A fantasy world, extensive tactical play. role-playing elements, great storytelling. All these ingredients are part of one great game series: Fire Emblem. Now that the release of the GamceCube's Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (formerly known as Fire Emblem: Trail of the Flame) is only six months away, let's take a closer look at this very promising title.

As you may or may not know, Fire Emblem is as old as your very first Nintendo Entertainment System. But the greedy Japanese kept the game series for themselves, thinking we, the people outside of Japan, wouldn't like this type of RPG-strategy game. That's why Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is in fact the ninth installment of the series, and yet our third.

Fire Emblem is a turn-based strategy-RPG game divided in different chapters. You start with a small group of men, all with their own specific abilities, like knights, thieves and mages. As the game progresses more people join you on your quest. Every chapter starts with further developments in the story, after that you have to fight against a group of enemies. Each turn you move your party and assign each character to different tasks; like attack, defend, move, trading.

Think carefully about your next move. Because a dead soldier means he won't be available in the following chapters. Is your opponent too strong for this character? Is it better to equip an axe or will you use the sword this time. And what if your strong knight dies? Can you finish the game without him? Or do you need to play the chapter over again with another strategy. And maybe over again, and over again. Until you are satisfied with the outcome of the battle.

In 3D...finally

Luckily you don't have to make your choices based on just a good feeling in your toe. Fire Emblem is full of stats. Every character in your army has his own stats table. When giving an attack command, you can almost predict the outcome of the battle. Just don't overlook the stats. You don't want to restart the fight, again, do you.

Your characters gain experience points every time they battle. When a fighter gets 100 experience points, the level of this character rises. Eventually he can change in a new class. This makes it important for you to choose who has to fight when. Who do you want to get stronger?

This time the game's story brings us to the continent of Tellius. A land populated with humans and half-man/half-beasts. After a long time of war the two groups finally established peace. A new force however threatens to relive the war, and to tear apart the different kingdoms. As always in a Fire Emblem game this is just a small summary of the story that develops deeper during the game.

Apart from for the story, so far you see no dissimilarities with the former two GBA games. (the second GBA Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones will be released later this year). What makes this GameCube Fire Emblem different from the handheld versions? Of course, the graphics are better. It has 3D environments, beautiful movies and 3D battles scenes. These battle views appear when you attack an enemy. They can become a little repetitive after a while, that's why it's a good thing you can skip them. The story scenes can also be skipped, although story is an essential element to the series. Unfortunately, they don't contain voice acting, except for some scarce movies.

New in this Fire Emblem is the 3D view of the battlefield. The camera can be turned to fit your needs. It can change up, zoom in and rotate. This way you've always perfect sight on the battlefield. Talking about the battlefield, you will find yourself fighting in different environments. Villages, castles, forests, dungeons. These environments are filled with objects like buildings and trees. Unfortunately these objects don't seem to take an active role in the game play.

By default it'll be one of the better RPGs on GC

As previous mentioned this Fire Emblem contains half-man/half-beasts. They take a big part in the game. There are panthers, hawks, ravens, wolfs and dragons. Some of them can join your party and battle for you. It seems like they also have the possibly to move your opponents a couple of spaces. This can be a great tactical addition. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance also features three different difficulty settings: Medium, hard and maniac. The medium settings has a tutorial that helps you understand the game basics.

Another difference from the GBA Fire Emblems is the 'Bonus EX' system. Your party keeps getting bigger during the game, and you will come to the point where you can't take all characters into battle. This results in some characters not gaining experience, and this way falling behind to others. With the new 'Bonus EX' system you can give any character at the end of a chapter extra experience. This way you can keep your party in balance, or you can choose to make some men stronger than others. The choice is your's.

Lastly it is useful to mention that Path of Radiance is being developed by Intelligent System. These guys made some great games lately. How about Advance Wars, the GBA Fire Emblems and don't forget Paper Mario 2 for the GameCube. This is almost a guarantee that this game is going to be great. The European release date for this game is November 18th 2005. Just don't forget there's also a Zelda game out around that time.