Played enough now to be pretty definite in my opinions:
Battle tactics are excellent and very satisfying. Addictive.
Exploration is the poster child for meh. Especially since this port does not appear to have a search key. I’ll probably use a guide to simply breeze through these, they are tedious.
Story is not up to the standards of a good book, but better than the typical narrative game. (But also easily skipped if not your thing.)
Quality of the port to PC is substandard. Both in and out of battle, I repeatedly have the experience of having to click the same thing repeatedly to get it to work. Especially tough when trying to figure out what is supposed to work, but aggravating in any case. Whether looking to move to specific tile or ascertain enemy abilities or upgrade a weapon, it’s an issue. Which seems unreasonable in a game of this price.
Visually not all that great. I find characters tough to recognize in battle.
I guess I’m in - quite a few of you guys at least liking the battles quite a bit. Some liking the story. I always enjoy @Scotch_Lufkin 's enthusiasm for the games he really enjoys. I have a more difficult time finding games I get that enthusiastic about - but I do find them from time to time. I’ll probably wait a bit though as I’m in the middle of some things right now.
You go to the Roselle area, hear how downtrodden they are, agree that it is your mission to protect them, visit one in their home… and take the money hidden in their house. /eyeroll
I can not afford the $60 price on all of the JRPGs that are coming out on other platforms such as the upcoming Persona 5 Royal (which I never played not owning a PS), Triangle Strategy & eventually Ogre Tactics remake.
If you had to choose one to buy which would it be?
I’m going to choose Tactics Ogre, although I still hope to pick up Triangle Strategy some day. I know Tactics Ogre is incredibly highly regarded so seems like a surefire win for me as someone who played the GBA Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis(and loved it) but never has played this one.
Tactics Ogre is the original and best of these games, I like it even just a bit more than Final Fantasy Tactics (it’s really close though, and I’m really excited for the remaster of that game to finally get announced, we’ve known about it for over a year, it’s the worst kept secret in the industry at this point), so that’s what I’d recommend.
I love Triangle Strategy, but if you are only getting one of the two, grab TO next month.
I’m interested in Persona 5 Royal as well, it sounds like it runs wonderfully both on Steam Deck and Switch even, and so I do plan on picking it up after I beat Mario+Rabbids, but it comes out in a few days and Tactics Ogre is next month, so I’m aiming to get both.
But I couldn’t recommend it, not really playing it myself. It’s a very different kind of game as well, as a JRPG vs. SRPG, so YMMV when it comes to value there. I’m more into the latter, generally speaking, myself.
Persona 5 (Royal) and Tactics Ogre (PSP) are probably two of my top 5 games ever, you can’t really go wrong there (and I would echo @Scotch_Lufkin that while I suppose they’re both JRPGs in the broadest sense, the SRPGs are different enough that I wouldn’t compare them directly). I did eventually get back to Triangle Strategy and finish it, and I wasn’t quite as down on it as I was at certain points earlier in this thread, but in the end it was still a disappointing experience for me.
Persona 5 Royal is also coming to Game Pass ($1 for the first month). I’m assuming it’s available on the PC version of Game Pass too (it’s how I’d prefer to play it), but I’m not positive that will be the case. Can find out Friday, though.
I’m obviously lukewarm on Triangle Strategy. It’s probably my least favorite game of its genre of those that I’ve spent more than a few hours with, so I would second the recommendations for Tactics Ogre over it without hesitation. OTOH, I prefer Persona 4 to Tactics Ogre so I assume I’d prefer Persona 5 as well, but haven’t played it yet so can’t say for sure.
Since we are talking about FFT and TO here as well, I have a question. When I played FFT I spent more time trying to plan character upgrade paths than actually playing the game (both a good and bad thing, really). Is TO like that as well?
I bounced off Persona 5 pretty hard. I was so ready for the opening sequence with the coach to be over after the first dungeon run. When that wasn’t the end, I bailed.
Kind of, but maybe not to the level FFTactcs could be. Remember FFT was made after Tactics Ogre, by the same team, and they had the Final Fantasy brand to draw from. It seems to me Tactics Ogre’s class/skill system is a little less crazy game breaking potentially than FFT was, but then again they seemed to have redone a lot of the skill system for TO Reborn, so it’s kind of hard to answer for sure.
Where the tile-selecting problem early in the game on fairly level terrain was aggravating, it could largely be worked around. However, when I reached maps where controlling the rooftops became essential, it turned out that it was impossible to either move my flying unit to a rooftop, or to target an enemy on a rooftop.
The tiles are colored pink or blue as legal choices, but no manner of clicking and playing around with the camera ever once managed to select the tile.
Bummer. But I am a mouse/keyboard player, and not feeling much urge to learn to use a controller. Maybe they will eventually patch it, but from what I have read, this is not an outfit all that willing to fix stuff.
