Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together Review

With a subtitle like 'Let Us Cling Together', Tactics Ogre immediately renders a tragic scenario of 'Les Miserables' proportions. Indeed, as the story unfolds, you are thrown into the thick of dark times for the land of Valeria. Divided by warring factions and, more tragically, a serious class struggle, a brilliant and often shocking background is painted for one of the best isometric strategy RPGs of all time.

Critically and publicly acclaimed in Japan but never afforded a European release, scant few Western gamers have had the chance to delve into the Ogre Battle series - save for a scattershot of entries on PSone, N64 and Game Boy Advance (the most recent of which is also the closest in style and storytelling). While not a remake, the game is a revamped version of the 1995 SNES title that also appeared on PSone and Sega Saturn. The translation has also been completely rewritten to sit more closely alongside the Japanese text.

To be certain, this kind of game takes an acquired taste to appreciate - and feel free to use this handy list to qualify your interest. Do you like prosaic, often meandering dialogue that really focuses on storytelling? Do you enjoy deep, methodical strategy with a lot of micro-management? Are you prepared to invest the time pre-battle in reading the voluminous backstory and supporting documents for the full experience?

This is not a game for the twitch-shooter generation. It's a different kind of beast; ancient and traditional and tragically lacking in sales bullet points, save for a wonderful pedigree and gameplay that really needs to be played with your full attention to be appreciated.

We can mostly sidestep the story, since Tactics Ogre's most important element is the quality of its narrative and the twists that unfold at the end of each chapter. Suffice to say, you lead a band of liberators, all with character flaws and personal motivations as clean cut as revenge and as sinister as personal gain. With dozens of characters of varying races, backgrounds and allegiances, each woven into the main story arc, you really do get a great sense of the all-enveloping nature of war.

The other big point worth praising is the branching story that does take some curious twists. It's not as all-encompassing as Mass Effect, but depending on whether or not you opt to save someone, or stick your nose into someone else's conflict, you'll be presented with new missions and side stories. Even fifteen years on, this remains a fresh storytelling process.

Fans of Final Fantasy Tactics and even Advance Wars will feel immediately comfortable with Tactics Ogre. The playing field retains its isometric point-of-view, but thanks to the PSP, you can now spin the camera to an overhead view and zoom it in and out for a broader view of the battlefield and your movement options. Taking into consideration everything from each character's elevation to their orientation, disposition and even the weather means there are a lot of modifying factors to keep in the back of your mind. However, for those who really take the time to dig into the mechanics, you'll find a truly balanced and rich strategy experience, thanks to this level of depth.

The tarot card motif plays a big part in the magical elements of Tactics Ogre. Different cards, earned through battle, can be used instantly to boost stats and cast spells. More traditional items and weapons, as well as character class modifications, special abilities and finishing moves are also at your disposal. Really, it does become critical to keep track of which characters are using what equipment and skills, since battles are pretty unforgiving. It goes well beyond the 'rock/paper/scissors'-style strengths and weaknesses strategy of many of its genre peers, and it'll take you a good couple of hours to start loosening up class abilities and magical skills. When you do finally get to that point, though, the beauty of Tactics Ogre's supreme depth and flexibility starts to shine through.

That said, the PSP itself isn't necessarily the best platform for a game like this; it's almost too grand and complex an experience. A battle can span anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour or more, and with that kind of pace, you'll find yourself transfixed a lot longer than the battery life allows. Even so, Square Enix has done a fair amount of tweaking and enhancing to make this version arguably the most accessible and refined in the series.

The real issue rests with the interface itself. Making the most of the PSP's face buttons, Square Enix has often doubled up on what each button can do. Given the right context, you might be holding down L and hitting square to bring up the camera options - and then using the D-pad to toggle the point-of-view, for instance. If it sounds convoluted, that's because it is. There are just too many different functions and elements all co-existing that need to be used a little too often.

Between battles, the overworld gives you as much time as you need to re-equip your troupe, buy new spells, sell your gear and pour through the hundreds of passages of text that outline the characters and their motivations.

Automation is a boon for a game like Tactics Ogre, and - like the newly introduced 'Chariot Tarot' replay system (which allows you to backtrack your actions and start again before you took that wrong turn that cost you your best spellcaster) - makes for a slightly more accessible experience. Expert players can ignore the auto-equip functions or in-battle AI control completely, but people in need of a helping hand have these tools at their disposal. It helps speed things along a little bit, letting you control a couple of characters, rather than a full regiment of 12 or more.

While some might balk at the largely 2D, sprite-heavy presentation, there are a few refinements to the presentation that help smooth over the cracks that time has weathered into Tactics Ogre. The spells are now far more impressive, the overworld map and supporting character art have been redone, and overall there's a richness to the colors and textures that point to the quality of the art direction, if not the technical prowess.

The character sprites do lack detail and fluidity, and after a while you'll begin to see the same generic character portraits for enemies as the ones you have for you own heroes. This does tend to make battles a little confusing, since it can be hard to get a good idea at-a-glance of where the enemies lie on the field (again, requiring a somewhat convoluted series of button combinations in order to toggle this information).

The soundtrack, composed by Square Enix fan-favourite Hitoshi Sakimoto, has been very carefully remastered and the impact is immediate. Some of the themes - not all of them, certainly, but some - rank amongst the best and most memorable scores in the Square Enix catalogue. With headphones, the PSP rendition sounds amazing. Sadly, the sound effects and squeaky cries and groans don't measure up to the same quality.

Capping everything off is a new multiplayer component that pits party against party. Basically, Tactics Ogre asks you to create a new save file based around your current single-player team and imports that data into multiplayer. From here, you can choose from more than 20 maps of varying size and complexity pulled from some of the more interesting single-player maps. You can outfit your troops, even assigning conditional battle cries (for instance, at the end of your first turn) to each character for a little more flavour.

However, if you haven't beaten the game, you'll end up spoiling some of the surprises by delving into this mode first, since the menu gives vague story allusions alongside each map, which seems bafflingly spoiler-laden.

Of course, if you're the kind of player who wants to refine your party and take on a friend who's equally passionate, chances are you'll have blitzed the story anyway. For everyone else, it's a pleasant bullet-point on the back of the box and an additional distraction you might want to dip your toes into.

Closing Comments

 

Since its debut in 1995, Tactics Ogre has always held a clutch of fans worldwide. It seems almost a shame that it's during the PSP's twilight that Tactics Orge finally emerged on the world stage. It's definitely testament to the quality of the original game design, however, that it remains so playable and engaging more than 15 years on.

It's not perfect, however. There are definitely times when the menus and sheer complexity will get to you. Even so, the numerous improvements and refinements are much appreciated, and for gamers with the patience, few other games come close to the sum-total quality of strategy RPGing that Tactics Ogre provides.

Ys I & II Chronicles Review

These games get around. Ys I and II are a pair of old-school role-playing greats, two games that first arrived on the scene over 20 years ago and have since been ported to nearly every possible platform. Nintendo consoles, SEGA systems, home computers – you name it.

That long history of remaking and re-remaking these same adventures has given us some great editions of them over the years, but unfortunately it's bad news for this latest reissue on the PSP. Ys I & II Chronicles has a killer new soundtrack and some fairly new art, but underneath the pretty paintjob is still just feels old.

The Ys series (pronounced like "Geese" without the G) tells the tale of the energetic and ambitious red-haired swordsman Adol Christin and his on-going quest to ram himself face-first into every villainous monster he sees. Seriously – that's the signature gameplay mechanic in these first two series games. You have no attack button. Swinging your sword is not mapped to a trigger. You simply line up Adol with an enemy and charge straight into them with repeated, relentless and ridiculous body slams.

It's a unique and, at first, somewhat off-putting battle system – since nearly every other video game trains you to always avoid making direct contact with foes, and here it's entirely required. You're not invincible during these collisions. Enemies can still hurt you. So it's all about your angle of approach – if you hit them directly head-on, your HP bar will take a hit. If you touch them off-center, from the side or from behind though, you'll earn clean strikes against them with no negative consequence to you.

The whole thing ends up devolving into you, as Adol, running in mad circles around the mindless foes and ramming them again and again until they explode – literally – into a mass of mutilated flesh and bone that comically goes raining out across the landscape. Adol's speed, too, is incredibly quick – so quick that, again, it's somewhat off-putting at first.

It's definitely a different kind of gameplay. And still unique, even after 20 years, as no other games outside the Ys series have ever been too eager to borrow this style of combat. Here, it kind of works. Adol's excessively accelerated standard speed and the fact that you don't have to do anything more complicated than touching your foes to hurt them are intentional design choices meant to make Ys I & II play at a constant rapid pace. And the pace does benefit from it – it's certainly fast, and that can be addictive.

But the design sacrifices depth for that speed, as Adol's enemies are all mindless and have no attack patterns other than just walking around. And the quickened pace hits a wall any time you get too hurt and have to run back to a safe haven for healing.

Or any time you run into another problem, being the adventures' many utterly nonsensical item-based obstacles. XSEED happily spins these pace-stalling stumbling points as "wonderfully obtuse," presenting them as respectful examples of the modern product paying homage to the games' most old-school original versions. That's a nice way of saying you'll be getting frustrated as you play – since the truth of the matter is that you'll just get totally stuck in the quest on more than one occasion and have no good clue what to do next.

As an example, Ys I's biggest dungeon, the Darm Tower, includes a malevolent hallway that immediately drains away all your health when you step inside its walls. The only way to turn off that instant-death effect is to find a hammer, then go back to a different, unrelated previous portion of the dungeon to locate one particular stone column out of dozens of similar-looking ones and smash a hole into it. What? Exactly. It's the kind of nonsensical disconnect that was totally common over 20 years ago, but in a "modern" product feels very out of place and just confusing.

Ys II, thankfully, is a bit more straightforward and easy to figure out, but Ys I would be almost entirely impossible without the help of some FAQ, guide or walkthrough – and that's ultimately what this "new" compilation boils down to. It feels old.

And as it turns out, it is – this Chronicles release actually isn't newly developed just for the PSP, but is really an adaptation of a previous remake of Ys I & II from 2001. The sprite art still looks pretty slick, and it's totally at home on the PSP screen. And the music is entirely new, with each track given a fresh and energetic 2011 remix (and you can even swap out the entire soundtrack for either the 2001 or original 1987 versions of the same songs at any time in the adventure, which is a nice touch).

But the core elements of the game itself – where you go, what you do and the conversations you have – don't seem to be 2011 caliber, beyond a handful of amusing recent pop culture references the latest porting team decided to toss into the script. And after all the other different versions these same games have had throughout the years, it's unfortunate that the PSP edition didn't get a little more modern effort.

 

Closing Comments

 

Ys I & II Chronicles on the PSP is a 20-year-old game design with a 10-year-old coat of paint on it, finished off with the gloss of an all-new soundtrack. Only consider it if you know you're in the mood for an intentionally obtuse, old-school journey that'll have you searching for an online guide in the first five minutes – or if you just really want to see a man defeat his foes by slamming straight into them with his face.

Gods Eater Burst Review

Let's all put aside the odd fact that the "Gods" in "Gods Eater Burst" is plural. In doing so, we can avoid scratching our heads hard enough to draw blood. Think about something more important. For example: why are you eating gods? Because the world is dead, and it's your job.

Of course, you're not actually killing and eating gods in Gods Eater Burst. In this devastated world, mankind has been wiped out by a powerful new organism collectively called the Aragami (a Japanese term invoking gods and demons). The organisms devoured other life in order to survive, assuming different forms in the process. Only a few factions of humanity remain, and they've been united under Fenrir, a military organization intent on rebuilding the world.


Gods Eater Burst is similar to the Monster Hunter series that infected Japan like a PSP-powered plague. It's a real-time role-playing game which tasks you with killing a bunch of creatures and collecting raw materials to craft new equipment and upgrade the old. With this new equipment, you're better prepared to face even nastier monsters and collect even better raw materials. And so the cycle continues.

It's great fun at first, but it gets dangerously repetitive. Even though killing gods is a thrilling task, and I'm a sucker for anything that takes place after the apocalypse, I started to get fed up with the experience towards the end. Not to say there isn't a lot to appreciate here; it's just a shame there wasn't more variety to keep the god-slaying at its best.

While I could never get behind the fur-wearing, dino-killin' antics of Monster Hunter, the visual style of Gods Eater Burst appealed to me from the start. A stunning anime opening introduces a harsh world filled with colorful, stylized characters and living weapons. It's great stuff, especially for you anime nerds out there. If only the character models animated and emoted more. As it stands, the whole story is like a mannequin theater.

At first, the combat in Gods Eater Burst is incredible, but it gets tired with time. Multiple weapon and shield types, as well as various upgrades, all lend to a customizable experience where characters can fight monsters in different ways. The Gods Eater weapon of choice -- the God Arc -- can transform from a sword into a gun and back again. This is an entertaining dynamic both visually and strategically. In one moment I'm hacking and slashing away at some toothy beast and the next I'm rolling back and firing ice blasts into its face.

Bullets are much more important in combat than you might expect. In order to properly prepare for battle, you'll need to craft your very own ammo. There's a complex bullet crafting system in place that lets you make just about anything you want. If you're interested in designing a bullet that flies through the air, stops, and drops small bombs on your enemies, you can do that.

Bullet crafting is one of many fantastic ideas in Gods Eater. I was just as impressed with the unorthodox method that you harvest raw materials for item crafting. As the title of Gods Eater suggests, your God Arc can transform into a giant mouth with pointy fangs that bites your enemies. On a living opponent, this boosts your character's performance for a short time. On a fallen foe, this is how you gather resources.

For the first several hours, this was all sorts of sweet. I had a blast running around post-apocalyptic Japan with a transforming weapon, killing monsters as I went. It's always rewarding to gather materials that can be used for item creation, and I appreciate the fact that you can tackle missions with friends via ad hoc wireless in order to better coordinate attacks. Even though my comrades were dropped a few times from the game, Gods Eater does support a seamless re-connection option for getting people back in the game.

But Gods Eater Burst gets old. After more than 20 hours of play time, I was still fighting the same monsters in the same set of environments. There's a painful lack of variation to be found and the battle system just isn't spontaneous enough to support that kind of grinding. Even against difficult opponents, I found myself defaulting to the same ol' strategies. Run behind him, attack, block, wait. Repeat for 20 hours with little variation and you'll see why it gets old.

It was even more frustrating to fight larger groups of Aragami at a time. In-game tutorials recommend "running and hiding," and trying to separate the Aragami in order to fight one at a time. This was next to impossible for me. Even after using a stun grenade (a special item that blinds Aragami), I would try and run away only to have the entire group of monsters come along for the ride. Death followed soon after.

If I did manage to isolate an Aragami from the rest of the pack, I would spend most of my time chasing it down as it leapt around like a fish out of water. I know these are supposed to be fast, dangerous creatures, but battles aren't fun if I'm doing more running than I am slashing.

Closing Comments

 

Gods Eater Burst is a fun game about killin' critters and collecting loot. It has some great ideas in place, including a transforming weapon model and complex bullet creation. But Gods Eater lacks variety. Furthermore, the pacing of combat can be painfully interrupted by a cowardly Aragami running from the fight. There are way better PSP games out there, though Gods Eater Burst does target a unique audience that rarely gets time in the spotlight.