Has anyone else played this game for Nintendo 64? I remember buying it when I was younger, and having it completly blow me away.
The game is a RPG/Tactics combo in which you control numerous "parties" of which you have to give strategical direction to try and capture key "strongholds" across the map. The part that was incredible is how important strategy is, you start off with 4 battalions of units, each containing 2-5 characters set on a 3x3 grid (doesn't influence the general play, only the battles), and at the beginning of each mission you are told what is happening in retrospect to hte main story, as well as your current objectives/updates.
The point is to work your away across the map by defeating other battalions, attacking strongholds, until you finally arrive at the final "Castle" for the map. Once you have defeated the leader (making it easy in a few early missions to simply focus the leader and ignore his minions, this attempt only works in beginning so its a nice opening for the game), you will learn more about the story and progress further into the game.
Similar to other RPGs, you have the "Character Development" stage in a series of questions based at your "graduation" from Soldier Academy. This consists of 15 4-choice problems, each which determine how your story will play out, what units will be available at the start, and who joins you or decides to fight against you.
The battle is somewhat unique, as you have no control over the attacks, all you decide is whether to attack the Leader, Weakest, Strongest, or Anyone, and your individual units have preset amount of attacks that they can do per "battle" before the winner is determined by doing most damage/healing/etc.
However, the mechanics are not what makes this game mindblowingly fun. I have easily put 70+ hours into one run through the story, only to have my next run be 50 hours, and the one after that be close to 90. The story is linear, there is no going around that, but certain decisions you make in game will unlock opportunities and certain accomplishments that would be unavailable unless you progressed through the game in a SPECIFIC manner. That being said, all 3 times I have played through it, I have had entirely different paths to getting to the end.
Also, the amount and variance of units is incredible. There are key "heroes" that you get throughout the game, depending on your overall morale, if you were good/evil, if you pillaged or rescued, etc, which help aid in your fight, allowing you to make additional battalions so that you can have your army spread further apart once the maps become huge.
You start off with 3 types of soldiers: a basic "trio" of soldiers, little guys with pikes, which when having enough battle experience, can be promoted to 1 fighter (male) or 1 ranger (female). From there, when your individual units can gain levels, theres many different ways of promoting your fighter depending on it's morale, attitude, engagements, etc.
For example, throughout the entire duration of the game and how YOU want to play it, as clearly certain units can be better than others, but none are so weak that they are useless, here is what 1 Fighter is capable of becoming:
The female classes are just as numerous, although COMPLETELY different, allowing for two different playstyles of the Male and Female characters.
BUT WAIT: It doesn't end there, as you progress through the game you can have "Wild" battles, similar to a Final Fantasy Fight, in which you can try to Coerce a "Wild" unit into joining your battalion. These make up for over 50 extra units available, from Beasts to Dragons to Undead, each with numerous opportunities.
The storyline is incredible, although I must say the music is quite repetitive and obnoxious, I tend to play with my own sound on. Also, there are multiple endings to boot.
Here is a few gameplay links: You can see the graphics clearly aren't best quality, but they are trounced by how amazing the gameplay is. I recommend this to ANYONE and dare you to try to play throught he same as someone else... it's almost impossible.
I played several missions but stopped. Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber is somehow much worse than the SNES Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen. I think it just plays slower, and the balance is maybe a little off compared to the first game. Some mechanics like needing to rest become more of a hassle than they are strategically interesting.
I really enjoyed the original though. Random historical sidenote for those that don't know: the SNES OB was directed by the guy that did FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Vagrant Story, etc. OB64 was made after he left the company for Square.
I recall having a Priest in every unit though. Then either a Drakonite(?) book or Combo Magic with a Freya, Ninja Master, etc. to pull off that except in my two front heavy melee units. I tried for the same thing everytime, but it never works out the same.
Honestly the only complaint I'd have with the game is the liberation/capture system, but honestly I've replayed this game (even recently) so many times. Did they ever really make much of a sequel?
This game is truly a work of art for N64. I played it once when I was pretty young and then again more recently when I was in High School. The political upheaval and twisting loyalties of every group and even individuals characters made this such a deep story. The game was like 50 missions long and there were a lot of major political choices to be made by the player about who/how your army would fight.
On my first playthrough I basically used only one unit all about level 48, an Archmage, a Lich, and a Princess, Asnabel (a hero character) as a Dragoon with Ogre Blade and the Helmet that doubles attack (he swings for like 800 four times per battle wtf) and a Freya with the Glaive that turns enemies to stone.
When the team casts Plasma Storm (Lit,Fire,Lit) it deals like 900+ damage to the opposing team and tends to paralyze them even if it somehow doesn't kill them. Of course I got the bad ending b/c I didn't know about liberation/capture.
for thsoe who are wondering... your units can range from like chaos to peace with a score of 0-99... each stronghold you capture has a point system based of 0-33, 34-66, 67-99, and capturing or liberating even a single stronghold can change your line on what characters are available, etc, from someone who did it with a differnet grouph. its incredibly complex, although not 100% necessary to understand, just something for achievement whores like myself
Tactic Ogre was by far my favorite of this series. It was an old Tactics game for PS1. Good stuff. I really enjoyed the mode where you could do a 10 v 10 battle and play 2 player to grind EXP =D.
Nothing beats 2 player PvP in an RPG where you can actually level up your party while having some competitive fun
oh wow, i remember playing this exact game in like 7th grade (01ish). DEFINITELY not my style or kind of game but i remember it being fun, I played it till i had to return it to the video store .
I was always more a fan of the SNES version and also OGRE TACTICS. OrgeBattle for SNES, Secret of Mana, FinalFantasy 3 and 6, Earthbound, Mario RPG..took up countless hours of my youth.
I played the snes one alot but never tried to N64 one.
The SNES one is so fucking long, I remember beating it on fastest speed on a ROM and it took hours, cant imagine playing it on the snes, must took 100+ hours.
On October 13 2010 00:05 ScDeluX wrote: I played the snes one alot but never tried to N64 one.
The SNES one is so fucking long, I remember beating it on fastest speed on a ROM and it took hours, cant imagine playing it on the snes, must took 100+ hours.
It did, but you could just race through the game with a few evil aligned parties and not care at all about seeing much of the content. What took the time was sending the good aligned parties to liberate hidden cities off the beaten path and not using overpowered parties to clear enemies. You literally had to half lose your fights, heal and come back again so that your reputation wouldn't go down as being a bully. Also, it didn't pay to draw cards from liberated cities unless you really had to, -2 reputation or an evil aligned card pulled by a group of cherubs is not worth it.
Each map, aside from the few at the beginning, can take up to 3 hours to play through.
I saw 4 different endings, and with each game was able to pick up more and more characters that I missed on the first runs.
I had never even heard of a SNES ogre battle, but 64 crashed my mind for over a year. I remember getting a free strategy book for this after subscribing to another year of Nintendo Power. So I had to buy it, and I didn't even pay! If I remember EBGames traded it to me for my copies of Turok, Southpark, and Hexen64. Hands down a good deal on the day it came out.
It was good, I remember playing it all the time. But it was not the best 64 game thats for sure... Golden Eye, Smash, Perfect Dark, man the memories go back.
EPT
