Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

Gozma

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2012
Messages
2,951
I had a great time with the PSX/SNES (can't remember which one I emulated) Tactics Ogre, with almost every map ending up being challenging in a non-rote and non-random-ass-bullshit way. Now the problem is I don't remember what I did to make it turn out that way, because other people I don't think are retards say the game is easy and stupid all the time.

I know I completely refrained from using the training thing to grind levels, but I don't remember if I went out of my way to not suppress the main character's level (I think that's what determines what level the enemies spawn at?) and it's possible I just didn't know that was what controlled enemy spawning levels. I think I didn't use any spoilers. I'm sure if I replayed it I'd ruin it now.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
FFT advance is a fucking abomination, I have no idea why they didn't give such an awesome game a proper sequel instead. Fucking jap publishers are insane.

Best Ogre Battle is the original imo. Create army, pretend to be good guy to acquire holy sword of destiny, give it away to a demon king in exchange for his trivial aid, conquer the world with undead. Good stuff. Another game that never got a proper sequel.
 

Serious_Business

Best Poster on the Codex
Joined
Aug 21, 2007
Messages
3,909
Location
Frown Town
This game is killing me. I've been playing it far too much for the last month, the psp remake. Genius. The new class system is problematic, but as was already stated by a fine gentleman on these forums, it is superior to the original version. In the original, you were pushed to grinding to avoid losing characters ; here you can keep grinding to a minimum and the story battles can all contain a certain amount of challenge. However you still have to grind the shit out of new classes, which is quite annoying. I've found that this is best worked around by selecting meticulously which class you want, and sticking to it.

But hey, even with all that grinding, the game keeps being fun to me. I must really be strangely addicted to this formula... a formula which was essentially used in two games : this and FFT. FFT was and still is one of my favourite game, but this is actually superior in scope. So I can't get enough of it. My life is complete with these shitty little sprites, it's incredible. Every battle is a rush, managing my team meticulously, getting new equipment, crafting and wasting my life as I my items get stronger and health lower, being an arrogant ninja asshole, I can't get enough of it.

The best thing to this is the plot and universe. A branching a purely political story, at least until chap the late parts of chap 4. It's just marvellous. There's a trend right now in gaming to make "morally ambiguous" stories, but I'm not sure if many games succeed at that. This 1995 game does. Choosing the Lawful path will put you into an Awful place (what the fuck am I even saying). You just feel bad about everything after that choice. It's magical. To look at it more closely though : it's the very opposite of magical. In games, it seems as if power is always represented as something fantastic and mystical - never anything human, social, organisational, credible. Here I do believe you have the reality of power and war represented from a fairly realistic angle. But this could be a thread in itself, I suppose.

If anyone is reading this - play this game now. 20/10 will play for the rest of my life
 

spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,278
Yeah, I liked the original Snes game more than FFT, despite clearly broken gameplay (IMBA leveling up).

I also recommend both Ogre Battle games (Snes one and N64 one). One of rare cases of console RTS (moar like RTT) done right.
 

Comte

Guest
This game is killing me. I've been playing it far too much for the last month, the psp remake. Genius. The new class system is problematic, but as was already stated by a fine gentleman on these forums, it is superior to the original version. In the original, you were pushed to grinding to avoid losing characters ; here you can keep grinding to a minimum and the story battles can all contain a certain amount of challenge. However you still have to grind the shit out of new classes, which is quite annoying. I've found that this is best worked around by selecting meticulously which class you want, and sticking to it.

But hey, even with all that grinding, the game keeps being fun to me. I must really be strangely addicted to this formula... a formula which was essentially used in two games : this and FFT. FFT was and still is one of my favourite game, but this is actually superior in scope. So I can't get enough of it. My life is complete with these shitty little sprites, it's incredible. Every battle is a rush, managing my team meticulously, getting new equipment, crafting and wasting my life as I my items get stronger and health lower, being an arrogant ninja asshole, I can't get enough of it.

The best thing to this is the plot and universe. A branching a purely political story, at least until chap the late parts of chap 4. It's just marvellous. There's a trend right now in gaming to make "morally ambiguous" stories, but I'm not sure if many games succeed at that. This 1995 game does. Choosing the Lawful path will put you into an Awful place (what the fuck am I even saying). You just feel bad about everything after that choice. It's magical. To look at it more closely though : it's the very opposite of magical. In games, it seems as if power is always represented as something fantastic and mystical - never anything human, social, organisational, credible. Here I do believe you have the reality of power and war represented from a fairly realistic angle. But this could be a thread in itself, I suppose.

If anyone is reading this - play this game now. 20/10 will play for the rest of my life

I have started dabbling in this myself lately the PSP remake I also acquired the SNES version. I keep getting wrecked though about 4 or 5 battles in. You got any tips for a beginner like party composition?
 

Emmanuel2

Savant
Joined
Feb 19, 2016
Messages
364
Location
Pearl of the Orient Seas
I have started dabbling in this myself lately the PSP remake I also acquired the SNES version. I keep getting wrecked though about 4 or 5 battles in. You got any tips for a beginner like party composition?

The SNES version is easier IMHO, you can grind nigh-infinitely and archers are kings/queens of the battlefield. Archers in the remake are still good (one of the best generics), there are better classes but most are unique.

If you want a stable challenge + zero grinding with a good power curve that's good even when the enemies start getting better equipment than you; try 2 archers, 1/2 clerics, a knight, canopus (vartan), 2 mages (earth and fire) and 1/2 rune knight for your base party. I used this as a template and finished the game at level 23, no other class levelled and no monster recruits.

If you want an even easier time, get 3+ archers or recruit 2 dragons/octopi. Earth mage is good because petrifog is a very powerful AoE spell that almost always petrifies targets at the mere cost of 24 (?) MP and you have an AoE slow while fire has strengthen and weaken. The Rune Knights are there for instilling, they have shit phys/mag damage early on so they're there for utility/proxy heals.

Once you get access to Lobbers, equip your clerics with them along with Field Alchemy II or III so that you can throw magic leaves and bombs (they deal 60+ damage a pop but they can't kill units always leaving them at 1 HP)

This can carry you well throughout the game, even for some WORLD sidequesting. Train someone with a 1H sword, preferably Denam Rune Knight, ASAP as you get a really good sword just by playing through the story.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,804
it is nice to see more people trying this.
Tactics Ogre is absolute stellar game.

What i like most about it from design perspective is that you can save characters and those characters later could sometimes help you in battle or have their own dialogs etc.

All of that without any quests and so on.

I think 3 sisters one is the most showing.
 

Karellen

Arcane
Joined
Jan 3, 2012
Messages
327
I strictly prefer the PSP version, but that's because for me, the attraction in tactical RPGs lies more in the tactics and less in the RPG. I like fights that are bloody and furious, with characters dropping on both sides and the enemy actually being in position to beat your party. The PSP version tends towards this playstyle, since character death is similar to FFTactics in that characters don't die at immediately at zero HP but go unconscious instead, and you have three turns to revive them before they die permanently. So if you avoid grinding in the PSP version and just go from one story battle to the next, you face a lot of difficult battles. I particularly remember the Chapter II Law battle in Rhime (where, if you save before that fight, you don't even have the opportunity to grind even if you wanted to), which I straight-up lost twice and only ultimately managed to beat after picking all the best characters in my team and using up all my spare points to upgrade everyone as far as I could. The PSP version also has Ravness, who is basically fanservice for Agrias fanboys, but since that's me, I don't mind.

Meanwhile in the SNES version, if a character goes to zero HP, they're gone forever. That has its upsides, but all in all that makes the SNES version a lot like Fire Emblem, that is to say the kind of game in which the real goal in battles is not winning, but winning without taking casualties. That also puts the game's emphasis squarely on grinding and party-building so you have a team that can actually take on enemies without anybody dying, only (in my opinion) Fire Emblem does it a lot better, so a lot of the nice innovations of Tactics Ogre end up sort of wasted. The character growth system in the SNES version is otherwise leaner and more elegant in some ways, so if you like grinding you might be more into it, but personally I couldn't get into it.

The PSP version's party growth system also starts to break apart later on, because you level up classes instead of characters, so every time you get a new class they start from level 1, which is incredibly tedious when you get new characters with special classes that are utterly, completely and thoroughly useless until you spend an hour or two grinding them to something tolerable. If you don't care about special characters, though, the game remains engaging all the way through so I still think it's the best version, but it's pretty galling when you realise that it could have been fixed so easily just by applying the Valkyria Chronicles system where you can allocate EXP to classes freely.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,804
yeah generally PSP is better but PSP also has downside - level scaling.
 

Hyperion

Arcane
Joined
Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
The PSP version doesn't have level scaling until you hit 30 or beat the game, whichever happens first. Once that happens, enemies will start scaling to your level and have the appropriate gear. If you spent too long grinding out levels too early, you may find yourself unable to beat later levels, because the enemies will horribly outgear you. However, for most sane people this should be a nonissue unless you somehow get TOO sidetracked doing extra shit. SNES / PSX is a far better game, with a lot less bullshit than the remake. Sure, training was a pain in the ass, but you could get by doing it once or twice per chapter and have minimal problems. The retranslation, and additional scenes / characters were kinda fun though. Character portraits in PSX / SNES are far superior.

But if you wanted to powergame in the slightest in the remake, the solution was to level all 12 of your characters as the same class, since every 10 class levels gained in battle will permanently increase the characters' personal stats by 1. Rush through the game to get your perfect 12, then level tediously as a single class at a time to get their stats up for their desired end class to take on the Coda I & II fights.

The Wheel of Fortune system killed the point of choice & consequence, and branching storylines. There's no permanence for failing to save Aloser or Selye. You can go right back to that scene and do it over when you're a higher level, have better gear and abilities, and better characters (With higher stats because of the leveling system).

Crafting was atrocious - manuals needed to be found in certain levels, didn't drop 100% of the time from an enemy that didn't appear 100% of the time. And when you finally got the manual, you had to grind out items, then find out you had a fixed chance of failure. It's a single player game, what's the point? Nobody in their right mind will not be saving before trying, and reloading if they fail. All unique loot was removed from levels. Fire Sword from Irvine? Gone. Elemental Bows / Armor from Fiduc Castle at the end of Chapter 3? Gone. Galdia fan from Zildor? Gone. All those sweet weapons from the Grimby City fight where you save Rendal? Gone. There's nothing worse when crafting is the best (in this case, primary) source of gear, you remove any sense of accomplishment and reward from a player. Most stages have no spoils outside of some money and consumables you'll likely never need.

Hell Gate was a mixed bag. Improved level layouts were fun, extra stuff, and fluffed out story were fun. Static enemy layouts, however, were not. And of course, along with static layouts come the same bullshit as getting crafting manuals. You want gear? Have fun turning your game on and off while you continually start a battle over looking for a particular enemy to drop a particular item.

Bloat. I love content, but holy shit it got to be too much at some points. For example, when you speak to Moruba and unlock the 4 temples. What started as 1 'Fort' battle against Pirates (where you got a cool elemental shield - also gone) and then 1 battle against unique large monsters with nasty abilities, became: fight pirates to unlock the Temple, then have 10 (!) battles leading up to the final Temple fight against the unique monster. And I think there were 6 Temples instead of 4. Somehow 8 fights were stretched into 66 fights.

P.S. - Certain parts of the SNES version had level scaling. All levels that didn't have story enemies scaled up to you, including all fights leading up to, and inside of Hell Gate, including Oxyones if you had Jenounes.

P.S.S. - PSP had a Gargastan Chaos Frame requirement for hiring Cressida. Fuck you.
 
Last edited:

jungl

Augur
Joined
Mar 30, 2016
Messages
1,420
Best ogre battle games were the gba and n64 one. tactics ogre for snes was okay but short. The remake has terrible design decisions like crafting and leveling that are definitely annoying.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
PSX version was broken trivially by simply overlevelling a single character and having him handle everything. And the hidden items in levels thing was stupid.
 

Hyperion

Arcane
Joined
Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
Meanwhile in the SNES version, if a character goes to zero HP, they're gone forever. That has its upsides, but all in all that makes the SNES version a lot like Fire Emblem, that is to say the kind of game in which the real goal in battles is not winning, but winning without taking casualties. That also puts the game's emphasis squarely on grinding and party-building so you have a team that can actually take on enemies without anybody dying, only (in my opinion) Fire Emblem does it a lot better, so a lot of the nice innovations of Tactics Ogre end up sort of wasted. The character growth system in the SNES version is otherwise leaner and more elegant in some ways, so if you like grinding you might be more into it, but personally I couldn't get into it.

Except you get the Revivify spell in Chapter 2 of either path in the original, which makes it nothing like Fire Emblem at all outside of the fact the game actually punishes your mistakes. Having 3 turns to resurrect someone before they're gone lessens tactics, as you have less to worry about. If memory serves, the character isn't even permanently dead if those 3 turns run out in a battle. I think you have 3 chances before they're actually dead? Most battles are easier anyway since Archers were good in the original, but GODLY in the remake. Fucking 12 square range arrows, not including height advantage is absolutely absurd. You could kill 1/2 - 3/4 of an entire enemy team before even their Wizards reach you, forget about melee.

On that note, magic was broken in the original, and nerfed to uselessness in the remake. A single cast of Gnome from Byan 1 shot EVERYTHING in the game except for Dolgare.
 
Last edited:

Karellen

Arcane
Joined
Jan 3, 2012
Messages
327
Meanwhile in the SNES version, if a character goes to zero HP, they're gone forever. That has its upsides, but all in all that makes the SNES version a lot like Fire Emblem, that is to say the kind of game in which the real goal in battles is not winning, but winning without taking casualties. That also puts the game's emphasis squarely on grinding and party-building so you have a team that can actually take on enemies without anybody dying, only (in my opinion) Fire Emblem does it a lot better, so a lot of the nice innovations of Tactics Ogre end up sort of wasted. The character growth system in the SNES version is otherwise leaner and more elegant in some ways, so if you like grinding you might be more into it, but personally I couldn't get into it.

Except you get the Revivify spell in Chapter 2 of either path in the original, which makes it nothing like Fire Emblem at all outside of the fact the game actually punishes your mistakes. Having 3 turns to resurrect someone before they're gone lessens tactics, as you have less to worry about. If memory serves, the character isn't even permanently dead if those 3 turns run out in a battle. I think you have 3 chances before they're actually dead? Most battles are easier anyway since Archers were good in the original, but GODLY in the remake. Fucking 12 square range arrows, not including height advantage is absolutely absurd. You could kill 1/2 - 3/4 of an entire enemy team before even their Wizards reach you, forget about melee.

On that note, magic was broken in the original, and nerfed to uselessness in the remake. A single cast of Gnome from Byan 1 shot EVERYTHING in the game except for Dolgare.

My feeling is that if the enemies are so weak that they can't kill a party member unless you make an outright mistake, the fight isn't going to be terribly exciting. I prefer it when the tension of a battle comes from whether I'm able to beat the enemy at all, as opposed to whether I'm able to make it through without anyone dying, since if the latter can be done, the former tends to be a foregone conclusion. I certainly like that in the PSP version, the enemy too gets things like Deathblows which mean that the enemy has the damage potential to wipe out characters in a single turn. Battles like that are just a lot more dynamic. This is why I liked the first two or so chapters of FFTactics more than the rest, too; the further you get, the more classes you get and the wackier combinations you have, until you have Agrias dual wielding knight swords in full plate armour and counter-attacking every turn so she basically clears out the entire map all by herself. In comparison, in the early game the fights were a lot more exciting since you weren't fielding demigods.

The PSP remake is by no means perfect, and I suppose one could say that the SNES version gets better as you progress while the PSP version eventually gets worse. Even so, I enjoyed fights in the PSP version a lot more, so it's a lot easier for me to overlook the balance problems (archers are broken, so I rarely fielded more than one) and various poorly designed subsystems the game has.
 

Lostpleb

Learned
Joined
Jun 15, 2016
Messages
380
Tactics Ogre is the kind of game that gets a score of 11/10 for the first chapter or two, then gradually falls down to a 5/10 by the end due to the quality of the game being diluted in favor of quantity. Cut a good third of the story battles out, polish the crafting system, introduce a catch-up mechanic for the new characters, thin out some of the leniency (turn rewind, 3 lives, revivify) and you have a GOTY contender.

I was honestly looking forward to the denouement of the political intrigue and replayability of the Law/Chaos paths, until the amount of filler made it so I couldn't care anymore. I think that I accidentally fragged Katiua with an AoE spell during that one pivotal battle with Lanselot and couldn't even bring myself to reload, that's how bad it was.

Still the kind of game that made me glad I bought a PSP, along with War of the Lions.
 

Cromwell

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2013
Messages
5,443
:necro:

I recently started this, unmodded psp version but I think I am shit at it.

I did the first few Missions including the optional one where you have to kill the necromancer that fled. Now I am at a mission where I have tio kill some Guy and his Beast minions and that just fucks me up. I have a few archers My hero is a knight and I have another knight, a Cleric and a Mage. All my Units apart from the knight get bitchslapped around and die rather quickly while nobody does any significant damage to beasts and other guys with high armor. I maybe get 30 or forty damage on them if I crit them but they still have around 150hp per Guy so I probably die before I can kill them.

I have no dragoon and cant hire one. Whatever weapon I tried nothing really works and magic istn really better. What am I missing here?
 

Nathaniel3W

Rockwell Studios
Patron
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2015
Messages
1,226
Location
Washington, DC
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
What am I missing here?
Grinding. And while you're grinding, be sure to grind efficiently: Keep everyone in the party to one or two character classes so as many people as possible benefit from class level-ups. Then go into battle with mostly archers and equip that ability that lets you see your arrow's trajectory.
 

Cromwell

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2013
Messages
5,443
Grinding. And while you're grinding, be sure to grind efficiently:

I will try the One Vision mod to see the changes but if with that and in the original grinding is the way forward I will stop because I dont like grinding just to get through the main missions.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom