Tactics Ogre

"The Roots of all Great Strategy-RPGs to Come..."

I picked up Tactics Ogre a few months ago not because I was particularly interested in the game, but because I found it used for only 30 bucks at my local Electronics Boutique. For those of you who don't know yet, it is quite hard to find Tactics Ogre (TO henceforth) out in the general public, and the game frequently goes for a pricy 60 dollars or so on Ebay. This was my original plan; buy the game, sell it on Ebay for around 30 dollars more. But before I did that, I decided to try the game for myself.

I didn't expect myself to like the game, since I wasn't a big fan of Final Fantasy Tactics (which was created by the same team that created TO). I found FFT far too challenging, the story too convoluted, and the flow of the game to be quite overwhelming at times. Instead what I found was a great strategy-RPG that didn't have near the level of confusion and madness that FFT had for me, and as such was a much more enjoyable and rewarding experience.

As many other people do in their reviews and discussion on TO, it is hard not to compare FFT and TO since they are so similar, and were made by the same development team. I will follow the same path of comparison in my review, and say why I believe TO is the superior strategy-RPG of the two.

Story/Characters - 8

This was my biggest complaint with FFT. FFT's story was obviously very good... it was just TOO CONVOLUTED, COMPLICATED, AND INTERCHANGING. There, got it out of my system. This problem is not present in TO, however. TO has a great story full of the same political intrigue as FFT, but doesn't require you to take a three-hour walk trying to figure it out.

Never before has a non-linear storyline been done so well. At certain points in the game, depending on the decisions you make, the story will branch a different way. The story still flows perfectly this way, and always remains interesting regardless of your choice. The three branches you can take are characterized as “law”, “neutral”, and “chaos”.

The characters in Tactics Ogre are only average, but there were some very nice scenes throughout the game, especially the ones between Kachua and Denim (the two main characters).

Graphics – 6

You must remember that this is a direct port of the SNES version of the game... so the graphics will naturally be of SNES quality. Compared to the games of today, it’s awful... but compared to other SNES games, they’re quite good. Everything is very colorful and well designed. Kudos to the developers on the map designs, these are very nice.

Character designs are nice as well, and the sprites the game uses for them are good.

All in all, I liked the graphics in TO, they did their job well, and for an SNES game they’re near the top when it comes to quality.

Sound/Music – 8

I was amazed at the great sound quality the game had (for an SNES-era game). The music is wonderful... and always fits the scene, mood, and particular battles well. Top-notch MIDI work here.

Sound effects are nothing special... the classic grunts and sword slashes we’ve all come to love.

Gameplay/Battles - 8

Ah, here we go; the most essential part of any strategy-RPG, the gameplay and battles. We all know the genres gameplay is revolved entirely around battles, so how does TO stack up in this regard (especially in comparison to FFT)?

Make no mistake; virtually all you will be doing in TO is battling. You will start battling for hours on end, continue doing it for hours, and always will be doing it for hours. How many hours exactly? Roughly 65 give or take a few hours. So, with all this energy that you’ll be putting into the game’s battles, are they FUN? Why, yes. Yes they are. But it does have some flaws.

I’ll start with this. TO’s gameplay is a dumbed down version of FFT’s. Do not put any emphasis on that word “dumbed”, please, as the differences are marginal. You will build up and train characters. You will choose classes for them. . You will travel from point A to point B on an identical world map. When you reach a point (sometimes a town, sometimes a natural setting) you will get into a battle. These battles will often be mind-numbingly hard. You will fight each battle an average of 5 times before you win. You will break your controller. You will break down into a sobbing, lifeless heap of organic tissue as you contemplate the madness that is these two games. When you do finally win the battle, you will see another story segment and you will then buy equipment for your characters. This will continue for 65 hours in TO, 40 or so for FFT. Wash, rinse, repeat.

As in FFT, your characters battle capabilities revolve around what class they are. You can change your character’s class as long as you have reached some condition (the number of kills you have, whether or not a certain stat level has been reached, etc.).While there are more classes in TO than in FFT, TO’s are much more... logical. You have the basic classes, which also branch into some more advanced ones. You have knights, wizards, clerics, priests, dragoons, sirens, gunners, and several more. FFT has all these... but also a bard, dancer, mathematician, and other various weird classes that don’t seem to fit. Each class specializes at a certain thing; magic, defense, speed, damage, etc.

The battle system in the two games is incredibly similar as well. The biggest difference in my mind is that in TO you use 10 characters in a battle, whereas in FFT you only use 5. I liked the 10-person system much better, personally. It’s just much more enjoyable somehow controlling 10.

You move your characters around on a fairly large map. Where you can move and attack is shown on a grid. How far and how quick you can perform an action depends on what class your character is, and that characters WT. The lower your WT, the better.

Replayability – 10

The most things to do, and best replay value of any RPG ever. Period. To do and get everything in this game, it’d take you 300 hours. Yes, I’m serious. The many different story paths, secret characters, Hell’s Gate quest (that quest alone takes 20 hours), secret items and weapons... all add up to a huge replay value. I’d go so far as to say it’s impossible to TOTALLY complete TO.

Overall – 8

Though it may be an old strategy-RPG from the SNES-era, Tactics Ogre is still a wonderful game to play even today. This is the first true strategy-RPG, and you can see the roots of all strategy-RPGs that came after. You can also see the inspiration for the most popular strategy-RPG ever; Final Fantasy Tactics.

However, I must say, do not attempt TO if you are inexperienced with RPGs. The difficulty, length, and huge amount of effort required to complete TO can be overwhelming. If you think you can handle it, buy the game if you can find it used somewhere (Ebay can be pricey...). Just be prepared to have as much trouble finding the game as beating it...

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/30/03, Updated 03/30/03