Path of Radiance was the first 3D Fire Emblem game released. With this entry, the series abandoned the beautifully drawn and animated character sprites in favor of 3D models, which got a mixed response. The character models during the command phase are laughable and the animations in combat are stiff in comparison to their previous 2D representations. However, at the time the quality of the CG animation really stood out to me.
The series’ art style is clean and simple, which converted well into 3D CG. In 2005, I hadn’t really seen anything like this. There’s only a handful of CG scenes in the game, but I was impressed with what was there. While the backgrounds have a flat look to them, they didn’t attempt to replicate the look of 2D characters. This might help with avoiding some of the awkwardness you sometimes get with 2D characters being too literally converted into 3D.
I used to wish that there would be an anime in this style, but 3D CG kind of snuck into a lot of anime with varying degrees of success. It doesn’t look as polished Fire Emblem, but a 3D CG series by Rooster Teeth called RWBY is probably the closest stylistically.
I can look back on Path of Radiance and remember how impressed I was then, but nowadays it’s kind of underwhelming. Even so, I’m less interested in watching anime now. For video games, titles in that visual style are starting to look more and more like the CG cutscenes of a decade ago. Last Year’s Guilty Gear Xrd blew out anything Fire Emblem has ever pulled off and that was in gameplay. I’d love to see another non-fighting game reach the level of quality it has to offer.
