Wolf Kanno and I have recently had this conversation about alignment systems in games. We agreed on one thing – it’s rarely done right. Most games I see that involve alignment systems generally boil down to a scale of “saint vs. complete asshole”. A good/evil system is very hard to work with when it comes to creating characters with actual depth. I already mentioned SMT as a game having an interesting alignment system based on a law/chaos scale. It’s a staple of that series. And yet, those games always present a pretty bleak scenario, where basically regardless of the placement on the law/chaos scale, people find ways to be assholes. And then there’s games that make that even more of a gray morality, where people do just as many heroic deeds and villainous acts in the name of upholding the law as they do when breaking the mold. One such magnificent gem is:
TACTICS OGRE: LET US CLING TOGETHER
Loads of people here are familiar with FF Tactics (oh, don’t worry – its time is coming ), but I found that the Final Fantasy fandom actually rarely mingles with the Ogre Battle fandom. FFT is partly the reason they regard us with such distaste, you know. What follows is a summary of a discussion on an Ogre Battle board concerning the PSP remake that I stumbled upon while playing this game. Before FFT, Tactics Ogre was THE Matsuno game. But then Matsuno sold out to Square and made a different, (subjectively) inferior game. Many a fan was very wary of the PSP remake, afraid that it would become FF: Tactics Ogre. Oh, the horror!
Pictured: an unspeakable abomination.
Really, though, from what I heard, the remake is a vastly superior game. I have never played the SNES original, even when it was rereleased on the PSX, and I heard the job system was changed substantially. Still, I loved what we got. It’s a bit weird in some aspects, for example, you level up jobs, not characters, so when you switch a new unit to a job you’ve leveled up to, say Lv. 14, that unit is now Lv. 14. You get to control a crapload of characters during a battle, but the enemy gets three times as many anyway, so that’s hardly an advantage. What I liked about this game was that there was a lot of story-relevant characters you could recruit, and they would still remain story-relevant, taking part in the dialogs and whatnot.
And there's heaps upon of heaps of classes. You can even have a whole army of monsters, if you wish!
Like in SMT, there’s the law, chaos and neutral route to choose from. However, the PSP version of this game introduces the World Tarot mechanic. After beating the game on one route, you get to keep playing, and you can go back to most of the previous story scenes and check out all the other possible outcomes. This is especially useful if you want to recruit all the special characters, since some of them may wind up dead or otherwise unavailable in other story-lines. So abusing some time paradoxes is necessary.
On to the story… Oh gosh. I really don’t want to spoil it for you guys. I’ll just say some general things. This is a Yasumi Matsuno game. If you come into this game knowing that, you know what to expect – a mature, politically-charged story, devoid of typical Japanese fantasy tropes. The world is usually pretty bleak, but not without hope, and your characters get caught up in all of this intrigue, suffering very much, like a real human being would. If you haven’t heard of Matsuno, let’s just say his stories are a bit like a Game of Thrones – a detailed fixation on the Medieval period with a very cynical, realistic worldview. Just with less boobs and gore. Like Martin, Matsuno usually bases his stories on real historical events. FF Tactics takes most of its inspiration from the War of the Roses, while Tactics Ogre is a fictionalization of the Yugoslavian conflict. Needless to say, the story is tangled, filled with backstabbing and betrayal. Pretty darn fantastic overall.
The impeccable localization surely helps drive the point home.
The music is done by Hitoshi Sakimoto and a couple of other guys I’m not that familiar with. If you’ve played the Ivalice games, you know what quality you can expect here.
I really recommend this game to SRPG fans, especially people who like FF Tactis, as this is kind of a spiritual predecessor to that game. Actually, the remake implements some aspects from FFT, so it’s kind of a weird hybrid at this point. I can’t vouch for the SNES version, but the PSP version is nothing short of brilliant. If you’re a Matsuno fan – what the hell are you waiting for?
), but I found that the Final Fantasy fandom actually rarely mingles with the Ogre Battle fandom. FFT is partly the reason they regard us with such distaste, you know. What follows is a summary of a discussion on an Ogre Battle board concerning the PSP remake that I stumbled upon while playing this game. Before FFT, Tactics Ogre was THE Matsuno game. But then Matsuno sold out to Square and made a different, (subjectively) inferior game. Many a fan was very wary of the PSP remake, afraid that it would become FF: Tactics Ogre. Oh, the horror!
