VIDEO GAME REVIEW | ‘TACTICS OGRE: LET US CLING TOGETHER’
‘TACTICS OGRE: LET US CLING TOGETHER’
Grade: A
Details: published by Square Enix for Nintendo DS; $34.99; rated Teen
“Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together,” first released in the United States in 1997 for the Play- Station, returns on the PSP in a reworked and upgraded format.
Similar in form and function to “Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions,” “Tactics Ogre” focuses on turn-based battles on a grid-based map, with units of various kinds maneuvering for advantage, casting spells, swinging swords and loosing arrows.
Yasumi Matsuno, the game’s original director, was also involved with “Final Fantasy Tactics” and some other Square Enix games set in Ivalice, including 2000’s “Vagrant Story” and 2006’s “Final Fantasy XII.”
This game is kind of a spiritual ancestor to the Ivalice ones, with its flowery language, its focus on the regional politics of its fantasy world and its exhaustive attention to the details of that world.
The story line has several branching paths that hinge on decisions made by the player.
All that makes for great flavor, and the core of the game remains solid as a rock, with a few improvements for good measure.
The basics are now standard for the tactical RPG subgenre.
Before each battle, players receive an objective, such as killing the enemy leader or protecting a designated unit, and direct their units turn by turn to move, attack, cast spells, use skills and so on in pursuit of that goal.
Players maintain a group of fighters in various classes — warriors, knights, archers, wizards and so on, as well as trained monsters.
Characters can be switched to different classes between battles as classes become available, so players have a lot of control over the makeup of their forces from fight to fight.
Each class levels up independently of the characters, so fighters do not need to start from scratch when they take a new class as long as the player has been keeping that class in the battle rotation classes gain experience toward higher levels only when they’re used.
A terrific new feature is called Chariot Tarot, which allows players to rewind to any of the previous 50 turns of a battle if things go sour rather than starting over from the beginning, taking back poorly judged moves, trying different strategies and perfecting their attack methods.
Outside of battle, the World Tarot feature allows players to revisit past battles with their current lineup of units.
—Justin Hoeger, Sacramento Bee
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