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.
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