Path of Radiance Act 1: Greil Mercenaries

We've crossed the threshold. Greil is gone, it's time for Ike to step up to the bat and become the commander of the Greil Mercenaries his father hoped he could be, and he has to deal with the plight of Elincia all on top of that. So what have we done so far?

• Prologue: Ike joins the Greil Mercenaries. A fairly basic tutorial level that doesn't quite feel like it fits.
• Chapter 1: Ike's first mission, to liberate Caldea. Putting the basics into practice and fighting off bandits while also making an effort to push an objective for the Seraph Robe house.
• Chapter 2: The kidnapping attempt. Ike learns the dangers of recklessness, and the player gets access to a healer. Using Rhys can keep your units in the fight longer, but Rhys can't take hits himself.
  
• Chapter 3: The pirate raid. This mission introduces Marcia, and expands on Shinon and Gatrie's grumbles with the mercenary company, but overall keeps the plot twiddling its thumbs while the game introduces you to indirect combat units.
• Chapter 4: First brush with Daein. This map is a solid sharp shock to the system, pitting you against Daein in open terrain without Oscar and Boyd. Ike struggles with soldiers and Soren is too weak to reliably be in multiple fights or secure his own kills- this map is a contender for top five hardest maps if you try to play it legitimately. We just needed a Titania rout, though.
• Chapter 5: Defending from Daein. This map introduces Defend and is more or less you going as hard as you can with all the units you've had access to in this prologue.
• Chapter 6: Escape to Gallia. This is a relatively cute gimmick map, even if the victory condition doesn't quite match with the story.
• Chapter 7: Gallian Fort. Aside from the introduction of Chests, this map is only slightly above average difficulty normally. No, this chapter is memorable for the story, and what a whammy that story is.

I'll be honest, this might partially be biased by the All Girls run, but this prologue section overstays its welcome a tad. We haven't seen the whole of it yet, but it's not until Chapter 11 that a casual player has a solid core of units that can afford to bench an underperforming Oscar and/or Boyd. If your Greil Mercs don't turn out, the transitional chapters coming up (8-10) can become quite dangerous. Fortunately, Chapter 8 also introduces us to the Base, which has three things that can help you when you're struggling- a shop, the storage convoy and BEXP.

One thing I've been considering, but am not completely satisfied with, is trying to figure out which chapters to cut. Chapter 3 is the best candidate, in my opinion, as Marcia's appearance and Shinon and Gatrie's dissatisfaction seems plausible to work into other encounters. The opening map, too, kinda suffers from too little to do and the game not quite having figured out what's going on. I'm side-eyeing Chapter 6, but I think at this point, the problem is less "the game is taking too long" and more "the plot structure of Fire Emblem is rebelling against the story being told".

Another solution is adding more characters. Why it takes Marcia so long to come back, I have no idea, and Mia could've been encountered in some other way with minimal changes- and even then, there was no real need for her to be captured and rescued by Greil. The new character in Chapter 8, too, might justifiably make an earlier appearance, though that one is stretching the material a little more.

In the end, we're here to look at Tellius, the highs and lows of its story, and what it has that has brought it such a reputation. This early stretch of the game has not been it. Tellius's strengths come later on in the game, when we have more characters, more fingers in the game's politics, and when the mysteries we've vaguely seen get more openly explored. A lot of RPGs have problems with the opening, often exploring the initial setting with a depth that isn't afforded to other areas and doesn't reflect its proper importance. The Greil Mercenaries are important to explore, as the way Ike treats and is treated by them informs how he approaches new people, but I think this didn't quite stick the landing.