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austin
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ChipCheezum
@ChipCheezum

Tactics Ogre owns

So I've been playing Tactics Ogre: Reborn, the remaster of a PSP remake of a SNES game, and it owns. I always loved Final Fantasy Tactics so playing what is essentially its predecessor has been great. Once I finish it I might work on a longer writeup on my feelings.

There's a small touch in this game that I love. On the world map you can check out this report that records gameplay stats, lets you review previous story events, etc. There's a section for people you've met, including otherwise "unimportant" commander units. The most common objective in story missions is to take out the commander, which will cause the remaining enemy forces to disperse and immediately bring the battle to an end. There are a lot of battles where the commander is simply Some Guy, either a higher ranking soldier, a headhunter, etc. They have a few words with you at the start of the battle, utter their last words when you defeat them, and then they are gone from the story.

However, these commanders get added to the roster of characters you've met in your report. Looking at these reports gives you their backstory. They're frequently only a paragraph or two long, but some of them go fairly in-depth for a character that is merely a speedbump in the story of the player character. But I love how all of these, even the short ones, go out of their way to tell you "Hey, this was a person, and here's their life story and how they came to be who they are. Then they met you in a random field and died."

The last couple instances of this have been more brutal because it's been stuff like "these pirates were married and you just killed them, and the wife was pregnant too" or "this wizard who researched magic for his kingdom became a headhunter so he could afford the life saving medicine for his sick daughter."

Tactics Ogre character report 1 Tactics Ogre character report 2

They're usually not this dark, but it's interesting to see how even these minor characters are given a history and motivations, and how all of them end with "and then you killed them".

tanner
@tanner

I have been playing Tactics Ogre Reborn, and this is definitely one of my favorite parts of the game.

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in reply to @ChipCheezum's post:

Pauline-Ragny
@Pauline-Ragny

I tried the recent remaster and it probably wouldn't bother you if that's the only version you played but I haaaaaaaaate the changes to the gameplay they made. The whole thing of spawning buffs and debuffs on the map changes the dynamic of battles the original had in a very irritating way to me. They bloated the stats of every class in a weird way. They added a level cap that feels restrictive. I don't know I just find it bad to play. The PSP version had flaws but I still prefer it.

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deafhobbit
@deafhobbit

I'm new to the game and the series, and I absolutely love both of these features. The cards create fun tradeoffs between acting now and building up, and the payoff of seeing someone who's taken a few turns grabbing cards sweeping the field is satisfying.

The level cap let's me experiment and mix in new units without grinding. And if I want to grind to try stuff out, I don't have to worry about accidentally breaking the game. Fights are still tight and challenging no matter what.

I could see myself liking it still without the cards, but I don't know if it'd work for me without the level cap.

Not saying you're wrong to feel the way you do, but I thought you might want to know these changes are helping some new fans like me enjoy the game.

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ChipCheezum
@ChipCheezum

Yeah, I saw your post about that a bit which made me consider if I should try it out. The buff and debuff cards were weird to me at first, especially since they clutter the battlefield visually once a bunch of them have spawned in. Having no experience with the PSP version, I eventually came to like the cards, mainly because it's a way for me to power up some low-powered, underleveled units in the middle of battle and keep them useful. The level cap I could do without, but at least when I hit it I'm forced to stop grinding since that's a thing I could get pretty deep into in something like FFT.

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Pauline-Ragny
@Pauline-Ragny

I've been on and off playing the "One Vision" fan mod of the PSP version. It tries to balance out the classes better than the base game and give some much needed utility to the ones that were unusable. I'm only a few maps in but I'm liking it.

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mrfb
@mrfb

Yess! I'm playing the chaos route and these really reinforce all of the feeling about that route. "You are a force of destruction and you've got to Deal With That."

You might try out Dungeon Encounters, there's some cool kind of quiet storytelling stuff in this vein in that.

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Raisins
@Raisins

I do think that's a great touch. It's hard for me to not compare FFT and TO for obvious reasons, but something that's both better and worse about TO is that it is really heavy-handed when it comes to this stuff. It's hard to notice on a single route playthrough but then you do the other routes and it starts to feel a bit artificial. I know this is still just an SNES game at heart so I'm not actually trying to be too rough on the story-telling which is generally well done. But the route split makes a lot of the main characters behave entirely differently depending on some binary choice you make, so it's a bit hard for me to get as engaged with them.

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Jama
@Jama

"and was slain for his trouble" is such a perfect little end to it all. This big dramatic peace of writing with six words that are the equivalent of a body hitting the ground with a Thud.

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