Solid Tactics

As a long time fan of JRPGs, I’ve played many different SRPGs over the years but despite Ogre Battle being a long running and celebrated classic, I have only played one game in the series to completion- that being the SNES title, “Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen.”

There’s no real specific reason for this but it certainly didn’t help that some of its titles never made it stateside in its original run. However, out of all the releases in the franchise, the one I heard the most good things about was Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together on the PSP.

In fact, I had already purchased it on the PSV and had the intent to play it at some point but my backlog being what it is, it never happened. Luckily, good things come to those who procrastinate as I was happy to see the announcement for a remaster of the title with various improvements that promised to be the “definitive” experience and took the opportunity to make good on my earlier intentions by taking on this classic.

The trajectory of the story can radically change with the choices made.

MSRP: $49.99 (PC)
Platforms: PC, PS4/PS5, NSW
Played on: PC Specs i7 9700K 4.6GHZ/GTX 3080
Steam Deck Status: Verified, played perfectly.
Length: 55~ hours

Denam, Cautia and Vyce are three childhood friends who have a chance encounter with knights from another land and decide to take arms against their oppressors. However, with each battle won, they find themselves more and more disillusioned and at a loss at what it truly means to be on the side of justice.

They say that a good story is timeless and that sentiment is proven correct once more as Tactics Ogre Reborn presents an intriguing tale which was shaped by the choices that I made along the way. While there are many characters and factions to keep track of, the depiction of the character’s personalities as well as the unfolding drama was heighted thanks to the addition of full voice acting. Denam and co’s naivety in the face of political intrigue and how they evolve as characters as they are met with betrayal and hardship was the most compelling element of the experience.

While I would have liked more opportunities to speak with each individual character to learn more about them, there were some discoveries to be made by reading through the various “Talk” topics that will unlock over time. Reading these entries often opened up new combat encounters and opportunities to recruit optional characters.

Adding to the presentation is the higher definition character portraits and re-orchestrated music which was the perfect fit for drama unfolding on the screen. Personally, I’m not too fond of the aggressive filters put on the sprites that make them look a bit blurry but it was at least nostalgic and reminded me of those SNES emulator filters.

There are a lot of classes with their own unique skills that can shine in different situations.

Even though I don’t have many complaints when it comes to the story and characters, the combat and overall balance is another matter entirely.

As I was playing through the game, I noticed that each battle encounter would take significant time and I figured as I would get stronger, I could move things along a bit faster. However, the opposite ended up being true with some regular enemies taking more than 4-6 attacks to take down. Normally, I would do a bit of grinding to get stronger in situations like this but in this title, that made that an impossibility with the addition of the “Union Levels.”

What this amounts to is a hard cap on maximum levels on all my units depending on my place in the story and despite this, enemies were scaled to be higher level than my potential maximum most of the time which always had me feeling like I was fighting from a disadvantage. While I can appreciate the game trying to cater the experience to be well balanced and challenging all the way through, the inflated HP change made from the PSP version where all units HP has been multiplied by 3-5 times of what it was originally, battles could often last more than 30 minutes.

Despite this massive change in HP pools, the damage output of the units remained mostly the same as well as the frequency of the battles which made the game feel like an absolute slog to get through. Even though I was able to take advantage of the fast forward feature, it certainly didn’t feel fast enough and after one or two encounters, I wanted to take a break.

Long range spells were a must to try to focus down enemies.

As for the combat itself, it felt solid but pretty basic overall. Having played other eccentric SRPGs like the Disgaea series with many layers of mechanics, Tactics Ogre Reborn felt overly simple and while testing out different classes and skill loadouts was fun enough initially, even the practice battles were taking far too long and once I hit the level cap which only took a few battles, I wasn’t incentivized to continue.

All acquisition of skills was simply based on levels and spells had to be purchased at shops. While there was a crafting system, it didn’t feel essential to success as the improvements made to the gear often felt rather insignificant and not worth the trouble.

Lastly, there was an auto-battle mechanic that I could use by choosing an AI program like “Full Attack”, “Long Range Attack” or “Prioritize Healing” but after discovering that I had permanently lost a character during an AI battle by being incapacitated for over 3 turns, I stopped using this feature.

So… many… battles.

With improved presentation and various quality of life changes, Tactics Ogre Reborn is a worthy remaster in all areas except for one. However, that one ends up being one of the most important as with poor balancing of difficulty with union levels and an overly inflated HP pool, it became an absolute chore to play early on in the experience and never quite recovered.

Fun Tidbit: Perhaps they can release a patch to either undo that change or give players the ability to modify the HP pools of all units which would make for a much better experience overall.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.