I might buy a PSP just for this game, that’s how much I loved the original Tactics Ogre.
The fact that the name of the series is Ogre Battle, and that the first was called Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen, indicates that you getting that particular song stuck in your head is not a coincidence.
Oh, wow. That’s cool. I had no idea.
Wait until halfway through chapter 3 when Denim participates in a bicycle race.
Man I wish this was true. I appreciate the titles, don’t get me wrong, but when you think about it, shouldn’t everything in the game be a Queen reference?
So I can talk about the game now since my review is posted, hooray. Loved it. I dunno that it’s any harder – the original was fairly difficult – but it’s definitely less tedious in terms of training up new characters and the three lives thing makes it significantly more difficult to permanently lose a dude. New graphics are great, re-localization is fantastic.
The one thing that sucks is that dealing with equipment is a giant pile of ass. Twenty or so characters, six slots each, up to thirty or so stats to parse per piece. Bleh. Not interesting at all. I pretty much gave up on optimization and just went with the most expensive stuff.
Unlocking and buying new abilities is kinda lame too, since the bonuses you’re choosing from are in most cases incredibly minor.
Still, excellent game.
Was the Game Informer piece I read yours? I didn’t realize that was a review, to be honest, but I did enjoy reading it. I suspect the item stuff will appeal to a diifferent sub-set of players, even myself among them, but maybe not. Still, I’m VERY excited for this one, and I’m glad those folks that have played it (yourself, Charles Onyett from IGN) have really enjoyed it.
I’ve never played a TO game, but Final Fantasy Tactics (specifcally the PSP version) is one of my all time favorite games.
What did you think of the class leveling system? I’m having a hard time understanding it - if you level up a wizard to level 5 (for example) than ALL your wizards are level 5? How does that work, if you don’t mind expanding on that?
Class system is okay. And yes, it works like you assume. Thing is a fresh wizard might be level 5, but he won’t have the support skills that someone who has been leveling as a wizard would. OTOH, it doesn’t take that long to get the important ones. And you can hopefully just recruit an enemy who comes preloaded with several useful skills.
And come on, there’s a giant score on the page and it says review in like five places ;)
Thanks for the info! I think it sounds like a decent system, at least this way if I decide 3 archers will be the most useful for a given battle, I don’t have to spend hours leveling 2 more units into useful archers. But, there is still a bonus for using the same units in battle (which is good, else none of your units would have any distinction?).
LOL, yeah, I looked again. To be fair, I had just woken up this morning when I checked that out, and you should be flattered I went straight to the text and didn’t care about any “review scores”… :P
How long did the game take to beat, out of curiosity?
A long-ass time. Don’t have an hour count handy, but 40+ easily.
Wow! Very cool.
I’m in the middle of reading a review on Diehard GameFAN (?) and he didn’t like the class system remake. Do you have any thoughts on his example here? Did this strike you as a problem at all?
The Diehardgamefan reviewer is, unfortunately, a bit of a fanboy for the original.
The new system is not perfect, but in the long run, it requires significantly less time and effort devoted to grinding compared to the original. It lets you swap in new characters a bit easier and it makes it less tedious to bring in new characters to fill gaps you need to have filled. Even that reviewer mentions that he abused the Training feature which was… well, not really fun at all.
At no point in the game did I really feel like I was hugely limited. I will say that there is a focus on class specialization compared to creating min-maxed super ninja/monks like in Final Fantasy Tactics, but each class tends to do well in their given niche. As I said, it isn’t perfect, but I think it will work out better in the long run for most people.
Yeah, pretty much what ImpAtom said.
Thanks for the info guys, that’s sort of the impresion I got reading the review. The new system DID sound like it was designed to be less grindy, but not take away the option of BEING grindy if you really wanted to. I doubted I’d have any problems, since I can say I’m MUCH less hardcore than that guy about … uh, anything.
Also, he used the phrase “to the point” too much. :)
Is this going to be available by download? I like playing from the memory stick, but I’m also hesitant, as one of the two games I purchased that way no longer works on either of my PSPs. I bought Lunar Star Silver whatzits or whatever it was by download, played it a while, put it aside to do other things, and then when I tried it again it wouldn’t run, telling me it wasn’t authorized on that user or account or PSP or something. I tried the memory stick in both my PSPs (an original and a 3000) and it wouldn’t work with either. Never was able to fix that.
OTOH, Valkyria Chronicles II works fine, and I do love not having the UMD slowdown/noise.
According to this comment, it will indeed be available via PSN download today.
As for your authorization troubles, I think it should be possible to deactivate your previous authorizations and reactivate them on your current PSP, but you might have to dig around a bit for the exact process, especially if you’re not doing it through a PS3.
I’m excited as well. Eagerly awaiting a copy from an industry friend.
Should be waiting for me at home after work today! I’m excited.
Thanks for the info. As for reactivation/deactivation, yeah, I’ve never figured out how, and I have to do all that via the PC or the PSP, as I have no PS3. My issue is that neither of my PSPs seem to be authorized, at all, and AFAIK I only have that one PSN account. So I’m baffled, and I’ve seen no way to get any useful support so far from Sony. It might be there, but I can’t find it.
I haz eet. And, evidently, the major arcana of a tarot deck as a bonus. Nicely illustrated.