Tactics Ogre

"It would have been a great game, except for the training involved."

I am a huge fan of strategy games done in this style along with the original Ogre Battle. I loved Final Fantasy Tactics, but it did have a lot of problems. It looked as though Tactics Ogre solved many of these. Unfortunatly even though it did it came with one small problem. First though, the good stuff. Parties that are double the size of Final Fantasy Tactics. This is great since you don't end up only using about a quarter of your entire army. Another great thing is the ability to force enemies to join your group and you don't need a sucky class character to do this. The ability is automaticly given to your leader. Not to mention monsters are actually useful compared to normal characters. The large party size combined with the monsters special abilities give you a party member who can quite possibly turn an entire battle around, Unlike tactics where the ability to use monsters was only a neat little trick that looked cool. Then there is undead. You can have several different kinds of undead in your party. I loved undead creatures in Ogre Battle and they're my favorite unit in Tactic. This time around though you can actually raise them from the grave yourself. Leveling structure is about the same as it was in ogre battle. Non-humans never change their class. Humans on the other hand can change classes and need to be a certain level and alignment in order to change in to a class. The spell system however is entirely new. You by spells (or you can pick up monster droppings) Then all spellcasters can be equiped with up to three spells which their class can use. It's great. You can really make a spell caster kick *ss by doing the spells just right, but do them wrong and you'll end up with a really weak character that can't fight. However the computer leaders have the cheapest move of any game. You let your entire party become weak trying to destroy them, because when they die you win. You get them down to just a few hit points. Then they pull out a healing item and go back to full HP. The cheapest move out there and almost every leader does it. The graphics aren't anywhere near Final Fantasy Tactic's, but they're enough for the genre. The story's non-linear, but I've never been much of a story fan and I think there's a little too much of it. All that said Tactics Ogre would have been my all time favorite game if not for one small detail. Mainly training. You can't just run a soldair out to battle. First you have to train him to bring his level up. There are five ways to do this. You can put together two armies and control both having them fight each other until both sides are dead. Usually doesn't give too much experience and is pretty boring. You can let the computer control one side and then fight them. It's pretty boring and the computer will almost always kill the weak characters that need the experience first. You get a buddy to play with you,each side taking a few party members, to strengthen the army. Then again it's really hard to get a buddy to play with you as much as you need and they don't understand "No don't kill him, he needs more points first." You can set the computer to do the whole thing. Once again the characters that need the experience won't get that much and you'll just be bored watching the screen. Then the preferred way. You get a bunch of low level guys and a couple high level guys. Have the high level guys put their backs facing the low level ones. Now have the low level ones throw stones at the high level ones until they level up enough. That gets to be more of a chore than anything else. And this isn't just with new characters either. After almost every battle you have to train everyone. Sometimes you can go two battles with out training but usually not more. What's worse is that experience gained is based on the level of the attacker compared to the level of the defender. If the attacker is higher level it's almost no experience. If they are equal the experience still isn't all that great. Meaning it takes forever to raise your characters past the level of your highest character.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99