Most of the changes are clear improvements though. At the same time, as a purist with a soft spot for Tactics Ogre’s slower pace and longer battles, I wish there was a way to turn it off, as you have the choice of doing with the voiceovers. On the whole, it can help cut down on some of the game’s more tedious moments as you try to break an enemy’s hold on the high ground or take down an especially powerful boss unit (a turn do-over system and fast-forward option also help). It’s a way to help make Tactics Ogre’s combat hit heavier and resolve more quickly, helping you dispatch an enemy in three hits rather than six (unlike, say, Fire Emblem where it almost never takes more than two). The card bonuses only last as long as each battle, and can swiftly turn the tide depending on who gets them first. The blue ones bestow buffs like higher critical hit rates, stronger magic, or higher defence, while the red cards remove them. In addition to vanquished enemies dropping green cards that permanently boost a unit’s stats, blue and red cards also randomly spawn throughout a battle. (Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku)Īnother big departure is the tarot card system. The new Tarot cards quickly start to litter the battlefield. A “party level” limits how far any one unit can level up until you progress further in the game. But don’t think you can grind your way to success. Instead, the training mode has returned where you can set your troops to spar on auto-pilot. Random encounters on the map while travelling from one story beat to another are gone. Unlike in the PSP version, characters level up rather than their classes, freeing you to play around more with different party compositions and loadouts. The remaster makes a number of other changes and additions as well. The returning Wheel of Fortune system, meanwhile, let’s you revisit earlier points in the branching story. Each battle feels heightened, each betrayal more sinister. As with the voice acting, it brings out a whole new level of depth in Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata’s fantastic score. On paper that seemed like a neat addition, but in practice it’s transformative. Reborn also introduces orchestral arrangements of all the original music. While I ultimately preferred to stick with the Japanese voice acting, the English cast is surprisingly excellent and a worthwhile addition that helps add a whole new dimension and emotional subtext to the story. Each scene is fully voiced now, and with minimal cringe as well. You would have gotten most of this from the original game as well, but Reborn is a remaster of a remaster, building on the improvements that were already made in the PlayStation Portable version released in 2010. The writing in Tactics Ogre remains full of great lines and no nonsense. You play as a trio of downtrodden youths trying to take back their land from neighbouring occupiers, tinkering with your roster of troops and feasting on wonderfully written scenes in-between battles as dukes, kings, and other leaders decide your fate like pawns on a chessboard. Units on one side, consisting of knights, archers, wizards, dragons and other classes, fight against enemies on the other. If you’re completely unfamiliar with the game and the tactical RPG subseries it hails from, Tactics Ogre spends most of its time on isometric battlefields divided into squares. It’s not as approachable as Final Fantasy Tactics, but its Realpolitik approach to war and revolution resonate as strongly as ever. And while both offer surprisingly mature tales of class politics and the corruption of power, Tactics Ogre lets players make a handful of choices along the way and then sit with the consequences at the end of the game. shores soon after despite first releasing in Japan a few years earlier) reveled in slower-moving battles of attrition where positioning and terrain matter as much as character classes. in January 1998 - focused on manipulating an over-powered job system to break the game with dual-wielding ninjas and massive summons, Tactics Ogre (which hit U.S. Where Final Fantasy Tactics - released in the U.S. Tactics Ogre: Reborn, out Friday on PlayStation, PC, and Switch, is the grittier, more granular predecessor to Final Fantasy Tactics (both were directed by Yasumi Matsuno of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII acclaim). I was worried the remaster, with its smoothed-over pixel art and other tweaks, would tarnish what I love about the classic tactics game. Nearly 30 years later, Tactics Ogre: Reborn has managed to safely transport a masterpiece into the modern era while sprucing it up enough so that it’s still a joy to play. The original Tactics Ogre proved that RPG chess was not only fun, it could also be morally ambiguous, beautifully written, and deeply compelling.
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