#nibbles on my chocolate and watches u all happily like a lil mouse

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

How is path of Radiance? Like the characters, writing, the plot.. I heard really good things about Elincia and getting good writing for female characters is so rare in FE games I want to try it now

I'm gonna take a wild guess and ask if it's @randomnameless you heard the Elincia stuff from LOL.

What I will say first about the females before getting into the other stuff is that the females are handled perfectly. They get the same amount and kind of development as the males and aren't there just to be male gaze eye candy. Petrine is the closest thing I could say is like that by appearance, but her personality doesn't match what they do a lot more often nowadays, and she's not a bad character (she's a good villain if nothing else). The females are treated very equally to the males.

PoR also kinda has a "no character left behind" deal where you can continue getting bits and pieces from everyone you recruit, either via base conversations or boss conversations (outside of just supports). Usually in FE after you get a character to join you, that's it and all you get is supports for development, but PoR continues to reuse those characters in various base conversations (including ones that phase out in story importance, like how the Greil Mercenaries are story important but most of them lose importance midgame).

One other good thing though about characters losing importance is that they all do. Aside from the very very main handful, you get sections where different characters get spotlight. For instance, the GMs are the first section of the game, but later on you start seeing more of Begnion's cast, and then you start seeing the bird tribes for a while and so on. Importance is split between a wide range of characters and it gives a whole bunch of them actual story relevance even if they're not in the immediate main handful.

The characters are all stellar because they're all very different and not single-trope based. These days we get one or two tropes and/or aspects about a character (like Boucheron in Engage gets lost all the time and he cries a lot from reading books/generally cries often, and that's... pretty much his whole personality. Citrinne is rich and doesn't know how to give gifts that aren't expensive and wants to protect her people and that's it) and just have to accept that it's their entire character.

There's also a lot of reading between the lines to understand all the characters and not just taking things at surface level. For instance, most people HATE Makalov because he uses people's money and gambles it all away, but he consistently tries to better himself. He ultimately fails in both games to lose that bad habit, but he does regularly bring the idea up of trying to lose that addition and tries to be a better brother for his sister. Just because he fails at actually breaking his bad habits doesn't mean that's it, clean cut, that's all there is to him. He's not my favorite personally, but imo he gets a lot of unjustified hate. He has a gambling addiction but he does have a lot of self awareness and knows when he's being a scoundrel. He doesn't like it, but he knows it's part of him.

For the story and plot, both are fantastic. Everything is connected, even between both games, giving the sense that the game was made with a sequel planned before it was even released. The game literally ends on a cliffhanger ffs lmao. The story starts as just the GMs doing their job, then they get hired to guard Elincia and have to take a journey to do so to gain enough army strength, but once you get about halfway into the game, it starts getting a lot more serious and kind of grows with Ike in a way. Like, he grows more into being a leader and understanding how to manage his mercenaries, but the story progresses with his maturity and becomes in a sense a more mature story.

There's also the way racism is done that's really well handled, in which a good chunk of the cast, including very main characters in both games, start out extremely racist (Tibarn and Reyson are among the most racist, human hating characters in the first game for a good half or more of the game, because the halfway point is chapter fifteen (there are thirty chapters total including the prologue, IF you don't count that chapter 17 is four parts long). Over time they all change and grow at their own pace. Naesala is even a tricky one because he seems like he's still not quite a villain but not really an ally by the end, but he actively drops the term "human" in favor of "beorc" once Reyson informs him he's in service to the Crimean army to repay their deeds in protecting his sister. Even more minor characters like Jill and Lethe take it at their own pace and Jill in particular you get base conversations with repeatedly, where she grows as a person in every single one. She joins you in chapter 12 and is still relevant in her own way through chapter 20, i.e. through base conversations.

Also, I really love that all the characters come together by the end and piece the plot together together, as a group. It's not just the main character and another one or two people who are suddenly like OH I UNDERSTAND. They literally have group conversations to work things out and add their own insight to bring the plot together. For example, there's a conversation with Caineghis, Tibarn, Ike, Soren, Titania, Elincia, and Ranulf where they're all discussing Ashnard and his motivations. They all use pieces of what they've learned individually throughout the war to tell everyone else what they know, and they piece it all together.

It's honestly kind of fascinating to see even now, at least for me, considering FE games don't do that anymore. Usually you get a few characters total who are main characters (like Awakening, how you get a handful of characters who have any plot relevance whatsoever and nobody else gives their two cents about what's going on, despite being part of a large army). It really gives each character individuality and purpose, where it doesn't feel like they're just a number in your army. It feels like another person in your army. Even if not all of them are directly in your army/playable, they still integrate with the story.

Supports are pretty great too because you can glean a lot from just small supports. If you've been following me long enough you knew he was going to come up sooner or later: HURRAY, SHINON, WHOOOO. 🥳🎉🎉🎉 Shinon has a pretty rocky B support with Janaff, but it's so valuable for both of their characters. Both of them think the other is stupid for not knowing "something totally obvious lelzies", but they end up having a good discussion about it and learning from each other, despite Shinon being grumbly grumble bag because he's talking to a yeehaw half-breed who was rood to him last support when he was minding his own business (Janaff had never seen him before but Shinon didn't like the way he was talking to him, so being the idiots they truly are had a ten second verbal battle of "if i wanted to i could kill u, just so u r aware lel"). It ends with Shinon like ugh ugh why am I doing this tho, and he skedaddles and Janaff is all huffy puffy because he wanted to ask more questions about beorc (humans). Their A support is a fountain of goodness for both of them/their characters because you learn a lot about Janaff that I think you otherwise would never even consider. This time it's Janaff who just happily opts out of the conversation after realizing Shinon isn't so bad and he enjoyed learning from him, and Shinon is the one who is like hey wait come back... except last time Janaff was aggravated when Shinon peaced out. This time Shinon is actually interested and intrigued and wants Janaff to come back because Janaff has seen more of the world than him and he wants to hear more, but he's nice about it (there's more development than that, but I'm summarizing to give an example of how supports go in this game).

Can you tell I adore them by the way I make fun of them so intensely? Thank you.

Imo the writing is good enough that I can reread the whole game even despite playing it over 20 times. Sometimes I do just play it for gameplay and skip dialogue, but there are plenty of times I read the whole script over again. The characters are very full of personality with depth and growth. Very few are kind of left in the dust, like extremely late game randoms like Calill and Largo who have no reason to exist except to give you a sage in case for some wild ass reason you did not train any of your three mages by that point, and Largo being the only Berserker class character in the entire Tellius franchise, which is a wah wah when you realize he's not even playable in RD. Probably Tellius' biggest wah wah what's the point, honestly.

Have you seen my posts about Ashnard that get littered around my blog regularly? When I complained about Houses' failures for making an intriguing villain? To put it simply, Tellius has characters like him, who are Happy and They Know It, aka A Villain and They Know It, and then you have villains who have actually unfortunate backstories (yeehaw spoiler for RD just in case you don't know who it is, but it's actually set up in PoR very, VERY sneakily, and you realize it's all there after you've beaten both/beaten RD at least twice because unfortunately there is a chunk of story/plot locked behind a second or higher playthrough in RD, some of which also requires very specific gameplay to have happened). No, I'm not talking about the Black Knight... though he is probably the worst written case of a villain in RD, when he was perfectly handled in PoR. Granted, he also has second or higher run locked story. In fact... so does Soren's entire identity lol. RD really just said replayability or bust.

As much as PoR is my second favorite game, I actually still think that in general it's the absolutely best written story/plot with the most diverse and detailed characters. Tbh I'd go so far as to say it's the actual best, because most FE games lack either in story, plot or characters, or even just lack in tolerable females/female designs. PoR doesn't miss a beat with any of those, and tbph I actively despise PoR Lethe but don't at all mind or dislike her in RD because there's actual growth there and her personality toward the main cast is basically a 180.

RD doesn't handle the group discussions, and adding in as many characters to the story as possible all the way throughout, as well as PoR, but it does try and it does give you various armies to work with to learn about a good chunk of them. It's definitely behind PoR in terms of the three things I've brought up that you asked about (the females aren't sexualized or treated poorly, but I'd argue that Micaiah was a point of contention when the game first came out. Think, Three Houses discourse except it was Ike fans versus Micaiah fans on a significantly tinier scale. Other than her (and Lyre being very annoying imo and having no redeeming traits lol), there wasn't really anything distasteful and the females as a whole weren't mishandled.

Really the worst part about people wanting to try the game is that it's approximately ~300 USD to buy a used copy of the original game, and RD isn't particularly cheap either. You'd be best off playing it on an emulator, but you also unfortunately need at least somewhat decent specs or a gaming computer for RD for it to run well, and POR can run okay on a bland computer but it might look/sound laggy. From my experience when using an emulator for it (since sometimes I like to fuck around with cheats because the debug stuff is so fun in that game), the sound is the worst in laggyness and it's just otherwise a bit slow. It might be doable, but at least much more so than RD. Just might not be a seamless experience, sadly.

If you can play it smoothly either via emulator or have the extra money to dish out (or if you find it up for a cheap enough bid online, or someone does an oopsie and puts it up for a steal), I'd definitely say try to grab one and play it for yourself. It's still awesome to watch a playthrough of if you have no decent access to it, but it's also very fun to play.

Also, it's a super good game for newer FE fans because it's not that difficult. I know lots of newer fans who only know casual and classic as options are a bit deterred from playing older games with no casual mode (FE12 and up have Casual, so anything from Shadow Dragon and backwards doesn't have that option, though SD has the benefit of having save points, like two per map, and RD lets you save at literally any time on any map as long as it's your turn). This game is at least a tolerable difficulty even on normal mode, so if you're really unsure, you can play your first run on easy mode and it should definitely not be too difficult.

There's also an added bonus of a way to tell if you might do well or ill in battle with any character at any given time and that's through the biorhythm, which you can see on the character's menu screen when you shift through their screens. It's a feature only in the Tellius games, but it adds the bonus of determining battle outcomes for every single unit and changes every turn throughout the battle. It's not an absolute, but it's helpful if you're looking at a unit who has a fifty chance of hitting, because if they have a poor biorhythm they're almost definitely not going to hit. If they have a perfect biorhythm, they have an even better chance of getting that hit.

So honestly, if you're struggling to pick a game to play that's older and doesn't have the safety net of Casual mode to help you see the story while not being worried about gameplay messing up getting to watch your favorite characters' development, I'd say pick up PoR and play on easy mode on your first go to make it much more comfortable. It's literally great for newcomers and/or fans who have never experienced classic mode not being a choice, and it has story/plot/characters to match the enjoyment.

Just because it's my second favorite and not my number one doesn't mean I won't advocate for it the most heavily! My favorite is still lacking in a fair bit of things PoR has and has wonderfully done.

Tbh, looking back on it too, even now my opinions on things are still growing and changing. I looked back on my recent ongoing run and went wow, I wonder how I felt about Naesala before chapter 16/17 on my first ever playthroughs, because I actually understand his point of view a lot better even without needing to consider the spoilers I'm now aware of. Just seeing what's in front of me, I actually think Naesala comes across as more likeable of a character than Tibarn and Reyson start out as, then it shifts the other way where they're more likable and he's not, and then it evens out lategame/by the end. After that RD is a rollercoaster with a resolution for a lot of characters, Naesala especially (especially especially if you bring him with you into the last portion of the game, which is a multi chaptered endgame with a set army/characters of your choice from throughout the entire game) that makes playing PoR again even better, because there's a lot of hindsight that was planned in PoR and dropped throughout.

Even if I wouldn't say RD is definitely as fascinating as PoR, it does answer a whole load of questions and makes replaying PoR much more reasonable if you otherwise saw little to no reason to replay it. Since I talked about PoR here it's kind of impossible not to include RD in terms of PoR's story since they are wholly connected, but even just by itself PoR is a perfect experience for story/plot/character balance.

Also, Ranulf is a cat. A blue cat. And he's funny. And he's kind. And he's sweet. Why hasn't he won CYL yet? Why does he not have even a single alt in Heroes yet? There will never be true justice in this world.