We've now reached the first of several Yasumi Matsuno games on this list, and this one is actually his first major title for Quest that involves all the staff we know and love, who us FF fans know as the Tactics Staff. With all that said, this is a pretty weird game if you go in with no preconception of what it is.
During the Age of Zeteginia, the Kingdom of Zenobia stood in splendor against the rest of the world, until King Gran was assassinated by the Sage Rashidi, who has conspired with Empress Endora to take over the lands. Now in exile, the Knights of Zenobia have gathered around a promising lord (that's you) who will either liberate the kingdom from the imperial scum or simply conquer the land to become it's new despot.
Suffice to say the premise isn't terribly original, but Matsuno, in his typical way, makes it very obvious that this isn't your cookie cutter rebels vs. empire shenanigans. As you begin to liberate the lands from the Empress, you'll quickly discover that the change in management has had some mixed results for the inhabitants of Zenobia, and that as idealistic as people talk about King Gran and his kingdom, it wasn't exactly as fairy tale nice for everyone involved.
This all ties into a central mechanic in the game, which is your reputation and alignment. Your actions in the game will change how the people view you, which will ultimately change what classes you can unlock and which of the game endings you're going to actually get. Will they see you as the Liberation Army, freeing them from the tyranny of the empire, or are you simply the nefarious Rebel Army that is cutting a swath of destruction across the land for your own benefit? This all plays out based on factors like the type of decisions you make when presented int battle. Do you spare the enemy general since their motives were actually pure? Do you hunt down retreating enemy units to squash their resistance? Does the RNG hate your guts, and you keep drawing bad karma Tarot Cards when you liberate a city or temple? It's a very intriguing concept that is only hampered by the limitations of the 16-bit format and how green the development team was at the time. Still, it's kind of fun to play something with so much ambition. I also give them props because they do subvert some expectations as well. There is a mad scientist character experimenting on the populace that you have the ability to spare when you defeat her. Unlike most games, sparing her is considered an evil act because she's not a very nice person, well at least in this entry...
The game is an RTS where you build units with between three and five recruits in each that help you fight off the enemy forces and until you can take the enemy stronghold held by the boss. While you personally direct the units across the map, so they can liberate cities, find treasures, and battle enemy units trying to retake their lost territory; battles are completely automated and work like classic Fire Emblem in some ways. When you engage a unit, you're taken to a battle screen that plays in auto-battle. You have no direct control of the units, but their attacks are based completely on how you set up their formation. This obviously makes formations incredibly important, as some units have unique abilities depending on if they are on the front lines or back row. Most of it is logical, such as mages only cast spell in the back row and fight with their staffs on the front, while knights get an extra turn to attack on the front lines but one in the back row. It gets a bit more complicated when you start unlocking Samurai who can do two attacks on the front line, but gain an ability that sacrifices their health to do a very powerful attack that can hit any enemy regardless of row.
So battles ultimately come down to how well you built the team as opposed to on the spot turn based shenanigans like a traditional JRPG, and I couldn't help notice the similarities to FFXII's Gambit system which works on the same premise. With that said, it's not all just staring at auto-battles because you can bring up a menu to give you a few other options such as retreating and changing the party A.I. to take advantage of the flow of battle. For instance, every unit has a designated leader, and killing them in battle will force the unit to retreat back to their home base to have them revived, so they can be redeployed. The unit can still be attacked while it's retreating, but this will affect your reputation and change your alignment. On the other hand, failing to destroy the whole unit means they'll be back after licking their wounds, so battles quickly transform into conflicts of holding territory and battling attrition. If your own unit loses its leader, they retreat back to the home base and are removed from battle until you spend money to redeploy them or use a revival item on them before they reach home. That's unless it's your character, if he dies, regardless how the battle is going, it's game over.
Classes are determined by an overly complex set of conditions involving levels, stats, alignment, reputation and whether you have certain transformation items. You start off mostly with Soldiers, Wizards, and Amazons as starting units, but each one evolves into unique classes that follow a specific class tree, much like the FF Tactics series and Tactics Ogre. Monsters and unique races like Mermaids and Hawk men just add more depth and things to keep track of. Unfortunately, we've now reached some of my gripes with the game. Like many early SNES RPG style games, the U.I. could be a hell of a lot better. Moving units feels sluggish due to poor delay from moving the cursor on the map with the d-pad, and is still noticeable with an analog stick if you're playing this through Wii-ware and a classic controller. The game does a poor job with showing all the information concerning a unit's stats, so unless you're on a specific screen, which involves a bit too much menu searching for a game that has you micromanage up to 50 individual characters. Also, if you were like me and simply picked this game up on virtual console or chose to emulate it, I hope you found a great internet guide to explain what items do what and the conditions needed for the various class changes cause nothing within the game is ever going to explain any of this to you and as you can rightfully tell from the previous four paragraphs, there is a trout ton of stuff to keep tabs on.
It's still incredibly charming if very rough around the edges, but the spite work in battles is excellent, Sakimoto, Iwata, and Musuo made a pretty killer soundtrack. The gameplay is a bit more hands off than I would care for, but the preparation and management of all of it makes this a very cerebral endeavor, so I've never actually been bored playing it, despite the large scale wars usually taking forever to complete. It might not be the best RTS, or Matsuno's best work, but the game is still super addictive and surprisingly ahead of its time.
Last edited by Wolf Kanno; 03-11-2023 at 07:10 AM.
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