Anyone who has read this blog more than a day knows that I am always looking out for new strategy tactics games to play. I’ve been following the development of Those Who Rule on Twitter for awhile, and finally had a chance to play through its first chapter. “Those Who Rule” follows four (so far) recruits to their kingdom’s army as they form bonds and train with each other to take on the political forces facing them – those who think immediately of Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Dark Deity wouldn’t be far off, as the visual novel-like interludes tell the story that plays out after on the battlefield. ...

Jusssst about 51 hours, though I went back in later and finished some side quests. Is this worth picking up for your Nintendo 64? Almost every review, maybe EVERY review, of recent tactical battler Symphony of War, mentioned that it was carrying a torch first lit many, many years ago by the Ogre Battle series, and seen seldom since. Tactics battlers aren’t rare at all, but those where you build an army comprised of many separate squads which you can direct but battle on their own, are rare. ...

It took us a little over two years to play through the twenty-five scenarios of Jaws of the Lion. But we enjoyed every single one of those twenty five. Covid, real life, and the occasional other game (mostly Terraforming Mars) got in the way of finishing this prequel to Gloomhaven in any reasonable amount of time. Sometimes, months would go by between plays. But we always came back. Our time with Gloomhaven and Jaws of the Lion gave us a reason to come together and just lose ourselves in a world where certain doom seemed to lurk around every new scenario. ...

Each of these probably should get their own posts, but I am exceedingly lazy. Commander Rhade is finally dead for good this time. Starting off with Ogre Battle – about halfway through at about 25 hours in. The plot has a lot of twists and turns. Modern RPGs could learn a lot by looking at these old classics, and I really regret not playing this game back in the day. ...

Now that I’ve gotten the game so that it works and looks decent, it’s time to ask the big question: How do I get Deneb in my battalion? Deneb Hey, that screenshot isn’t from Ogre Battle 64! It’s from Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen for the Super Nintendo, and as far as I know, it’s the only other real time strategy game in the Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre family. ...

It’s not pretty and it could be better, but I’m able to stream from my unmodified Nintendo 64 at an acceptable resolution using about $50 of hardware. The hardware Curling around the picture is an S-Video cable. My N64 came originally with composite cables; S-Video provides a slightly better signal. With so much signal processing happening, it’s important to start off with the best signal we can get. There is an N64 mod that breaks out the RGB signal before it is processed, but I don’t have that. ...

It’s pronounced DAY-moss. I always feel I need to point that out when someone plays the card in Terraforming Mars that sends Mars’ smaller, outer moon crashing to the ground purely to just raise the temperature by a couple degrees C. It’s actually the closer moon, Phobos (FOE-buss), that’s in danger of crashing to Mars at some point. Phobos orbits so close to Mars that it actually appears to be moving backward in the sky. ...

I went through a lot of trouble to be able to play Ogre Battle 64 on the original hardware with today’s high resolution, digital monitors. Was it worth it? Intro from original hardware Most older consoles were designed around the old cathode ray tube televisions – one to three electron beams use electromagnets to shine on variously colored phosphors. The whole thing was high voltage and prone to interference from anything else going on electrically in the area. ...

Some games will last forever, if you let them. You expect that in an MMO, but with mobile gacha games – when do you just decide it’s time to move on? I made the difficult decision last night to stop playing Flight Rising. It’s a browser game where you raise and breed dragons. After looking into a similar game that used crypto, I looked around for non-exploitative alternatives, found this game and fell in love with it. The community is awesome, there’s little need to pay money for their currency when they give so much of it away for free; I’ve never come close to running out. But the game made, for me, a fatal mistake; they added a game mode where you have to check in throughout the day. ...

I was looking for a game to keep me occupied during the long holiday weekend, and my partner handed me an old RPG from the original PlayStation days – Dark Stone. It didn’t run super well on my usual PSX emulator, so I was forced to try something different – RetroArch, now on Steam. Dark Stone questing Dark Stone is an action RPG. A necromancer, Draak, has resurrected himself as a dragon and is terrorizing the world. Seven crystals scattered across seven dungeons in seven lands are required to reform the Time Stone and allow you to put a final end to him. You take on the role of one of eight different classes (male and female versions of warrior, mage, thief and priest), go out, explore, hunt, get levels and gear, and then take on a dungeon. ...