In any Fire Emblem level, a number of clear conditions may be assigned to finishing the chapter. The most common have historically been seize - claim a specific location with your main character - or defeat the cꦏommander and rout the enemy (we're sure you can guess how these are fulfilled). Some chapters may have other clear 🅷conditions as well, although they're less common.
Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, however, had something special related to clear conditions: bonus EXP conditions. As the only two games in the series to use an EXP reward system, every chapter would have additional, optional victory conditio🧜ns attached, such as clearing the level within a certain turn limit or leaving certain enemies alive and unharmed. While other Fire Emblem games often have rewards for rescuing every NPC or visiting every house on a given map, the Tellius games took unique advantage of the extra clear conditions to give challenges to the player in every chapter. The greatest example of this is Path of Radiance's 22nd chapter: "Solo".
Solo is set up in a fairly simple way. Path of Radiance featured base conversations that the player could choose to read before entering the next battle. These conversations would often contain hints for good strategies to employ in the next fight - in Solo's case, Ike tells someone that the best way to deal with an enemy you don't want to fight is to push them out of the way. Wouldn't you know 𝄹it, the very next chapter takes place in a church overrun by mercenaries using priests as human shields. Ike, naturally, doesn't want to kill the hostages.
Through the base conversation setup before the level, the story mention of Ike's preference to avoid killing hostages, and the bonus EXP clear conditions, Solo primes players to engage with a lesser-used gameplay element. It even manages to justify its existence by tying its mechanics into the progressing story - in🌠 the ruins of a country that is rapidly losing the war, mercenaries and common bandits are becoming more cutthroat than ever, while Ike attempts to hold fast to his morals.𓄧 As both a gameplay level and a 'chapter' in a story, Solo stands, well, on its own.
Solo takes place in a very crowded church building. Most doorways or narrow passages are blocked by hostages, and what's more, some will attack (but won't move) using light tomes. That means you can't leave ranged attackers near them with a weapon equipped, or you'll risk counter-killing the priests. Infantry units who weigh more are able to push enemy or allied units one tile away as a command. Un🍬its with the Smite skill can push them two tiles away. The game guides players into using these skills to make gaps in the enemy formation large enough to rush the boss and end the chapter.
The real genius of Solo, however, is that there's still more than one solution. While the game certainly primes players to take the push and smite approach, it's not the only way - with clever usage of siege tomes (magic with extremely long range) like Bolting, it's actually possible to kill the boss without ever pushing or killing a single priest. It's tough to ౠpull off, however, since the boss has a priest next to him to spam heals, and siege tomes are very low usage. You'd have to commit to using a very limited resource to end the map quickly, and forfeit a lot of EXP you'd have gained from defeating the grunt merc༺enaries.
Which is why the fact that one of the rewards for leaving the priests unharmed (more experience points) is so important. The opportunity cost of leaving 'enemy' units alive is offset greatly. Not only that, the priests give you a special staff if they're all alive at the end. It packages two substantial rewards and the ideal resolution for a story beat together, all while encouraging more complex and engaging methods of gameplay than the average player would normally🏅 use to clear a level.
Path of Radiance had a lot of truly fantastic level design, from the first encounter with the Black Knight in Blood Runs Red to the ultra-difficult BEXP challenge of leaving every Laguz unit alive at the end of The Feral Frontier. But Solo marries gameplay challenge🧸 and story concept in a fair, fun way with multiple solutions. For that, it's one of the best Fire Emblem levels of all time.