Ogre Battle anyone?

[Barinthus]

Thanks, Gepap

Got this thread bookmarked and will be sure to give try the game again probably not until August.

[SnowFire]

JCG: If you could withstand the hellishly boring task that was Training, you are a better man than I. I want games to be fun, not ones that are chores. Level counted for waaaaaaay too much in TO.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by JCG
A very good game indeed, though I prefer Tactics Ogre over it (heck, I even prefer it over FFT, curiously enough. More challenge, different story paths, and the lack of such a weird/hilarious translation really sets TO as the better game for me....and FFT's 3D wasn't that much of a necessary improvement). Btw, the PSX/SNES Tactics Ogre is indeed different from the GBA one though, which is a bit more simplified and supposed to be some sort of a sequel/prequel. Still, I didn't really try to finish it...

Have you also played Vandal Hearts? I've recently gotten a hold of every 'tactics' game I could find- Final Fantasy Tactics & advance version, Tactics ogre & advance version, and Vandal Hearts.

I haven't tried the snes/psx tactics ogre or Vandal hearts yet, trying to decide which one I should try first...

[pg]

Originally posted by SnowFire
JCG: If you could withstand the hellishly boring task that was Training, you are a better man than I. I want games to be fun, not ones that are chores. Level counted for waaaaaaay too much in TO.

snowfire i agree with you. TO seemed much more boring than ogre battle or ogre battle 64(more on that later). the battles lasted way longer(why couldn't they just slash HP in half or something?), there was tons of boring bs story you had to click thru, and you had to play training/bonus missions to be most effective. i ended up finally quiting once i had gotten the highest evolved dragons iirc(around level 20?). i'll have to make another go at it to try and beat it sometime because i have beaten all the others.

ogre battle 64 is a good game and much closer to the original snes version. it has the best story of the three imo and the battles can be fairly challenging. i actually restarted half way thru(at ithaca) since my army sucked. if you are going to play OG64 i'd use the ~450k faq on gamefaqs.com because there is an insane amount of little things you need to do to get all the best items/characters/pedras that i doubt anyone could figure out on their own. my favorite is the shop in a certain town that's only open a few days a month on certain hours(wtf were the designers thinking?). OG64 also has a bug where you can get unlimited items by a simple trick. it's pretty fun to use stat boosting items to make an uber army.

maybe it's just me but after playing final fantasy tactics advance, snes OG, TO, and OG64 i'm sorta burned out on this genre. the linear huge campaign with a generic story is just a real turnoff now. i'm finally starting to see these games for what they really are - a giant treadmill(just like mmorpgs). i'd still be interesting in a freeform mode where stuff is constantly changing, like mercenary simulation with kingdoms, or maybe something with online multiplayer but only if there was a bit more strategy and tactics. sorta ironic these games are supposed to be all about tactics and really the only thing that counts is level and stats not tactical abilities.

[General Ludd]

I wanted to try Ogre Battle 64 but couldn't find an emulator that ran it decently.

[pg]

hmm, i thought project 64 ran it ok.

edit: pj64 should run it fine. if you have trouble search their forums.

[SnowFire]

Hmm. I have the reverse situation of Ludd- I've got P64, but no ROM. All the ROM sites I can find on Google are hideously infested by "download our adware," and my old set has mostly gone down. Getting on K++, I found only one person, and it seemed a big download.

Anybody have a better link that they could send me? Or would be willing to directly transfer the ROM via ICQ?

pg: I don't know about it being a treadmill. The ones that have true strategy as opposed to levelling are still great. But TO definitely was a treadmill, since everything was about levels, and even worse, instead of levelling up by using the system and fighting battles, you had to level up fighting yourself (otherwise your high-level characters would get even higher level, strengthening your opposition, and then leaving the rest of your crew useless).

[pg]

the reason i say it's a treadmill is because while there are numerous strategies and tactics, character stats/levels/classes are much more important. TO seems to have lots of deep gameplay but you can't take advantage of it unless you are pretty much the same strength as the enemy you are fighting or you'll just get blown away. since you'll be pretty much equal to who you are fighting anyways tactics are pretty pointless because the ai sucks. just ganging up and killing one guy at a time is more than enough to let you win most of the time because the ai won't be able to do similarly to you.

btw, i think asking for roms is a no-no here i think.

[SnowFire]

Close. Linking to ROMs is a no-no.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by pg
hmm, i thought project 64 ran it ok.

edit: pj64 should run it fine. if you have trouble search their forums.

Yeah, after serching a bit I found out it was because of the video plugin I was using. I found one that works better, 'though it still has a few graphical glitches.

[JCG]

Originally posted by General Ludd
I haven't tried the snes/psx tactics ogre or Vandal hearts yet, trying to decide which one I should try first...

Haven't tried Vandal Hearts, but I've heard good things about it, and going by the other posts in the thread, perhaps it's a better alternative than TO...I thought about buying Vandal Hearts 2 a while back but decided not to, which I'm starting to regret....

JCG: If you could withstand the hellishly boring task that was Training, you are a better man than I. I want games to be fun, not ones that are chores. Level counted for waaaaaaay too much in TO.

Of course I'm not going to deny that Training was pretty much just a bore, but there were ways to speed it up , like purposedly lowering the HP of the highest level characters so that the weaker ones can kill them easily and thus level up, for example. Still, it's a fair point.

As for the story, well, I found it interesting enough, with the multiple paths and all, so that aspect of the game wasn't as boring for me but rather an incentive to play through even the sleepy parts...

I still need to track down Ogre Battle 64 one of these days (only played it for a relatively little while when it was in someone else's possession, but I did get a great impression of it)....

[pg]

i recommend OG64 for anyone who liked TO or snes OG. it's my favorite of them all(but i doubt i'll ever play through it again). anyhow - i have a question...

i was reading some on TO and the gba version supposedly is very different than snes/ps1 version. the snes/ps1 is supposed to be much better. anyone played both? btw is here is the review i got all this info from.

Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis is the fifth installment in the Ogre Battle series. It is a side story (Gaiden) to Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.

For those that are unaware, I'm saying this now. TO:LuCT was made by Yasumi Matsuno, and he left Quest with a few key members, joined Square, and they made FFT. That's right, Tactics Ogre came before Final Fantasy Tactics. Accept it and move on. This is a sequel to LuCT, but it does not have Matsuno's handprint, so the games differ in many ways. FFT was the ''true'' sequel to TO, in terms of gameplay. TO:KoL is merely a pretender using Matsuno's brand name.

While KoL does improve on many areas that LuCT needed cleaned up, at the same time it takes away from many of the key areas that made LuCT among the greatest gridtype strategy RPGs ever. You would think that somebody would bring up the logic ''If it ain't broke don't fix it'' but hey, what do I know? Well, what I DO know is that...

Gameplay: 7/10
Where to start... in LuCT, you could use 10 characters in battle. In KoL, you're down to 8. Less characters on the screen means less strategy.

There were around 120 different classes in LuCT, and there are only about 50 in KoL. That COULD have been a good thing. You see there were many classes in LuCT, but some of them didn't have anything unique about them. Knights, Berserkers, Beast Tamers, Lizardmen, etc were all melee classes without any effective special ability. Fewer classes meant the weeding out of the mediocre, that all classes would be different. KoL ALMOST accomplished this successfully.

Unfortunately, they made some classes good, and some classes very, very bad to the point of inferiority. In LuCT, there was a balance between the classes, while in KoL, there is no balance. Your choices for male class boil down to Knight or Swordmaster. Archers, Beast Tamers, Dragoons, Soldiers, Clerics, and Dragon Tamers, are all human classes that got the shaft either statistically, or abilitywise (sometimes both. While giving improvements to the large classes, they are still terrible for the most part. Sadly, most of the special characters have special classes that are improvements over existing classes. Since you can only use 8 characters per battle, why wouldn't you use these ''advanced classes?'' Warlock, Witch, Wizard, and Siren are 4 classes that become inferior because of the inclusion of these special character classes. If you're keeping track, a whopping TEN of the 15 human classes either start out or become inferior to playable classes. VERY, VERY bad. Just to show how overboard they went with this, Knights were among the worst classes in LuCT. Average stat growth, and no special ablilities. Well, in KoL, Knights can now cast Healing spells, cast an attack magic spell, and can cure status ailments. In ADDITION, their average stat growth has become EXCELLENT stat growth. A Knight gains 6 STR, 4 INT, and 5 AGI per level. In comparison, a Dragoon gets gains of 6/3/5, a Beast Tamer gets 5/3/5, while the Archer gets 4/3/6. Before you point out that the Archer gets more AGI, I will point out that the Ninja gets 4/4/7 and the Swordmaster gets 5/3/6. Those numbers reek of unbalance. And that is BEFORE you hear that long list of Knight abilities that these classes do not have. You could beat the game just by making 8 Knights. If you made 8 of a single class in LuCT or FFT, you would get creamed. Not good for strategy.

Speaking of strategy (this IS a strategy RPG after all), the turn based system of combat is far and away the worst battle system in Strategy RPGs. The first game I played that used this system was Vandal Hearts. I managed to beat Vandal Hearts in a matter of 48 hours. The system is just far too easy to abuse, and it puts the computer at a huge disadvantage. If you can get a numbers advantage, you win, because in essence you are getting more actions per turn. So if you use my 8 Knights strategy, you could heal 8 times per turn. Something else that irked me is that characters have abnormally high HP. In LuCT, characters started off with a little 100 HP. In the first battle, your characters start with far more than 100 HP. This is a problem, because the damage taken this time around has been reduced.

Oh, did I mention that the computer AI is non-existant, and the computer characters will just attack random characters? It's like playing Chess with a newbie. Except in this case, the newbie costs $40 and consumes battery power. This fact, combined with reduced damage, means the computer CANNOT WIN. That means, YOU CAN'T LOSE. And there's not much to offer in a strategy RPG where you don't need strategy to win. I allowed an 8 year old to play this game. 30 minutes later I came back. He was attacking his own characters because he thought they were the enemy, and he was STILL winning. Furthermore as it comes to the turn based system, the enemy turns are always VERY slow and there isn't a single thing for you to do but watch, which makes for a very uninvolved experience. I just put my GBA down and come back in 5 minutes. Not only does it take a long time, but since the computer AI isn't very smart, very little is accomplished on computer turns.

The items, spells, and abilities are just reincarnations of their LuCT forms. Summons/Fluid Magic still require no strategy to use, and I didn't expcet that this would change in a game devoid of strategy. Revised names and descriptions are nice for OB fans, as some of these weapons are making their 4th appearance in a North American OB game. There are more items, which has its pros and cons. Less strategy on who to give out good items to, because they're a dime a dozen now. In past games, rare items don't pop up until chapter 3. Oh joy! I almost forgot! Length!

LuCT, OB64, and FFT are all 4 chapters long. KoL doesn't have chapters, but if it did, there would tecnically be 3. I say technically because the chapters aren't ''official'' chapters, just that the story advances 3 weeks. Overall the game has about 25 story battles. Or, for those keeping track at home, around the same amount that LuCT had before Chapter 3.

I will not mention the 100 floor dungeon in LuCT known as Hell Gate. I swear, I refuse.

KoL does have Quest Mode to seemingly replace Hell Gate though. While the system is very unique as expected there are major flaws in this mode. The purpose of Quest Mode is to allow a dungeon sort type of battle where you get rewards based on your accomplishments (victory in a certain number of turns). The problem is the rewards are very good, and the cost is very free. You can get unlimited money and items by doing Quest Mode repeatedly. Even Quest battles that cost 10k goth to participate in, if (when) you win, you are typically rewarded with more goth than you spent, let's say 12k. If you won Quest, chances are you'll win it again using the same characters, and same battle strategy, so just wash rinse, repeat and get unlimitted items and goth.

Golly, I love the strategy aspect of this game. Let's move on.

Story: 6/10
The story is pretty bad. If you take off the Ogre label, it's blatantly mediocre. As is the custom with OB games, there is politics, and betrayal, and a fight with demons somewhere along the way. However in KoL, they also give you a very FORCED love angle between the main character and another character. While this actually explains alot in the big picture (KoL is a side story, mind you) it does very little for the game itself. None of the special characters have any impact on the story. Most characters will join you and shutup. You won't hear from them again until the ending. LuCT kept special characters in the story even after they joined you. Yet another downgrade. Also, there is no Warren/Hugo Report/Brave Story. This report was a section of the game dedicated to the story and the characters. This appears in LuCT, OB64, and FFT, with OB64 being the best incarnation. KoL doesn't have one which really damages the value of the story. Then again, it really doesn't need one. The dialogue is horrendous. It could put a grown man to sleep if he actually read it word for word. That means that in those famous scenes where the bad guys converse and almost reveal their sinister and diabolical plans to the gamer just before exiting the room, the dialogue is very plain and generic. Perhaps I'm using LuCT far too much as the example. But LuCT had MANY villians, all of whom were interestin. Lans Tartare, the main antagonist of LuCT may be the most complex villian to grace an RPG, and Vice, Leonard and the Dark Knights all did excellent jobs. In KoL, 66% of the villians are very plain, and the story doesn't pick up until they're out of the picture (read as: late game). If this game wasn't built in the OB universe, it would easily get a 4 or 5 for story.

Graphics: 8/10
Ooohh... Ahhh... pretty graphics. Unfortunately, games with better graphics than gameplay usually don't amount to much. I would have taken the 7/10 LuCT graphics if it meant the gameplay would have been 1/10th of what LuCT was. A big deal was made over the color and brightness of the game compared to LuCT. Yeah, I see it, but in order for graphics to make your jaw drop, you have to be able to stop cursing at gameplay related flaws.

Sound: 3/10
The worst music in the OB series, period. Just think of LuCT without Footsteps from the Darkness (the Lodis theme), any catchy battle tune, or anything else of quality. You can play KoL with the sound off and you won't miss anything. Although part of this could probably be the GBA's lower sound qualities fault, but the fact is that nothing on the track is remotely inspiring. ...Were there sound effects? I don't remember...

Multiplayer: 1/10
I'll probably get torched for the number rating, but it's true. There is no strategy in Multiplayer. Just build up your character to insane proportions, buy 3 FireCrests and stick a Brionac on him and bang, you win. It's that easy. Instead of focusing on strategy, matches are determined by whoever played the game more and built up their characters. Or, it benefits whoever used Gameshark the most. I will also not go into how Multiplayer can be effective for a game that sold a very low number of copies. If I have to travel on 2 buses and a train just to see the guy closest to me I know who owns this rare title, then I won't be playing Multiplayer. And I'm not the only person in this boat. I would very much prefer that they remove Multiplayer in favor of improving single player. Like any successful game, you need a strong single-player mode to back it up. GTA, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, these games have strong singleplayer modes. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are games with strong multiplayer modes, but ALSO had the strong single player modes to back it up. KoL is too weak in both of these areas. Fortunately for all the people out there, I didn't consider Multiplayer when I came up with my overall score, or else I would have gone much lower.

Replay: 7/10
If somebody tells you this game has 2 paths, they're lying. The battles and story are pretty much the same on each path. The 2 paths have 6 different stages between them, which are just different variations of the stages depending on your route. Theres something like 5 endings for the game. You can get 2 endings each time through (plus losing will get you a minor 6th ending). The 5th ending is just the A ending with a short scene at the end, and you have to fulfill special requirements to view it. The game is rather short, and can be done in 15 hours or less easily.

Compared to the average game, this has some decent replayability, and there is some room for experimentation. The question is, would you WANT to play this game more than once?

Overall: 7/10
All the bad I mentioned, most of it is specifics. Specifics are very crucial to a strategy RPG. If I gave this game a 2/10, I'd by lying. That score is reserved for clunkers like Fighting Force, or Batman and Robin. While this doesn't compare to the top Strategy RPGs out there (if you read my review you know which ones) there are many that are worse *Cough*VandalHearts2*Cough*

http://gamefaqs.com/portable/gbadvance/review/R44831.html

[GePap]

I never new this series had so many bits to it. I only knew of the SNES game and the Nintendo 64 one.

[pg]

well it's only a matter of time now until i get the psx version to try it out(30mb left). anyways there is also a neo geo pocket version and maybe one more on some weird japanese console. square purchased the ogre battle property and the guy who made the supposedly best versions(snes, and tactics ogre for ps1) now works there. square put the guy who made ogre battle in charge of making final fantasy 12(interesting huh?). i suspect once ff12 is done he will be working on a new ogre battle(hope so anyways).

[pg]

if anyone is interested here are my first impressions of tactics ogre on psx.

-great music and sound
-the graphics are fine and functional
-unit balance seems pretty good(unlike TO on gba)
-decent story so far(only a few battles in though)
-the game seems to move quite a bit faster than TO on gba
overall it seems very promising, but there seems to be a fatal flaw(as snowfire said) you have to training almost in between every battle. i didn't understand how bad it was until i played. it's really quite insane as if you are more than 2 levels lower than your enemies you will die(even TO on gba isn't this bad). even 1 level difference you will most likely lose a charater or two(which is pretty much unacceptable) per battle.

to counter this you have to train in between levels so you are the same level as the enemies in your next battle. why this sucks is because it's so slow and boring. the best way to train is to use range attacks(lucky all characters can at least throw rocks which was obviously included for training) so what you do is take your highest level characters and have your low levels throw rocks at their backs. rocks do 1-5 damage or so and most characters have 50+ health so it takes forever to level up guys. you get ~5-10 exp per attack and 50+ for a kill(100 per level). you could use close range attacks but since the level difference is so powerful even training vs a character one level higher means he will most likely kill you very quickly with counter attacks(which are automatic).

the game is fun but i can only stand so much training per session. if there was no training i could play this non-stop for a long time. with training i'll probably only do an hour or two before i get frustrated/bored. wtf were they thinking. forced training must be because japanese are masochists or something. also i read loading time is horrid from the cd-rom on psx but i wouldn't know.