Nah. You're 100% Right on this one. I think that if Lord of the ring didn't exist, this game would be the worst RPG on the SNES. Honestly, I'd rather finish Lagoon twice than playing Ogre Battle again. At least Lagoon was kinda fun
Well i was half hoping to turn your comment section into a sing along but I mostly agree with you. I actually found it fun for a bit, but its slow, absurdly obtuse and I got bored half way through. And i think it plays better on an emulator where you can use the speed up function. I also have respect for reviewers willing to shit on Sacred Cow games. If you review Der Langrisser at any point I hope you mention the games absurdly low difficulty and hilariously poor balance (and yes I mean the snes one). Just curious, how many dislikes you got? Sometimes high dislikes are entertaining. Also found the video thumb nail hilllarous
Nah, many people dislike this style of game, for me it's one of my favorites there wasn't many tactical games like this when it came out and the depth of hidden items and mechanics and unit combos when this came out. It hasn't aged well, so with no nostalgia goggles on, I totally get why many would have issues with the game.. (none of my friends or I ever touted it as having a good story, it's a meat and potatoes tactical min max game)😂 👍
What I expected Ogre Battle to be from how people talk about it: A dark fantasy SRPG with a super cool story, massive difficulty spikes, branching paths and all that What Ogre Battle actually is: One of those European strategy board games with a bible-sized instruction manual that turns away 95% of people but if you stick with it you will keep playing it with your 3 friends who also stuck with it for the rest of your life Funnily enough I like the latter more than the former so I'm adding it to the wishlist. Great review!
@@gilium5039 I think the confusion is because of this. People mix up the two songs, even though Let Us Cling Together isn't even from the same album as March of the Black Queen and Ogre Battle! People, don't mix up your records.
If you're wondering where the name "Ogre Battle" comes from, it's actually from Queen's Ogre Battle song. The creator of the series was a big fan of Queen!
As someone who will gladly trash a beloved game if it didn't work for me I couldn't appreciate your authenticity more. Thanks for staying sincere! You always have an interesting point to make. And I never played this but the spritework in battle does look pretty nice.
If I remember correctly, using good aligned units to liberate cities gives you reputation, while using evil aligned units to liberate cities reduces your reputation. If you use the same team to fight all the battles, they will be too strong and their alignment will drop as they will be seen as cruel for culling the weak. Also, I think that you wasting time at the time of each stage to accrue money was also costing you reputation as you were just draining money from the cities in that stage. The story of this game is the way you wage your campaign, and having a good reputation and unlocking all characters and stages is really rewarding. This is not the kind of game where you just go around killing everything.
The reputation/alignment system is needlessly punishing and its mechanics are hidden enough that it's very difficult to even understand HOW to play it correctly
It’s more complicated than that. Towns have an alignment and whether or not you use similarly aligned units affects whether it’s a liberation or conquest.
I mean, if you are just blindly playing all the games you can without doing any real prep for any of them, you're going to set yourself up for a bad time with some fine games. This game came with a fat manual and a poster with all the branching class descriptions and requirements. It was essential to the experience. I love your videos. Watch 'em all the time. But man, I really wish you'd have read that pdf of the manual before you fired this one up. It's a lot of fun if you know what you are doing. The PS1 version adds an actual story even.
Yeah, it is sometimes easy to forget how developers handled manuals, like sometimes an essential part of playing their games. A developer can easily say that they will shorten the tutorial for the sake of pacing teaching only the basics, and include all the advance stuff in the manual. I mean even games like mario 64, all the advance manuevers are right there with big artwork and colorful instructions, some starts are impossible to get without those manuevers. You were expected to at the very least have a look at them. It was just a different philosophy.
I agree, but I must say I played this back in the late 90s (being around 18/9 yrs old at the time) and managed to get the gist the mechanics of the game without a manual.
Your review makes sense. Ogre Battle is a lot like The Last Remnant on XBox 360, you'll only understand where you went wrong way too deep into it, but when you know what you're doing from the beginning it's a damn good time and extremely satisfying.
Oh Last Remnant got a PC port, weirdly, at the strange era between early PC ports that just worked (FFVII/VIII, Grandia 2, Breath of Fire IV) and Steam time where we got everything. During a short frame it was the ONLY new jRPG on PC, and it was... weeeeeird, but then I got it has that FF8 system where leveling up makes game harder and you need to work on jobs instead. I need to get back at it.
@@KasumiRINA I had last remnant on PC when it first came out and played it without a guide. All of my squads ended up being dominated by scouts which are herbalism based healers, and apparently the most sub-optimal class. Every boss fight I had to stop by a store and buy 99 of every herb type, and then the boss battle would be a war of attrition with me chain reviving my squads over and over. Didn't have to do any grinding, and was able to beat the final boss and win the game (though didn't touch any of the superboss content). Had a lot of fun with that game, shame it was a flop.
Big ups to you for completing this game, dude! All I managed to achieve when I tried it out was doing some stuff on the first map before giving up lol. This is kind of a fascinating game to me because it looks really cool and unlike basically any SRPG out there, including its own sequels (come to think of it, on the outset it looks more like a PC RTS like Heroes of Might and Magic or something), but it is also really baffling, just looking at the map and witnessing the battles for the first time is enough to make you question wtf is going on, like it feels like my brain isn't big enough to comprehend all of the game's inner workings, but the way you describe it makes it seem like some of those details are, for better or for worse, mostly just smoke and mirrors set up to make you think the whole thing is more complex and difficult than it actually is, but even then it's still really cryptic, there is no fucking way to just pick it up and play like you can with Fire Emblem or Langrisser (although the early FEs are definitely guide games as well due to the way your characters are handled). Either way, Tactics Ogre and FFT seem like much better games, not to mention TO, from what I've seen, actually does have an engrossing dark political plot for real, so I wonder what you'll think of TO when/if you get there. Also, I'm pretty sure the skull squids are supposed to be skulls and crossbones. Also also, if you want a good SRPG with a morale system that influences the story and gameplay, you'll probably enjoy Feda: Emblem of Justice, a sort of honorary SNES installment of Shining Force, hope to see a "review" of it in the future!
There is a sequel Ogre Battle 64 that is basically this game but...more. It's actually a bit less obtuse though- and as the game continues it gets easier and easier, unlike this one that gets harder.
Never played games in the 16 bit era for their story, not one time. Never thought about it. Ogre Battle is my favorite SNES game ever and is still fun today. I dont fault people who say they dont like it. Its one of those games with no middle ground. The reasons most people dont care for it are the same reasons other people are addicted to it.
Hey I got a shout out from doing a shout out, It's shoutception! Or something. To be fair, as much as I love Ogre Battle, I know it's a mess. I remember playing it one summer when I was a dumb child and put over 300 hours into it and didn't even beat it. I need to replay it some day and when I do, I'll be implementing Jason Graves' Just Walk Straight To The Boss Approach™.
Great video. I actually like this game I played it all the way through 3 or more times, but I understand how you feel. This is a game like Genghis Khan 2: if it doesn't suck you in right away, you're not going to be invested enough to learn the reams of information that you need to succeed
I remember, sending my unit to every curious places, to find secret artefact. There are items hidden on the map, and you have to send a unit over there to pick it up. But there is NOTHING that indicate there could be an item there.
I appreciate your honest review, I had a lot of fun playing Ogre Battle but you’re right in that it is definitely a guide type of game. I played with a guide on my first run because I knew it was a long game and I was set on getting the ‘best’ ending. That said though I don’t blame you for saying it has no story, with so many endings it makes sense that the story is minimal compared to its successors later on. I’d say that you get the most story by playing with a guide tbh, as it helps you get the best ending which sets up future games (not that it really matters since there hasn’t been a new/real sequel since 2001). Can’t wait to see what other videos you make.
Agree reputation was badly implemented. I had a 100 percent reputation run where I used 2 super teams with evil units to murder everyone… and 2 “high alignment” pansy units to just liberate towns. Felt… less than heroic.
That's what's cool about it though, your reputation isn't based on what you're actually doing, it's what the people are "seeing." It's a bold and very real portrayal of war and revolution for its time.
Does that actually work if you keep taking down and completely wiping out weaker enemy squads? It balances out just from the liberations and finishing scenarios quickly?
@@Alianger No joke, it worked great on my "best ending" playthrough. By about halfway through the game I had a 0 alignment 0 charisma "kill squad" with 2 attack all magic users, a princess and some flier. Killed every unit in seconds. Rarely took damage. I'd park it right by the enemy HQ. Unleash hell. All enemy squads usually killed by day 2. After the map was clear, I'd use the liberators to liberate the map and finish story stuff, get one round of tributes, then win. It wasn't chivalrous at all, but it worked.
@@SusieUndertale Honestly this is a really good point. On my early playthroughs I struggled to try and have every unit "good" and it was almost always a bad ending. To get the good ending I had to look into the abyss. :)
This is one of those games where the main source of the fun comes from all the decisions and balancing you have to do to keep your reputation meter up, and it does indeed take basically some time studying to even know wtf to do. Makes sense you didn't enjoy it given the circumstances, but I'd bet hard money now that you're familiar with the game if you looked up more info on how to get your rep up and keep it up and gave it another go in some odd years, you'd change your mind on it. It's not an easy game to like, but it *will* reward you if you take the time to let it in. Most of your criticisms are rooted in "I didn't know what i was doing" or "I did this wrong" (like the money cheat of just waiting doesn't work because your rep will go down, and the rep governs like 11 something endings. A few high-powered units is great to speed-run the bad ending, but none of the others as rep goes down if you're higher level in a fight) and, yeah, naturally that'll be no fun, but it does mean there's still a game there you haven't seen or played yet, and *that* game is the one everyone is raving about, not the one you played. "When the best way to play your game is to ignore your game, that's a failure" That's why the worst ending is only available if you do that. Beating the game is easy and boring, getting the higher rep endings is where the fun is as basically nothing you did in this vid would have been viable. "It doesn't tell a story" It does if you go for the better endings as there are a lot more conversations and such. Reputation's also gained by a ton more than just liberating cities. Even things like winning fights with lower level units or even just sitting in cities as high morality units and the day and low morality units at night will raise it, as well as various quests and a handful of other things. Liberating's not a small part, but it's not the main part either, it's more how you fight the war over a ton of actions more than any single actions. I totally get where you're coming from but there's a good game in there you haven't cracked open and haven't even seen yet. Maybe try again in a few years, might be like discovering a new game.
Nice video. Lots of fair criticism. I think a big part of OBs appeal is putting together the army so I can understand if you don't care about that it would be a slog. Gryphon + 3 mages can solo the entire game
This is a very entertaining review! I'm hopeful that Vanillaware can produce a more balanced and intuitive take on this game's mechanics with Unicorn Overlord.
The trick w/ Ogre Battle is you can definitely rush the game like that and get one of the bad endings. For the best ending you need to do things like keep your alignment of your main character up, reputation up, find a bunch of magic items hidden in the game, as well as recruit certain characters. A lot of story is something you can opt into, ie, if you recruit a certain character in a chapter, and have them fight the boss of the stage, you'll get more backstory, and can recruit the boss. This is also why I have never finished this game lol I love it, but its a pain to manage reputation especially, since steamrolling enemy units with super OP groups lowers your rep, since the game basically treats you as just another tyrant.
Your review is straight my first run in the game, when i finished i got the worst ending, then i started to realize i was missing all the "correct" way to play it, then i knew i was missing characters, missions, classes upgrades, just because i wanted to steamroll it with a omnipower unit, i strongly recommend you to play it in the way the game wants you to behave
The fun thing about Ogre Battle is that the optimal strategy will get you the worst ending because of your low reputation. You'll also miss alot of the plot because there are a bunch of hidden characters.
This game I have a weird relationship with. I really really wanted to get into it as a kid, but I could never really figure out the optimal strategy. I would make a bunch of good guy units cause I wanted to see the best ending, and those units would quickly outlevel the enemy after the first few chapters and their alignment/charisma would plummet and then I couldn't promote them. I made larger and larger armies, trying to spread the xp, and the same thing kept happening. Then like 15 years later I tried it as an adult. Turns out the optimal strategy, even if you are going for the good ending, is to make a handful of good units and then a bunch of units that are evil as shit. The evil as shit units fight most of the battles for you, unseen by the people you are liberating, while your good guy units liberate cities, kiss babies, etc. If your evil as shit units full of undead dragons, liches, vampires and all that wipe out the enemy, no one cares.
As someone who's gotten the 'best" ending multiple times, this is really the strategy, though... you usually only need like 2 or 3 "evil" units. Usually just the main wizard NPCs. Whenever I play a game of this, I'll recruit ALL unique NPCs except for the demon and the witch because they are exclusive to an evil playthrough. IIRC, there's 3 wizard NPCs, and each get their own unit, and depending on how many class change items I find, this means 3 units of mages/sorcerers/liches. I'll send out any units I have that are lower level than the enemy and when they level up, I'll pull them back and then send the liches out. Every map has a finite amount of units except for the very last one, don't liberate anything. Just kill the stuff coming out of the enemy's base. Then, when the enemy is out of units, have the hero (who should be max ali/cha) liberate every town on the map. When you go to fight the boss, put whatever NPC is supposed to fight that boss in the hero's unit which counts as that NPC fighting the boss (Lans for Map #2, Canopus for his friend, etc). Once your rep meter is 75% or more, I like to send all units back to base except the hero's, and wait for 2-3 tributes per map, or a 1 pixel drop in the rep meter. 3 drops in the rep meter once it's full. You'll have way more money than you could ever spend while maintaining a full meter.
As someone who loves this game, your complaints are pretty warranted; the character design and the music are the highlights, along with the mechanics being a semi-realistic simulation of actually balancing political power. You can rush the enemy fortress with your strongest characters, sure, but you lose favor with the people for continuously slaughtering lower-level units. Is that interesting? Definitely. Is it fun? Mmmmmmmmmmm that's not as clear-cut
You didn't play it wrong. You didn't play it badly. You played Ogre Battle for the first time. Everyone who's played it should understand that. Even though I love the game, and come back to it every handful of years, I understand that it's not to everyone's taste. That's fine. No offense taken. I liked hearing your thoughts on the game, even if it didn't do it for you. In the future, if you ever want to take another crack at Ogre Battle, let me know. 👍🏻 Sometimes your feelings about a game can change, given time and a different approach.
5:30 I disagree with that because you might wanna change tactics mid-way, flee or use a card. I also emulate so I can just FF anyway I'll have to come back later with more thoughts as I haven't played that far into it yet
I had a pretty cool expirience with this game myself. This was one of the few games I downloaded through the Wii VC back in the day. Back then I was getting into Heroes of Might and Magic aswell as Fire Emblem. I think I played up to chapter 10 or so until I started to get into other games and lost interest. Shortly before the Wii shop channel closed down I transfered all my data to my Wii U. A few weeks later I decided to play some of my Wii games but I fked up the transfer. I had kept the games on my SD card not knowing I had to redownload them to the Wii U internal storage and then transfer them to the SD card. At some point I just clicked on the Wii shop channel and it opened. I could still download every game I had bought before. I didn't know that so I was extremly hyped to play Castlevania Rebirth again. After I had played that to death I decided to give Ogre Battle another go. I was suprised to see that my save state was still there. I continued to play the game in my old style. 2-3 Squads. 1 to defend 1 or 2 for roaming around. I had enjoyed the game so much I bought the sequel Ogre Battle 64 before I had finished my playthrough. Then the ending came. First off the final battle forcing me to sacrifice 1 squad was BS. Than the multiple bossfights got annoying real quick. I was using my 2cnd roaming squad as canon founder. Send them into the fight and use my saved cards to dominate the fight. But I needed to many of them forcing me to use fking Sun which is sort of a suicide bomb. It does a shitload of damage to the oponent but also you. My second squad just barely managed to survive the final battle. with the leader only having like 10hp left. I felt really great at that point since I didn't want to play the final mission again. I had lost my main guy at my first attempt causing an instand game over. This was really not the time to give me such a terrible ending man.... I had put way to much work into it to get the worst ending just like you did. I don't know if I can play any other game in the series any time soon.
Starting with 16-bit cover of Ogre Battle, it was the only option! That said, March of the Black Queen from very same Queen 2 is just as good of a track. Gotta love Japanese devs randomly naming stuff after their fav Rock bands, Sol Badguy vs Ky Kiske, anyone?
lol. i loved that intro with your face coming in close. made me laugh for real. i'm still smiling. your videos keep getting better and better (i've watched a few dozen at this point, working my way through your impressive catalog). i never played this game in particular, though i have it on PSX due to my quest of getting every RPG on that system (one to go... and it's a miserable one). I am a big fan of the Tactics Ogre subseries though, Knight of Lodus and Let Us Cling Together are fantastic imo. Also i'd like to add that most games can be reduced to "evil empire blah blah" but it's the story in between that define them. Even the Tactics games can be distilled to that but they are full of political intrigue and developments.
My dude, as a member of the mob, I do sympathize with the struggle, playing off and on for years, 1st you can save mid campaign. Far as battle goes it usually goes "strong" the 1st/2nd encounter to weaken everyone without killing the leader which cause retreats than switching to "weak" to pick off all non leader enemies. Then having having a flying hit squad to clean up the mess. Reputation is so convoluted it's absurd. Also the story requires so many specific characters and timings with reputation checks it's difficult enough even with a guide. Love the video/s understand your feelings on tho it's almost too slow and convoluted for it's own good especially upgrading to the most fun classes
I appreciate your honesty it isn't a game for everyone. Then again what game is. Where the real fun with playing with alignment and reputation is the kind of character class evolutions you get. Side note you want slow play the PS1 port there's loading times before and after every and I mean every battle.
Yes, they are two different games (SNES - and then later PS1 - got Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen; on the 64 there was Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber)
Great review. It's interesting to finally get an idea of what this game's actually about. Now we need a Tactics Ogre SNES review for the ogre redemption.
The problem with most of ogre battles' morality system is that it actively punishes the player for basic play, and so you have to go through the game effectively with one arm tied behind your back while still trying to juggle all the mechanics if you want the good ending
I love this game. Its easily my favorite console SRPG. I wish Square would remaster the Ogre Battle games instead of just rehashing Tactics Ogre again and again. The story's interesting if you dive into the lore. The Kingdom you are fighting to re-establish weren't the good guys. But the leader of their intended victims became evil after kicking their ass.
Can't agree more with you on this one. Bought it when it came out and I returned it the same week, why became my greatest regret when I saw it's value skyrocket
I played this game a lot as a kid, and I loved it, I got all the secrets and figured all the stuff out, spent a lot of time on the gamefaqs boards piecing together all the little crumbs of story you get throughout the game along with the tidbits from every ending.... ...I went back to play this as a 36 year old, made it through maps and was like 'Wow. This was really boring.' And then came to the same conclusions as you did- though I knew how the game mechanics worked, to an extent.
Man, this is a game that you really need to read the manual to understand what's happening... The gist of it is that this is the 5th chapter of a history, that started with a war against the ogres, and was fought by 12 wizards and 3 high knights, against the ogres, and Diablo was the leader of them. Rashidi, the second to last boss, was one of the 12 wizards, he started dealing with dark magic, which lead him to succumb into the evil, he killed the other wizards and is looking for the Brunhild, a magic sword that is the key to access the heavens, where the 3 high knights lives, while also brain washing the queen Endora to rule the empire and make way to summon Diablo, to rule the earth again. It's a great plot, but it's exposed too sparcely on the game itself! And you need to follow the path of good to get most of it, so no waiting at the end of the level to raise more money, nor liberating cities with low ally leaders, only to have them conquered again 😅
The story itself requires you to engage with the mechanics fully. I always liked that you COULD play it the way you did, but you get more out of it if you put more in.
I always appreciate how much you been going through all these jrpgs man. Can't wait for the next few stuff my dude, I was never that interested in this one so it might be a pass for me
I tried it multiple times but could never fully get into it. Never got very far. On the other hand, I love the N64 game. It's done in the same style, but far more intuitive and fleshed out. It has a proper storyline, with dialogue. Reputation is done far better. It doesn't cost money to deploy troops. The main guy and a few of his friends from the SNES one even shows up as an ally, and you can recruit them. I got way more enjoyment out of it than I did with the SNES game. Beat it twice, bad ending first time and best ending second time.
I agree mostly but reputation was a disaster in Ogre Battle 64 as well. Random early cutscene choices can absolutely massively affect the game in ways you’d never predict. It was not good. But the game was cool.
You missed ALOT of gameplay, what you said was like throwing a revue on pac-man and saying it was a good game but I didn't understand how I was supposed to move up when all I did was press left. There are things to consider with this games, like alignment or being a "bully" (steamrolling the enemies was a no no back then and trust me I learned the hardway on that one lol), so many nuances its almost like actual warfare (you cant see the enemy troops until your close). Give this another thought and play through being a hero to the empire (that's the hardest part as you can out level your enemies pretty fast and be a bully)
In sum then, the game didn't explain itself well and you had a bad time. That's fair enough, but the idea that a game is a failure when you don't chase down every bit of content doesn't hold water. Most games would be failures by that reasoning, since filler and grind are near-universal. Makes even less sense if you judge a game as a failure on the basis that the dominant speedrunning strategy is to skip things, which seems to be only superficially different from what you're saying.
I feel like calling this an RPG is kinda unfair. I liked this game so much bc it took elements from RPGs, RTS, and turn based combat and made a surprisingly rich and enjoyable game. It might not deliver on any one concept really well, but it does do a good job of making all three aspects enjoyable. But I can see how it would not be enjoyable if you minmax it, kinda like your Front Mission review. But I was able to play it with enough emerssion to see stories in my units and explore the bit of depth it offers pursueing those emergent stories while having a power fantasy romp bc the minmax strat gave me lots of freedom to still beat the game.
"You need to replay it to appreciate it but that is not the expectation I went in with" I think this a fair review...That is exactly what motivated me to rerent this game even though I beat it and enjoyed it. I felt the first play through gave me enough experience with the games systems that gave me the freedom to have a power fantasy romp with my preffered unit loadouts and with that freedom of OP units I was able to explore other less optimized unit loadouts that I just thought were cool when they hit, even when they were not optimized. Explore the games systems in that way let my imagination run free in the esoteric lore of the game.
i agree so much with this review. tried this game when i was a kid but it was way too complicated and missing the manual too since i only rented it. so i just gave up quickly on it. i might replay it someday now that im much older but for anyone younger, i think it was way too difficult to understand.
There was an ogre battle in history of the lore. Characters who fought in that war actually appear in this game on sky islands. Ogre Battle 64 actually brings the Ogres out
The game can be tedious, but you didn't pay attention to the game mechanics that were presented to you. I mean as an RPG fan, aren't you in the habit of reading all the text from villagers? Still I appreciate your opinion.
A game that explores such topics as "just war" and provides a rich back story and plenty of information on how to conquer without being a tyrant and surrendering power when there is no opposition and this fool does exactly the worst thing and becomes the tyrant he is to oppose. You missed the whole point of the game dude.
Two factors are supposed to discourage you from bum-rushing bosses: plot (leading to character unlocks and different endings) and optimizing unit class changes. The plot is definitely "opt-in." This is the big difference between the 2-hour 100% and 1-hour any% speedruns. Honestly, most of the "plot" content you missed amount to a series of guide-dangit fetch quests which open up some seriously OP characters and a few extra maps. There are a few fun character interactions, but it's really not that interesting. Fire Emblem and a lot of other sRPGs did all of this much better, sorry not sorry. Unit class changes depend on how the unit is used in combat. ALI, CHA, and level control which classes are available to a unit. ALI/CHA tend to drop when a strong unit kills a weak or "support" unit. That said, there are more than enough new units to replace a few that get locked out of a good class upgrade, especially if you are on the 100% path. And once a unit hits the desired end of their tree, there's basically no reason not to use them as a steamroller, ali/cha be durned. For my part, I kind of liked the oddball "squad-level" management (especially in the ocean of samey jRPGs and sRPGs. I wish there were more games that refined this style. OB's a strong proof of concept. The game would have been much better if the squad battles had been designed to resolve in a matter of a few seconds as a map overlay, not the long jrpg-style display with full intro/exit transitions.
The plot, an evil empire exists The twist: it's you. That's what the empty rep bar means. Evil is boring, and I like how this game makes evil the most tedious way to play. This game is Undertale 0 really. People mistake this for a tactical RPG. In reality it's a PR management game in which your goal is to maintain the image of a struggling resistance of the people while you keep your real army of demons, liches, and other horrors on the down low. Or legit win with good, high Ali units, which is significantly tougher than curbstomping everyone.
Imo the review has a number of good points, but I'd say look at it in the same way you look at someone reviewing Undertale based only on a genocide run. It DOES hit the core game mechanics and it does get an okay sense of the game, and it does point out legit problems. But its missing the meat and potatoes of what a lot of folks like about the game.
I love this game but boy howdy is it not everybody’s jam. Unwieldy, obtuse, weird, you’re allowed not to like it. The story gets more fleshed out in later games, and I think the N64 version is way more accessible but yeah there’s a reason this wasn’t a success.
How can you even judge a game when you spend 90% of it not understanding how to play it? It sounds like you missed a healthy chunk of the game just trying to run straight lines and beat it fast. You’re entitled to not like it, but to act like it’s a bad game because it goes over your head is wrong. It sounds like you just don’t like that type of game.
The thing is, once you understand Ogre Battle you can still get the best endings through thoughtless cheese. An optimal playthrough frankly won't look much different than one that doesn't understand the mechanics. You just need to kill all of the bad guys with your super army and have an army of high charisma back benchers liberate the cities.
Masters can speed run this game in 2 and a half hours for the best ending. He spent 50 hours for one of the worst endings. You understand nothing, at least your opinion leader wasn't possessed. Go griffin bro.
![Digital Circus Episode 4 [TRAILER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/abZtsmMUbJo/mqdefault.jpg)
Bracing for the angry mob
I agree about this game. I tried to play through several times through the years and I never figured it out
*SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME*
Nah. You're 100% Right on this one. I think that if Lord of the ring didn't exist, this game would be the worst RPG on the SNES. Honestly, I'd rather finish Lagoon twice than playing Ogre Battle again. At least Lagoon was kinda fun
Well i was half hoping to turn your comment section into a sing along but I mostly agree with you. I actually found it fun for a bit, but its slow, absurdly obtuse and I got bored half way through. And i think it plays better on an emulator where you can use the speed up function. I also have respect for reviewers willing to shit on Sacred Cow games. If you review Der Langrisser at any point I hope you mention the games absurdly low difficulty and hilariously poor balance (and yes I mean the snes one). Just curious, how many dislikes you got? Sometimes high dislikes are entertaining. Also found the video thumb nail hilllarous
Nah, many people dislike this style of game, for me it's one of my favorites there wasn't many tactical games like this when it came out and the depth of hidden items and mechanics and unit combos when this came out. It hasn't aged well, so with no nostalgia goggles on, I totally get why many would have issues with the game.. (none of my friends or I ever touted it as having a good story, it's a meat and potatoes tactical min max game)😂 👍
What I expected Ogre Battle to be from how people talk about it: A dark fantasy SRPG with a super cool story, massive difficulty spikes, branching paths and all that
What Ogre Battle actually is: One of those European strategy board games with a bible-sized instruction manual that turns away 95% of people but if you stick with it you will keep playing it with your 3 friends who also stuck with it for the rest of your life
Funnily enough I like the latter more than the former so I'm adding it to the wishlist. Great review!
I like the board game comparison. Wish I thought of that
Same.
Tactics Ogre is exactly what you thought it was lol,minus the difficulty spikes
@@gilium5039 I think the confusion is because of this. People mix up the two songs, even though Let Us Cling Together isn't even from the same album as March of the Black Queen and Ogre Battle! People, don't mix up your records.
If you're wondering where the name "Ogre Battle" comes from, it's actually from Queen's Ogre Battle song. The creator of the series was a big fan of Queen!
The same place the subtitle March of the Black Queen and the subtitle of Tactics Ogre (Let Us Cling Together) comes from....
@@shinjodun March of the Black Queen is like Bohemian Rhapsody's older sister. It's such a good tune.
As someone who will gladly trash a beloved game if it didn't work for me I couldn't appreciate your authenticity more. Thanks for staying sincere! You always have an interesting point to make.
And I never played this but the spritework in battle does look pretty nice.
If I remember correctly, using good aligned units to liberate cities gives you reputation, while using evil aligned units to liberate cities reduces your reputation. If you use the same team to fight all the battles, they will be too strong and their alignment will drop as they will be seen as cruel for culling the weak. Also, I think that you wasting time at the time of each stage to accrue money was also costing you reputation as you were just draining money from the cities in that stage. The story of this game is the way you wage your campaign, and having a good reputation and unlocking all characters and stages is really rewarding. This is not the kind of game where you just go around killing everything.
The reputation/alignment system is needlessly punishing and its mechanics are hidden enough that it's very difficult to even understand HOW to play it correctly
@@TonySylvesterOhio That was par for the course back in those days of gaming and without the internet to make sense of it quickly.
It’s more complicated than that. Towns have an alignment and whether or not you use similarly aligned units affects whether it’s a liberation or conquest.
I mean, if you are just blindly playing all the games you can without doing any real prep for any of them, you're going to set yourself up for a bad time with some fine games. This game came with a fat manual and a poster with all the branching class descriptions and requirements. It was essential to the experience. I love your videos. Watch 'em all the time. But man, I really wish you'd have read that pdf of the manual before you fired this one up. It's a lot of fun if you know what you are doing. The PS1 version adds an actual story even.
Yeah, it is sometimes easy to forget how developers handled manuals, like sometimes an essential part of playing their games.
A developer can easily say that they will shorten the tutorial for the sake of pacing teaching only the basics, and include all the advance stuff in the manual.
I mean even games like mario 64, all the advance manuevers are right there with big artwork and colorful instructions, some starts are impossible to get without those manuevers. You were expected to at the very least have a look at them. It was just a different philosophy.
I agree, but I must say I played this back in the late 90s (being around 18/9 yrs old at the time) and managed to get the gist the mechanics of the game without a manual.
The "RTFM" era was a very different time; I can understand a modern player having a hard time getting into that headspace.
Those towns contain quests that raise your reputation quests that also provide story content.
Sounds like you need to play for a good ending if you missed the story. Love your reviews either way man. Keep up the good work.
Your review makes sense. Ogre Battle is a lot like The Last Remnant on XBox 360, you'll only understand where you went wrong way too deep into it, but when you know what you're doing from the beginning it's a damn good time and extremely satisfying.
Oh Last Remnant got a PC port, weirdly, at the strange era between early PC ports that just worked (FFVII/VIII, Grandia 2, Breath of Fire IV) and Steam time where we got everything. During a short frame it was the ONLY new jRPG on PC, and it was... weeeeeird, but then I got it has that FF8 system where leveling up makes game harder and you need to work on jobs instead. I need to get back at it.
@@KasumiRINA I had last remnant on PC when it first came out and played it without a guide. All of my squads ended up being dominated by scouts which are herbalism based healers, and apparently the most sub-optimal class. Every boss fight I had to stop by a store and buy 99 of every herb type, and then the boss battle would be a war of attrition with me chain reviving my squads over and over. Didn't have to do any grinding, and was able to beat the final boss and win the game (though didn't touch any of the superboss content). Had a lot of fun with that game, shame it was a flop.
Aww, you murdered my boy. Lol.
As a hardcore ogre battle player, this was interesting to see a fresh POV.
tarot: pronounced like arrow with a t in front. Tarrow.
Big ups to you for completing this game, dude! All I managed to achieve when I tried it out was doing some stuff on the first map before giving up lol. This is kind of a fascinating game to me because it looks really cool and unlike basically any SRPG out there, including its own sequels (come to think of it, on the outset it looks more like a PC RTS like Heroes of Might and Magic or something), but it is also really baffling, just looking at the map and witnessing the battles for the first time is enough to make you question wtf is going on, like it feels like my brain isn't big enough to comprehend all of the game's inner workings, but the way you describe it makes it seem like some of those details are, for better or for worse, mostly just smoke and mirrors set up to make you think the whole thing is more complex and difficult than it actually is, but even then it's still really cryptic, there is no fucking way to just pick it up and play like you can with Fire Emblem or Langrisser (although the early FEs are definitely guide games as well due to the way your characters are handled). Either way, Tactics Ogre and FFT seem like much better games, not to mention TO, from what I've seen, actually does have an engrossing dark political plot for real, so I wonder what you'll think of TO when/if you get there. Also, I'm pretty sure the skull squids are supposed to be skulls and crossbones. Also also, if you want a good SRPG with a morale system that influences the story and gameplay, you'll probably enjoy Feda: Emblem of Justice, a sort of honorary SNES installment of Shining Force, hope to see a "review" of it in the future!
There is a sequel Ogre Battle 64 that is basically this game but...more. It's actually a bit less obtuse though- and as the game continues it gets easier and easier, unlike this one that gets harder.
Same, I found this in like a 150 snes games emulation pack I downloaded of kazaa in 2003 and had a similar experience.
Never played games in the 16 bit era for their story, not one time. Never thought about it. Ogre Battle is my favorite SNES game ever and is still fun today. I dont fault people who say they dont like it. Its one of those games with no middle ground. The reasons most people dont care for it are the same reasons other people are addicted to it.
Very true.
How dare you not like everything I like!! Might be my favorite video yet.
You're just saying that because you got a shout out.
(I'm still not doing your spritework for OGRE Brothers)
Hey I got a shout out from doing a shout out, It's shoutception! Or something. To be fair, as much as I love Ogre Battle, I know it's a mess. I remember playing it one summer when I was a dumb child and put over 300 hours into it and didn't even beat it. I need to replay it some day and when I do, I'll be implementing Jason Graves' Just Walk Straight To The Boss Approach™.
First saw your great Chrono Cross video and I've been happily subscribed ever since.
To another 43 SNES rpgs!
Keep up the good work guy!
All that build up and your like, “I didn’t like it.” 🤣 bravo!
Great video. I actually like this game I played it all the way through 3 or more times, but I understand how you feel. This is a game like Genghis Khan 2: if it doesn't suck you in right away, you're not going to be invested enough to learn the reams of information that you need to succeed
I rmember playing this for hours upon hours when i was about 12-13....I replayed it again a few years ago and it is just as good. So much strategy
At least... until you figure out the "best" way to do it then every map plays exactly the same. But it's still fun.
Well i must completely disagree with the reviewers take but i respect his opinion. This is a top 10 SNES game for me.
I remember, sending my unit to every curious places, to find secret artefact. There are items hidden on the map, and you have to send a unit over there to pick it up. But there is NOTHING that indicate there could be an item there.
I appreciate your honest review, I had a lot of fun playing Ogre Battle but you’re right in that it is definitely a guide type of game. I played with a guide on my first run because I knew it was a long game and I was set on getting the ‘best’ ending. That said though I don’t blame you for saying it has no story, with so many endings it makes sense that the story is minimal compared to its successors later on. I’d say that you get the most story by playing with a guide tbh, as it helps you get the best ending which sets up future games (not that it really matters since there hasn’t been a new/real sequel since 2001).
Can’t wait to see what other videos you make.
Some of your points are valid, but Ogre Battle was AMAZING for its time.
Agree reputation was badly implemented. I had a 100 percent reputation run where I used 2 super teams with evil units to murder everyone… and 2 “high alignment” pansy units to just liberate towns. Felt… less than heroic.
Right? It's like how the military uses sub-contractors to distract.
That's what's cool about it though, your reputation isn't based on what you're actually doing, it's what the people are "seeing." It's a bold and very real portrayal of war and revolution for its time.
Does that actually work if you keep taking down and completely wiping out weaker enemy squads? It balances out just from the liberations and finishing scenarios quickly?
@@Alianger No joke, it worked great on my "best ending" playthrough. By about halfway through the game I had a 0 alignment 0 charisma "kill squad" with 2 attack all magic users, a princess and some flier. Killed every unit in seconds. Rarely took damage. I'd park it right by the enemy HQ. Unleash hell. All enemy squads usually killed by day 2. After the map was clear, I'd use the liberators to liberate the map and finish story stuff, get one round of tributes, then win. It wasn't chivalrous at all, but it worked.
@@SusieUndertale Honestly this is a really good point. On my early playthroughs I struggled to try and have every unit "good" and it was almost always a bad ending. To get the good ending I had to look into the abyss. :)
This is one of those games where the main source of the fun comes from all the decisions and balancing you have to do to keep your reputation meter up, and it does indeed take basically some time studying to even know wtf to do. Makes sense you didn't enjoy it given the circumstances, but I'd bet hard money now that you're familiar with the game if you looked up more info on how to get your rep up and keep it up and gave it another go in some odd years, you'd change your mind on it. It's not an easy game to like, but it *will* reward you if you take the time to let it in. Most of your criticisms are rooted in "I didn't know what i was doing" or "I did this wrong" (like the money cheat of just waiting doesn't work because your rep will go down, and the rep governs like 11 something endings. A few high-powered units is great to speed-run the bad ending, but none of the others as rep goes down if you're higher level in a fight) and, yeah, naturally that'll be no fun, but it does mean there's still a game there you haven't seen or played yet, and *that* game is the one everyone is raving about, not the one you played.
"When the best way to play your game is to ignore your game, that's a failure"
That's why the worst ending is only available if you do that. Beating the game is easy and boring, getting the higher rep endings is where the fun is as basically nothing you did in this vid would have been viable.
"It doesn't tell a story"
It does if you go for the better endings as there are a lot more conversations and such. Reputation's also gained by a ton more than just liberating cities. Even things like winning fights with lower level units or even just sitting in cities as high morality units and the day and low morality units at night will raise it, as well as various quests and a handful of other things. Liberating's not a small part, but it's not the main part either, it's more how you fight the war over a ton of actions more than any single actions.
I totally get where you're coming from but there's a good game in there you haven't cracked open and haven't even seen yet. Maybe try again in a few years, might be like discovering a new game.
Nice video. Lots of fair criticism. I think a big part of OBs appeal is putting together the army so I can understand if you don't care about that it would be a slog. Gryphon + 3 mages can solo the entire game
This is a very entertaining review! I'm hopeful that Vanillaware can produce a more balanced and intuitive take on this game's mechanics with Unicorn Overlord.
When you think about it, nearly everyone needs a haircut sooner or later.
Have you tried playing the version on PS1 or on a Saturn ROM with the English Patch?
I need to try this game. I got tactic ogre reborn but haven’t tried it yet.
Best Strategy RPG ever is pretty crazy praise. I actually really like it, but I’d take Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics any day of the week.
The trick w/ Ogre Battle is you can definitely rush the game like that and get one of the bad endings. For the best ending you need to do things like keep your alignment of your main character up, reputation up, find a bunch of magic items hidden in the game, as well as recruit certain characters. A lot of story is something you can opt into, ie, if you recruit a certain character in a chapter, and have them fight the boss of the stage, you'll get more backstory, and can recruit the boss. This is also why I have never finished this game lol I love it, but its a pain to manage reputation especially, since steamrolling enemy units with super OP groups lowers your rep, since the game basically treats you as just another tyrant.
Your review is straight my first run in the game, when i finished i got the worst ending, then i started to realize i was missing all the "correct" way to play it, then i knew i was missing characters, missions, classes upgrades, just because i wanted to steamroll it with a omnipower unit, i strongly recommend you to play it in the way the game wants you to behave
The fun thing about Ogre Battle is that the optimal strategy will get you the worst ending because of your low reputation. You'll also miss alot of the plot because there are a bunch of hidden characters.
As much as I massively respect Yasumi Matsuno games, their systems can get pretty cumbersome.
This game I have a weird relationship with. I really really wanted to get into it as a kid, but I could never really figure out the optimal strategy. I would make a bunch of good guy units cause I wanted to see the best ending, and those units would quickly outlevel the enemy after the first few chapters and their alignment/charisma would plummet and then I couldn't promote them. I made larger and larger armies, trying to spread the xp, and the same thing kept happening.
Then like 15 years later I tried it as an adult. Turns out the optimal strategy, even if you are going for the good ending, is to make a handful of good units and then a bunch of units that are evil as shit. The evil as shit units fight most of the battles for you, unseen by the people you are liberating, while your good guy units liberate cities, kiss babies, etc. If your evil as shit units full of undead dragons, liches, vampires and all that wipe out the enemy, no one cares.
As someone who's gotten the 'best" ending multiple times, this is really the strategy, though... you usually only need like 2 or 3 "evil" units. Usually just the main wizard NPCs. Whenever I play a game of this, I'll recruit ALL unique NPCs except for the demon and the witch because they are exclusive to an evil playthrough. IIRC, there's 3 wizard NPCs, and each get their own unit, and depending on how many class change items I find, this means 3 units of mages/sorcerers/liches. I'll send out any units I have that are lower level than the enemy and when they level up, I'll pull them back and then send the liches out. Every map has a finite amount of units except for the very last one, don't liberate anything. Just kill the stuff coming out of the enemy's base. Then, when the enemy is out of units, have the hero (who should be max ali/cha) liberate every town on the map. When you go to fight the boss, put whatever NPC is supposed to fight that boss in the hero's unit which counts as that NPC fighting the boss (Lans for Map #2, Canopus for his friend, etc). Once your rep meter is 75% or more, I like to send all units back to base except the hero's, and wait for 2-3 tributes per map, or a 1 pixel drop in the rep meter. 3 drops in the rep meter once it's full. You'll have way more money than you could ever spend while maintaining a full meter.
As someone who loves this game, your complaints are pretty warranted; the character design and the music are the highlights, along with the mechanics being a semi-realistic simulation of actually balancing political power. You can rush the enemy fortress with your strongest characters, sure, but you lose favor with the people for continuously slaughtering lower-level units.
Is that interesting? Definitely. Is it fun? Mmmmmmmmmmm that's not as clear-cut
Keep doing what you're doing man. Appreciate your perspectives.
Will you cover Japanese SNES games that have fan translations?
Yeah but that world map theme??? Holy crap that's good.
You didn't play it wrong.
You didn't play it badly.
You played Ogre Battle for the first time.
Everyone who's played it should understand that.
Even though I love the game, and come back to it every handful of years, I understand that it's not to everyone's taste. That's fine. No offense taken. I liked hearing your thoughts on the game, even if it didn't do it for you.
In the future, if you ever want to take another crack at Ogre Battle, let me know. 👍🏻
Sometimes your feelings about a game can change, given time and a different approach.
5:30 I disagree with that because you might wanna change tactics mid-way, flee or use a card. I also emulate so I can just FF anyway
I'll have to come back later with more thoughts as I haven't played that far into it yet
@1:30 Just curious....are you a fan of the Weird Al movie UHF? Lol
Nice!!! A new vid, you never fail to entertain and provide quality content. Keep it up!
Huh. I can see Unicorn Overlord inspirations here. So that's where they probably pulled their real time with pause system from.
I had a pretty cool expirience with this game myself.
This was one of the few games I downloaded through the Wii VC back in the day.
Back then I was getting into Heroes of Might and Magic aswell as Fire Emblem.
I think I played up to chapter 10 or so until I started to get into other games and lost interest.
Shortly before the Wii shop channel closed down I transfered all my data to my Wii U.
A few weeks later I decided to play some of my Wii games but I fked up the transfer. I had kept the games on my SD card not knowing I had to redownload them to the Wii U internal storage and then transfer them to the SD card.
At some point I just clicked on the Wii shop channel and it opened. I could still download every game I had bought before.
I didn't know that so I was extremly hyped to play Castlevania Rebirth again.
After I had played that to death I decided to give Ogre Battle another go. I was suprised to see that my save state was still there.
I continued to play the game in my old style. 2-3 Squads. 1 to defend 1 or 2 for roaming around.
I had enjoyed the game so much I bought the sequel Ogre Battle 64 before I had finished my playthrough.
Then the ending came. First off the final battle forcing me to sacrifice 1 squad was BS. Than the multiple bossfights got annoying real quick.
I was using my 2cnd roaming squad as canon founder. Send them into the fight and use my saved cards to dominate the fight. But I needed to many of them forcing me to use fking Sun which is sort of a suicide bomb. It does a shitload of damage to the oponent but also you.
My second squad just barely managed to survive the final battle. with the leader only having like 10hp left.
I felt really great at that point since I didn't want to play the final mission again. I had lost my main guy at my first attempt causing an instand game over. This was really not the time to give me such a terrible ending man.... I had put way to much work into it to get the worst ending just like you did.
I don't know if I can play any other game in the series any time soon.
While the SFC version of Tactics Ogre never came out in the US, the Playstation version certainly did. I played the hell out of that back in the day.
Starting with 16-bit cover of Ogre Battle, it was the only option! That said, March of the Black Queen from very same Queen 2 is just as good of a track. Gotta love Japanese devs randomly naming stuff after their fav Rock bands, Sol Badguy vs Ky Kiske, anyone?
lol. i loved that intro with your face coming in close. made me laugh for real. i'm still smiling. your videos keep getting better and better (i've watched a few dozen at this point, working my way through your impressive catalog). i never played this game in particular, though i have it on PSX due to my quest of getting every RPG on that system (one to go... and it's a miserable one). I am a big fan of the Tactics Ogre subseries though, Knight of Lodus and Let Us Cling Together are fantastic imo. Also i'd like to add that most games can be reduced to "evil empire blah blah" but it's the story in between that define them. Even the Tactics games can be distilled to that but they are full of political intrigue and developments.
I hope you do Tecmo Secret of the Stars eventually.
My dude, as a member of the mob, I do sympathize with the struggle, playing off and on for years, 1st you can save mid campaign. Far as battle goes it usually goes "strong" the 1st/2nd encounter to weaken everyone without killing the leader which cause retreats than switching to "weak" to pick off all non leader enemies. Then having having a flying hit squad to clean up the mess. Reputation is so convoluted it's absurd. Also the story requires so many specific characters and timings with reputation checks it's difficult enough even with a guide.
Love the video/s understand your feelings on tho it's almost too slow and convoluted for it's own good especially upgrading to the most fun classes
Im no Ogre Battle fanboy but I agree with what at least one other said. Judging the game while havint no clue how it works is not fair
I would usually have five or six good units to take the left and right flanks. My leader never left the base and never leveled up.
I appreciate your honesty it isn't a game for everyone. Then again what game is. Where the real fun with playing with alignment and reputation is the kind of character class evolutions you get. Side note you want slow play the PS1 port there's loading times before and after every and I mean every battle.
turn your output gain on your mic up 4db.
Did this game actually come out on the SNES? I’ve only ever played OB on N64.
Yes, they are two different games (SNES - and then later PS1 - got Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen; on the 64 there was Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber)
"Zeteginean" - ZEGENTIAN
Is there town and temple rebuilding in this game ? Isn’t that where some of the money supposed to go ?
Great review. It's interesting to finally get an idea of what this game's actually about. Now we need a Tactics Ogre SNES review for the ogre redemption.
Thank you. My cousin's and sister swear by this one. I've just never jived with it. I try every half-decade or so. It just never clicks.
This is why fast forward was invented on emulation. The game is a lot cooler when you send your armies out at 4x the speed haha.
The problem with most of ogre battles' morality system is that it actively punishes the player for basic play, and so you have to go through the game effectively with one arm tied behind your back while still trying to juggle all the mechanics if you want the good ending
This game was meant for people who also enjoy chess. I knew how to play it correctly and got the 'World' ending.
I love this game. Its easily my favorite console SRPG. I wish Square would remaster the Ogre Battle games instead of just rehashing Tactics Ogre again and again. The story's interesting if you dive into the lore. The Kingdom you are fighting to re-establish weren't the good guys. But the leader of their intended victims became evil after kicking their ass.
Can't agree more with you on this one. Bought it when it came out and I returned it the same week, why became my greatest regret when I saw it's value skyrocket
I played this game a lot as a kid, and I loved it, I got all the secrets and figured all the stuff out, spent a lot of time on the gamefaqs boards piecing together all the little crumbs of story you get throughout the game along with the tidbits from every ending....
...I went back to play this as a 36 year old, made it through maps and was like 'Wow. This was really boring.' And then came to the same conclusions as you did- though I knew how the game mechanics worked, to an extent.
Love the art style of this game, superb. It's too hard though, and I think could easily be revised to be more user friendly imo.
The music is bangin'
Man, this is a game that you really need to read the manual to understand what's happening...
The gist of it is that this is the 5th chapter of a history, that started with a war against the ogres, and was fought by 12 wizards and 3 high knights, against the ogres, and Diablo was the leader of them.
Rashidi, the second to last boss, was one of the 12 wizards, he started dealing with dark magic, which lead him to succumb into the evil, he killed the other wizards and is looking for the Brunhild, a magic sword that is the key to access the heavens, where the 3 high knights lives, while also brain washing the queen Endora to rule the empire and make way to summon Diablo, to rule the earth again.
It's a great plot, but it's exposed too sparcely on the game itself! And you need to follow the path of good to get most of it, so no waiting at the end of the level to raise more money, nor liberating cities with low ally leaders, only to have them conquered again 😅
The story itself requires you to engage with the mechanics fully. I always liked that you COULD play it the way you did, but you get more out of it if you put more in.
I swear reading the manual was mandatory for a lot of old games because most games were pretty bad at teaching you how to play. 😅
I always appreciate how much you been going through all these jrpgs man. Can't wait for the next few stuff my dude, I was never that interested in this one so it might be a pass for me
it's an alright game.
Still My Personal Favorite Strategy RPG of all time! Not gonna Hate on Ya for not Liking it! Everyone has Different taste! 100% :)
Mom. I made it on RUclips.
Edit: I was looking forward for the review to see if I'd actually want to play the game. It's a bit intimidating.
I tried it multiple times but could never fully get into it. Never got very far. On the other hand, I love the N64 game. It's done in the same style, but far more intuitive and fleshed out. It has a proper storyline, with dialogue. Reputation is done far better. It doesn't cost money to deploy troops. The main guy and a few of his friends from the SNES one even shows up as an ally, and you can recruit them. I got way more enjoyment out of it than I did with the SNES game. Beat it twice, bad ending first time and best ending second time.
I agree mostly but reputation was a disaster in Ogre Battle 64 as well. Random early cutscene choices can absolutely massively affect the game in ways you’d never predict. It was not good. But the game was cool.
Good video man! Sucess 🎉🎉
You missed ALOT of gameplay, what you said was like throwing a revue on pac-man and saying it was a good game but I didn't understand how I was supposed to move up when all I did was press left. There are things to consider with this games, like alignment or being a "bully" (steamrolling the enemies was a no no back then and trust me I learned the hardway on that one lol), so many nuances its almost like actual warfare (you cant see the enemy troops until your close). Give this another thought and play through being a hero to the empire (that's the hardest part as you can out level your enemies pretty fast and be a bully)
9:28 A "Baha" Moment? What?
In sum then, the game didn't explain itself well and you had a bad time. That's fair enough, but the idea that a game is a failure when you don't chase down every bit of content doesn't hold water. Most games would be failures by that reasoning, since filler and grind are near-universal. Makes even less sense if you judge a game as a failure on the basis that the dominant speedrunning strategy is to skip things, which seems to be only superficially different from what you're saying.
I feel like calling this an RPG is kinda unfair.
I liked this game so much bc it took elements from RPGs, RTS, and turn based combat and made a surprisingly rich and enjoyable game.
It might not deliver on any one concept really well, but it does do a good job of making all three aspects enjoyable.
But I can see how it would not be enjoyable if you minmax it, kinda like your Front Mission review.
But I was able to play it with enough emerssion to see stories in my units and explore the bit of depth it offers pursueing those emergent stories while having a power fantasy romp bc the minmax strat gave me lots of freedom to still beat the game.
"You need to replay it to appreciate it but that is not the expectation I went in with"
I think this a fair review...That is exactly what motivated me to rerent this game even though I beat it and enjoyed it.
I felt the first play through gave me enough experience with the games systems that gave me the freedom to have a power fantasy romp with my preffered unit loadouts and with that freedom of OP units I was able to explore other less optimized unit loadouts that I just thought were cool when they hit, even when they were not optimized.
Explore the games systems in that way let my imagination run free in the esoteric lore of the game.
Yeah, tactics ogre is not the same.
One of the most hit or miss games ever
Funny enough, his N64 sequel is amazing and superior on every way
reminds me of an rts kinda which isn't my jam either
i agree so much with this review. tried this game when i was a kid but it was way too complicated and missing the manual too since i only rented it. so i just gave up quickly on it. i might replay it someday now that im much older but for anyone younger, i think it was way too difficult to understand.
This game is needlessly complicated. 100% agree.
Thank you!
But why is it called Ogre Battle? I'm just asking the rational questions here.
Google Queen band
There was an ogre battle in history of the lore. Characters who fought in that war actually appear in this game on sky islands. Ogre Battle 64 actually brings the Ogres out
Ugh you're killing me with these midi covers of pop songs. I can't finish this video :\
bro try ogre battle 64 it had a veryyy good story plus the combat was better than this one
Just say "I suck at Ogre Battle" lmao
The game can be tedious, but you didn't pay attention to the game mechanics that were presented to you. I mean as an RPG fan, aren't you in the habit of reading all the text from villagers? Still I appreciate your opinion.
A game that explores such topics as "just war" and provides a rich back story and plenty of information on how to conquer without being a tyrant and surrendering power when there is no opposition and this fool does exactly the worst thing and becomes the tyrant he is to oppose. You missed the whole point of the game dude.
Two factors are supposed to discourage you from bum-rushing bosses: plot (leading to character unlocks and different endings) and optimizing unit class changes.
The plot is definitely "opt-in." This is the big difference between the 2-hour 100% and 1-hour any% speedruns. Honestly, most of the "plot" content you missed amount to a series of guide-dangit fetch quests which open up some seriously OP characters and a few extra maps. There are a few fun character interactions, but it's really not that interesting. Fire Emblem and a lot of other sRPGs did all of this much better, sorry not sorry.
Unit class changes depend on how the unit is used in combat. ALI, CHA, and level control which classes are available to a unit. ALI/CHA tend to drop when a strong unit kills a weak or "support" unit. That said, there are more than enough new units to replace a few that get locked out of a good class upgrade, especially if you are on the 100% path. And once a unit hits the desired end of their tree, there's basically no reason not to use them as a steamroller, ali/cha be durned.
For my part, I kind of liked the oddball "squad-level" management (especially in the ocean of samey jRPGs and sRPGs. I wish there were more games that refined this style. OB's a strong proof of concept. The game would have been much better if the squad battles had been designed to resolve in a matter of a few seconds as a map overlay, not the long jrpg-style display with full intro/exit transitions.
I agree and disagree.
Good review btw
Yeah, that's a way to beat the game, but look at your reputation bar, it's all the way down.
The plot, an evil empire exists
The twist: it's you.
That's what the empty rep bar means.
Evil is boring, and I like how this game makes evil the most tedious way to play.
This game is Undertale 0 really.
People mistake this for a tactical RPG. In reality it's a PR management game in which your goal is to maintain the image of a struggling resistance of the people while you keep your real army of demons, liches, and other horrors on the down low.
Or legit win with good, high Ali units, which is significantly tougher than curbstomping everyone.
Imo the review has a number of good points, but I'd say look at it in the same way you look at someone reviewing Undertale based only on a genocide run.
It DOES hit the core game mechanics and it does get an okay sense of the game, and it does point out legit problems. But its missing the meat and potatoes of what a lot of folks like about the game.
I love this game but boy howdy is it not everybody’s jam. Unwieldy, obtuse, weird, you’re allowed not to like it. The story gets more fleshed out in later games, and I think the N64 version is way more accessible but yeah there’s a reason this wasn’t a success.
Yess finallyyyyy
How can you even judge a game when you spend 90% of it not understanding how to play it? It sounds like you missed a healthy chunk of the game just trying to run straight lines and beat it fast. You’re entitled to not like it, but to act like it’s a bad game because it goes over your head is wrong. It sounds like you just don’t like that type of game.
Because part of a game is how intuitive it is. How good a job it does in instructing the player.
The thing is, once you understand Ogre Battle you can still get the best endings through thoughtless cheese. An optimal playthrough frankly won't look much different than one that doesn't understand the mechanics. You just need to kill all of the bad guys with your super army and have an army of high charisma back benchers liberate the cities.
The game plays itself. By definition it is bad!
Masters can speed run this game in 2 and a half hours for the best ending. He spent 50 hours for one of the worst endings. You understand nothing, at least your opinion leader wasn't possessed. Go griffin bro.
Can you believe someone who's not a master Didn't play optimally the first time? holy crap I can't believe it@@ChuckFitzgerald