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Tactics Ogre, the pinnacle of strategy/RPGs

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: May 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I must confess, I bought this game only because I had played Final Fantasy Tactics and loved it. Desperate for a strategy/RPG fix, I got TO because many of FFT's creators had worked on it. But just because it preceded FFT does not mean it's not as good...on the contrary, it actually is more fun and absorbing than its slickly polished descendant.

Let's start with the bad news. Tactics Ogre was originally released for the Super NES, and it shows. With small, blocky sprites and the inability to rotate a camera (because the background is also 2D), TO won't be winning any graphics awards anytime soon. The in-game speech portraits are nice, though.

Tactics Ogre can also occasionally get monotonous - the most common culprit being the constant need for training. There's also a special 100-floor (!) dungeon that is not for the faint of heart.

Now the good news: The story is absorbing. TO takes place in the island nations of Valeria; you play Denim Powell, a young member of the Walstanian ethnic group. He, his sister Kachua, and his friend Vice are determined to lead Walsta out from under the oppressive hand of the ruling Gargastan. They're helped in this aim by a group of exiled warriors from Zenobia: the heroes of the first game in the Ogre Battle Saga. Eventually the scope of the conflict widens to include the rest of Valeria, and culminates in a bitter struggle for the High King's throne and for the power of an incredibly powerful magical artifact. TO's story would be its strongest point...except for one thing.

The gameplay.

Dear God, the gameplay. It's like a sundae smothered in hot fudge, chocolate sprinkles, whipped cream, and with a cherry on top: wonderful, but occasionally overkill. TO's gameplay is definitely deep; while it doesn't have the huge list of jobs and abilities that its descendant, Final Fantasy Tactics, does, I can't help but feel it's without a doubt more complex in terms of strategy. With over a dozen sidequests, not to mention three distinct paths through the game (each of which has its own special characters to get), there's no question that TO has even more replay value than FFT. And that's really saying something!

Tactics Ogre is definitely a game not to be missed. While Atlus is no longer making the game, if you can buy a used copy, do!

The best tactics game ever made

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: September 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

You've probably heard of Final Fantasy Tactics and heard great things about it, and it is a great game, but if you have the choice of Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, while FFT might have better graphics, Tactics Ogre is better in almost every other aspect of gameplay, period. Tactics Ogre is just flat out a better game than FFT, and unfortunatly, never recieved huge sales due to limited avalibility, but if you see it on sale anywhere, I recommend you buy it. You wil not be disapointed.

For the hardcore.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: April 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Tactics Ogre is all about the hardcore experience. Not only are the graphics nothing special, they border on offensive. Looking at this game, you'd wonder how anybody could give it a high rating. That's where our little friend, Gameplay, comes in. He suggests that graphics don't matter, that he can offer a much more fulfilling experience. He introduces you to his brother, Storyline, and tells about how deep and involving Storyline's personality is. Storyline is quite the plotter; he can tread on the feet of kings and peasants without losing a beat. He propagates destructive forces (ghouls, necromancers, chaos knights, etc.) while staying true to human emotion (people die, people are sad, people revenge). He does all this through the medium of plastic, namely the disc entitled Tactics Ogre.

The storyline and gameplay (containing a job system that was FFT's predecessor, though not matching its depth enjoyable nonetheless) are quite well done. If you can look past the surface (don't stare at that ugly brother!) then there is much to love about Tactics Ogre.

P.S. This game has a 100 (that's not a typo) level dungeon that focuses entirely on fighting and item finding. You must traverse it twice to obtain an extremely valuable item. Talk about hardcore!

One of the best RPGs ever made

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: August 08, 2001
Author: Amazon User

While lacking in the graphics department(This game was originally designed for the super famicom) this game really is one of the best RPGs on PSX(destorying FF Tactics easily). The story is very long and draws you in right from the start. The battles for the most part are very challenging and very well done. Outside of battle you are given a lot of control over your large army(Of which you take 10 into battle) and you can always persuay other humans and monsters to join in your fight. There are a huge variety of different classes ranging from the usual(Knight, Cleric) to Gunner and Swordmaster. There are also a lot of various creatures, including golems, ghosts, hawkmen, and some really weird things that you can find in the expansive hidden dungeon(100 levels) called Hell's Gate. The best part about this game is the non-linearity to it, at several places in the game you are asked to make decisions that not only affect your army, but affect all the rest of the characters in the game. Each option leads you down a very different path to victory(there are 8 ending in all) of this very large game. If you can find this game, I suggest you buy it!

One of the longest games i've ever played!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: June 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've been an Ogre Battle fan for around 4 years. It took a while, but i got Ogre Battle 64 on clearance in '98. I loved it! Then, just a year ago, i got FFT. (GREAT GAME) While on the internet
looking for help on FFT, i saw many references to a game called Tactics Ogre. After many months, I got this of Ebay for 50 bucks. (Which is actually a VERY good price for this game w/ all inserts.)
Now, on to the review. This game (In terms of plot and class amounts) Is TONS better than FFT. The plot revolves around government, betrayel, and war. There are 3 different paths to take, and it took me around 50 hours to go through one of them. Sure, the graphics are fairly bad, but i figure if you can tell what everything is, your fine.
If you are lucky enough to find this game and you like it, I suggest you get Final Fantasy Tactics, which has a great job system and is now only 20 bucks. Thanks for taking your time to read this.

Great storyline far outweighs poor presentation

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game when it first came out, and I've kept all these years, and for good reason, this is one of if not the best SRPG ever made, although you probably wouldn't think that just looking at it.

First off the game really doesn't look that good, especially when compared to Final Fantasy Tactics, while FFT has crisp well animated characters, Tactics Ogres characters look blocky discolored and have only a few animations which don't look that natural to begin with. The music is okay, but nothing special, of note is the absolutly absurd "death screams" that each gender makes when they die. The females sound like someone has pinched them and the males sound like they're doing a bad monkey impression. I only mention it because I thought Final Fantasy Tactics had really good screams. While the graphics are rather bland the gameplay fares much better.

Tactics Ogre battle system really doesn't add anything new to the SRPG genre, you enter a map filled with knights and wizards, and sometimes monsters, you choose your soldiers and then attempt to kill them before they kill you. Tactics Ogre utilizes a lot more "Defeat the Leader" then other Tactics games, in fact it uses "Defeat the Leader" more than it uses "Defeat al Enemies" so its important to weigh the pros and cons of defeating everyone else, since if a character is killed in battle thay are gone from the game, their are some resurrection spells in the game, but you won't be able to get them until about the last quarter of the game so for the majority of it you have to be sure that you don't get you team members killed.

The game does one thing that I don't really like, that is that it has scaleable enemy levels, the enemy's level scales up or down depending on your level, which means even if you train a lot often the enemy will still be at the same level as you, its kind of aggrivating to train for 2 hours just to have the enemy auto level itself up to your level. As for training its a tedious little venture, basically you enter training mode which can be done anytime on the world map, you split your forces into two teams then they fight each other, you can control wither team, both, or neither, and just have the computer play both sides, but the fastest way is to control both sides and had weaker characters hit the stronger ones, while the stronger ones just stand around. The whole thing is very boring, however since Tactics Ogre is a pretty difficult game you'll find yourself having to train quite a bit.

Now on to the reason that I gave this game 5 stars, the storyline. This game has an incredible storyline. It starts out simple enough, your main character is a rebel soldier trying to liberate his people from oppression. The story will eventually evolve into you trying to stop an evil being from destroying the island, but for the majority of the game it's a war story, and this is where it really excels. It excels not only because it's a great story, but also because you get to shape the story as you go. At the end of the first chapter you'll have to make an extremely difficulty choice, whether to sacrifice your ideals in order to have a chance to win and liberate your people, or to stick to you ideals even though your people might stay slaves forever. The best part about this choice and indeed all the choices is there is no wrong answer, but more importantly there is no right answer. Depending on your choice people close to your character will die, and some will die no matter what you choose. Characters that might join your party if you make one choice will become bitter enemies that you will be forced to kill in battle if you make another. For example in order for the main character to gain his ultimate class you have to have a certain character die, either by not saving them or killing them off in battle, either way they are gone for goos, and yet your main character is stronger for it.

It's slightly dissapointing that although you have a lot of choices to change the story throughout it will still end about the same. The last chapter is near identical no matter what choices you made, the only difference is what characters are still alive and which are in your party. The final boss is the same no matter what, and he seems tacked on.

The game has plenty of side quests to keep you busy, most notably hell's gate, a 100 floor dungeon. Besides for that their are a lot of secret characters and a few secret classes to unlock, that coupled with the games already long storyline means this one is gonna keep you busy for awhile. No to mention the fact you'll want to play it at least 2 or 3 times to get the full experience, their is nothing quite as heart warming as having an enemy from a former game join your party, or as sad as watching someone who fought side by side with you die in the mud because they didn't agree with your choices.

Overall I can't recommend this game enough, although it has a few faults, you'll quickly forget about them once you get sucked in to the storyline, its gritty, brutal, full of death and betrayal, has a few massacres mixed in for flavor, and it comes out as one of the most intense and well written storylines to date.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaang

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

SO ... good. Tons of replay value and the game is like 70+ hours each go through!!! Its alot like FF tactics(this game preceeding and the creator dude of this one made FF Tactics the good game it was) only you can attack an enemy out of range and still have a chance of hitting, you gets tons of monsters that can increase in class and skill just like people, cool special characters from Ogre Battle, and the training option out-does FF Tactics allowing you to advance in lvls faster before battles. Heres a tip, get a high lvl beserker over 30 kills to get the option of "Terror Knight" that automatically causes all enemies within a certain range to suffer attack and defence penalties.

This game is WAY too overrated...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 12
Date: October 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

People seem to rave about this game... but I beg to differ. This game certainly had a ton of potential. The class system is always nice and the story takes off right away, no boring "waiting for stuff to go wrong" time. But after a three or four battles, I noticed that the missions were all awfully repetitive and hours of training your characters is necessary between every battle. To facilitate training, there is a special "Training Mode". Here you split your party into two teams and just have your low level characters chuck rocks at your high level (meaning 1 or more level higher) characters. If a level 3 character decides to go melee against a level 4 character, the level 4 character will usually (a) block the attack, then (b) counterattack and kill (or put in critical) your level 3. Yes, that's how much difference one level makes.

As for the tactics, this is another "take all your characters and beat the snot out of the enemy" game. You don't get many abilities per character and there's no compatabilities (like in Final Fantasy Tactics) to check for - if there's an enemy nearby, just attack! So much for strategy...

You're better off renting this game if at all possible. I'd recommend "Final Fantasy Tactics" over this game anyday. But if you've played FFT and are expecting the same great gameplay, you'll be sorely dissapointed.

tactics ogre

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 25
Date: September 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

i'm looking for the playstation game tactics ogre.i would like to receive a catolog for it so i can send it by mail with a money order.

I loved this game but never beat it

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: September 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I first played this game when i was in junior high because i saw it and i loved rpg's and i had just finished final fantasy tactics, which is a great game also by the way. I remember renting it and i fell in love and i got my parents to let me rent it again. Then every weekend i would rent it and play for hours on end. Then i offered the rental store to buy it from them and they told me no, and every time id rent it i asked them to let me buy it. Then the store closed and i never seen it again. But this is one game, that i would have to say, has one of the best story lines ever, next to FF VII if only i could find a cheaper price for this game i would buy it on the spot. Speaking of buying it, i just bought the disc off of ebay for 59 bucks, so yeah i'll be finally able to beat this game like i wanted to when i was younger!!!

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