Ogre Reborn Strategy Review – Chess 4D
Tactics Ogre was a landmark game in the evolution of the strategy RPG genre, but it never received the acclaim it deserved outside of Japan. Part of this has to do with the overly long shadow of its much-loved and directly inspired sibling, Final Fantasy Tactics. Despite receiving an incredible remake in 2011, PSP exclusivity once again limited audiences for Tactics Ogre. Now, with the release of the HD version and mass update of Tactics Ogre Reborn on every platform under the sun, Square Enix is taking steps to correct a longstanding injustice – albeit with some missteps. with presentation and gameplay changes that make this not an official version of the all-time classic.
Our story follows the young Denam and his sister Catiua, two siblings of the Walister family. The Walisters had suffered from oppression by the Galgastani rulers for many years, and a protest movement had begun to form among them. What begins as a plan to avenge the death of the snowman siblings’ father turns into a mission to rescue Duke Ronwey, the leader of the resistance. But as Denam becomes part of a growing resistance, he discovers the lengths of time that Duke Ronwey will take to progress towards his goal, forcing him to make very difficult choices. towel. As the struggle expands to involve neighboring nations, Denam will need to find his own way to end the conflict.
If you’re familiar with director and writer Yasumi Matsuno’s previous works (Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII), you’ll find similar themes here: political interweaving, issues morality, class struggle and idealism have disappeared. Depending on the choices you make (including some completely painful, life-or-death decisions), the path of the story – as well as the special characters you can recruit – will change dramatically. . There’s plenty of twists and turns to experience, enhanced by a combination of a superb English-language script from acclaimed localizer Alexander O. Smith and the addition of voice acting to the cutscenes. The World Tarot system from the PSP remake also returns, acting as an Enhanced New Game+: After completing the game, you can return to earlier points in the story, exploring the outcomes and different routes while keeping their current roster of characters.
The gameplay is similar to other grid-based strategy RPGs: You cultivate and deploy a small army of handpicked troops to fight against a CPU-controlled team by moving around the battlefield and Use attacks and skills to gain the upper hand. When each character takes their turn and how far they can move is determined by a multitude of factors, including stats, equipment, buffs/debuffs, and the number of actions they took in the previous turn. The effectiveness of attacks and skills is similarly affected by many variables: stats, elemental alignment, attack type, and even the direction you’re approaching are just a few of the determining factors. importance.
What makes the battle so exciting is the sheer amount of options at your disposal and the variables to consider – do you swing your sword with massive gunners to draw your enemies to you or hold you back. until your MP resources accumulate first? Do you want to hit the smaller target continuously, or try to weaken your enemies with their sick condition before plunging into a massive finishing blow? Should you kill the monsters you encounter to get rare items or try to train them to use their unique powers in the upcoming battles? Figuring out how to approach each fight and execute your plan (or at least try) is incredibly rewarding. And if you make a mistake, there’s a way to undo moves that are particularly confusing: Chariot Tarot is an optional feature that you can activate to “rewind” turns in battle and try out an action. other motion.
With the HD release and mass improvement of Tactics Ogre Reborn on every platform under the sun, Square Enix is taking steps to correct a longstanding injustice.
But all the world laps won’t save you if you don’t have a strong army to start with, and building a platoon of heroes to your liking is one of the most engaging and rewarding parts. by Tactics Ogre. There are countless classes to explore throughout the game – from staples like mages, knights, and archers to the fearsome Knights of Terror, zombie-controlled Necromancers, and bullet-shooting Fusiliers . Each class has specific skills they can learn and equip, but only four skills can be assigned to each character. You’re also not stuck with a specific weapon in each class: all classes have at least a few different weapons they can equip, and specific classes can cast spells too. . This versatility means it’s possible to have multiple units of the same class with completely different builds – for example, you can create a ninja unit that focuses on a combination of ranged attacks and Ninjutsu magic along with another ninja character built to deal double debilitating damage -using melee attacks that cause status sickness. Exploring classes and playing around with different configurations is incredibly fun, and you could easily spend hours micromanaging your virtual soldiers.
Adding to this experience are some brand new improved gameplay mechanics for Tactics Ogre Reborn. The system of learning and using skills has been greatly streamlined, making it easy to keep track of what the character has learned and equipped. New skills have been added, such as a skill for some classes that can trigger a subsequent pincer attack when an enemy unit is surrounded and attacked. Additionally, instead of the confusing and cumbersome class-based leveling system of the PSP remake, characters are now leveled up through the more typical individual EXP system where each unit levels up through EXP received even after changing class. Another new addition, enchantments, are single-use items that can boost a character’s stats, raise their level, and change their elemental affiliations, giving you more control over how your character works. their customization. And if you want to raise the level and skills of a few units, you can opt for training battles where the risk of death is minimized. It also means no more random battles when roaming around the map.
There are a lot of other changes and quality of life upgrades for Tactics Ogre Reborn: a trajectory viewer to see exactly where ranged attacks will hit, item crafting bugs removed, a healing system spawn more like Final Fantasy Tactics with a countdown timer on fallen units until death, and can scout the battlefield before combat. Most of these changes are for the better, but some are controversially worse. The addition of buffs and debuffs that randomly appear to collect (or try to coerce enemies) on the battlefield is a neat idea, although it can make battles more chaotic (yet) It’s going to be messy as they pop up all over the arena.) Skills and Perfect Movements that used a resource called TP in the PSP game now all use MP instead. This makes resource management a bit easier, but also makes MP resource management much more difficult for certain classes like the Healing/tank hybrid Knight.
Finally, one of the biggest changes is that the party-wide level cap only goes up once you’ve removed specific parts of the story. This is done to prevent you from leveling up to beat the battles in the story. While it helps to keep the challenge level consistent, it prevents players from getting stuck in a particular encounter beyond fixation to help get through it, which they should have the freedom to do if they wish. .
The other major problem is the image. While the high-resolution character portrait artwork looks great, upscaling the character art leaves to be desired as it looks like a particularly bad filter has been applied. I got used to it after a while, but compared to great HD-2D remakes like Live A Live – another Square Enix title – Tactics Ogre Reborn feels pretty straightforward by comparison. Some musical selections have also been reworked, but the heavy orchestral emphasis takes away some of the intense, melodic quality of earlier performances. The ability to switch to sharper, realistic graphics or use previous soundtracks would be a nice addition, but alas.
Tactics Ogre’s intense tactical combat, in-depth character building, and excellent storytelling make it a must-play for fans of the strategy RPG genre. It’s great that this game is now much more widely available and most of the updates and upgrades make the package even better. While some might balk at the $50 price tag for a remake with a graphics and sound overhaul, the superb strategic gameplay and branching story path will attract attention. yours for a long time. While it may not be a perfect remake, it’s a damn remake.