Tactics Ogre is one of the most bizarre things to cover, because even those of us that have been obsessing for going on two decades get stuff wrong constantly 😂 But uhh....the protagonist of the GBA game is the almost antagonist of this one, not Ogre Battle.
Somehow this appeared as the first result for the "Video game remakes" tab on TH-cam. What a pleasant surprise seeing a new review from you right after I get my PC back.
The difference between your FE4 review and this one is that, while I was sure I'd try that one out **sometime** after watching the video (and I still intend to do so "eventually"), I am already approaching the end of Chapter 2 of Tactics Ogre. Well done. For how intimidating it is, I couldn't help being drawn in by this vortex of unbelievable ambition and attention to detail. Incredible work distilling this massive experience into just thirty seven minutes. I was prepared to saunter back in here and say that I'd bypassed the need to train up Level 1 units by persuading enemy troops to join my side, but from the Rime battle onward, I've consistently failed to find ways to avoid the grind. Not quite Tactical enough for this Ogre, but I'm too invested to quit. Game’s just too interesting.
@@JasonGravesPoser Gotta make up for all the time I spent putting off Matsuno’s work (and I’m allowing myself the use of a speed-up feature during enemy phases, so that helps).
He... doesn't know about hellgate. I don't have the heart. I had a ninja that could take so many turns in a row he beat the last boss using a shield repeatedly bonking him with it to cause knock back until I chased him off the edge of the map ledge and he died from falling off before it went even once. That ninja is disgustingly underpowered for hellgate. If I could bring 20 of them, they would be underpowered for hellgate. Also, hellgate contains a massive amount of content, a dozen unique spells, creatures, equipment, and even teaching about a dozen unique permenantly learned special moves. Oh, and the whole sub quest to get the special hidden element weapons and the 4 sacred priestesses to in tandem unlock the.. shenanigans.
Well done beating this massive game. I played it for the first time couple years ago, and it blew my mind. I sunk my teeth into as much as I could for one play through and I still missed things. Really impressive what they did with this game on the system. Great review too! Sorry it wasn't all for you. Understandable. This game drove me nuts until I learned Revive way too late. Did you miss all of Hellgate? That was a huge timesink with some cool rewards to make that last level less of a headache. I've also been going through every SNES/SFC RPG on the system for a few years now, so all of these reviews I can relate to. I wish more could be translated for all of us English speakers. Thanks for the content!
The trick to this game is that often the enemies are balanced to your main character's level, not the level of your team. Keep your main character's level low, and much of the game is a cakewalk.
Finally! I really appreciate someone doing this. I've only ever played the PSP version, so NOW many of its systems and elements make sense! Like items not being completely useless, or why multi-battles don't really have weight, and such. Very insightful! But even still, this game was beyond its time.
I’ve never seen out heard of your channel before, but this is one of my favorite games of all time and I also 5:03 hated Ogre Battle. Here’s some comment engagement for the TH-cam algorithm!
Dude, great video. I really appreciate how much thought you put into these reviews. My thoughts are pretty similar. I really respect the mature story and the really impressive replay value. That said, replaying the battles can be a slog…
The protagonist of the last game is not the final boss of tactics ogre, he's just a different dude with a sort of similar backstory, who stole a bunch of stuff from the original protagonist to do his evil plot. The final boss is resurrected by the protagonist from the GBA tactics ogre knights of lodis, but that came out after this and was mostly sort of a 'hey lets look at this dude from Snes tactics ogre, what if we had a game about his backstory?' ...But the game is overly complex. The protagonist of the last game is Destin and he appears in the n64 Ogre Battle game, and is overall, not an evil dude.
This was a great 30 minutes watch. Its really nice to see how many stuff you mentioned are fixed by the remakes which i never even knew before. Dont worry about the mistakes, there is yet a tactics ogre guide in the internet that doesn't have mistakes or false info in it. Even half my videos are riddled with mistakes if you dig deep enough.
Can't wait for you to say that Ogre Battle is your favorite game of all time 🙌 👏 👌 edit also Unicorn Overlord looks like an actual spiritual successor to Ogre Battle
Excellent video, thank you ! Regarding the part where you can't predict who is gonna strike well.. You have a key combination (L or R + buttons) that you can activate in game options, to see the AT "Attack Turn" et other stuff (element, wounded units etc).
I'm kinda shocked at saying the SNES/PSX version is harder than Reborn. As someone who literally loved Ogre Battle so much as a kid that I bought Tactics Ogre the day it was released from Toys R Us -- I never struggled too too much with it. Sure there are some really obscene rescue missions in the original games - but you can over-level and card-abuse so much easier. It's harder to abuse cards in Reborn, there are level caps to prevent over-leveling, and damage is overall kinda lower (granted I didn't finish Reborn). The only easier thing is no perma-death (or more difficult perma-death).
If you look at the footage of his gameplay you can see why he found the game more difficult than reborn. He doesn't seem to have intuited the nature of the weight system of the original Tactics Ogre making late game armors more or less useless (for example: you see he has a ninja equipped with a firedrake sword, baldur armor, and a shield -- this would make the ninja very bad at his job as a dodge tank compared to having him wearing no armor or equipment save for a pair of swords). If you're using heavy armor in SNES Tactics Ogre, your characters are gonna be dying a lot, and it's not exactly intuitive for a player going in blind to understand that late game armor is objectively worse than early game armor, or no armor at all. Really not his fault as a player or reviewer, the game balanced its defensive equipment very poorly.
this was such an entertaining review! the best reviews are the ones where you criticize but still like the game. and your script for this was perfect... funny and so involved. Great work on this video! glad you liked the game. I am the type of person to only play one game at a time and obsess over it, so i greatly enjoyed this on the PSP (though i had the PS1 version i never got around to playing lol). it's been almost 20 years though and i remember nothing, i doubt i beat it but the PSP had some QOL fixes. anyway, absolutely stellar work and you've improved so much as a writer, performer, orator, director and editor!!!!! really honing your skills man, great work. what a great video!
nice review, i played this as a kid on the snes and did manage to beat it, but because i didn't have the internet, i didn't have guides, so i got a bad ending. but i do remember how difficult it was.
Hi! Hardcore fan here with some corrections; Dolgare, the final boss is not the protagonist in any game of the ogre battle series. Dolgare united the island of Valeria, which one might assume to be the plot of an earlier game, but it's not. Warren, Lans, and Canopus would have a lot more to say about Dolgare if they had fought along side him in the war against the Black Queen and Rashidi. Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen is Episode 5, not 1-6. It's a star wars reference to start in the middle. With the warning up front, I expected to find more errors. It is especially difficult to recall all the events of a 100 hour play thru after the fact AND lost the footage to refer to - Good job. :)
Glad someone pointed it out. March of the Black Queen's protagonist is named Destin, who shows up as a playable character in Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber.
It's interesting to see both how beautiful/complex the SNES version is... but also the places where it feels dumbed down from the later iterations, like Reborn. It's this weird mix of punching way above the gameplay/narrative weight of most SNES games while also being frustrating because of those limitations. Sounds like you had quite the journey through it, thank you for sharing =]
It's a monumental task just to play through this, to try and sum it up isn't easy either. I think you did a great job explaining what beating this game is like, and I have a lot to say about it myself. I have respect for anyone that can manage to beat the original version of Tactics Ogre, after 70+ hours I could not. It absolutely is the hardest snes RPG. I used to hate this game, I played it just as the translation came out and a lot of it went over my head. When the game started getting really difficult I thought it would be a good idea to max level my team, because surely that would make the game easier. What I didn't know is that enemies level up and class change as you do, so I reached a point late-game where a enemy moved first on the first turn, used a map-wide spell, and wiped my entire team without any chance of survival. Unlike all the fantasy heroes journey style RPGs I'd seen before, you're role-playing as a future ruler; a warlord. It stuck with me how the game asks difficult questions with often very harsh consequences (choosing to spare that town early on comes to mind) the "good guy" answer isn't always the right one. The way the game handles its themes is much more grounded and realistic especially for the time and I appreciate that much more now. Despite everything I can't help but respect what this game did, it's very deep and advanced for its time, a very smart game, both in story and mechanics. But I will NEVER to play it again. Great review
If you have any interest in finishing the game, the Reborn version on modern platforms is pretty good. There’s a level cap for your party that slowly increases as you progress. That way the enemies don’t scale, and you don’t have to worry about over-leveling. That said, I think there’s a certain quality about the graphics and sound of the SNES version that’s still special.
@@thebossbaby7402I'll never play the original again, but I will consider the remake. I think the Snes version has the best audio of any of them, the spell and weather effects in later versions look better.
NIIIICE! i found you a few months ago and i've been loving your every snes rpg series. I'm not a diehard tactics ogre fan, i made it like 20 hours in or so but after watching this I kinda want to give it another shot. i grew up playing shit like FFT and Fire Emblem, Shining force ect. this was a really good one i enjoyed the entire video. you gave it a whole 37 minutes thats a bit longer than your usual snes rpg reviews Have you done Bahamut Lagoon yet??? there's another TRPG i'd love to see you review.
Before work this morning, I saw the spreadsheet that this was coming tomorrow so definitely a cool surprise! I also noticed you added a CRAPLOAD more to that list which is fantastic -- Here's one I didn't see Feda: Emblem of Justice. Apparently there are two translations but I played the 2009 version -- I could be wrong on this but it feels like they added their own spin and doesn't match how most of the dialogue. If you've already played it in the past you know what I mean -- it's like they go from a nobleman speaking to someone who thinks teenage jokes and bathroom humor are hilarious still... that was probably my only gripe of the game and I wish I knew what the previous translation was like. I played over the winter on a whim looking for Shining Force "like" games on SNES besides Fire Emblem and to be honest, overall I thought it was fantastic game and eventually want to go back and do a Chaos run (instead of Law).
I absolutely love how your reviews capture the essence of what it's like playing this games in a way that seemingly no one else does. And now I have zero regrets about never actually diving into Tactics Ogre. 😆
YESSSS. Ever since I made that Ogre battle comment, I've been waiting for this review because that comment was made after I beat tactics Ogre. I think in retrospect, I liked this game. It was worth my time, but it's a lot of time that left me burnt out at the end. It felt like the game was asking more time of me to grind and punishing me if I take any shortcuts. I love so much of what this game does whether it be the alternate paths, customization, profound narrative, and recruiting process. It's a game ahead of it's time, but feels a little archaic to play now. Great review.
Having played through Tactics Ogre Reborn 100% through all routes I can safely say that the original snes is by far way harder than anything I’ve played so far. I’m currently at the halfway point and it’s been excruciating man, your review felt incredibly validating to me rn haha.
I am a man of discipline, routines, quality nutrition. I am also a man of save states, frameskip, stretching snes games to 21:9. I know, I am a heretic for doing so... Imagine being the first dude ever to eat some hot lead. lol
I really wanted to love this game because I love FFT so much and it has the aesthetics and the plot sensibilities but the enemies level scaling with you just killed it for me. FFT is hard on your first playthrough but at least you can grind it into submission....
One thing I learned about Yasumi Matsuno (I think that's the dudes name) is he has a degree in foreign politics. Like he knows how this sh^t works and how to tell a political story where everything is moving and tons of stuff happen.
I played the PSX version back when it came out. It kicked me in the gut and took my lunch money so many times I just gave up and went back to FFT instead.
the saturn version allows the player to see the action turns order, by pressing a button. Characters will blink one after the other to show you who will be next to act, so you can anticipate better. It makes a big difference. And it has a lot of vocals and great cd music :) But yeah, i doubt you'll want to dive back in this game any time soon!
@@floriansolatges9624 Yeah the Saturn version is probably the best pre-reborn version of the game. The PSP adds a lot of content but it's quite unbalanced and janky and it also has slowdowns like the PS1 port.
Loved this game on the psp, I actually used it's 'time travel' to do every path and get every character and the 'new true ending' Great times. The difficulty of the snes version would have definitely been off putting though.
Every version of this game has been brutal in some aspect or another. But the story is so damn rich and all the interactions between the units are so....endless. It's definitely something we in the TO community can't get enough of lol.
Hey Jason, probably a little late now, but i was trying this game for the first time and accidently bumped the L button. There was some odd menu. If you hold down A while holding L it will go threw the turn order so you can predict moves!!!
Back when the PSP game was still somewhat new, I played through this game and quickly got tired of the never ending talking. Fond memories of mashing the X button until the next battle happened and then loving the actual gameplay. Couldn't tell you a single thing about any characters or storyline, but the tactical RPG gameplay is top tier.
I only found out the game existed, but I'm hoping you try out The Adventures of Hourai High - Transfer Student Dramabomb. I thought it was going to be some weird SNES visual novel. But nope, surprise, JRPG. Nice music. Weird premise. yea
I just started Tactic Ogre on Nintendo Switch (Never played it) but Ogre Battle 64 was one of my best game in the 64 Librairy! I knew I wasn't going for a game in the same style. Right now, Ogre Battle 64 is still better in my eyes! It was so original while Tactic Ogre is just like all the game you show at the beginning of your video. Do you know games more like Ogre Battle 64 ?
I have the Playstation version. I beat it a couple of times. It's one of the best tactic RPGs ever made for sure. The last time I beat it I finally said the right thing to get Kachua to stay in the party =).
I'd say the biggest reason that strategy games frontload their stories and pacing so much is because you can only play them at the game's pace. Chrono trigger, Final Fantasy, and games like those you can explore on your own time. Talk to different NPCs who might say different things depending on when you talk to them. Find background lore. etc etc. There's (almost) none of that in tactical games though. Therefor they have to make sure to tell you every single thing because you're unable to look for it on your own.
I've tried to get into this game several times, and always felt like something was seriously off... Now I know why! I had been playing on the PSP, treating Tactics Ogre as if it were a PSP game. If I had known it was an SNES port, I would have been genuinely impressed. But I was judging it against its contemporaries that came out over a decade later. Seriously, what were they thinking with this one? They couldn't have updated the graphics or systems at all???
Now when you said you'd get stuff wrong, so fair enough, but I wasn't quite expecting "the final boss of Tactics is the protagonist of Battle." That's not remotely true, the protagonist from Battle is a character who's alive and well in Ogre Battle 64 (now when it comes to the final boss of *that* game.... well, that *could* be a lot more true...) The final boss of Tactics does not appear in Battle at all, he's a character from the history of the island that Tactics takes place on. I hope I'm not coming off as an "ass" about this, but I'm curious what lead you to believe Dolgare was the opinion leader from Battle.
6:55 When was the last time you replayed it? The start of FFVI is a literal text scroll exposition dump, like in Star Wars... then you get more exposition in dialogue between Biggs and Wedge, THEN follows with the long ass credits walking sequence, following it with some combat interrupted by cutscenes, and when you get rid of the party, it stops you multiple times to have flashbacks to the Empire making super soldiers with Gundam-style mind screw and sieg heiling... Then after tower defense minigame, you're in a castle where everyone just keeps talking, and there's very little action until later. Chrono Trigger is also weird in that it has that fair where you basically have to kill time with minigames before actual game starts. FF7 had a good starting pace, but those games you listed aren't really good examples.
Hi, This is a really good episode. Really enjoy it. Also Bro you should also play the Knight of lodis from Game boy. Much better than the one you play.
my dad got this on ps1 day one it came out i was like 6 by 9 i finally got to the end only for my older brother to tell me ahh yeah theres 7 other endings
@Jason Graves Side Note: Dorgalua Oberyth Valeria is not the main protagonist of the first Ogre Battle but rather it's Destin Faroda is the main protagonist instead. FYI please check first the lore before getting a solid & concrete evidence because it feels that you basically lying and backhanded us to a certain degree (Insult to our intelligence I might add LOL) And lastly I can understand that this game is not for everyone (especially to you) of course but please don't tell me that this game is one of the hardest strategy game ever because my question is that have you even tried Fire Emblem - Thracia 776 and my god I considered that the hardest one to finish and one that quit me many times than this game. For me I had a lot of memories to this game until now since I remember this game since I was started to play SRPG games before and I don't know what to play first since I got overwhelmed by many SRPG beforehand (Shinning Force, Fire Emblem Series, Front Mission, Etc) until I stumbled upon this game since it was introduced me by my old friend from high school since this was his favorite SRPG game and I got fascinated and intrigued by this one alone and it's true at first that I have a lot of hard time finishing the game (SNES version of TO: LUCT) and almost gave up but with the gaming walkthrough to this game and sheer determination I finally finished the game and I got the good ending as well. It's not a cakewalk of course but it's not literally a crossing to the landmine field either.
I found the difficulty of the remake for PS5 much harder than the original. In the original you could just over level and destroy everything. Also I found the AI in the new game extremely stupid, with NPCs doing suicide runs into the enemy soldiers so you could not save them
The AI in the original game really wasn't any less suicidal though. This is almost a genre staple, as this issue also existed in Final Fantasy Tactics. The only non-suicidal NPCs you had to rescue were Rendal, and Selye, and the latter was only non-suicidal if the charm effect on her did *not* wear off early on in the fight (as she'd prioritize getting closer to your party over attacking enemies with the charm effect on -- if it wore off, she'd try to punch the templars and get killed on counterattack). I recall the forums about this game back in the early 2000s were always full of threads complaining about how suicidal guest npcs were in missions to rescue them, with Hoborym in C and L routes being one of the worst. I would say OG TO wasn't even hard without overleveling, if one understood the underlying mechanics behind the speed/weight system and how to guarantee debuff spells to hit (in order for classes like "Witch" and "Warlock" to be effective, for example, one would level them up as Archer and Swordmaster/Ninja respectively, before switching them back into the caster class). I also wouldn't say the option of cheesing the game by just abusing the training system to get yourself overleveled early is a fair way to judge its overall difficulty. Sure you could conceivably set up training mode with two AI controlled clerics punching each other and healing themselves for 20 hours until they got to level 50, then having the rest of your party throw rocks at them until they got to level 50, and that would make the game a cakewalk, but generally speaking this is irrelevant to how difficult it is for a player who naturally goes through the game. And I can attest from experience the game can actually be done without the use of the training mode, at a level on average lower than the enemy, without losing any characters in battle. Overleveling is an option, but it's mostly a crutch for those unwilling to getgud. Reborn itself is similarly not particularly difficult once one has an understanding of the mechanics -- it's certainly more forgiving thanks to a lack of permadeath at 0 hp and the availability of revive consumables... those 3 turns until death are very generous. Not to mention things like crafting, and the infinite money exploit to give the player an edge over enemies (using +1 pants, gauntlets and armors made the player's army always far more mobile than the enemy, and using +1 weapons was a game changer in a lot of other ways). Plus the enemies in Reborn almost never buffed themselves or debuffed the player - the AI will literally never use a buff/debuff ability which did not heal or hurt hp, unless it was a passive (notice no enemy ever casts Boon of Swiftness -- they only ever get a speed buff from the Speedstar autoskill). So in terms of difficulty, the AI in Reborn is always playing with one hand behind its back, and so kind of *needs* to be an advantage statwise to pose a challenge against all the options the player has unrestricted access to.
When I saw the thumbnail I thought hold on Shrek came way after the SNES
Lol
Tactics Ogre is one of the most bizarre things to cover, because even those of us that have been obsessing for going on two decades get stuff wrong constantly 😂
But uhh....the protagonist of the GBA game is the almost antagonist of this one, not Ogre Battle.
Hey it’s CoffePotato I enjoyed listening to you on the State Of The Arc Podcast. Keep up the great work.
Love your stuff man
Though the protagonist of March of the Black Queen is the antagonist of another Ogre Battle game, if you do it right... =]
Somehow this appeared as the first result for the "Video game remakes" tab on TH-cam. What a pleasant surprise seeing a new review from you right after I get my PC back.
He does have a fantastic channel. Found him about 2 months back myself, probably searching for something to do with RPGs.
Good timing with Unicorn Overlord
The difference between your FE4 review and this one is that, while I was sure I'd try that one out **sometime** after watching the video (and I still intend to do so "eventually"), I am already approaching the end of Chapter 2 of Tactics Ogre. Well done. For how intimidating it is, I couldn't help being drawn in by this vortex of unbelievable ambition and attention to detail. Incredible work distilling this massive experience into just thirty seven minutes.
I was prepared to saunter back in here and say that I'd bypassed the need to train up Level 1 units by persuading enemy troops to join my side, but from the Rime battle onward, I've consistently failed to find ways to avoid the grind. Not quite Tactical enough for this Ogre, but I'm too invested to quit. Game’s just too interesting.
You got to work fast then, that's pretty far in
@@JasonGravesPoser Gotta make up for all the time I spent putting off Matsuno’s work (and I’m allowing myself the use of a speed-up feature during enemy phases, so that helps).
the 3/6 gag always gets me.
"Theres no time" hahahahhaa i like what you did there 😂😂❤
He... doesn't know about hellgate. I don't have the heart.
I had a ninja that could take so many turns in a row he beat the last boss using a shield repeatedly bonking him with it to cause knock back until I chased him off the edge of the map ledge and he died from falling off before it went even once.
That ninja is disgustingly underpowered for hellgate. If I could bring 20 of them, they would be underpowered for hellgate.
Also, hellgate contains a massive amount of content, a dozen unique spells, creatures, equipment, and even teaching about a dozen unique permenantly learned special moves.
Oh, and the whole sub quest to get the special hidden element weapons and the 4 sacred priestesses to in tandem unlock the.. shenanigans.
Well done beating this massive game. I played it for the first time couple years ago, and it blew my mind. I sunk my teeth into as much as I could for one play through and I still missed things. Really impressive what they did with this game on the system. Great review too! Sorry it wasn't all for you. Understandable. This game drove me nuts until I learned Revive way too late. Did you miss all of Hellgate? That was a huge timesink with some cool rewards to make that last level less of a headache.
I've also been going through every SNES/SFC RPG on the system for a few years now, so all of these reviews I can relate to. I wish more could be translated for all of us English speakers. Thanks for the content!
I could hear the suffering in your voice throughout this whole damn video hahaha. Very good and very apt review.
14:54 No joining, i reefuse.
Hell yeah, excited for a new RPG video!
Just discovered you and this series. You earned the thumbs up and sub. About to start at the beginning since I was raised on JRPGs.
The thumbnail alone Will give you a few thousand views and subscribers
The trick to this game is that often the enemies are balanced to your main character's level, not the level of your team. Keep your main character's level low, and much of the game is a cakewalk.
Finally! I really appreciate someone doing this.
I've only ever played the PSP version, so NOW many of its systems and elements make sense! Like items not being completely useless, or why multi-battles don't really have weight, and such. Very insightful! But even still, this game was beyond its time.
I’ve never seen out heard of your channel before, but this is one of my favorite games of all time and I also 5:03 hated Ogre Battle. Here’s some comment engagement for the TH-cam algorithm!
Love your videos man! Your review made me start playing this game and I know I'm in for some pain now
Dude, great video. I really appreciate how much thought you put into these reviews. My thoughts are pretty similar. I really respect the mature story and the really impressive replay value. That said, replaying the battles can be a slog…
The protagonist of the last game is not the final boss of tactics ogre, he's just a different dude with a sort of similar backstory, who stole a bunch of stuff from the original protagonist to do his evil plot. The final boss is resurrected by the protagonist from the GBA tactics ogre knights of lodis, but that came out after this and was mostly sort of a 'hey lets look at this dude from Snes tactics ogre, what if we had a game about his backstory?'
...But the game is overly complex.
The protagonist of the last game is Destin and he appears in the n64 Ogre Battle game, and is overall, not an evil dude.
This was a great 30 minutes watch. Its really nice to see how many stuff you mentioned are fixed by the remakes which i never even knew before. Dont worry about the mistakes, there is yet a tactics ogre guide in the internet that doesn't have mistakes or false info in it. Even half my videos are riddled with mistakes if you dig deep enough.
Can't wait for you to say that Ogre Battle is your favorite game of all time 🙌 👏 👌 edit also Unicorn Overlord looks like an actual spiritual successor to Ogre Battle
Excellent video, thank you !
Regarding the part where you can't predict who is gonna strike well.. You have a key combination (L or R + buttons) that you can activate in game options, to see the AT "Attack Turn" et other stuff (element, wounded units etc).
8:03 - 8:06 Bayou Billy Graves Tactics Ogre Crossover
4:3 aspect ratio chad
RHCP? Nice soundtrack 🙂
I'm kinda shocked at saying the SNES/PSX version is harder than Reborn. As someone who literally loved Ogre Battle so much as a kid that I bought Tactics Ogre the day it was released from Toys R Us -- I never struggled too too much with it. Sure there are some really obscene rescue missions in the original games - but you can over-level and card-abuse so much easier. It's harder to abuse cards in Reborn, there are level caps to prevent over-leveling, and damage is overall kinda lower (granted I didn't finish Reborn). The only easier thing is no perma-death (or more difficult perma-death).
If you look at the footage of his gameplay you can see why he found the game more difficult than reborn. He doesn't seem to have intuited the nature of the weight system of the original Tactics Ogre making late game armors more or less useless (for example: you see he has a ninja equipped with a firedrake sword, baldur armor, and a shield -- this would make the ninja very bad at his job as a dodge tank compared to having him wearing no armor or equipment save for a pair of swords). If you're using heavy armor in SNES Tactics Ogre, your characters are gonna be dying a lot, and it's not exactly intuitive for a player going in blind to understand that late game armor is objectively worse than early game armor, or no armor at all. Really not his fault as a player or reviewer, the game balanced its defensive equipment very poorly.
Two great video drops from you and the Game Chasers , what a day 😄👍
Great thumbnail, great video!
this was such an entertaining review! the best reviews are the ones where you criticize but still like the game. and your script for this was perfect... funny and so involved. Great work on this video! glad you liked the game. I am the type of person to only play one game at a time and obsess over it, so i greatly enjoyed this on the PSP (though i had the PS1 version i never got around to playing lol). it's been almost 20 years though and i remember nothing, i doubt i beat it but the PSP had some QOL fixes. anyway, absolutely stellar work and you've improved so much as a writer, performer, orator, director and editor!!!!! really honing your skills man, great work. what a great video!
Looking forward to seeing you cover Last Bible 3. Really interesting little game that one is.
nice review, i played this as a kid on the snes and did manage to beat it, but because i didn't have the internet, i didn't have guides, so i got a bad ending. but i do remember how difficult it was.
Dude the fact that you don't get more traffic is a travesty.
You got a shoutout on the DrunkFriend podcast btw.
Oh nice I'll have to check that out
Hi! Hardcore fan here with some corrections; Dolgare, the final boss is not the protagonist in any game of the ogre battle series. Dolgare united the island of Valeria, which one might assume to be the plot of an earlier game, but it's not. Warren, Lans, and Canopus would have a lot more to say about Dolgare if they had fought along side him in the war against the Black Queen and Rashidi.
Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen is Episode 5, not 1-6. It's a star wars reference to start in the middle.
With the warning up front, I expected to find more errors. It is especially difficult to recall all the events of a 100 hour play thru after the fact AND lost the footage to refer to - Good job. :)
Glad someone pointed it out. March of the Black Queen's protagonist is named Destin, who shows up as a playable character in Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber.
nice you recovered the footage
It's interesting to see both how beautiful/complex the SNES version is... but also the places where it feels dumbed down from the later iterations, like Reborn. It's this weird mix of punching way above the gameplay/narrative weight of most SNES games while also being frustrating because of those limitations. Sounds like you had quite the journey through it, thank you for sharing =]
It's a monumental task just to play through this, to try and sum it up isn't easy either. I think you did a great job explaining what beating this game is like, and I have a lot to say about it myself.
I have respect for anyone that can manage to beat the original version of Tactics Ogre, after 70+ hours I could not. It absolutely is the hardest snes RPG.
I used to hate this game, I played it just as the translation came out and a lot of it went over my head. When the game started getting really difficult I thought it would be a good idea to max level my team, because surely that would make the game easier.
What I didn't know is that enemies level up and class change as you do, so I reached a point late-game where a enemy moved first on the first turn, used a map-wide spell, and wiped my entire team without any chance of survival.
Unlike all the fantasy heroes journey style RPGs I'd seen before, you're role-playing as a future ruler; a warlord. It stuck with me how the game asks difficult questions with often very harsh consequences (choosing to spare that town early on comes to mind) the "good guy" answer isn't always the right one.
The way the game handles its themes is much more grounded and realistic especially for the time and I appreciate that much more now.
Despite everything I can't help but respect what this game did, it's very deep and advanced for its time, a very smart game, both in story and mechanics.
But I will NEVER to play it again. Great review
If you have any interest in finishing the game, the Reborn version on modern platforms is pretty good. There’s a level cap for your party that slowly increases as you progress. That way the enemies don’t scale, and you don’t have to worry about over-leveling. That said, I think there’s a certain quality about the graphics and sound of the SNES version that’s still special.
@@thebossbaby7402I'll never play the original again, but I will consider the remake.
I think the Snes version has the best audio of any of them, the spell and weather effects in later versions look better.
I'm in love with you. Your content is just fantastic
NIIIICE! i found you a few months ago and i've been loving your every snes rpg series. I'm not a diehard tactics ogre fan, i made it like 20 hours in or so but after watching this I kinda want to give it another shot. i grew up playing shit like FFT and Fire Emblem, Shining force ect. this was a really good one i enjoyed the entire video. you gave it a whole 37 minutes thats a bit longer than your usual snes rpg reviews Have you done Bahamut Lagoon yet??? there's another TRPG i'd love to see you review.
Oh my. I love the every rose has its thorn at the end! Made me feel like I was from Jersey.
This game is amazing!
Shout out to Ogre Battle 64 which turned out to be the best rpg on N64
Before work this morning, I saw the spreadsheet that this was coming tomorrow so definitely a cool surprise!
I also noticed you added a CRAPLOAD more to that list which is fantastic -- Here's one I didn't see Feda: Emblem of Justice. Apparently there are two translations but I played the 2009 version -- I could be wrong on this but it feels like they added their own spin and doesn't match how most of the dialogue. If you've already played it in the past you know what I mean -- it's like they go from a nobleman speaking to someone who thinks teenage jokes and bathroom humor are hilarious still... that was probably my only gripe of the game and I wish I knew what the previous translation was like.
I played over the winter on a whim looking for Shining Force "like" games on SNES besides Fire Emblem and to be honest, overall I thought it was fantastic game and eventually want to go back and do a Chaos run (instead of Law).
Luv the chili peppers background music !!!
Heyyyyyy!
10 minutes in so unless anything changes, this is an awssome vid.
Keep hitting them homeruns.
I absolutely love how your reviews capture the essence of what it's like playing this games in a way that seemingly no one else does. And now I have zero regrets about never actually diving into Tactics Ogre. 😆
That thumbnail is going to get you a billion views, well played Mr Graves
YESSSS. Ever since I made that Ogre battle comment, I've been waiting for this review because that comment was made after I beat tactics Ogre.
I think in retrospect, I liked this game. It was worth my time, but it's a lot of time that left me burnt out at the end. It felt like the game was asking more time of me to grind and punishing me if I take any shortcuts. I love so much of what this game does whether it be the alternate paths, customization, profound narrative, and recruiting process. It's a game ahead of it's time, but feels a little archaic to play now.
Great review.
Thank you grave man
Having played through Tactics Ogre Reborn 100% through all routes I can safely say that the original snes is by far way harder than anything I’ve played so far. I’m currently at the halfway point and it’s been excruciating man, your review felt incredibly validating to me rn haha.
I am a man of discipline, routines, quality nutrition. I am also a man of save states, frameskip, stretching snes games to 21:9. I know, I am a heretic for doing so... Imagine being the first dude ever to eat some hot lead. lol
21:9 🤮🤮🤮
This is review is spot on. I played with save states and a guide and still found it way too hard. But still fun!
I really wanted to love this game because I love FFT so much and it has the aesthetics and the plot sensibilities but the enemies level scaling with you just killed it for me. FFT is hard on your first playthrough but at least you can grind it into submission....
Long time @HCBailly fan. Great LPer.
I need to finally get this game and beat it a few times.
Another banger from my boy J Graves
Wish you had more comparisons of this game against FFT but I am not sure if you have played that one.
One thing I learned about Yasumi Matsuno (I think that's the dudes name) is he has a degree in foreign politics.
Like he knows how this sh^t works and how to tell a political story where everything is moving and tons of stuff happen.
great thumbnail
I played the PSX version back when it came out. It kicked me in the gut and took my lunch money so many times I just gave up and went back to FFT instead.
What's with AVGN as your picture? 15:04
No time to explain
In Ogre Battle 64, I would pride myself in not losing characters. That won't work in In Tactics Ogre.... there will be fatalities.
Well done mate 👏. Great delivery. Always entertaining even tho I don’t always agree w your sh*t 😂
i played a lot this game on saturn recently with the english patch and loved it. I hope you did too, i'm about to discover that :D
the saturn version allows the player to see the action turns order, by pressing a button. Characters will blink one after the other to show you who will be next to act, so you can anticipate better.
It makes a big difference. And it has a lot of vocals and great cd music :)
But yeah, i doubt you'll want to dive back in this game any time soon!
@@floriansolatges9624 Yeah the Saturn version is probably the best pre-reborn version of the game. The PSP adds a lot of content but it's quite unbalanced and janky and it also has slowdowns like the PS1 port.
Loved this game on the psp, I actually used it's 'time travel' to do every path and get every character and the 'new true ending' Great times. The difficulty of the snes version would have definitely been off putting though.
Every version of this game has been brutal in some aspect or another. But the story is so damn rich and all the interactions between the units are so....endless. It's definitely something we in the TO community can't get enough of lol.
I like the profanity in the PS1 version
Or was that the Snes version
Aeon Genesis rules!
Hey Jason, probably a little late now, but i was trying this game for the first time and accidently bumped the L button. There was some odd menu. If you hold down A while holding L it will go threw the turn order so you can predict moves!!!
that's pretty useful
It's useful, but boy is it slow. It's not like a list. It slowly pans to each character in order on the map... then you have to remember the order lol
Back when the PSP game was still somewhat new, I played through this game and quickly got tired of the never ending talking. Fond memories of mashing the X button until the next battle happened and then loving the actual gameplay. Couldn't tell you a single thing about any characters or storyline, but the tactical RPG gameplay is top tier.
Nice song choice. I know, I know it's you
You say hello and then I say adieu
No Time Bimmy at 14:56 kils it!
Lol you named one of your big strong lizardmen "LIZZY♥"
RIP Saturn version, you might like the OV mod for the PSP version. Nearly thought you were going to say "Vyce is a computer controlled asshole".
are there even ogres in this game!?
Axing da real ????
This game is in my top 3 rpg on the ps1🎉
I only found out the game existed, but I'm hoping you try out The Adventures of Hourai High - Transfer Student Dramabomb.
I thought it was going to be some weird SNES visual novel. But nope, surprise, JRPG. Nice music. Weird premise. yea
I love TO, but never subjected myself to the SNES version.
I might risk it.
I just started Tactic Ogre on Nintendo Switch (Never played it) but Ogre Battle 64 was one of my best game in the 64 Librairy! I knew I wasn't going for a game in the same style. Right now, Ogre Battle 64 is still better in my eyes! It was so original while Tactic Ogre is just like all the game you show at the beginning of your video.
Do you know games more like Ogre Battle 64 ?
Even the strategy guide for the psp doesn’t tell you all of the ins and outs
Will not attempt without save states.
I have the Playstation version. I beat it a couple of times. It's one of the best tactic RPGs ever made for sure. The last time I beat it I finally said the right thing to get Kachua to stay in the party =).
That thumbnail is "very suspicious"
Shrek played f6
I'd say the biggest reason that strategy games frontload their stories and pacing so much is because you can only play them at the game's pace. Chrono trigger, Final Fantasy, and games like those you can explore on your own time. Talk to different NPCs who might say different things depending on when you talk to them. Find background lore. etc etc.
There's (almost) none of that in tactical games though. Therefor they have to make sure to tell you every single thing because you're unable to look for it on your own.
THE GOOOOOOAAAAAAATTTT!!!
was that aroind the world with donkey kong synths?
Best game on the Super Famicom, period.
I've tried to get into this game several times, and always felt like something was seriously off... Now I know why! I had been playing on the PSP, treating Tactics Ogre as if it were a PSP game. If I had known it was an SNES port, I would have been genuinely impressed. But I was judging it against its contemporaries that came out over a decade later.
Seriously, what were they thinking with this one? They couldn't have updated the graphics or systems at all???
Now when you said you'd get stuff wrong, so fair enough, but I wasn't quite expecting "the final boss of Tactics is the protagonist of Battle." That's not remotely true, the protagonist from Battle is a character who's alive and well in Ogre Battle 64 (now when it comes to the final boss of *that* game.... well, that *could* be a lot more true...) The final boss of Tactics does not appear in Battle at all, he's a character from the history of the island that Tactics takes place on. I hope I'm not coming off as an "ass" about this, but I'm curious what lead you to believe Dolgare was the opinion leader from Battle.
I got it on my nintendo switch !
Please tell me you didn't play the whole game on that funky little crt.
Don’t diss the CRT. It looks pretty good up close
Gawed dude...we got to get you off that thing. If you ever in California I hook you up. I got way too many.
6:55 When was the last time you replayed it? The start of FFVI is a literal text scroll exposition dump, like in Star Wars... then you get more exposition in dialogue between Biggs and Wedge, THEN follows with the long ass credits walking sequence, following it with some combat interrupted by cutscenes, and when you get rid of the party, it stops you multiple times to have flashbacks to the Empire making super soldiers with Gundam-style mind screw and sieg heiling... Then after tower defense minigame, you're in a castle where everyone just keeps talking, and there's very little action until later. Chrono Trigger is also weird in that it has that fair where you basically have to kill time with minigames before actual game starts. FF7 had a good starting pace, but those games you listed aren't really good examples.
You could distill the text dump into "evil empire, magic come back" though
I like the way you covered your ass with final fantasy 3/VI. Smart
Hi, This is a really good episode. Really enjoy it. Also Bro you should also play the Knight of lodis from Game boy. Much better than the one you play.
my dad got this on ps1 day one it came out i was like 6 by 9 i finally got to the end only for my older brother to tell me ahh yeah theres 7 other endings
@Jason Graves Side Note: Dorgalua Oberyth Valeria is not the main protagonist of the first Ogre Battle but rather it's Destin Faroda is the main protagonist instead. FYI please check first the lore before getting a solid & concrete evidence because it feels that you basically lying and backhanded us to a certain degree (Insult to our intelligence I might add LOL) And lastly I can understand that this game is not for everyone (especially to you) of course but please don't tell me that this game is one of the hardest strategy game ever because my question is that have you even tried Fire Emblem - Thracia 776 and my god I considered that the hardest one to finish and one that quit me many times than this game. For me I had a lot of memories to this game until now since I remember this game since I was started to play SRPG games before and I don't know what to play first since I got overwhelmed by many SRPG beforehand (Shinning Force, Fire Emblem Series, Front Mission, Etc) until I stumbled upon this game since it was introduced me by my old friend from high school since this was his favorite SRPG game and I got fascinated and intrigued by this one alone and it's true at first that I have a lot of hard time finishing the game (SNES version of TO: LUCT) and almost gave up but with the gaming walkthrough to this game and sheer determination I finally finished the game and I got the good ending as well. It's not a cakewalk of course but it's not literally a crossing to the landmine field either.
Happy to have found your channel and just subscribed! Question, though: why is "review" in quotes for your videos?
Was that a Red Hot Chili Peppers midi music I heard?
Hi Jason
hi!
I found the difficulty of the remake for PS5 much harder than the original. In the original you could just over level and destroy everything. Also I found the AI in the new game extremely stupid, with NPCs doing suicide runs into the enemy soldiers so you could not save them
The AI in the original game really wasn't any less suicidal though. This is almost a genre staple, as this issue also existed in Final Fantasy Tactics. The only non-suicidal NPCs you had to rescue were Rendal, and Selye, and the latter was only non-suicidal if the charm effect on her did *not* wear off early on in the fight (as she'd prioritize getting closer to your party over attacking enemies with the charm effect on -- if it wore off, she'd try to punch the templars and get killed on counterattack). I recall the forums about this game back in the early 2000s were always full of threads complaining about how suicidal guest npcs were in missions to rescue them, with Hoborym in C and L routes being one of the worst.
I would say OG TO wasn't even hard without overleveling, if one understood the underlying mechanics behind the speed/weight system and how to guarantee debuff spells to hit (in order for classes like "Witch" and "Warlock" to be effective, for example, one would level them up as Archer and Swordmaster/Ninja respectively, before switching them back into the caster class). I also wouldn't say the option of cheesing the game by just abusing the training system to get yourself overleveled early is a fair way to judge its overall difficulty. Sure you could conceivably set up training mode with two AI controlled clerics punching each other and healing themselves for 20 hours until they got to level 50, then having the rest of your party throw rocks at them until they got to level 50, and that would make the game a cakewalk, but generally speaking this is irrelevant to how difficult it is for a player who naturally goes through the game. And I can attest from experience the game can actually be done without the use of the training mode, at a level on average lower than the enemy, without losing any characters in battle. Overleveling is an option, but it's mostly a crutch for those unwilling to getgud.
Reborn itself is similarly not particularly difficult once one has an understanding of the mechanics -- it's certainly more forgiving thanks to a lack of permadeath at 0 hp and the availability of revive consumables... those 3 turns until death are very generous. Not to mention things like crafting, and the infinite money exploit to give the player an edge over enemies (using +1 pants, gauntlets and armors made the player's army always far more mobile than the enemy, and using +1 weapons was a game changer in a lot of other ways). Plus the enemies in Reborn almost never buffed themselves or debuffed the player - the AI will literally never use a buff/debuff ability which did not heal or hurt hp, unless it was a passive (notice no enemy ever casts Boon of Swiftness -- they only ever get a speed buff from the Speedstar autoskill). So in terms of difficulty, the AI in Reborn is always playing with one hand behind its back, and so kind of *needs* to be an advantage statwise to pose a challenge against all the options the player has unrestricted access to.
Commenting 4 algoritha- however you spell it.