If you've played either of the GBA Fire Emblem games, then Path of Radiance will be familiar territory. Think of it was a cross between Advance Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics -- it plays very much like the former, from a tactical standpoint, but heavily utilizes RPG-style character building in a style similar to the latter.
The game is divided up into chapters, each of which is essentially a tactical battle on a single map book-ended by narrative sequences. One of the series' more infamous trademarks is the fact that if you lose a character on the field of battle he or she is gone for good; no items or spells exist that can wrench their souls from the nether -- apart from the reset button, anyway, but that would involve replaying the whole map. So the rule of thumb: be very careful with your units. You'll spend a lot of time building characters up, more so in Path of Radiance than any previous installment I've played. The investment here is much more significant.
Path of Radiance's story focuses on a band of "sellswords" called the Greil Mercenaries. It's far from your typical mercenary organization in that its leader, Greil, seems to have a tendency to only take jobs for a just social cause. These typically involve ridding villages of bandits, pirates, marauders, and the like. But Greil isn't the hero; rather, it's his wet-behind-the-ears son and successor, Ike. Chapter One marks his first job with the company, and as you'd imagine, his stature only grows from there. Not too long after the game kicks off, Ike and company are informed by one of their legion that the capitol of their own nation, Crimea, had suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Daein, a neighboring, not-too-friendly nation. The events that ensue take the growing band of (sometimes reluctant) heroes to the farthest reaches of the game's fantastical world. The installments in the series released in this territory thus far have benefited from excellent writing, and Path of Radiance seems no different.
