Tactics Ogre: Reborn review: Classic tactical RPG is showing its age

The historical importance of the is unquestionable. Tactics Ogre Let’s stick togetherIt’s a keystone game — probably of Keystone Games — A specific demanding genre, tactical role-playing games. It’s also the cornerstone of a notable but unfortunately never fully realized career: that of writer-director Yasumi Matsuno, who went on to make cult classics. final fantasy tactics When wanderer’s tale before burning out in the middle of the tortured development of final fantasy 12a personal and professional setback from which he never seems to have fully recovered.

of Tactics Ogre: Rebornthe 1995 game — often ranked high in Japan’s polls for the greatest games of all time — receives its second major overhaul. reborn Nominally, it’s an updated port of the 2010 PlayStation Portable remake (this time for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch). But we’ll tweak the essential design elements, add features, overhaul the interface, restore the artwork, and revise it thoroughly and carefully. It says a lot about the game’s respected status of having received Tactics OgreAfter hiring Matsuno away from them in ’95, publisher Quest final fantasy tacticsa game in Square’s flagship franchise, for which few PSP and mobile versions were made.

New players should approach Tactics Ogre But be careful. (I’m one of them. I’m familiar with the game’s reputation, but hadn’t played it before starting this review.) Many thoughtful revisions and quality-of-life improvements, too. Regardless, this is still a difficult game that is slow to reveal. An early masterpiece in a highly specialized genre that has seen so much innovation since then, it can feel dated and inflexible. And it’s often just a chore.

There are both simple and not-so-simple reasons for this. A simple one has to do with the size of your party. It is a turn-based tactical game in which you move your character around a gridded map while playing fantasy combat his chess against AI-controlled enemy forces. A standard party size for an encounter is 8-12 units. Turn execution takes time. It’s usually impossible to engage the enemy, and the first round of movement just moving each unit into attackable distance feels endless. (to be fair, it’s not very common — this is a balanced game) is excruciating.

Additionally, the large number of troops makes it difficult to keep in mind the state of your troops and the general shape of the battlefield. It’s not grand strategy, but it’s not an easy game to parse, and combat can feel disjointed and disjointed.It should be noted that final fantasy tacticsMatsuno and veteran square designer Hiroyuki Ito teamed up to reduce the number of units to the four to six range, and garnered a lot of attention as a result.

to be fair reborn We do quite a few tweaks to speed things up and reduce mental strain. You can assign AI to take over the actions of party members. There is a rotation speed button. The skill and spell system has been redesigned to give you access to better skills early in the game. Random encounters have been removed from the world map (and replaced with optional training battles if desired). Still, despite all of this, and despite the 3D map design that uses verticality to create some interesting spatial challenges, the game still manages to be a kind of clean, one-of-a-kind representation of the tactical genre at its best. I’m having trouble staging complex logic puzzles in .

Image: Square Enix

Tactics Ogre Very obviously dates back to its design advance wars — games in parallel but very closely related genres — did a lot to articulate the balance of rock-paper-scissors and the problem-solving joys of tactical combat.These days, like indie games Into the Bleach Also Invisible Inc. find ways to present complex strategic challenges much faster than Tactics Ogre Paradoxically not overwhelming, but manageable. But this may not be just an age issue.perhaps Tactics Ogre It is also more of an RPG in nature than a tactical game. I call it Backroom RPG.

Backroom RPGs are games where the real action takes place outside of combat, deep within the party menu. (final fantasy 12with its Gambit programming system and game-like license board is one of the best examples.) Tactics Ogre It’s a theory crafter’s dream, with tons of customizability and depth. reborn We rarely rationalize on purpose. In fact, it discards the PSP version’s class-wide leveling and reverts to individual unit leveling. You can also change the placement of important elements in battle. Skills, spells, equipment, and items are assigned and developed for each character, and there are ways to create and combine stronger equipment to boost your stats.

Here you’ll have to manage a huge amount of inventory and units as you develop and improve your favorite squad. There’s also the satisfaction when that squad performs effectively in combat. For certain types of players, this is heaven. I’ve been known to love that sort of thing myself. but, Tactics Ogreit feels like all the menu hectic work distracts from a combat system that already struggles for strategic focus. Without singing, all the work that supports it can feel like wasted effort.

Image: Square Enix

But there is a whole other grand scheme at work Tactics Ogre, A much more mature one that will pay back your investment in the game in spades. It’s a story. Matsuno is more a talented and influential writer than a designer. Despite the fantasy setting, his games tend to be humanist works that lay out complex maps of political intrigue. But they evolve into something personal, heartfelt, and relevant to the real world. Tactics Ogre There is no difference.

Matsuno says the game’s devastating branching storyline was inspired by the early ’90s war in Yugoslavia, which collapsed in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tactics Ogre Imagine the Valerian Islands, an archipelago torn apart by ethnic and class strife between the three main constituencies of Bacrum, Gargastani, and Warister. After the death of the King of Unity, a civil war broke out. Join a group of oppressed Warister revolutionaries led by young Denham Pavel, his sister Catiua, and his childhood friend Vice, in a time of uneasy peace. They soon join a team of friendly mercenaries, and Resistance leader Duke Longway leads them deeper into a conflict of changing factions, complicated allegiances, and dirty tricks.

This is a branching storyline where choices judged on a scale of legal to chaotic rather than good to evil can suffer from moral ambiguity and the consequences can be painfully bleak. Denam’s willingness to follow the Duke and his level of commitment to the Wallister cause are severely tested. As an exploration of the moral and political quagmire of war, reborn Fairly sophisticated, and Matsuno’s refusal to explain it in black and white, the consequences of the divergence became apparent rather than reductive. You can explore all branches in parallel reality without having to (Combat has a similar rewind feature, allowing you to redo selections and switch between different tactical outcomes without overwriting them — a nice feature.)

Talent and integrity are at work here.go deep enough Tactics Ogre and its subtitle plea, let’s stick together, starts to sound less goofy and more urgent and sad. How immersive you are in the game will depend on your desire for microcontrol and your patience with a gameplay system that, after 27 years, is starting to creak despite all the wise tweaks. It depends on your strength. Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a welcome, polished, and thoughtful update to the game that defined the genre — now leaving that genre behind.

Tactics Ogre: Reborn It will be released on Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 on November 11th. The game was reviewed on Switch using a pre-release download code provided by Square Enix. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, but Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased via affiliate links.discoverable Additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy can be found here.