and they turned out garbage even though they are unmounted and supposed to have better combat than their mounted counterparts. But Brom turned out really good with the help of the knight's ward
The speed of Path of Radiance I do think is the biggest contributing factor as to why I don't play the game often, and why it doesn't quite make being my favorite Fire Emblem game. If Nintendo just released a port that adds in more speed up, or even skips enemy phase like the newer games, I would eat it up so hard. Despite that, the speed has never taken away from my personal enjoyment of this game. Radiant Dawn suffers from similar issues, but they did put a lot more consideration into making the maps more reasonably sized or providing more options. Though my big problems with Radiant Dawn come down more to the game's structure than anything else, which is why I enjoy it far less.
I don't like playing on fast forward in those types of games, but yeah it is slow. And I would like more options for animations, like disable anims against grunts but keep them against named characters
One of my favourite aspects of PoR and RD is the worldbuilding. I really love how it feels more unique compared to most FE-games I´ve played since we have the Beorc and Laguz and their long history of resenting eachother, rather than have a handful of "dragon-people" who shows up at the very end of a game and can only turn into dragons using some stone. Also, I really love the fact that the main protagonist isn´t of royal birth, but a simple mercenary who´s father was one of the greatest human warriors in his time. And as you stated in the video, the cast overall is pretty damn great. This game is definitely a guilty pleasure of mine.
FED: *"Balance doesn't matter"* Also FED: *Complains about the units of your army being unbalanced due to how busted mounted units are in PoR & how much the game favors them* So somehow the lack of good balancing is a problem, yet it somehow doesn't matter... What sense does that make?
I _gave_ this game away to a friend as an impromptu gift one day after being disappointed with it on release. I’ve been bitter towards this treasured game ever since. I’m enjoying the other instalments in the series much more, and my interest in this one never seems to build beyond a passing interest, but people sure like to push it. While it’s visual style definitely repels me, I have to admit that this iteration of the support conversation system really impresses me.
something that grinds my gears on PoR is the low quality of the mages/healers. Rhys dies on one hit from a fly, Soren isn't strong enough to OTKO anything, Ilyana is just meh and mist... oh lord, extremely annoying to level up and can deal damage just with florette... what happened to the previos FE valkryes? mounted staff+tomes was super fun (and OP)
I can never play without the animations, it’s my favorite part of the series. Would love it if Tellius got remakes. Anyway I don’t know why people get so mad about “playing it optimally means most of your units aren’t worth it.” Then don’t, play normal mode... who cares I’d rather more units got buffed then they nerf horses anyway.
It's definitely not as bad if you use speed up on an emulator, but obviously using speedup doesn't allow for a great viewing experience. Without speedup, I honestly don't know how I would play PoR or RD again. RD is probably my favorite game, but man it's also so slow.
Honestly the sluggishness of the gameplay is my only major gripe with this game (there are other things, like having relatively few standout maps/some poor later maps, the lack of unit diversity in early chapters over subsequent runs, the lack of a good upper difficulty because fuck Maniac). The dominance of mounted units isn't great but it doesn't bother me _too_ much because I love this cast so dearly that I will use whatever wacky unit combinations I feel like (this is one aspect where the lack of challenge is actually an asset). I have been strongly considering, once I have the disposable income to do so, putting up a hacking bounty to speed up the animations. It seems we're getting to the point with PoR hacking that such a thing should be within the realm of possibility reasonably soon.
I’ve never played PoR, but I have played 4 games in the series and after falling in love with the series again with 3H, I was curious about this game. But this video didn’t give me any sense of what is masterpiece like about the game. 80% of it is about the flaws, and the rest is described as “solid.”
The slow speed is only a minor issue to me because I play on emulator, but I can see it being really annoying on console (similar to FE4). The problem with turning off combat animations, though, is that it also turns off combat stats. For player phase, you see the stats beforehand, but for enemy phase you don't. Maybe for people who have play the game a lot this isn't an issue, but not getting that information in real time is at best bothersome for me. Also, the fact that the damage is using impact font really takes me out of the experience. I know it wasn't a thing when the game came out, but the overuse of that specific font on image macros and meme templates for the past 10+ years has cemented it in my brain as "meme font".
I can agree alot i was having so much fun on my first play threw of path of radiance but with how slow the game is and of how the last part of the game i just did not enjoy makes it hard to pick back up like i do with fe 7 or some of the newer games.
It’s too bad these games came out before FE blew up. The Tellius series is so much better than these new games. The new ones are good but I gotta admit my first play through of three houses quickly turned in to me replaying Radiant dawn. The amount of strategy required for that game is my favorite part. Playing POR now for the first time and it’s cool seeing the characters I already know and love and how they started off. Still in part I but so far it’s been fun all be it much easier than RD
Path of Radiance is a great game, but I actually have quite a few gripes with it. One is not so much the speed at which things move in the game, but more so how the speed relates to the difficulty. PoR is a slow game but it is also one of the easiest games in the series. Slow and Easy is not a great combination as you tend to easily see what you need to do on the map, but it takes so long to execute your plan. That hinders enjoyment from a gameplay perspective. The second problem I have with PoR is not the story (which I think is pretty good), but rather the characters. Everyone loves to point out how different Ike is because he isn't royalty or anything but when you strip the uniqueness of that character trait away from him, he has one of the simplest character arcs of any main character in the series. He is a young inexperienced merc leader trying to gain experience and become worthy of his father, all while also trying to help people who cannot help themselves with the resources he has available to him. He does not really face many huge decision points that challenge or change who he is as a person. I think he earns people's trust to easily at times and for a rookie Merc leader, it certainly did not feel like he had huge growing pains as one might expect from one so inexperienced. Yeah, he had his doubts in his abilities at times, but because he rarely if ever made a costly error, it felt a little like the straight A student getting a 90% on one of his tests and then sulking because he feels like he let everyone down because it wasn't at least a 95%. It comes across a little like false modesty. I still think Ike has really good moments in PoR and can see why people would like him so much, but as for me, I see Ike as a fairly average main character. I also think that on the whole, the characters of PoR are mostly solid with a few great ones like Jill and Elincia, and a few stinkers (whom I won't mention at risk of pissing someone off). They definitely aren't my favorite cast in the series though. The final minor problem I have with PoR are the animations. They were definitely cool at the time, but I do not think they aged well at all, and whenever I dabble in PoR these days, I always just turn them off because I never felt like they added much to the battles. All of this being said, PoR is still like my 4th favorite game in the series so it's not like I dislike it at all. I just don't consider it to be anywhere near a masterpiece in my eyes. 8.5-9 out of 10? You bet. Borderline 10? Not so much for me.
Overall with balance, I wouldn't really have it different per se. I mean if you give the foot units better stats how much is justified, how much before they steamroll the game, etc. Zihark and Mia maybe should have been tankier and as someone who likes Mia and used her, I'll say that I should have just not and just use her when I play Radiant Dawn instead. Path of Radiance had a great story but gameplay-wise I'm coming back to Radiant Dawn and Three Houses mostly. Tellius had the best tale to tell but after seeing the whole story 2-3 times now I don't look at it as much anymore. Great Game but I think Radiant Dawn shows class balance off well (except for you Jill and Har) but I personally wouldn't want them nerfed. Overall great game but gameplay-wise I've only come back once after the 1st playthrough and don't plan to anytime soon.
I didn't like the lack of a world map, the last game I played before PoR was The Sacred Stones, so I was a little disappointed about not being able to train any of my units whenever I wanted with repeatable missions. Tellius ended up being my favorite setting though, I wish we could get a prequel set during the war against Yune 700 years before.
Yeah. FE9 is really slow and very easy. I did a hard mode playthrough so I could use some transfer bonuses for my first FE10 hard mode run with them. I was in shock on how easy/boring the hardest difficulty was. It was a physical NSTC version btw. I feel FE10's gameplay flows a lot better compared to FE9 and even FE16. FE10's hardest difficulty is tough, but never in an unfair way. FE10 is my favorite game. I have 3 physical copies of FE10. One of them is new/sealed... I might need help.
Astrid is decent? I haven’t heard that one. I suppose that paragon, and promoting at lvl 10 to gain axes makes her serviceable, but she comes at level 1, a chapter before Makalov who is like level 10. She’s squishy and 2 ranged locked before promotion. I like her because of her Knight Ward. Otherwise, she is very awful
I used her in my first playthrough and let me tell you, she is really good. Bonus experience her to like 8-10 and she can hold up with everyone else and can really help carry later on.
Imo PP games will always have better gameplay than EP ones. The gameplay in fe4 and 7-9 will never be as engaging as the peaks of Thracia, FE6, RD, Fates and 3H.
Personaly i played PoR in 2005 when it came out and i wasn't a fan of FE so tried it. I hated it. Then later on, in like 2009 i played Radiant Dawn because shit why not lol and I loved it! The music, the story, the character, the gameplay, the map omg my favorite FE ever! Then i decided to try again PoR and fell for it. RD made me love PoR lol and now both of them are my two favorite FE ever.
Path of Radiance has my favorite story by far. Its not a prince trying to reclaim a throne just a guy who is tryimg to lead his mercenaries the best way he can.
The Power scaling is also done very nicely. The obstacles Ike faces have a nice gradual build up and even while "winning" every map you feel like an underdog until endgame.
Fire Emblem was always a character driven game, but I'd like to experience a FE Story where the worldbuilding is even more fleshed out as in Path of Radiance
For Radiant Dawn, a BIG point that is worth mentioning is the color pallet attributing to the tone.
Radiant Dawn uses more muted pastels in each character's, as well as the entire game's, pallet making them appear more dingy and old compared to Path of Radiance's brighter colors that pop more, and give off a more cheery vibe in opposition to Radiant Dawn's dreariness.
Wow! I thought I was the only one who noticed that attention to detail!
The game definitely has a slowness to it but that never bothered me. It's understandable if you're playing on maddening mode but I don't end up playing maddening mode that often I like to have fun and not to have headaches.
Same. I've only played on hard mode (not maniac), I never got the feeling that the field animations were slow. It'd be nice if they give option to completely remove all field animation but it's not deal breaker for me.
Seriously one of my favorite games ever, despite the flaws. I feel like it’s really great at establishing tone early on, esp with chapters like ‘Despair and Hope’
Path of Radiance was my first FE game. Been hooked ever since.
Path of Radiance is the FE game I've had the most fun with. I haven't touched Normal at all so I'm talking about the hard difficulty. The speed isn't really bothersome, and I think a majority of the maps are fun and well designed. I think even though while mounts are certainly busted, the general design of the game does allow for infantry units to have some form of use because your mounted units can't be everywhere at once. Even then though, I do think the general imbalance of mounts-infantry doesn't stop the game from not being fun. It is fun just using all the mounts you can, and using the infantry units you can. There are balances to be had for sure, but I think it works.
I think one thing though that Tellius and Judgral have highlighted to me though from a gameplay perspective that I want is just mounted archers having super canto. I've always had the view that mounted archers should have the super canto we see in these games and foot locked archers having Close Counter, it allows for some fun gameplay imo and Astrid having Super Canto makes her one of my absolute two favorite units in fe in general because the hit and run tactics she has. (Midir is the other one for the same reason.)
The slowness hasn't been an issue for me either but that's a tolerance thing. I wish the game could be faster though, I think it would make if even more fun.
Overall though this to me is just the most fun fe asides like Radiant Dawn maybe.
And it does have my favorite story in the franchise.
I actually like the slag. It makes the crits and skills nice to look at and the music is able to play a descent bit for the battle to go on just a little longer. I love the music!
I find a charm to the PoR animations, so I kept animations on for pretty much the entire game when I first played it this year. The only reason I turned off animations in the final map was because my emulator kept crashing in the middle of the map as my laptop is pretty weak. What helps is that the battle music is fantastic, so I actually like watching the enemy phase in action. Of course, I put the game speed on Fast, and I’m typically a slow and methodical player anyways, so I enjoy the suspense.
As for mounts being too strong, I do agree that cavs are busted in this game, but it’s not nearly as severe of an advantage as in FE4. The difference in FE9 compared to FE4 is that the maps in FE4 are enormous. Over the course of 40-50 turns, your infantry units will be half a country behind and essentially useless, especially with the road tiles. The maps in FE9 are smaller, so infantry units won’t be nearly as disadvantaged. Rescue also allows your mounts to carry infantry units, so if those foot units aren’t attacking on player phase, you can just use Canto to carry them across the map (which you can’t do in FE4).
Plus, FE9 introduced shoving, which allows you to pull off some cool movement strategies with your infantry units. Shoving can make a huge difference as it could help put units in place to attack on player phase or even get in range for a support bonus.
Not gonna lie, I feel like the whole Fire Emblem series is what I would consider a flawed masterpiece. But I think this game along with its sequel, Genealogy and Three Houses are where I tend to find myself enjoying the series the most despite all of their flaws.
I actually introduced one of my friends to fire emblem through path of radiance and he’s loving it although he is aware of its slowness.
I've never cared about the slow speed of Path of Radiance, it gives me more time to think of plans and statagies and listen to the amazing soundtrack
For some reason this games slowness never really bothered me. I always played with animation off but I almost found it relaxing how nice it was just sitting back and watching how my strategy played out, sipping on some tea I brewed. I dunno this is a pretty subjective point, and being a student I probably have more time than others.
Flaw? I do not know him 🙃
What makes this hurt so much is that these problems are so easy to fix. If FE9 ever gets a remaster or even a simple port, I have no doubt they’d speed it up and balance accordingly, effectively making it a...masterpiece.
Great cast, best support system in the series, damn good story, imagine (better) voice acting and more cutscenes? It’s my favorite in the series by far, and the thing with FE10 because I know obvious connections are going to be made is that game requires a LOT more touchups to reach that near-perfect status. Most problems FE9 has are in FE10 to a lesser extent, but with the added caveats of (even) worse unit balance, weakened cast/no supports, and awkward story structure imo. But hey they are different games with different people preferring one or the other lol
Please no voice acting. Voice acting is awful (3h). I like to read and picture the voice, personnality and attitude of each chatacter in my head. Old FE are better for this reason imo.
I really don't think that's enough to call the game "flawed" lmao. It's a little too slow sure, but it's plenty fine with animations off. Also, I think the difficulty is more relevant than the balance for the overall rating of the game.
EDIT: For perspective, a game that I would call a "flawed masterpiece" is Xenoblade Chronicles X and that has WAY more issues in both significance and quantity.
Playing FE9 when it first came out back then, after spending a lot of time on FE7 & FE8, it is different in style and pace of play. I loved all three but for different reasons; FE7 because it was my first and I got very attached to many of the characters such as Nino & Matthew, FE8 because I thought trainees & skills were awesome, FE9 because the story, themes, and skills came together in a grander way, including the more epic soundtrack. I can see now that it plays slow, but back then I was the only reason it took so long to play through 😅 but that's just how I enjoyed playing it.
Yeah I think a Speed up button and skip function plus Hitrates and critrates in the animation would speed it up a lot.
@Wil E We wouldn't need emulation in the first place if they would provide good legacy content.
not to mention a EXPENSIVE masterpiece. on Amazon, a disk only, and this is the cheapest one available at the moment mind you, will set you back 320 bucks. and that's not including shipping!
I agree that it is really hard to replay the games where you cant skip enemy phase but I feel like, and agree, that thats a series issue overall about not engaging the player. So yeah. I love PoR but I dont really go back to it like I do 3H.
As far as balance. I feel like thats just FE in general. I just finished Valentia blind for the first time and it felt like Dread Fighter's and Bow Knights just hard carry.
We know player balance is jank in 3H but I am curious how you feel about enemy quality on maddening overall.
all i can think now about is that one rengor video where its just a PoR enemy phase
I haven't noticed the slowness. I've played a few of these now and this one is my favourite.
Looks epic upcaled too.
I just beat this game yesterday on hard so good timing:
I just wanna start off by saying I agree I think the story, it’s themes and the world building are excellent. It’s main theme really resonated with me and for that reason alone I loved it.
However playing the game itself... was rough at times because the game’s map design was kinda bad imo. From chapter 23 onward, i realized just how poorly designed the enemy density was. They stack a ridiculous amount of enemies in corners. Then there’s so much empty space in the middle so you basically just do nothing when you clear one side and then there’s just another massive stack of enemies in another corner. This on top with the game feeling SLOW as crap like you mentioned made the game feel like a HUGE slog. And especially me trying to use Mia with Soren and Ike. Using even 3 footlocked units made the game feel that much SLOWER 💦
Imagine all of these issues and playing chapter 23 (the lol pitfall meme bridge) and then 25 (the ha ha boulder chapter). I can’t imagine how people play this game with more infantry units outside of Ike (forced deployed) & Soren (since he’s the only one really worth it IMO).
Mounted units are too ridiculous yeah, but the best part about them is they at least get through the maps much faster
Did you play on a emulator? If so where did you get it? I can’t find any that work.
Dolphin emulator
this feels like an extreme over exaggeration, you going on about the game being slow when it really doesnt take much time feels like just complaining. Never felt slow to me and I'm not rushing to beat a game cause that defeats the whole point of even playing a game.
Fe9 is my favourite fire emblem game by far it is so fun
I tried training Nephenee and Rolf and they turned out garbage even though they are unmounted and supposed to have better combat than their mounted counterparts. But Brom turned out really good with the help of the knight's ward
The speed of Path of Radiance I do think is the biggest contributing factor as to why I don't play the game often, and why it doesn't quite make being my favorite Fire Emblem game. If Nintendo just released a port that adds in more speed up, or even skips enemy phase like the newer games, I would eat it up so hard. Despite that, the speed has never taken away from my personal enjoyment of this game.
Radiant Dawn suffers from similar issues, but they did put a lot more consideration into making the maps more reasonably sized or providing more options. Though my big problems with Radiant Dawn come down more to the game's structure than anything else, which is why I enjoy it far less.
I don't like playing on fast forward in those types of games, but yeah it is slow. And I would like more options for animations, like disable anims against grunts but keep them against named characters
One of my favourite aspects of PoR and RD is the worldbuilding. I really love how it feels more unique compared to most FE-games I´ve played since we have the Beorc and Laguz and their long history of resenting eachother, rather than have a handful of "dragon-people" who shows up at the very end of a game and can only turn into dragons using some stone. Also, I really love the fact that the main protagonist isn´t of royal birth, but a simple mercenary who´s father was one of the greatest human warriors in his time. And as you stated in the video, the cast overall is pretty damn great. This game is definitely a guilty pleasure of mine.
Replaying this right now.
Isnt it like 300$ now?
That's truly is the game's biggest sin
FED: *"Balance doesn't matter"*
Also FED: *Complains about the units of your army being unbalanced due to how busted mounted units are in PoR & how much the game favors them*
So somehow the lack of good balancing is a problem, yet it somehow doesn't matter... What sense does that make?
Man this FED guy sounds like a dummy
I _gave_ this game away to a friend as an impromptu gift one day after being disappointed with it on release.
I’ve been bitter towards this treasured game ever since.
I’m enjoying the other instalments in the series much more, and my interest in this one never seems to build beyond a passing interest, but people sure like to push it.
While it’s visual style definitely repels me, I have to admit that this iteration of the support conversation system really impresses me.
something that grinds my gears on PoR is the low quality of the mages/healers. Rhys dies on one hit from a fly, Soren isn't strong enough to OTKO anything, Ilyana is just meh and mist... oh lord, extremely annoying to level up and can deal damage just with florette... what happened to the previos FE valkryes? mounted staff+tomes was super fun (and OP)
I can never play without the animations, it’s my favorite part of the series. Would love it if Tellius got remakes.
Anyway I don’t know why people get so mad about “playing it optimally means most of your units aren’t worth it.”
Then don’t, play normal mode... who cares
I’d rather more units got buffed then they nerf horses anyway.
I just wanna play it, I don't have a GameCube and I can't figure out how to emulate it
It's definitely not as bad if you use speed up on an emulator, but obviously using speedup doesn't allow for a great viewing experience. Without speedup, I honestly don't know how I would play PoR or RD again. RD is probably my favorite game, but man it's also so slow.
Honestly the sluggishness of the gameplay is my only major gripe with this game (there are other things, like having relatively few standout maps/some poor later maps, the lack of unit diversity in early chapters over subsequent runs, the lack of a good upper difficulty because fuck Maniac). The dominance of mounted units isn't great but it doesn't bother me _too_ much because I love this cast so dearly that I will use whatever wacky unit combinations I feel like (this is one aspect where the lack of challenge is actually an asset). I have been strongly considering, once I have the disposable income to do so, putting up a hacking bounty to speed up the animations. It seems we're getting to the point with PoR hacking that such a thing should be within the realm of possibility reasonably soon.
I’ve never played PoR, but I have played 4 games in the series and after falling in love with the series again with 3H, I was curious about this game. But this video didn’t give me any sense of what is masterpiece like about the game. 80% of it is about the flaws, and the rest is described as “solid.”
The slow speed is only a minor issue to me because I play on emulator, but I can see it being really annoying on console (similar to FE4). The problem with turning off combat animations, though, is that it also turns off combat stats. For player phase, you see the stats beforehand, but for enemy phase you don't. Maybe for people who have play the game a lot this isn't an issue, but not getting that information in real time is at best bothersome for me.
Also, the fact that the damage is using impact font really takes me out of the experience. I know it wasn't a thing when the game came out, but the overuse of that specific font on image macros and meme templates for the past 10+ years has cemented it in my brain as "meme font".
I love playing with animations :) but i love the tellius games in general lol
I can agree alot i was having so much fun on my first play threw of path of radiance but with how slow the game is and of how the last part of the game i just did not enjoy makes it hard to pick back up like i do with fe 7 or some of the newer games.
Through emulation you can up the game significantly.
It’s too bad these games came out before FE blew up. The Tellius series is so much better than these new games. The new ones are good but I gotta admit my first play through of three houses quickly turned in to me replaying Radiant dawn. The amount of strategy required for that game is my favorite part.
Playing POR now for the first time and it’s cool seeing the characters I already know and love and how they started off. Still in part I but so far it’s been fun all be it much easier than RD
Path of Radiance is a great game, but I actually have quite a few gripes with it. One is not so much the speed at which things move in the game, but more so how the speed relates to the difficulty. PoR is a slow game but it is also one of the easiest games in the series. Slow and Easy is not a great combination as you tend to easily see what you need to do on the map, but it takes so long to execute your plan. That hinders enjoyment from a gameplay perspective.
The second problem I have with PoR is not the story (which I think is pretty good), but rather the characters. Everyone loves to point out how different Ike is because he isn't royalty or anything but when you strip the uniqueness of that character trait away from him, he has one of the simplest character arcs of any main character in the series. He is a young inexperienced merc leader trying to gain experience and become worthy of his father, all while also trying to help people who cannot help themselves with the resources he has available to him. He does not really face many huge decision points that challenge or change who he is as a person. I think he earns people's trust to easily at times and for a rookie Merc leader, it certainly did not feel like he had huge growing pains as one might expect from one so inexperienced. Yeah, he had his doubts in his abilities at times, but because he rarely if ever made a costly error, it felt a little like the straight A student getting a 90% on one of his tests and then sulking because he feels like he let everyone down because it wasn't at least a 95%. It comes across a little like false modesty. I still think Ike has really good moments in PoR and can see why people would like him so much, but as for me, I see Ike as a fairly average main character. I also think that on the whole, the characters of PoR are mostly solid with a few great ones like Jill and Elincia, and a few stinkers (whom I won't mention at risk of pissing someone off). They definitely aren't my favorite cast in the series though.
The final minor problem I have with PoR are the animations. They were definitely cool at the time, but I do not think they aged well at all, and whenever I dabble in PoR these days, I always just turn them off because I never felt like they added much to the battles.
All of this being said, PoR is still like my 4th favorite game in the series so it's not like I dislike it at all. I just don't consider it to be anywhere near a masterpiece in my eyes. 8.5-9 out of 10? You bet. Borderline 10? Not so much for me.
Overall with balance, I wouldn't really have it different per se. I mean if you give the foot units better stats how much is justified, how much before they steamroll the game, etc. Zihark and Mia maybe should have been tankier and as someone who likes Mia and used her, I'll say that I should have just not and just use her when I play Radiant Dawn instead. Path of Radiance had a great story but gameplay-wise I'm coming back to Radiant Dawn and Three Houses mostly. Tellius had the best tale to tell but after seeing the whole story 2-3 times now I don't look at it as much anymore. Great Game but I think Radiant Dawn shows class balance off well (except for you Jill and Har) but I personally wouldn't want them nerfed. Overall great game but gameplay-wise I've only come back once after the 1st playthrough and don't plan to anytime soon.
I haven't even played this game and all I can say is that it's an RPG, it's a given that it's gonna be slow.
I’d love to play but a copy goes for 300, I Kobe Nintendo hates the E word but that’s what I’ll have to do
The ugly 3D graphics in path of radiance are a big turn off for me.
PoR is the flawed masterpiece, RD is the masterpiece masterpiece
Isn't ' flawed masterpiece ' an oxymoron?
I didn't like the lack of a world map, the last game I played before PoR was The Sacred Stones, so I was a little disappointed about not being able to train any of my units whenever I wanted with repeatable missions. Tellius ended up being my favorite setting though, I wish we could get a prequel set during the war against Yune 700 years before.
Yeah. FE9 is really slow and very easy. I did a hard mode playthrough so I could use some transfer bonuses for my first FE10 hard mode run with them. I was in shock on how easy/boring the hardest difficulty was. It was a physical NSTC version btw. I feel FE10's gameplay flows a lot better compared to FE9 and even FE16. FE10's hardest difficulty is tough, but never in an unfair way. FE10 is my favorite game. I have 3 physical copies of FE10. One of them is new/sealed... I might need help.
A whole video with nothing but complaining about the game.
Seriously you are grasping at straws for the game speed its really not that much of a problem.
Astrid is decent?
I haven’t heard that one. I suppose that paragon, and promoting at lvl 10 to gain axes makes her serviceable, but she comes at level 1, a chapter before Makalov who is like level 10. She’s squishy and 2 ranged locked before promotion. I like her because of her Knight Ward. Otherwise, she is very awful
I used her in my first playthrough and let me tell you, she is really good. Bonus experience her to like 8-10 and she can hold up with everyone else and can really help carry later on.
She's not bad cause paragon is genuinely that good. Ofc she's no titania jill marcia but she's def an above average unit
Imo PP games will always have better gameplay than EP ones. The gameplay in fe4 and 7-9 will never be as engaging as the peaks of Thracia, FE6, RD, Fates and 3H.
The fuk?
I think Radiant Dawn is better.
I can’t even finish radiant dawn
@@charlesmitchell1058 Yeah it's long for sure.
@Wil E They created emulators for games like this.
Personaly i played PoR in 2005 when it came out and i wasn't a fan of FE so tried it. I hated it. Then later on, in like 2009 i played Radiant Dawn because shit why not lol and I loved it! The music, the story, the character, the gameplay, the map omg my favorite FE ever! Then i decided to try again PoR and fell for it. RD made me love PoR lol and now both of them are my two favorite FE ever.
it was too easy.