What are you playing right now?

[Jordan]

I enjoyed triangle strategy so much I decided to give tactics ogre reborn a go.

I am really glad I did. At first glance, the game looks and feels like final fantasy tactics, but in my opinion at least this game takes a big fat crap on all the plots of fft games and other tactics sort of games, which includes triangle strategy too. The story is REALLY gripping imo. Apparently the game was inspired partly by the borderline genocidal wars following the breakup of yugoslavia and it shows. The game's three main races feel like some kind of strange allusion to serbs, bosniaks, and croats in their zero sum, no holds barred conflicts for control of the 90s, but as if all of this happened in a sort of medieval fantasy setting. I really love the way this game handles the ideas of race and war as part of the narrative. I am only about 8 or so hours into this one but the plot has really captured my attention.

I feel the gameplay could use some work though. I am less decided on that aspect. It isn't horrible or bad by any means, but I would have to really break everything down and analyze it to see how it stacks up with other srpgs I enjoy.

[Gray Riders]

After finishing off Tears of the Kingdom I'm planning to get to Cassette Beasts, part of the recent wave of games created by people who were kids when Pokémon came out and were inspired by it.

I enjoyed triangle strategy so much I decided to give tactics ogre reborn a go.

I am really glad I did. At first glance, the game looks and feels like final fantasy tactics, but in my opinion at least this game takes a big fat crap on all the plots of fft games and other tactics sort of games, which includes triangle strategy too. The story is REALLY gripping imo. Apparently the game was inspired partly by the borderline genocidal wars following the breakup of yugoslavia and it shows. The game's three main races feel like some kind of strange allusion to serbs, bosniaks, and croats in their zero sum, no holds barred conflicts for control of the 90s, but as if all of this happened in a sort of medieval fantasy setting. I really love the way this game handles the ideas of race and war as part of the narrative. I am only about 8 or so hours into this one but the plot has really captured my attention.

I feel the gameplay could use some work though. I am less decided on that aspect. It isn't horrible or bad by any means, but I would have to really break everything down and analyze it to see how it stacks up with other srpgs I enjoy.

Tactics Ogre is an absolute gem; apparently it's actually very famous in Japan, but it got overshadowed by FFT in the west, likely because Tactics Ogre seems to have had a fairly limited release there.

Funny note; of the three main releases the game has had all of them play very differently (the "buff cards" that spawn in didn't exist in earlier versions, for instance, and you could hire monsters like Dragons straight from towns in the original release but not the later ones), so each release has had some fighting in the fanbase over the changes.

[Yoshitaka Ouchi]

You know, I actually have Tactics Ogre: Reborn but have been hesitant to play it before the SNES version since I suspect I'll enjoy the SNES version more due to it being the original, rawer English localization, and mechanical differences I've read about. I suspect it'll be like playing two different games that just so happen to have the same story, and I can't say which one I'll like more before I play them both, but I am probably going to play the SNES version first.

Lately, I've returned to Morrowind, a game that's fairly new to me but has been the game I've played most in the past year. Ridiculously open and flexible, I've spent at least a thousand hours already and have only chipped the iceberg in terms of quests, exploration, and even mechanics. Weirdly enough, it's as if this was the proper sequel to Oblivion which, in turn, was the proper sequel to Skyrim due to how massive Morrowind is in terms of both mechanic depth and breadth; quality and quantity. That's before getting into modding, this being the very first game I've ever modded (of 3 I've learned to mod), and the only one I've made mods for over the course of learning the game on a technical level.

[Gray Riders]

You know, I actually have Tactics Ogre: Reborn but have been hesitant to play it before the SNES version since I suspect I'll enjoy the SNES version more due to it being the original, rawer English localization, and mechanical differences I've read about. I suspect it'll be like playing two different games that just so happen to have the same story, and I can't say which one I'll like more before I play them both, but I am probably going to play the SNES version first.

As someone who played the PSX version I'd definitely recommend doing the classic version before Reborn if you're planning to do both; Reborn has a lot of extra story scenes and the gameplay is generally much smoother (the SNES/PSX version has a silly issue where higher tier equipment is mostly worse--in fact, in most cases having armor is worse than being unarmored because they made armor too heavy--which isn't an issue in Reborn), so I think it could be frustrating to go from it to the original. I do think the original English writing has some charms to it, and the later localization (used in PSP and Reborn) sadly has an issue where there's at least two important dialogue options where the English version messed up and made it much harder to choose what you want to say compared to the original version (in one case a "Yes" and "No" was turned into two different "No" options but one counts as yes).
The guy who translated them has a pretty good reputation but that mess up makes it hard for me to have such a lofty view.

Lately, I've returned to Morrowind, a game that's fairly new to me but has been the game I've played most in the past year. Ridiculously open and flexible, I've spent at least a thousand hours already and have only chipped the iceberg in terms of quests, exploration, and even mechanics. Weirdly enough, it's as if this was the proper sequel to Oblivion which, in turn, was the proper sequel to Skyrim due to how massive Morrowind is in terms of both mechanic depth and breadth; quality and quantity. That's before getting into modding, this being the very first game I've ever modded (of 3 I've learned to mod), and the only one I've made mods for over the course of learning the game on a technical level.

Morrowind has a special place for me because it was the very first game I recall needing a new PC to run.
The game just has so much .

[Yoshitaka Ouchi]

As someone who played the PSX version I'd definitely recommend doing the classic version before Reborn if you're planning to do both; Reborn has a lot of extra story scenes and the gameplay is generally much smoother (the SNES/PSX version has a silly issue where higher tier equipment is mostly worse--in fact, in most cases having armor is worse than being unarmored because they made armor too heavy--which isn't an issue in Reborn), so I think it could be frustrating to go from it to the original. I do think the original English writing has some charms to it, and the later localization (used in PSP and Reborn) sadly has an issue where there's at least two important dialogue options where the English version messed up and made it much harder to choose what you want to say compared to the original version (in one case a "Yes" and "No" was turned into two different "No" options but one counts as yes).
The guy who translated them has a pretty good reputation but that mess up makes it hard for me to have such a lofty view.

I'm sure they're different enough that one cannot be readily said to be the upgrade of the other, but I'll probably do as you say anyway because I don't like some of the little changes I read about (such as not being able to buy cute dragons or have random encounters on the overworld) and the music was done better with the original.

Morrowind has a special place for me because it was the very first game I recall needing a new PC to run.
The game just has so much .

Yeah. I have a bit of a history with Morrowind, since it was not the first time I tried playing it when I did my first complete playthrough last year, but actually my third.

Originally, back when I was a school student, a friend let me borrow his copy (that I could barely run on my low-end laptop) and, being completely new to PC gaming (as opposed to console gaming), I struggled to even set it up properly and made the huge mistake of browsing the Nexus and downloading and installing loads of mods that resulted in a super laggy world full of triangles! Even so, I did have fun wandering towards Vivec and eventually got so lost in the city it was the end of my first experience with the game.

Later, as in, many years later shortly after my school years, I bought a copy of the game for my Xbox 360 but couldn't play it due to not having a necessary piece of hardware. I tried to cheap out by buying a 3rd party hard drive and it didn't work, but, at least, I only wasted $15 dollars on a copy of a game I still can't play but the real pain was the sheer disappointment since I was very excited.

It was only last year that I figured out how to play it on my computer, using OpenMW, and was able to actually play it properly for the first time. I didn't start delving into modding until months later, like maybe last November or so assuming I started playing Morrowind around Summer of last year, so I had a few full playthroughs of a mostly vanilla experience. My very first wound up being rather short since I discovered the Fortify Intelligence alchemy exploit and made a Fortify Health potion that soft-locked me (unless I console commanded or reloaded to an earlier save) so I considered it the end of my brief first playthrough since I felt bad for having such ridiculous power. I was very happy to discover I could play using a PS4 controller, though, since that was a huge issue I had with PC gaming (painful to do with a keyboard and touchpad). My second playthrough, the first I actually completed, retraced my steps in entering the Balmora Mage's Guild after traveling via Palegiad from Seyda Neen, and ultimately went to complete both the Mage's Guild and House Hlaalu before I called it a complete playthrough. My third went fairly similarly, except this time as a High Elf and joining Telvanni instead of Hlaalu, and ended after I slew Almalexia and Her Hands in Mournhold.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed the breadth and depth, but my biggest gameplay complaint was how hard it was to find a good balance for the game since it's way too easy to become OP and I hated having to restrain myself so much. Getting into modding eventually fixed all of these problems because I could rebalance the game to be a lot more engaging and less punishing of my natural tendency to optimize and exploit systems and mechanics. Now, a thousand hours later, I'm doing my first Imperial Mage and using the Persuasive Speech mod to effect a "Personality build" where you can recruit a number of NPCs to be companions based on your combined Speechcraft and Personality (divided by 20, hard-capping at 10 total companions) while semi-casually exploring Vivec (my favorite city alongside Balmora) and seeing what I can get up to with a character aimed at being "lawful good" while broadly intending to settle himself into a new life in Morrowind.

[Jordan]

I played a playstation version of Tactics Ogre years ago, but my memory of it is incredibly fuzzy. All I remember is that I rented it, didn't like it much, and didn't get too far. I was really young at the time, and whether or not it was the same game essentially as Reborn, and whatever depth it had completely flew over my head.

As a now 33 year old adult, I can definitely say I like Tactics Ogre Reborn way better than Final Fantasy Tactics, though not really in terms of gameplay. Not that the gameplay is bad, but I dunno, some things just feel kind of janky. I still think that considering this game is originally from like 1995, even taking into account some rebalances and changes, the game holds up amazingly and should be considered at the same level as the top behemoths in the genre. But there are a few things I don't really like, and here I think that maybe it's a bit unfair to play the game now after 20 years of srpgs have gone by and my standards are a lot higher.

Guest characters are a horrible idea. I hate them so much that I sometimes go out of my way to kill them once the enemies become manageable, or before the battle lines are fully drawn, so they don't screw up something like me trying to recruit a character, or do something else which annoys me. The ones that perma die if they are killed in battle are of course the worst, because in that instance there is nothing I can do about their ruinous existence. I also frequently take off all their equipment to mitigate the self-damage they can do. If they don't perma die, I take no effort to save them if enemies target them. I just don't see the purpose of why you can't control these characters, even if they are temporary. It's just bad game design for this particular issue.

The loyalty system feels really pointless imo.

Recruitment rates seem to cap out around 30-40% in battles, but recruitment is kind of pivotal so it just feels very unnecessarily RNGy. This is mitigated with the fact that you basically have infinite uses of a turnwheel ala Fire Emblem Three Houses. If you didn't have that, the game would honestly be a pain a lot of the time. However, it feels like a lot of the time you have to use this turnwheel purely for recruitment RNG, which feels kind of stupid. Once you have an enemy down to very low HP, I feel like it should have been easier to recruit, or maybe there should have just been a 100% capture attack option. the game also doesn't explain certain things such as how recruitment works too well.

The balance feels very all over the place. I'm not sure whether the game is imbalanced or not. One thing I find very stupid: Is there any real reason not to use a generic winged [insert class] over a generic human counterpart? It's literally the exact same thing, except that the winged unit can fly, giving it better mobility options.

I also feel like the way exp works makes it frustrating/grindy to get all your characters on par, because you want a diverse roster in this game to deal with different challenges, but when you only have like 8-10 deployment slots, inevitably characters fall behind and it feels like you are meant to grind a little, which I really don't want to do. However, there were points in the game where I felt compelled to do so.

One particularly egregious thing that occurred in my playthrough was that you have at least one battle that's a one on one where you can only deploy your protagonist. This required me to change my protag's class and grind for levels and weapon levels just so he could deal with it, as early on I screwed around with making him an archer not really expecting this kind of forced bs. I almost restarted the whole game because of this.

One last nitpick is that I feel like knockback feels a bit arbitrary.

Despite all this, I've really enjoyed the game so far. The game still has a pretty robust class system with a lot of options. The classes do feel unique enough from each other to make experimentation worthwhile, but it gives you some diverse options. Unlike FFT, as far as I know there isn't really cross-classing or combination stuff you can make use of, so it's more about figuring out what kind of composition you need than minmaxing individual characters. Weapon type is very important and makes a big difference in terms of what each character can do. There are some unique and interesting mechanics in this. Every character has four item slots and I've found that these really matter a lot. Only certain classes can recruit certain other classes, which gives some an important role. I like the card mechanic personally. It adds some strategy to battles because you have to decide how to best make use of positioning to get the cards on the ground OR focus down certain enemies that become a threat with them. Like FFT, equipment can be critical, vastly altering what kinds of passive skills characters have, and specifically in Tactics Ogre, the types of finishing moves that they get.

I usually value gameplay more than story, but in Tactics Ogre's case, I feel like the story elevates what would be a good, but maybe not top tier game into a top tier game. The story is just so good and enjoyable to me. Of all the srpgs I've played, it probably has my favorite story.

[Gray Riders]

Not that the gameplay is bad, but I dunno, some things just feel kind of janky. I still think that considering this game is originally from like 1995, even taking into account some rebalances and changes, the game holds up amazingly and should be considered at the same level as the top behemoths in the genre. But there are a few things I don't really like, and here I think that maybe it's a bit unfair to play the game now after 20 years of srpgs have gone by and my standards are a lot higher.

It's a bit odd; both the PSP and Reborn made major changes to the game--PSP was vastly different from SNEX/PSX and Reborn significantly overhauled the systems from the PSP version. I think it's entirely possible for someone to play all three and love one but hate the others, or hate one in particular.
But they seemed reluctant to just outright cut things for the most part, and some of the leftovers don't quite slot in well--Loyalty was a much bigger deal in the older versions but is very easy to raise in Reborn, for instance.

Part of the issue is that the English version, at least (not sure about the Japanese ones) re-used the PSP script and didn't update it to account for mechanics changes. For instance, the various automatic skills that guarantee the next attack hits also guarantee secondary effects, like the various debuffs on Dragon breath attacks and certain weapons.

I just don't see the purpose of why you can't control these characters, even if they are temporary. It's just bad game design for this particular issue.

For the non-killable ones, I suspect they didn't want the player getting in trouble if they built their party around someone who leaves suddenly (there were a small number of people who left after joining in the original version but the remake changed it to a loyalty drop).
For the ones who can die? I don't know if I could find it again but I think the director said in an interview that, in effect, they were expected to die and saving them is a bonus that gets you new (often very powerful) characters, but they were made easier to save in later versions due to complaints, though I think there's also some subquest battles now where you get a gameover if the guest bites it (for Reborn in particular recruiting a Griffin or Cockatrice and giving them a bunch of healing items is a great "medical evacuation" unit--large monsters having low defense but high HP means they attract lots of enemy attacks but can tank it out for a while).

One particularly egregious thing that occurred in my playthrough was that you have at least one battle that's a one on one where you can only deploy your protagonist. This required me to change my protag's class and grind for levels and weapon levels just so he could deal with it, as early on I screwed around with making him an archer not really expecting this kind of forced bs. I almost restarted the whole game because of this.

A huge help in those (and many late-game bosses in general) is to use debuff consumables on the enemy to lower their attack.

[Jordan]

In all honesty, Tactics Ogre is too frustratingly difficult for me. I guess I'm spoiled by other games or a casual or just don't have the patience for this kind of thing. I was struggling for the last several levels, but somehow pulled through them. But once I got to this level where you fight Oz in a tower, where it feels like they give the enemy every single advantage possible, I gave up. You're outnumbered, you have the low ground by a significant degree, the boss is supercharged with multiple buffs, and all of the enemies are stronger and faster, regardless of what you do (I understand how equipment affects RT; it doesn't seem to make any difference. Even with velocity charge and unequipping stuff or equipping lighter stuff, it doesn't feel like there's any way to get around this).

I looked online and saw some guides saying to fly two or three griffins up to Oz and/or a flying beast master and just fling every debuff imaginable at him. To be honest I don't even really feel like trying that, and it would require me to get another griffin which I don't feel like doing. The battle is just too frustrating for me, though there were several up to this point that were also quite maddening, like the one in which you have to let a bunch of griffins and cockatrices run roughshod over you because killing any of them triggers massive debuffs on your whole team, something the game does not tell you about until you're already knee deep into the fight.

Edit-God I finally beat this horrible level. This level singlehandedly ruined the whole game for me to be honest. I finally cleared it by literally doing nothing until Oz marched down far enough where I could use all my flyers to throw every single debuff possible on him, knock him down, and then dogpile him. I ignored every single other enemy.

Funnily enough, the next 2 levels afterwards were really not that difficult. When I saw him pop up again at Phidoch I was kind of scared, but without the height advantage, that level really was not that bad and I beat it on my first try without that much difficulty. I'm still kind of sour on the game though and I dunno, the plot at this point kind of also took a turn for the boring as well.

[ky9ersfan]

I also quit Tactics Ogre, it is very frustrating when I formed a defensive line and was succeeding. And then the guest character does a kamikaze death charge behind enemy llnes, and proceeds to get annihilated. I was trying to get the special characters, but this is very frustrating.And it is also pretty lame, that there are level caps at each act, to stop the grinders from leveling up, and then conquering the game with ease.

I mean don't get me wrong, I loved the lore, the characters, and the tactical rpg gameplay. I just wish the guest characters didn't charge behind enemy lines like that, I wish you could control them instead.That would've been bettter.

[Jordan]

Wholeheartedly agree. Guest characters are a terrible mechanic.

I played a bit further in tactics ogre and what amuses me is every single battle after that one extremely and unnecessarily insanely difficult one has been ok. Height is just overpowered as hell in this game.

I love the story of this but I have a lot of critiques about gameplay. I think I would rather play almost any other srpg. The class balance feels very stupid and certain things feel overpowered, like item spam or terror or white knights. The difficulty curve makes no sense at all. The game will throw like massive difficulty levels at you and follow it up with battles against weak generics in bad classes on lousy terrain (for the enemy) with no boss.

The way exp works is also too grindy for me in the sense that I dont really feel like keeping more than 12 characters leveled up, so at a certain point I just gave up on that. I feel like the game wants you to experiment and use different classes and weapons but the way exp works disincentivizes me from bothering.
It's a shame because there really is a deep story here.