Heresiarch
Prophet
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2008
- Messages
- 1,451
I've always wanted to play Tactics Ogre for over a dozen years. Due to various problem (language, emulator, etc), I couldn't play it until one week ago, as the official PSP port was out. And I must say I'm completely hooked to it.
Despite all the cute-style character sprites on the battlefield, and the weirdly translated conversations - I think they've used different translators for different parts of the game, I find the Warren report translations MUCH better than characters' conversations - the whole game is simply so damn good in every other aspect. Here's some of my thought:
Dark, gritty, mature story: yeah, I mean it. To be honest, before playing it, I thought it would be another cheesy "beautiful Asian looking hero saves the world with girls and fans all around cheering on him", complete with cheesy typical anime-ish witty one liners. But to my surprise, from the first hour's cutscenes, I find myself confused, because they're all discussing about serious political and racial issues. Then, after finishing chapter 1, I thought myself playing Witcher in disguise. And now, after finishing chapter 2, I find the game's story simply real and serious, dark and forboding (well, maybe not THAT dark, but I can't help but find very little lolzy moments at the story). Apparantly, you don't need to have blood and gore flying everywhere to create a mature story.
NPCs dying left and right: one of the most infamous thing of JRPG is how they're not afraid to kill off your supposedly liked or even loved characters without mercy. And it's not even like you can choose route B to avoid meeting some character and he or she will live. If you choose to become A, then she'll join you, otherwise, you must kill her. Of course, choosing A will make NPC X and Y die. Either killed by you, or by some other "accidents". Even NPC already joined you may leave if you choose the wrong (or right) route, and even other protagonists may die forever if you speak the wrong sentence. And due to the realisticness, I find characters in TO much more likable compared to Bioware guys, so I do feel sad if (and when) one of them dies, and it's great pleasure when I can finally recruit one of them after many encounters.
C&C: opposite to Biowarish "tons of senseless choices", TO have a few but all critical C&C. By critical I mean it'll make the whole chapter's story go in a completely different route, with completely different goals and characters. And of course just as said above, choosing the wrong answer will make people die. Not only so, but during actual battles, doing the wrong things or killing the wrong people may kill them forever, or make you impossible to recruit some important people.
Challenging combat: at the few hours, combat is quite easy. But now, after 1/3, battles become properly challenging and even downright brutal. Enemy archers and mages will aim for your healers and mages first, enemy mages will slow and petrify and weaken your bunch, enemy healers will heal their weakest guys and even throw fucking bombs to AOE your guys, and enemy troops who can use powerful finishing moves will not hestitate to unleash them on your guys. Fortunately (or popamoled some may say) death is not permanent in this PSP port - you have 3 turns to revive unconciouss troops, and even if they do "die", you have 3 lives for them to die off. If not so, I think half of my roster are already dust.
Everyone have lives: I was so astonished when I saw in the Warren report, that even some mini bosses who have showed up for only one battle (and promptly died there) and have even a generic portrait have their own character profile.
The Chariot system: well, you may say it's legal cheating, or may say it's the ultimate popamole incarnation by popamoling even the save/load system, but damn it's so convenient to "wind back" and try again rather than save every step and then load after you've made some terrible mistake several turns later.
While the game itself, do have some problems - very weird class-based levelling system, sometimes irritating UI (you can't check easily what NPC have learned what skills or spells, so you need to buy spells blindly and guess who shall learn what), annoying crafting system etc. But the story, the C&C, the characters, the tactical combat, are all very well designed. It has a story even more mature than western RPG who brand themselves as DARK GRITTY MATURE TM, has C&C who laughs at all the "A: Yeah. B: Why not? C: Of course!" choices, has characters who you can feel sympathized to them rather than want to kill them off over and over again like some whiney virgin warden or winged elf, it has tactical combat which doesn't show mercy to kill off your weakest spellcaster who somehow stand a little bit to the front.
All in all a very, very nice game.
Despite all the cute-style character sprites on the battlefield, and the weirdly translated conversations - I think they've used different translators for different parts of the game, I find the Warren report translations MUCH better than characters' conversations - the whole game is simply so damn good in every other aspect. Here's some of my thought:
Dark, gritty, mature story: yeah, I mean it. To be honest, before playing it, I thought it would be another cheesy "beautiful Asian looking hero saves the world with girls and fans all around cheering on him", complete with cheesy typical anime-ish witty one liners. But to my surprise, from the first hour's cutscenes, I find myself confused, because they're all discussing about serious political and racial issues. Then, after finishing chapter 1, I thought myself playing Witcher in disguise. And now, after finishing chapter 2, I find the game's story simply real and serious, dark and forboding (well, maybe not THAT dark, but I can't help but find very little lolzy moments at the story). Apparantly, you don't need to have blood and gore flying everywhere to create a mature story.
NPCs dying left and right: one of the most infamous thing of JRPG is how they're not afraid to kill off your supposedly liked or even loved characters without mercy. And it's not even like you can choose route B to avoid meeting some character and he or she will live. If you choose to become A, then she'll join you, otherwise, you must kill her. Of course, choosing A will make NPC X and Y die. Either killed by you, or by some other "accidents". Even NPC already joined you may leave if you choose the wrong (or right) route, and even other protagonists may die forever if you speak the wrong sentence. And due to the realisticness, I find characters in TO much more likable compared to Bioware guys, so I do feel sad if (and when) one of them dies, and it's great pleasure when I can finally recruit one of them after many encounters.
C&C: opposite to Biowarish "tons of senseless choices", TO have a few but all critical C&C. By critical I mean it'll make the whole chapter's story go in a completely different route, with completely different goals and characters. And of course just as said above, choosing the wrong answer will make people die. Not only so, but during actual battles, doing the wrong things or killing the wrong people may kill them forever, or make you impossible to recruit some important people.
Challenging combat: at the few hours, combat is quite easy. But now, after 1/3, battles become properly challenging and even downright brutal. Enemy archers and mages will aim for your healers and mages first, enemy mages will slow and petrify and weaken your bunch, enemy healers will heal their weakest guys and even throw fucking bombs to AOE your guys, and enemy troops who can use powerful finishing moves will not hestitate to unleash them on your guys. Fortunately (or popamoled some may say) death is not permanent in this PSP port - you have 3 turns to revive unconciouss troops, and even if they do "die", you have 3 lives for them to die off. If not so, I think half of my roster are already dust.
Everyone have lives: I was so astonished when I saw in the Warren report, that even some mini bosses who have showed up for only one battle (and promptly died there) and have even a generic portrait have their own character profile.
The Chariot system: well, you may say it's legal cheating, or may say it's the ultimate popamole incarnation by popamoling even the save/load system, but damn it's so convenient to "wind back" and try again rather than save every step and then load after you've made some terrible mistake several turns later.
While the game itself, do have some problems - very weird class-based levelling system, sometimes irritating UI (you can't check easily what NPC have learned what skills or spells, so you need to buy spells blindly and guess who shall learn what), annoying crafting system etc. But the story, the C&C, the characters, the tactical combat, are all very well designed. It has a story even more mature than western RPG who brand themselves as DARK GRITTY MATURE TM, has C&C who laughs at all the "A: Yeah. B: Why not? C: Of course!" choices, has characters who you can feel sympathized to them rather than want to kill them off over and over again like some whiney virgin warden or winged elf, it has tactical combat which doesn't show mercy to kill off your weakest spellcaster who somehow stand a little bit to the front.
All in all a very, very nice game.
