Tactics Ogre: Reborn - Review After 100%

foreign [Music] what's going on everybody mortum here this time excited to bring you my review after 100 for Tactics Ogre Reborn the remake of a much beloved pillar of the trpg genre that is to say tactical RPGs that was originally released in 1995. however it did see one other release in 2010 for the PSP and as I mentioned it's one of the greats when it comes to this particular genre so a remake of it is pretty exciting especially since it really hasn't been available on Modern Hardware under normal circumstances until this that said a lot of people might be aware this video is coming up a day before the actual release of the game I did get a review copy of it from Square Enix a good month in advance I've had my hands on this particular title for quite some time I got to do an early preview of it towards the end of October and I've spent a couple hundred hours with it since then seeing and doing all of the things which is not unusual for the channel I review games after 100 all the time specifically to set me apart from other reviewers on YouTube and while that does include the achievements it also includes a lot more than that if you're not subscribed and go to my channel page first thing you'll see is a video explaining everything that I cover but from there let's dive into this a little bit the first thing I want to talk about are some of the major changes it's important to note that this particular iteration of Tactics Ogre is based on the 2010 release which already made significant changes from the 1995 release and if this is your first time playing or seeing this game at all you might want to skip past the major changes section if you're just interested in hearing about the game it'll all be time stamped down below but for those who have played the game before I did want to talk about some of the major changes that Tactics Ogre reborn actually introduces before we dive into the regular stuff first up we have eased equipment requirements things like level requirements skill qualifications that kind of thing has been removed they can just put it on as soon as you find it though there are still a few restrictions based on things like your class for instance they've also added skills each character is capable of equipping 4 4 skills and the amount of skills has been increased they've added a few such as the pincer attack which allows you to make flanking attacks on targets with two characters then speaking of skills they made a significant change to finishing moves finishing moves were unlocked by leveling up a weapon skill so one of the skills you can put on a character is a weapon and then as they use that weapon they'll passively increase the skill and then as they hit Milestones they'll knock finishing moves these used to work off of tactical points or a separate gauge basically whereas now it just uses the magic points that everybody has they also added a new item called charms charms are pretty important whenever you make a character you can select their Affinity which is their association with a certain element charms will let you change that Affinity which can affect things they're weak to and strong against charms will also let you permanently raise stats in some instances and overall these kind of let you build a character in a very specific way removing some of the grind of finding characters with perfect stats they also made changes to the battle parties screen so before you enter combat you'll do a little setup thing on this sort of chess board where you can pick up battle groups as you will be managing a lot of characters potentially and this is where you'll prepare for the battle but this will also now allow you to scout out the map to see exactly what you're up against and adjust your party or use a different party accordingly then we have the buff cards this is a slight change from the previous version so the cards were in the previous versions but sometimes you could pick them up and they'd become consumables but the buff cards now are just Buffs you pick them up you get a one-time buff you can potentially lose it the same type of buff does stack with each other so getting your Melee character a bunch of melee Buffs can make them very very strong and tactically picking up these cards or using them defensively or trying to get enemies to hit the remove buff card can be part of the gameplay they've also made pretty big changes to the overall AI both allies and your enemies in general AI in the earlier versions was not great and this would cause a lot of your companions or non-player air controlled characters to act in a way that would not be beneficial they would get themselves killed and sometimes this would make completing a mission much more difficult than it really needed to be so they tried to touch up a lot of that type of stuff though that said it is possible to play the game on your end through AI you can set up a few AI presets to completely control your team and while it is certainly not perfect it does actually work pretty well they've also added bonus objectives to combat you can get extra rewards by completing combat bonus objectives such as bringing certain classes to the fight or performing certain actions in combat they've also added a trajectory system this will let you see where you are aiming a spell or range attack which is important because you can hit your own allies with things like bows spells Etc if you are aiming in a way that can't hit the enemy so they've added that trajectory line to make that simpler to see they've also added a revive countdown if your teammates go down you can revive them within a set number of turns but if you don't they will die permanently they've also removed moved Random Encounters and replaced them with training battles so now rather than deal with Random Encounters on the map in towns you can just have training battles to grind up your characters to where you need them to be they've also made a pretty significant change to crafting it used to be a percentage chance of success now it just succeeds 100 of the time again trying to remove some of the more grindy aspects of it and in addition to that believe it or not there's a lot more still they've made sweeping changes to the game balance enemy stats your stats the level scaling of the entire game has been adjusted they even introduced a union level which is a sort of level cap based on certain aspects of the story so a lot going on here in terms of changes but let's talk about when we actually jump into the title for the first time one of the first things you are going to do is answer a few questions such as deciding your character's birthday as well as answering a few questions related to tarot cards answering these questions will set up your initial stats there's so much variation in the game that this isn't like for death by any means but I think it's important to know what is actually being chosen here and what you're doing is setting up your beginning stack though for the most part I would just pick what suits you and then after that we will pick our starting Affinity as I mentioned in the changes section Affinity is a association with a certain type of element which can make you weak to or strong against certain type of attacks or enemies with different affinities but with charms that were added in you can change this pretty freely so again more of a starting point than anything else but from there let's actually talk about the story setup though I do want to mention right at the gate here the difficulty of the game is just the difficulty of the game there are no options or anything it's just the one difficulty but now let's talk story setup so we are on the Isles of Valeria they have been torn by War for quite some time however there was a man who managed to unite all of the aisles together under one banner and he became known as the dynast king his Reign lasted for about 50 years of Peace unfortunately after his death the land devolved into civil War again specifically between three factions while two of them turned out okay one of them the wallisters Lost effectively however you start the game playing as denim who is a member of the wallisters and you take up your sword with a few of your friends and manage to start reversing the fortunes of the war through of course tactical turn-based combat though that said what is especially interesting about Tactics Ogre reborn is that there are many paths through the game and many options to see there are three main paths through the game chapter one is largely the same no matter what you do chapter 2 and chapter 3 can vary wildly and then chapter 4 is more about the resolution of your choices up to that point and then after that there are two main endings you can get with tons of variations based off of your specific choices did characters live did characters die you might see extra scenes based on that there's a lot of variations to the ending but there are two main endings and assuming you want to see all of them like I did you can use the World tarot system this is sort of like new game plus with a few distinct differences for starters you're not literally starting a new game but World tarot will allow you to do is jump back to certain anchor points that is to say decision making in the story and then play through different paths however your old path doesn't get erased or anything and you can jump around these anchor points as you please to see all sorts of variations on the story which makes going through the content you did not see a pretty enjoyable relatively quick experience and assuming that is still not enough for you the game actually has end game content via optional dungeons the game uses a system called strongholds for big locations where you'll go through several different Maps fighting battles but you have to do it all in one go now in the required strongholds you can't Retreat you can save in between battles but you have to do it all at once the optional dungeons on the other hand you can leave and come back as you please for the most part outside of one of them however doing so will reset your progress these optional dungeons serve a few different different purposes for starters most of the game is relatively linear in terms of the battle so the optional dungeons give you a place to grind out equipment and money in case you need any which I would say is their main purpose and then there are several secret dungeons which the game pretty explicitly tells you about so it's calling it secret once you get to that point might not be the truest of statements but completing those can earn you a special reward as well as a unique boss fight however probably the biggest one to note is the Palace of the Dead this is a 115 level dungeon and if you just go to the Palace of the Dead you might not even realize it's that deep because on the third level you have to find a secret door which leads to the other levels the Palace of the Dead is specifically an in-game challenge you have to go all at once it's very long and very tedious but it is there for the dedicated so the game is not hurting for content is basically my point but the basic gameplay Loop of all of this depending on the chapter you're in ultimately boils down to gearing up with your party member and teams and fighting various battles on maps across the world map as you progress the story more and more of the world map will open up and towards the late game you can pretty much travel around the map freely doing whatever you please but from here let's talk progression how do we actually build up these characters I keep mentioning so when it comes to progression first thing I want to talk about is the union level this is effectively your level cap it's going to raise As you move along the story there are some points where that level cap is relatively restricting there are some battles where you're forced to be two to three levels lower than your opponents which is a big deal in this game and it can make a lot of fights much more difficult than they really should be and this is where you're going to have to make use of the training battles to kind of grind up your characters as well as the optional dungeons to make sure you're in the best equipment possible to overcome that level gap on top of being good at the actual tactical combat because as I mentioned there's only the one difficulty so there's no real getting around that which is why I wanted to mention it now from here let's talk recruitment recruitment is a big part of this game you need to be managing teams of troops oftentimes several teams however on the low end you're probably looking at at least 15 to 20 party members overall that you need to outfit and equip and everything so you recruit most characters through either hiring them at the shop or recruiting them in battles now there are set characters throughout the game that you'll get but most of your characters are nameless or irrelevant to the plot outside of using them for the battles now hiring them at the shops is pretty straightforward you pick a starting class you give them an affinity and they start at level one and you can train them up to where you need them and you can use class marks to change their class to whatever you need it to be class marks are a pretty cool item but each individual character can be one of many classes and class marks are what allow you to swap between those relatively freely I was never at a point where like I needed a specific class Mark and didn't have it but even within that system there are a few restrictions certain enemy types can only be certain classes such as recruiting beasts or dragons they can only be certain classes within that enemy type so it's not completely free form but you do have a lot of leeway in terms of turning whatever character you want into whatever class you want there are certain points in the story where you can't change the classes of certain characters but for the most part towards the end game it's more or less a free-for-all combine that with the charms I mentioned earlier and you can make almost any character into just about anything you need them to be really which is where the combat system can get pretty deep but I also mentioned earlier that you could recruit enemies how does that work well one of the skills you can assign to each of your characters is the recruit skill there is a recruit skill for each enemy type and as enemies get low on health and low on morale or loyalty as the game calls it you can attempt to recruit them this offers you a low chance to just bring them to your side and then if they survive they just become your unit now and you can use them in the Army and this is how you're going to get a lot of the more interesting unit types such as beasts dragons golems that type of stuff and some of the classes you have access to specifically revolve around empowering those units such as as a beast Tamer so something to keep in mind and then we have the other progression systems as I've mentioned a few times skills finishing moves and spells so it's not enough to just have a class you have to actually equip your skills finishing moves and everything you want them to use in combat skills and spells you can equip four of each and then finishing moves really depends on what your character has access to in terms of weapon skills skills cover a variety of things and are typically based on your class and what I thought was really cool is that mechanics that tend to just be the normal in other trpgs here are relegated to various skills for instance the ram part Aura will make it impossible for enemies to walk directly past that unit effectively giving them a zone of control and then clerics and Priests have a skill that does a similar thing but specifically for Undead and then we have things like the pincer attacks where you can use flanking characters to attack an enemy but skills allow you to do all sorts of things now one of the important ones though is that you want to give each character the weapon skill for the weapons they are using because increasing your weapon skill to certain milestone zones will give you finishing moves finishing moves are very strong attacks that are kind of the pillar of the late game combat using them is Paramount so you want to make sure every character has them by making them have the weapon skill for the weapon they're using spells work in a somewhat similar manner for the classes that can equip spells you can't assign up to four of them usually based on type and class Wizards and mages will pretty much be able to equip anything you need them to in terms of spells clerics and Priests can equip healing spells and each spell has ranks associated with it and the further you get into the story The more ranks you'll be able to acquire though it's worth mentioning that this is done in a sort of consumable fashion spells are items that you equip to that character so you will have to buy new spells and then assign them to individual characters now from here let's talk about combat as I mentioned tactical turn-based combat which of course sees us moving along a grid across these tactical maps that have all sorts of variations like elevation which can affect your movement skills but also ultimately combat comes down to move act and skills every turn you'll be able to move take an action which sometimes includes things like finishing moves and items and then if you have an active skill equipped you'll be able to use that separately which is important to note for the skills that are like Buffs you're going to want to use that before you take your Action Now who goes when is down to recovery time and attack turns pretty standard stuff basically an initiative order based on your character's equipment things like that they'll have a certain recovery time which will place them further down the list of people who get to go next so there are various things that can't affect this but effectively it's a turn-based system based on initiative or the speed stat now one important thing to mention though is that the magic points that every character has do not start the battle full they actually start relatively empty and then as turns go by you'll build up magic points and then be able to use them for your skills magic Etc there are items as well as skills that can increase the rate of recovery which is going to allow you to use your spells and finishing moves as quickly as possible all of this makes combat in this game really come down to monopolizing the action economy as often times due to things like the level cap and just being slightly outnumbered in most battles means that capitalizing on the action economy and making sure you have more turns and actions than the enemy is really kind of everything and in that regard Tactics Ogre is absolutely flush with options because all of the various classes the way you recruit other characters the way you can set up Affinity stats all of the items and Equipment you can give gives you a lot of deep options for customization and party composition some classes are kind of just hard counters to other classes which means that thankfully tactical combat is something this game has in Spades though a few other kind of notes that I wanted to mention here are the spoils as you defeat enemies or you yourself have characters die they will drop their equipment in the case of enemies this is usually not as substantial but if your characters die they will drop their equipment as spoils whenever you complete a combat you'll get a certain amount of items just for finishing it but most of your boils if you will come from picking them up off the ground however this is not the case for your downed characters if your character goes down and no enemy picks up their spoils which absolutely is possible then you'll just get them back at the end of combat however if they fall off a ledge or an enemy picks it up you might actually lose that stuff so it is important to keep that in mind it is not exactly Paramount to pick up the enemy spoils as they're not always amazing but you can get more Loot and thus more money that way and it's mostly important in terms of recovering your equipment if a character dies I would say and then we have crafting in addition to all of the items and Equipment you pick up eventually you're going to start picking up crafting recipes which will allow you at the shop to start crafting while it sounds relatively simple crafting is a pretty big part of the game simply because as I mentioned sometimes you're at a level cap and disadvantage using your characters against characters with stronger spells stronger stats so anything you can do to give yourself an edge is very important and crafting is really the pillar of that the bonuses it gives to your items is not insubstantial so if you get stuck grinding and crafting up your characters with better equipment is usually what's going to get you through it which brings me to the AI as I mentioned earlier AI will allow you to let your entire team play Combat on its own and for the most part this is fairly effective though something to keep in mind is that while these turn-based battles are relatively tactical in nature a lot of them come down to having to Vanquish the enemy leader sometimes you'll have to get everybody but a lot of times you're just needing to take down the leader and occasionally that's something the AI will really struggle with for the most part it's very very good but there are moments where I would notice the AI wouldn't go after the leader specifically when it could end the battle earlier by doing so and that's really the place the AI struggles now the enemy AI has also been adjusted to make more use of tactics as well so they will try to be more proficient in what they do and while it's not absolutely brutal I have noticed that they tend to go after the back line and weaker classes where possible and in general they try to attack the classes they have the biggest advantage against when they can but assuming nothing is going your way you can also make use of The Chariot tarot this is effectively a turn reversal on the enemy's turn when it's not your turn you can activate the Chariot tarot which will let you back up combat a few rounds and try to do things a little differently you can do this relatively freely and if there was a mistake that was made that kind of thing Chariot tarot is great for just kind of helping you out there but all of that stuff combines to make combat a mostly great experience there's a handful of pain points usually around being under leveled compared to the enemy and the union level and then having to go back and grind up equipment and everything to get past a challenge that can be a little annoying sometimes and towards the late game the grinding feels basically required but if you can get past that stuff it's a fantastic system with a lot to offer and after the game is over over you can even continue to make use of more of it via things like the late game Dungeons and the Palace of the dead so there's really as much content and combat as you could possibly want so with all of that said let's talk about steam deck compatibility unsurprisingly it plays great on the steam deck this is largely down to the controller support and given its previous releases on the Super Nintendo as well as the PSP that's no real surprise it had controller support there meaning it was developed with those things in mind so naturally the steam deck controls are very natural for this game and you don't really need to do anything special to make it work so I would be surprised if this doesn't wind up getting a great on DEC rating but I had zero issues on my end now in terms of technical stuff for the new release Here I did want to mention that I didn't really run into any problems personally across about 200 hours the game crashed exactly one time I didn't really run into any major bugs or problems which is always nice but that brings us to aren't positives and negatives now first up on the positives is is they did put a lot of work into of course the obvious stuff like raising up the definition of all the old portraits and everything that they used in game as well as re-recording most of the audio from what I understand then of course we have things like the branching story pads as well as the story itself in addition to all of the various paths you can take through the story the story is quite interesting in some places it's especially dark and it doesn't shy away from being a sort of grim dark story about war which is especially surprising given the art style to be honest sometimes it feels like a bit of a juxtaposition but it works quite well and then of course there's the Tactical depth as well as the just sheer amount of content the combat is deep and rewarding there's a lot of stuff you can put into it you can min max characters choose all this sort of stuff you want to use and really kind of hone in on exactly how you want to play so the combat is pretty fantastic in that regard and there is a ton of content for you to participate in that combat with via the secret dungeons the optional dungeons all the world tarot stuff that allow allows you to effectively new game plus there's tons of stuff to do which is nice now on the negative side of thing I think the union level level handicap isn't Fun honestly I wish they would at least let you be the enemies level to make it a little more fair because oftentimes the challenge feels somewhat forced by just making sure you're a lower level than the enemy and as a result this kind of makes the grinding feel basically required as there are points in the story where if you don't stop and upgrade your equipment and everything you're probably going to have an awful time trying to get past a few of the bosses or the big fights if you will and it can make for a somewhat bad experience and given how they streamlined basically everything else it's very curious to me that they implemented that and I get the idea of incorporating the challenge but like you have the in-game content that was already there so it just seems like a strange decision on my end with the exact way they instituted that Union level but with some tiny bit of adjustments I really don't think it would be bad at all but nonetheless in its current form kind of a negative another big negative is that there's no real options to adjust anything visually at all which I mentioned specifically because some people aren't a fan of the exact take on the older graphics for this game Some people prefer the more pixelated look of the older titles and that's not really an option here what you see is what you get there weren't any options to change that so something to keep in mind but that brings us to our conclusion ultimately this is a great update to a beloved classic bringing it to Modern Hardware occasionally it can be grindy and difficult but I think it's definitely worth playing especially if you've never touched it before like if you're just now hearing about this game it's absolutely worth a look as this is an important game in this particular genre for a reason the story I think is incredibly well done lots of branching paths narratives choice and consequence combined with the Deep tactical combat systems which is then further enhanced by all these improvements that they've made to the game for a modern audience as well as the gameplay Loop itself I think they did a good job remaking this as such from me it's a buy they are charging fifty dollars for it U.S over on Steam which I think is a fair price especially if you've never played the game before given everything they've done to sort of bring the title up to speed however it does have a few pain points now if you've played the game previously I'd maybe consider getting it on sale as it's not going to do a ton in terms of new content and because of this if you've played previously the only real new thing this does for you is getting to play it on Modern Hardware but I definitely enjoyed my time with it it has a ton to offer again absolutely a buy from me so with all of that finally said I hope you enjoyed the video if you did don't forget to like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz we are growing every day which is what is allowing me to get copies of these games so early and have the reviews to you that much faster so subscribe and stick around if you enjoyed it but regardless of all that truly thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 270,037

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, tactics ogre, tactics ogre reborn, tactics ogre reborn gameplay, tactics ogre reborn OST, tactics ogre switch, tactics ogre let us cling together, tactics ogre gameplay, tactics ogre psp, tactics ogre reborn review, tactics ogre review

Id: Ht1DUvWpvfQ

Length: 25min 9sec (1509 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2022