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Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (TO) is such an old game(in terms of release date, NOT gameplay or story), that I often doubt the choice made by Atlus for releasing this game over here to the US so late. The PSX version of the game uses the VERY same hand-drawn graphics that were used in the Super Famicom version. I figure that there will be special-effects and graphic maniacs who are out there looking for its flaws since this game is highly competitive even when compared with some "strategy" games for the PSX created not so long time ago.
Okay, let's go for a review for the Japanese PSX version of TO. The story took place in an island called Valeria, time was a few years after the legendary war of Ogre Battle. Here, after the king's death, there were conflicts of who shall be the new leader. The two different minorities of the island, Galgastan and Walstan, were having massive disagreements on many issues. This island was notorious for its conflicts between the minorities and churches even before the king's death. The death of the king, and with the help and plotting of the Bishop Buranda, a ruler of the social elitist (the people of Bucram) of the island, the war broke out between the two races while the Bucram people are slowly controlling the country. With the helps of the Dark Knights of the Losrorian Empire, Buranda was successful in taking over half of the island in the middle of the war. The leader of Galgastan, Lord Balbatos, started the war called "Racial Purification," trying to kill off the Walstan people, and succeed in capturing his arch rival, the leader of the Galstan people, Duke Ronwey. A year later, as the execution date of Duke Ronwey coming closer, in a small port town called Coliath, a few youngsters were plotting the murdering of the Dark Knight Lancelot, the leader of the Dark Knights, but what awaits them is a silver-armor paladin with a mission…
The game starts off with an intro, which is not FMV but a beautiful and artistic, hand-drawn opening. The most noticeable features of this game should be its beautiful graphic and melodious, yet dark-mood music. Every single thing in this game were hand-drawn (except for a little CG effect). I remember that I bought the music CDs before I got the game for the Super Famicom (damn expensive imports…). I had no idea what and how the music will be like. I was a bit disappointed with the fact that the music are darken and not-so-melodious when compared with FF 6 or FF5's music (FF7's go away). But when I finally played this game, I found out that the music fits the game more than anything game out there (I think it's not possible to compare that of Tenchu because TO has 40+ tracks and these are two different genres).
This is a very typical strategy game, so there will be NO fast battle like many other "strategy" games out there. You can have up to ten members in the battle field at once (not counting the NPC characters.), often the enemies will have about the same number, or one or two more character(s), this means there is no way one or two characters can dominate the battle field. The are about 16 classes for male fighters, and about 8 for females, and a few hidden, such as the lord, which can be discovered by doing… (nah I'm not telling) According to the route you have chosen, your character will end up having different classes for you to choose, also, Kachua, main character's sister, has three different classes that are not available for other females (high-priestess, dark-priestess, and princess). The classes ranged from soldier to berserker to warlock.
The class you choose will affect the status of the character: if you are a ninja, you can use double attack (no ability points needed, and this attack along will not lead you any where close to victory), and you can jump higher than other classes, and you will have better speed and a lower weight point, which will determine how fast your turn of action should come. If you are a berskerker, however, you will have really great attack and defense, while slower in speed. Females' classes are often famous for their indirect attacks: priestess, witch, etc. But classes like valkyrie and archer are sometimes even deadlier than other male classes. Many of the classes are traditional from the magic fantasies, such as knights and witches.
Each class has its own favorite weapon, and with that they can perform a little bit better than other weapons. But any one can equip any weapon, but that is not the wise way. You can tell that a class is using its favorite weapon by the different attacking position. Let's take valkyrie for example. If a valkyrie is equipping a sword, she will simply do a over head strike. But once equipped with a lance, she will first hold the lance with one hand, swing and spin to the other hand from behind, and pull it from the back with the other hand and stab. If a knight is equipped with a sword, he will pull it out (good sound effects of sword rubbing the sheath, rise it to the air (Brave Heart!!), and strikes from the top to the bottom. The sound effects for attacking a are bit improved from the SFC counterpart, but not much to get too excited about.
The weight point (WP) of this game is a very important element. As I had mentioned earlier, the WP is what determines how fast your turn will come. WP is affected by the class and the equipment you have. There aren't that many weapons for you to select. But once you had selected the weapon, your life will be depended on it for a LONG time (the reason I like this game is the fact that, I really have the feeling of "Live by the sword, and Die by the sword" feel which not many games can offer). The heavier the weapon, the stronger it's attack (this is not the case with some legendary weapons that are used by the White Knights and Paladin Lancelot, as well as the Dark Knights). But as you progress in the game, you won't simply buy the expensive weapons but quite picky at what to equip. The lightness of weaker weapons will allow you avoid attacks better, and have a higher hit rate and lessen the WP. So this is the trade off: stronger but heavier and slower weapons, or lighter but weaker and less WP weapons. The different items/relics you equip will also affect the WP tremendously. You can have massive armor on and have great defense, but you will be the one walking behind while the others are not-so-happily engaged in massive combat. The different equipment will really affect the battle since you are only allowed to equip up to four items/armor/weapons. Often I found myself equipping the very basics because they give me the best overall defense and speed. This sounds complicated? YES IT IS COMPLICATED! So if you don't have much confidence in digesting what I had said, you might be lost for a while in the game, BUT not for long because that happened to me when I first played this game. Every single class can throw a rock to inflict little damage. But if you do nothing instead of performing an action, your turn will come faster. It's much like Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT), so FFT players can understand many of the elements found in this game, but just incase some people don't know, this game came out earlier than FFT and were done by most of the programmers who did FFT).
Okay let's go to the battle! And this is where every single member of yours will "CLING TOGETHER." The battle fields are BIG, and are very detailed (due to the fact that they are 2-D). The fields range from swamps to grasslands to castles. Different grounds will affect how the out come of an attack/defense will be. The thing that got into my nerve numerous times in FFT is the fact that not much physics were employed in the field, at least not as much as this TO. In this game, you really feel the different fields will affect your battle strategies. For example, if you have an archer, you will soon discover that, the higher she goes (or who ever has a bow or rock), the further away she shoots. You can simply ignore the range-meter outlined for you and aim for somewhere further away, and you can see that the arrow will go to where you aimed. This is a very important element of this game, because in the later fields you will encounter archers guarding the castles with their bows, and it's almost impossible to dodge their attacks. There is NO way you can equip the ability high jump and fly to the above and kill them off. This really makes many of the classes (archer, gunner, etc) useful even towards the end of the game.
There are much strategy in choosing the classes you want to have in battles, but there are even more strategy in the battle itself. You have to put classes together which its members will aid each other. This game is impossible if you don't have different classes since there is no secondary ability for you to equip. The Loyalty point is what affects which classes you can choose. A loyalty person (L) can choose to be a Sword Master and exorcist, etc, because they are loyal to a leader or a church/god, while they can't become a berserker. A chaotic (C) person can choose to be a berserker or Terror Knight (my favorite), but not knights. Neutral (N) person can choose some L classes, and some C classes, also a few N classes (handsome Dragon Slayer, atheist gunner etc).
While the battle ground matters, so does the height (as mentioned earlier). When you attack, or being attacked, the one being hit will counter attack with the weapon equipped, NOT with ability. So this will really make you consider before attack a Dark Knight or a strong guy. This makes the game much more realistic and more brain-drilling. It will be wise to keep the magicians all the way at the back because they can't take too much hits, while fighters can take the trade off and attack. My favorite element about the battle: since this game has no ability points, you can't counter with things like "auto potion," and if you are standing two levels above your enemy, and you attack from above, there is no way he/she/it can counter the attack. He can block, but unless he's holding a lance or a whip, he can only wait in pain from above before his turn should come (BY the way, incase some are soooo slow, this game uses the same format FFT uses: whoever charge up the WP first will have his/her turn) If you can use auto potion, then the element of going-above-and-attack is useless because the target will heal no matter where and how you attack him/her/it.
This strategy, along with the realism of physics and WP, is so fun and useful, it really makes sense that you sent you troops to a higher ground. Since the enemies often have better and more strategically planned position of their troops, every level will be different and prove to be fun and hard. Different characters will go into different grounds. For example, an archer can go to wet and slippery grounds, while knights will be VERY clumsy in swamps and ice lands. Your team will NOT survive if you don't consider the grounds your troops will be standing on. For example, a knight who can inflict 100 damage standing a cement-ground, will only inflict about 60 on a wet or ice ground; the same goes to defense.
I think the most important element of this game in whole is the story line. It's just too darn good. And the best of all, there are two endings (possible three, but I'm not so sure) with many scenes that will show up ONLY if you keep your characters. For example, if you keep the two White Knights and Canopus ( he is the winged guy from Ogre Battle, the white knights are Paladin Lancelot's subjects, where is Warren and Paladin Lancelot in the end? Find out yourself!), they will be talking about some fun encounters with the Dark Knights before they ride the ship home (the Dark Knights said that Canopus is a bird and they wanted ToriYaki, or fried bird, for lunch). If you kept one of the four sisters, Ovilia (no not Ovelia), she will go with the main character, Denim Powell, and started their journey of a life time.
Often in this game, if you can save some NPC, you will be opened to many other goodies such as more characters and events. For example, if you succeed in saving a green magician, Brian, he will teach you where a member of their force is, and you can save her to complete your list of the Four Sisters. There are many areas where you can choose where you want to go, and this was what made me spend weeks and weeks of sleepless nights on this game. At the end of each chapter ( 4 chapters in one time, and more than that if you choose different routes), you will given the option of choosing which way you want to go. For example, at the end of the first chapter, as you freed a concentration camp of slaves, and were having a hard time persuading them to join your force, a royal knight of the rebel force will come. He brought forth a command from their leader: kill every single living being of the village.
You will found out that the leader wanted to raise the anger among the Galstan people by telling them that it was their common enemy who killed the villagers. At this point you are given two options (which will affect the endings): 1) You know your role and follow the order, and 2) You will NOT dirty your hand for your own dreams. If you choose 2, then your head will be wanted by bounty hunters because, you had been crowned the name of a betrayer by your people under the influences of your ex-leader.
One good thing is the fact that you will feel very good about yourself. Also, your Loyalty point will be Chaos (C), and you can no longer become a knight. Let me say a few things about the loyalty points. In the world of Valeria, there are two gods: the God of Darkness and Freedom, Asmodee, and the Goddess of Light and Order, Ishtalle. If you choose to go your own way, they will say that you are under the God Asmodee, and if you choose to follow orders from church and leader, you will be following the Goddess Ishtalle's order. But many times you will see that those who follow the Goddess are nothing but selfish pigs who use their laws and orders to control the people, while those who followed Asmodee are people who are after freedom in this chaotic land. But there can be two kinds of followers of Asmodee: those true evil people, or those who hates laws and commands. So even if you don't like a thing about Asmodee, he is just a representation of chaotic and freedom-seekers ( he looks like a typical demon, while Ishtalle looks like Athena and holds and curved blade). Being C doesn't mean you are evil, it's merely someone who follows his own set of rule. L doesn't mean virtuous good, but merely a dog of his ruler or church (keep in mind that most of the Dark Knights, who were murders and demons, were all-the-way Loyalty classes simply because they followed orders).
In the later chapter, you can decide to go back to the leader or go your own way, which will also affect your story and classes tremendously. This way, you will have right classes for you to use (other members will not change) for the position you are in. And yes, it's almost impossible to be a virtuous knights because a knight had to follow orders, whatever they could be…
The battles are long, and this will add to the story. Did you have those experience in FFT that, there should be dialogs happening between the characters, but you will have to wait for their turns to come to see them. But since the battles are short and field is small, you will kill the enemies BEFORE they can say much. But here, the hard battles and vast battle ground will make sure you see every single dialog. Since other characters will have a lot to do with the overall storyline, so if you keep some alive you will see more of the story, for example, if you have all the three sisters and challenge the last one, they will have some sister-chatting.
At last but not least, the music, which is the magic that put the whole dark-mood game and story together. The music was intent to be dark and conspiracy-filled. There are many tracks. For example, if you rescue some pals or in some serious discussion, the music "The Theme of WLO (Walstan Liberal Organization)" will be playing, and if there are evil plots taking place, songs like "Religious Concept," or "Insincerity" will be playing. It happens that the music really fits the game. Some might not like the all-real instruments that were being used or the symphonic composition of the music, BUT as I play I feel like watching a movie, or a western drama/play. Speaking of a play, there is an option for you to watch all the important stories that had taken place (YES there are many similarity between this and FFT) If there should be one flaw, and it will be the level setting. In this game, all the enemies are set up in a way that they will have the same level as your highest leveled character. This will provide difficulty level, but if you are attacking a castle, where two battles will take place one after another, you will have to be careful not to make one level up. Luckily it is not easy to level up in this game.
You can always train the characters to reach the same level while you are on the world map, but when you are coming closer to the last stage, where you have to fight over ten continuous battles, this will be quite trouble some. You should divide the number of kills between your fighters. One more thing: all characters will die if they get kill. There is no counter above their body. You can only resurrect them if you have the magic resurrection, and it only resurrects those who died in the very battle where you chant the magic. This might be quite hard for beginners to enjoy, but when I first play this game I was a beginner myself, and I managed to digest it, so I hope you can, too.
Since this game was made first in a 16-bit system, many of the elements of this game is quite different from many PSX "next-generation" games. Among the most obvious is the fact that even this is a PSX version, the maps are unrotatable, and there is not much of graphical special effects. For those who feel that this rapid-growing game genre (RPG, strategy, simulation, etc) which emphasize more on special effects and eye candies is too tiring, then this game might be greatest for you. One thing about this PSX version: when you attack using projectiles, it will take a second to load the attack, while this is not the case in the SFC version. This is not some really serious problem ,and if you clean your CD drive often, the loading is quite smooth. During the loading the music flows smoothly. The loading time of going to a battle is not at all that long. Some of the tracks in this version now emphasize a BIT more on the treble side. That means some of the instruments are more outgoing than others. And some of the sound effects were changed to fit the battle a bit more (like the knight pulling the sword out is now better, which I like), but I'm not saying that I like some of the "outgoing" instruments…what a purist I am.
Graphics 8.5
+ All characters were drawn with a more mature aspect (by the same artist who drew those of FFT), and really fit the world they are in (that means they all have noses.)
+ The most detailed 2-D strategy game ever!
+ Beautiful classes design that fits the time era.
- In this polygon-filled world some might not interested in hand-drawn characters and back grounds that which are just too detailed.
Music 9
+ Many great and memorable tracks (DRAMATIC is the point).
+ Music that really fits the environment and story (when Denim found out who he really is, or at the scene of "the Disparition of Kachua (^^;)," you will see how close the music fits the story/mood)
- Some short temper players might find the music scores build up slowly, and due to their nature, they might resist such a traditional element of western orchestra music.
- Too dark for some… ^^;
Gameplay 9
+ Great stage design. Great strategy in many stages.
+ The amount of classes and the differences between them.
+ Hardcore strategy players in game-heaven. Truthful gamers one step closer to game-heaven.
- Might be too hard for some…?
Story 9.5
+ Many different ways to end the game should make this game the best storyline(s) ever.
+ Very mature theme. If you like those of FFT then you like this, but able to change your fate makes this game more SATISFYING than FFT.
Replay Value 10
+ Multi-endings really make players going back for more and more.
-Again, short-temper players might not be good enough to see all of them
Overall 9
This game might not for everyone because this a truth STRATEGY, NOT a blending of some RPG or action with "strategy." For today's many over-blended genres this game might not be loved by some gamers, but if you want to enjoy a great strategy game, or simply a great game with great music and story and gameplay, then this is a must. If you enjoy killing your enemies, or killed by your enemies, with fast and godly skills, look elsewhere (namely FFT).
Ps. You can also name your troop with whatever name you can come up with…My troop: "Chaotic Steel Riders." Kanji provided… ^^; Since the US version is coming out, some of you might consider the US version. But if you are interested in the Japanese version, the amount of Japanese is MUCH, and you really need to be at least an intermediate reader in order to understand.
Comments, only if friendly (wanted to help out) and cussing-less, are HIGHLY welcome! The point of this review is NOT to thrash games like FFT (I figured that FFT is made for a different audience), but mainly to introduce a game that not many cared to take a good look at.