Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is a turn-based strategy game. You play as Ike, son of Captain Greil, leader of the Greil Mercenaries. As the game starts you are training with your father so that you can someday take over as the leader of the mercenary company. You receive word that war has broken out between your homeland of Crimea and the aggressive land of Daein. Despite being mercenaries, Captain Greil is still led to help the people of Crimea. But this decision doesn't come without a price. When Captain Greil is killed by an enormous, black-armored Daein knight, Ike is thrust into leading the mercenary company during a time of war.

Now I have to admit, it's been a long time since I've played this type of strategy game. In fact, the last one I played was on the Sega CD (yes, I had a Sega CD, but I got a really good deal on it. Don't look at me like that), so that should give you an idea of how long it's been. So maybe I'm just out of practice, but I found this game to be really difficult. Part of it is a balance issue. You have a large number of characters, each with a different set of skills, but some of them seem to be far more powerful than the others. There are a couple of characters who can dish out and take punishment far better than the rest. The easiest way to gain experience is by defeating enemies, which only exacerbates the problem. The strong keep getting stronger and the weak stay weak. While it's possible to weaken an enemy with a strong character and have a weak character finish them off for the bonus experience, this is much easier said than done. Most characters will either dominate their enemy in combat, or slap ineffectually at them. And if you bring a weak character up to fight, that exposes them to the rest of the enemy army.

These balance difficulties are offset somewhat by the bonus experience that can be collected. The bonus experience is awarded for going above and beyond what is required of you in the mission. The requirements for gaining bonus experience are never explained to you, so you have to guess from the mission what sorts of things you have to do to gain the experience. Bonus experience can be given out however you see fit to any character, so it's a great way to boost the skills of those new characters that desperately need some extra help.

I was a little disappointed by the item selection as well. There are the usual healing potions that I used all the time, but the other items never really seemed necessary. I would look at them occasionally in my item list to see what they would do, but I just never felt the need to use any of them. I was even less likely to use them because you only get one action per turn, and when faced with using an item or fighting an enemy, it always seemed like a better idea to take out the enemy.

The combat system is nice and easy to understand. Swords are better against axes, axes are better against spears, and spears are better against swords. While this is helpful when you are picking your battles, it has little effect during your enemies' turn. I was always overwhelmed during the enemies' turns. The enemy forces always outnumber yours, and it always seemed to me that they moved and coordinated far better than anything I could do. It is possible to equip different weapons with different strengths. Some are effective against knights, others are good at piercing armor, and so on. Equipping the appropriate weapon can swing a battle heavily in your favor, but things are still difficult.

There is another aspect of the game that made things difficult for me. If one of your characters is killed in battle, then it's dead. There is no way to resurrect them. If you lose a character it is gone for good. If you aren't careful, it would be easy to lose a couple of characters and no longer have a strong fighting force. This made things much more difficult for me. I refused to let any of my characters die. However, it just takes one minor mistake to result in the death of multiple characters. I became very familiar with the reset button on my GameCube.

The graphics are nice. The little animated battle scenes are nice, and they show off the different troop choices and different equipment nicely. They are a bit time consuming, though. It takes time for the battle to load, time for the battle to be fought, and time for the main board to load back up. I ended up turning battle animations off so that I could get through the game faster.

There were some very nice cut scenes, too. Now, I may be getting stuck-up in this new age of fancy cut scenes and great voice work, but I was a little shocked by what I found in this game. There are some very nice cut scenes, but there are also several scenes consisting of two static images of the characters and text scrolling underneath them. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - it's the way all of the games I used to play were, but on this generation of consoles it just struck me as kind of odd.

All in all, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is a good game for strategy fans, but may be a little overwhelming for someone unfamiliar with the genre. There are a lot of good things here and lots of rewards to be had, but it can be frustrating if you aren't prepared for it. Kind of like leading your own mercenary company.