The horrors of war

Tactical or strategic japanese role playing games weren't much of a thing until the creation of Fire Emblem in 1990 that put the thought on Famicom owners everywhere in Japan. Despite my inexperience with the Fire Emblem series, tactical role playing games have slowly nurtured my appreciation for the gameplay style, music and the stories they try to tell. Final Fantasy Tactics was one of my favorite titles and honestly my favorite Final Fantasy title ever bringing everything iconic about the series with deep gameplay mechanics, interesting jobs/classes, excellent music and one of the best political fantasy stories ever told. Before Final Fantasy Tactics, there was Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Originally a strategy game before turning into a fully realized tactical game with the sequel in question. Matsuno's sophomore effort will eventually leave an impact on the tactical japanese role playing genre forever even now until the modern times with the new release of Tactics Ogre: Reborn allowing people to experience what started it all in possibly the best way you can. I haven't been this enamored with this game in a way to the point I started another playthrough on the Super Famicom version shortly after playing a bit of the modern iteration of Tactics Ogre. This one is for the ages, the crown jewel of the tactical japanese role playing genre lived up to its name and so much more.

Instead of relying on a purely fantastical premise with the powers of good versus the powers of evil, the story is more grounded in reality in political and ethnic struggles. No one is truly a "good" person in this story as everyone has their own strong stance on what is truly right and rides this dark line throughout the whole story. The great thing about a grounded tale is how easy it can be to be immersed in the Valerian Isles, the location in which Tactics Ogre takes place in. The main three characters are extremely flawed takes of the regular japanese role playing protagonist, the heroine, and the childhood friend. Each of them can take a turn for the better or worse depending on your decision and the game throws a lot of difficult decisions, life or death or changing the entire course of the story itself. There's rarely a truly moral answer and rides on your own personal sense of righteousness to see if it was the right thing to do but considering how war is, you always lose something regardless of winning. The main players of the play are important and fleshed out but we can't forget about the supporting cast you can completely easy miss out on. Extremely obtuse requirements required to even see them or have them join your battalion carrying unique skills sometimes with unique interactions with the main narrative itself that fleshes out the little bits even more. The interesting part is that almost each main leader in a story battle has their own page in the Warren Report giving more insight to them and even the current happenings of the world that actually gives you more content to do. The voice acting delivery in Reborn is a little bit mixed I feel with some decent performances but some voices sounding a bit off that might be because of my personal bias with Ivalice or Matsuno's work mentally associated with british voice acting but then again when you hear the protagonist and realize it's Ryuji from Persona 5's english voice actor doing an English accent, you can't help but be taken out a little bit despite the guy really trying his best.

Not mentioning much of Reborn's changes in my thoughts about the narrative and characters earlier because most of the changes the new iteration gives is from a gameplay perspective. Three versions of Tactics Ogre exist with mostly different gameplay in each with the same room premise. Reborn takes its core from the PSP remaster/remake and makes a lot of quality of life adjustments that makes the gameplay a little more forgiving and easier to digest compared to its older iterations. Don't get me wrong though, Tactics Ogre is a pretty difficult game even with a literal tool that lets you turn back time at will with no limit. You'd think with something like that then the challenge would be gone but you'd be surprised. 3D isometric fields with smudgy pixelelated characters that I kinda got used to after a while, it feels familiar if you played Final Fantasy Tactics before but it's a bit different and a bit more streamlined here. A big change is the party size while Final Fantasy Tactics usually have up to five units up at a time, you now have up to a whopping twelve to control at the max with other times being eight to ten at specific moments. If you couldn't tell already, battles in Tactics Ogre can be extremely long at times and the game throws a lot at you to do near the end that almost feels like a third of the game alone in content as a post game of sorts.

Fortunately there's a lot of variety in ways you can create and customize units and even gather units that aren't even from the same species as you such as gryphons, dragons or even skeletons into the fray. Reborn essentially streamlines a bit of stuff from the PSP and make it easier and simpler to an extent such as crafting not failing, different rules for equipment, the leveling system being completely different, skills and jobs being different and tuned and so much more and I honestly think from a gameplay perspective to go to Reborn if you just want to experience the story. I can understand some complaints about the story level cap and not being able to overlevel but I think it's good so you actually have to think about battles instead of brute forcing through higher stats. There's a lot of ways to tackle battles and so many tools the game gives you with actual things to do that challenges that knowledge that I feel pretty fulfilled with the eighty hours I sunk into this game and the extra fourty I sunk into the SNES version itself. I will say I'm not that keen on the buff card system since it brings more randomness to battles where with what cards will spawn and where they spawn that might buff up enemies even more than they already are barring the bosses coming with a full deck of card buffs since it's appropriate given the nature of the gameplay. Ending battles can mostly be easy from just defeating the solo leader unit most of the time and it never feels like there's a reason to defeat everyone else before just the leader considering there are times when I only got little experience points for defeating everyone above my own level and a lot of experience points for just gunning straight for the leader. There's no decent way to calculate experience gained until the very end of a battle so I'm left a little confused on that front but I can say that training battles (which have replaced and removed random encounters) are quick battles you can do for great experience. I prefer this approach as it lets players decide their own pacing.

It's not a Square Enix tactical role playing game without an orchestral soundtrack and Reborn has essentially remastered it as such and I really dig it. A lot of intense battle themes during important moments as always elevate these experiments and really sell you on these huge epic tactical battles of war that the game is known for at this point. Listening to Limitation and Faraway Heights are some of my favorite battle tracks just for that reason alone.

Let us cling together. A poetic subtitle for the game that works twofold that I won't delve on due to spoilers but it's very appropriate after the credits rolled. A story of a country ruined by war and lords lusting for power, grasping for it at whatever cost. Tactics Ogre is not a walk in the park but a sprint through a minefield with how everything clicks and hits you right off the bat. It requires more patience than most games but if you give it that patience, it'll be rewarded and then some with some of the best tactical gameplay in the video gaming space.

Can you get your hands bloody for peace?