I haven’t played the sequel to my favorite Final Fantasy game, Final Fantasy Tactics, in ages. And even when I played it before, back in the Gameboy Advance days, I never got that far into it – the tiny screen just didn’t work for JRPGs for me. So I spent a lot of money getting a Nintendo DS – the one with the GBA slot – and a complete copy of the game, and decided to give it another shot. ...
So, there, it’s done. 62 hours and 22 minutes from the start to the end of the game, LucasArt’s near forgotten cinematic tactical strategy gladiatorial combat RPG defied all my expectations. The last time I blogged about Gladius, I’d just left Imperia for the Windward Steppes. That gave us the last group member, Eiji, an archer, who was more than she first appeared. But who didn’t know that? Continuing on to the Southern Expanse brought us a cutscene where one of the many evil villains dogging our steps said she would be sending someone to us who would bring us right to her, followed by a new character joining us immediately afterward. ...
I haven’t really been blogging, streaming or even talking about my progress in Ogre Battle lately. I’ve been mostly just working my way through the story. The last time I wrote, my character was headed for the very worst of endings. Her alignment was the absolute worst. Her charisma was headed to the same point. Cities hated me. I couldn’t get the good character promotions. I found a solution. It was obvious, really: I had to stop playing the main character, and I had to stop liberating cities and temples if there were any possibility that the enemy could retake them. ...
Before I decided to consolidate my groups a bit, my lord’s alignment and charisma were sky-high. I’m even proudly wielding the holy sword Brunhild. They just don’t toss those out to just anyone. But now, I am in dire straits. My charisma is a nice, round zero – and it’s the same for the rest of the group. My alignment has plummeted – wasn’t too long ago it was at 100, shining like a star. Now, my moral compass is pointed to a dark place. ...
The first time I tried to play Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen, I didn’t know how there could be any sort of strategy or planning when every map was just continually battling enemies that are continually attacking you. How anyone could take the time to be concerned about making sure each unit only fought higher level enemies with lower alignment (if the unit contained good characters, like Knights), or ignored those rules (if the unit contained evil characters (like Wizards), while also juggling reputation, the time of day (good characters stronger in day, evil ones at night) along with fifteen thousand other fiddly bits… every time, I put the game aside and promised to get back to it later. ...
I took Wednesday night off to watch the VP debates, which were way more fun than any dumb game. Thursday, with the drop of Fall Guys Season 2, was already pretty full, but after embarrassing myself for awhile dodging swinging axes and spiky rollers, I thought it was about time to check in on the battling ogres. Deneb is the Ogre Battle series’ answer to Final Fantasy’s Cid. She’s always going to show up somewhere. Rumor has it that she’s not even human – in reality she is an evil spirit that possesses young women, though she denies this. ...
In a little bit of serendipity, fan site RPG Site posted up on Twitter yesterday that the successor to : turned 25 yesterday. ...
I just don’t know about this game. Other tactics games, you take your best guys, you win a fight, you’re done, grats, everyone cheers. Sometimes you save someone, sometimes you condemn someone, sometimes you take the left path and other times the right. Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen weaponizes fighting itself. You could win the battle and lose everything. That’s what happened to me in the Pogrom Forest. ...
Before Final Fantasy Tactics, my favorite fantasy tactical battle RPG, there was the Ogre Battle series. I discovered the franchise the other way around, though: after loving and completing FFT on the PlayStation back in the day, I looked around and found Ogre Battle: Let Us Cling Together, the second game in the series, and was again blown away. Both games shared a creator – Yasumi Matsuno – who, along with the Ogre Battle series and Final Fantasy Tactics, also went on to work on Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIV, and the Vagrant Story PS2 game (which I also found). ...