Tactics Ogre is One of the Best RPGs

The Ogre Battle Saga is divided into two sets of video games. The Ogre Battle games focus on grander stories about the big countries in the game’s world. Tactics Ogre focuses on the local conflicts and takes place on islands.

The Tactics Ogre games tell more personal stories about the people who participate in war. While still being stories about a hero overcoming an evil empire or leader, they focus on a small part of the game’s world. These two games are all about people.

The first game, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, occurs during an ethnic conflict that broke out after the death of a king who held the island together. It touches on war crimes, religious conflicts, proxy wars, and ethnic cleansing.

I love this series! Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen is my favorite game in the series, and Tactics Ogre is my second favorite. I love how it focuses more on the people in this world and how the larger countries interact with the smaller ones. It is incredibly fascinating to me.

TLDR: One of the Best Tactical RPGs Ever Made.

Narrative

Our story starts with a brief history of the island nation of Valeria. It is made up of three ethnic groups that were united under a royal family. When the royal family was killed, the island descended into chaos as ethnic tensions erupted into war.

Our three heroes are from the Walsta ethnic group. We’re going to be following Denim, which is the player’s character. Denim is the default name, but you can name him. His “sister Kachua, and his “friend” Vice, follow him through the game’s first chapter.

The three of them attack a group of exiled Zenobonian Knights, who are mistaken as the leaders of the Black Knights, who are members of the Kingdom of Lodis. Confusingly, there are two characters named Lans, one Zenobonian and one from Lodis.

The good Lans and some other characters from the first Ogre Battle join our heroes and liberate Duke Ronway, the leader of the Walstain people. From here, the player is presented with choices that impact the game’s ending.

Throughout the game, you’re given clues about how the soldiers fighting this war feel. Sometimes, enemy units attempt to run away during the cutscenes before the battle. It paints a picture of a people that are tired of war. Each of the two “enemy” factions has this happen, which is subtle enough to miss at first.

You hear from the ordinary people for the faction your character is fighting for. It is more a part of the plot, and more cutscenes are dedicated to it. It is also tied to a key part of the game where you can stick with the liberation army or split with them.

You get presented with choices during the game. These can change the course of the war and your character’s role during the war. No matter your path, things end up in the same place. You have to fight against the former King, who has been transformed into an Ogre. The role of Ogres in the series is fascinating. I’ll talk more about it in the next section.

There are a few endings to Tactics Ogre. On this playthrough, I got the bad ending. Both Vice and Kachua died, and Denim became the new King. He was immediately killed, and the Kingdom of Lodis took over the island. In the other endings, Kachua can become the new Queen, or the war will continue. Vice has a few endings as well. He dies in two of them, and in the third, he stops being a dick and joins up with you.

Role of Ogres in the Series

As a kid, I didn’t question what was in video games. It didn’t matter to me. The game said that Ogres were evil and a representation of chaos. In Ogre Battle, depending on how your alignment works out, you’re either fighting evil or you get called Ogres.

At the end of Tactics Ogre, you fight an Ogre. In the game’s world, these are the representation of evil. However, an Ogre isn’t the same in Japanese folklore as in the folklore I learned. I think this boils down to a translation issue and cultural bias.

I think what you’re fighting is an Oni or an evil spirit from Japanese folklore. When you look at Japanese art, an Oni looks a lot like what I would think of when I think of an Ogre. However, an Oni isn’t a mindless creature like they are in the fantasy stories I grew up with.

An Oni looks more like a demon to me. While they’re large creatures, the horns remind me of what I would think of as a demon. It is all objective, and what they look like can change based on where you’re from. There are a lot of creatures like this from all around the world.

I know this is going to be an obscure reference, but I’m reminded of the anime Ogre Slayer. In the story, a young man’s mother was an ogre. He spends the rest of his life hunting down ogres and killing them. If you’re wondering, this section was just an excuse for me to hunt down and watch the anime again.

I’ve also seen comparisons between Trolls and Oni. This is a bit of a mess where you have people trying to find similarities across folklore. They’re three distinct beings with different attributes. I’m sure I could better articulate the differences if I did a deeper analysis.

An Oni is more of a spirit with horns and can take physical form. The Ogre is a hulking giant that feasts on humans. It is fascinating to see how similar these two mythical creatures are.

This section is threatening to derail me even more than I intended. This seems to be a product of translations and making connections between differing folklore. Whatever you call it, the thing is evil, and it is up to the player to kill it.

Gameplay

Tactical or Strategy RPG is my favorite sub-genre of video games. Many of my favorite RPGs fall into this category. The gameplay is similar to moving chess pieces around a board. They also have some quirks to their combat systems, such as:

• Weapons Triangles
• Terrain
• Direction of attack

Tactics Ogre uses a version of all three of these. It has an elemental weakness system terrain that impacts movement and combat, and your attacks are more effective when attacking from the back or the side. Let’s get into the game a bit more and explain some of the gameplay.

You’ll get characters during the game but can also recruit units when you reach a town or castle. There are a ton of units you can recruit. There are also a good number of monsters you’ll encounter in the game. Here is a list of them:

• Soldier (Male unit)
• Amazon (Female unit)
• Golem
• Dragon
• Faire
• Hawkman
• Lizardman
• Gryphon
• Octopus
• Cockatrice
• Ghosts
• Skeletons
• Gremlin

Several of these units are L Class units. I’m assuming that means large, but I don’t remember it being said in the manual. These units can be auctioned off for money. It sounds terrible, at least to me, but it can get you out of a jam as money becomes scarce as you progress in the game.

Some of these characters can change their class, specifically soldiers and amazons. They have different class trees, and more options appear as you level up these characters and as their alignment changes. Here is a quick list of the classes and what tree they are in:

• Knight
• Wizard
• Ninja
• Berzerker
• Beast Tamer
• Archer
• Cleric
• Valkyrie
• Witch
• Exorcist
• Siren
• Warlock
• Sword Master
• Dragon Tamer
• Dragoon
• Priest
• Angel Knight

Each of the character classes has their own set of weapons, armor, and magic that they can use. This can sometimes be a little frustrating, but the game will tell you what spells each magic user can use and what equipment a character can’t use. You can also look this up online, which takes some customization away.

Sometimes, you’ll get angels in the game. If a character dies, they might be replaced by an Angel. I’m not sure if this will also happen with a demon.

Random encounters exist in the game but aren’t that important. You get more out of the training segments than from wandering around the map hoping to encounter some monsters. It is fun that there are random encounters, but they’re more annoying than helpful.

If there is a hole in Tactics Ogre’s gameplay, it would have to be the mission goals. They often default to kill the enemy leader, especially early on in the game. This is disappointing when compared with other Tactical RPGs of this period.

Games like Shining Force, Fire Emblem, and others offered more goals than this. By the time it was ported to the PS1 and released in North America, there were more games in the genre, and they did a better job of including more missions.

Occasionally, there will be a character you need to save/keep alive. This isn’t always made clear at the start of missions. The game will only tell you to kill the enemy leader to win, but it won’t tell you the losing condition.

During this playthrough, I noticed something strange about the enemy AI. The enemy leader puts itself into danger by charging directly at your party or moving to a vulnerable position on the map. You can win most battles by focusing on the enemy leader when it does this, and it makes the mission easier. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen more often than not.

I’m unsure if this is the same in all versions of the game. It is something that I noticed in the PS1 version. It might be different in the other two versions of the game.

Magic is a puzzle for me in this game. Tactics Ogre has magical attacks and healing spells. You don’t learn these spells; you must buy them at one of the shops. I don’t have a problem with this. What I do have a problem with is explaining magic points.

Most RPGs have magic points. They might be called something different or tied to skills, techniques, or abilities. In Tactics Ogre, it’s simply called magic points. You start each mission with a few and randomly gain more as you take turns.

The game attempts to explain how this works, but I don’t understand. It feels like your magic users randomly get more MP each turn. I never had to worry about running out of it.

Talking about magic brings me to the alignment system in the game. Each character is aligned to one of four elements: Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire. Each of these is tied to magic, except Dark and Light magic.

This elemental alignment creates a pseudo-strength and weakness chart. It sort of works. This doesn’t play into the combat. Alignment does impact magical attacks, but physical attacks rely on the direction of attack and map terrain.

One of the most annoying parts of the game has to deal with leveling up new characters. When you lose characters, which you most likely will, you might want to replace them. As the game progresses, this becomes increasingly difficult.

Recruits start at level 1. If you need new characters late in the game, you need to level them up to be useful. This forces you to spend a lot of time grinding one or two characters. I’m unsure if this is an issue for the PSP version or Tactics Ogre Reborn.

When you attack a castle, you must go through a gauntlet of missions. The game throws this at you in the tutorial, but they get more challenging as the game goes on. Near the end of the game, you’ll have to do three missions in a row.

While this isn’t difficult, your characters won’t be healed between missions. You also won’t be able to train for the next mission. It makes things very difficult. It isn’t impossible, and you’ll need to make sure you have a large roster of soldiers to get through this.

Overall, the gameplay is excellent! I love Tactical RPGs, and this is one of the best in the genre. Tactics Ogre is a challenging game that can take a while due to grinding for levels, but it is an enjoyable game that lets you build your part however you want.

Visuals

I love the way this game looks. It is a port of a Super Famicom game, so it isn’t as visually impressive as some other PS1 games. However, I feel that pixel art looks better as time goes on when you compare it to the early attempts at 3D art.

The missions take place on a series of grids. They look good for the most part, but they can sometimes look haphazard. The terrain won’t always look practical, specifically when fighting in a city.

I can forgive this in smaller towns because it makes things look like a place where a war occurred. It looks like the people who lived there were putting the building back together as best as possible. In the castles, it is a little stranger.

You’ll see roads that don’t make much sense, and the staircases sometimes don’t make sense. It looks like the developers were trying to create spots for the terrain to impact the combat. Seeing how important elevation is to the combat, this would make sense. It still makes things look strange.

The cutscenes are similar to how games on the SNES would do them. Everything is done with in-game graphics. The cutscenes between chapters are done with a map of the country and pictures of the important characters.

The spells look good. You can tell when you hit or miss with an attack or status effect spell. This is where the game looks a little dated. The PS1 could pull off better graphics, but because Tactics Ogre was originally a Super Famicom game, the spells don’t look as good as other Tactical RPGs from this period.

Overall, the graphics are very good. While they would have seemed dated in the late 90s, they have looked better than the early attempts at 3D graphics. The closest comparison I have at this point is Vandal Hearts. I think Tactics Ogre looks sharper than that game, but Vandal Hearts has better-looking spells.  

9/10. I love this game! It does have some flaws, like having to grind for experience and money. Weapons, Magic, and new recruits get very expensive. However, it has an awesome story and great graphics and challenges the player quite a bit.

Pros

• Great Story
• Multiple Endings
• Great Graphics

Cons

• Grinding for Levels
• Can be too Hard

Conclusion

Tactics Ogre is a great but very frustrating game to play. The PlayStation 1 version is a challenging game that forces you to grind for experience. It can be time-consuming. The more recent version of the game, Tactics Ogre Reborn, adds many quality-of-life features that water down the game and make it more accessible for new players.

I didn’t know where to put this, and I’m sure people won’t care about this, so I’ll put it here. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together has many parallels to the break up of Yugoslavia. That is the conflict I used to bring up the most when discussing the game, which I did more often than you would think.

However, it could be taken from any one of a vast number of ethnic cleansings that have happened over the years. Pick a country where two or more ethnic groups have been mashed together in one country, and you’ll see a parallel to this game’s story. They won’t have zombies in them, but religion might get weaved into them in some places.

Several conflicts in Africa are similar to Tactics Ogre for various reasons. You have many countries where one ethnic group or nationality was given power over native populations or larger ethnic groups. It can be hard to research these.

It can be hard to look up information on this stuff. I used to have to watch terrorist and war crime videos. Replaying this game for a review brought some of those memories back—the war crimes, not the zombies.

I remember what I used to do when I go back and play video games like this. I enjoy playing the game, but the subject matter and the themes remind me of the stress of that job. It is tough for me to do as I like the stories in these games, but I wouldn’t say I like thinking back to the stuff I used to analyze.

I’m unsure how to wrap this up, and I’m a little worried that I ended it on a bit of a downer. This is one of my favorite games on the PlayStation. Ogre Battle is a fascinating series that is broken into two separate series. It is an unfinished story that, unfortunately, we won’t get a conclusion to. Video games can make you feel a variety of emotions. Most give you a sense of enjoyment. However, some of the better games make you feel something or think about things if you want. You can also play them and not be bothered with what the game has to say.