Tactics Ogre: Reborn – this is not Final Fantasy Tactics (pic: Square Enix)

The original inspiration for Final Fantasy Tactics gets a new remaster, that reconfirms Tactics Ogre as one of the best ever tactical RPGs.

You’d assume that any game that got more than one remaster must have to be something pretty famous, like Resident Evil 4 or Skyrim. That is usually the case but sometimes, especially if it’s a Japanese game that wasn’t originally released in the West, it can take multiple attempts before there’s anything close to a definitive version. Such is the case for Tactics Ogre, which is a game most people have never heard of but, if they’re strategy fans, will find instantly recognisable.

We didn’t realise this was a remaster at first and assumed from the subtitle it was actually a reboot of the series. Alas it is not. It’s a remaster of PSP game Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, which in turn was a remake of 1995 SNES game Tactics Ogre – which was also ported to the Saturn and PlayStation but never released in the West until 2011.

That is a complicated family tree, and we doubt that this incarnation has any greater chance for mainstream success than the others, but it is a highly influential game, whose impact on the wide strategy genre is rarely appreciated. If you know what Final Fantasy Tactics is, and are looking at these screenshots in puzzlement, assuming they’re one and the same game, there’s a good reason for that – except that Tactics Ogre came first.

PIC 1

Final Fantasy Tactics is credited with popularising the modern concept of the tactical role-player but it actually arrived on the scene almost two years after Tactics Ogre. Not because it was a copycat but because it was developed by essentially the same team, who left the now defunct Quest to work at pre-merger Square.

To complicate matters further Tactics Ogre is not actually the first game in the series, which started in 1993 with the almost entirely dissimilar Ogre Battle: The March Of The Black Queen (as you might judge by the subtitles, the developers are big Queen fans). Ogre Battle has no modern counterparts and was a weird hybrid of real-time strategy and role-player, whose only European release was on the Wii Virtual Console.

Turn-based strategy games are relatively popular nowadays but that sometimes seems to be at the cost of tactical role-players, which used to be as fashionable as strategy games ever got. For a long time they followed the template of Tactics Ogre/Final Fantasy Tactics very closely, with battles that take place on small, isometric maps, where you control a small army of fighters with their own unique skills and abilities. Think XCOM but with much more stats and storytelling.

The success of modern strategy games seems to have finally convinced people that they’re not as complicated and obscure as their reputation suggests. Indeed, the gameplay in Tactics Ogre, like most of the genre, boils down to nothing more complicated than being able to move once and attack once during each characters’ turn.

There are many complications beyond that, which add extra depth to the battles, but they’re all quite logical and only become important the further you progress. Terrain, elevation, weather and the different weapons and abilities of the various different combatants all play a part, as the game takes on chess-like connotations with battles that can last for a good hour or more (which actually suits the Switch surprisingly well, since you can take it anywhere and stop and start with ease).

The game also inherits Ogre Battles’ obsession with Tarot cards, as at the start of the game you’re presented with a series of moral dilemmas, the answers to which relate to specific cards. These, and others you can earn in battle, offer a wide range of special abilities, from various buffs to unique spells and the all-important ability to rewind time.

Tactics Ogre is, and always has been, quite difficult but it’s surprisingly accessible, not just because the basics are simpler than you’d imagine but thanks to quality of life features such as an auto-equip option and simplified levelling up for support units, that was added in with the PSP remake.

This remaster goes further, by changing the way characters learn and apply new skills, so you don’t lose track of who can do what. The levelling system has also undergone a new modernisation, which is very welcome as the customisability of the characters is one of the game’s most impressive features, with the ability to make even those that are part of the same class almost completely different in terms of abilities and stats.

There’s new content as well, including several skills – including one that allows you to gang up on enemies with multiple allies – and items called charms which can have a variety of effects including raising stats or changing elemental weaknesses. Perhaps most welcome though is the ability to quickly level grind units in training battles where they can’t die, instead of having to rely on random battles on the world map, where permadeath could easily lose you a unit instead of levelling it up.

A plot dependent level cap prevents this feature from being abused, in what is an impressively well thought out series of tweaks and improvements – including a revival system to avoid permadeath and a clearer visual indication of where exactly ranged attacks are going.

However, the remaster probably could have done without the addition of cards that can buff or debuff you and the enemy, and which litter the field like discarded chip wrappers. They add too much of a random element and we would’ve preferred an option to switch them off.

That goes for the new high-res graphics which use an ugly, if relatively subtle, blur filter, similar to the smoothing often used in modern coin-op emulations. In those instances though it’s usually just an option, whereas here you’re stuck with them and the noticeably more bombastic soundtrack remixes.

Tactics Ogre: Reborn – chibi chivalry (pic: Square Enix)

Overall, the improvements do outweigh the negatives but just a few more options to chose between the original version(s) and the new features would’ve made all the difference.

The final issue is something that’s always been a point of contention in the game, and that’s the overwrought plot, which takes itself incredibly seriously and is filled with cod-Elizabethan dialogue and, now, equally corny voiceovers. The story does try to address some serious issues, but despite its best efforts all the talk of ethnic cleansing and gritty class struggles seems unavoidably absurd when being discussed by super cute, pint-sized sprites.

That’s always been a problem with the game though and your mileage will vary in terms of how off-putting you find it. For us, it’s certainly not enough to undermine the still excellent strategy gameplay, whose new nips and tucks show an impressively thorough and delicate touch for such an old game.

The hefty asking price is probably going to limit its mainstream appeal more than the retro stylings but we dearly hope there is a brand new game by the same team, because Tactics Ogre is not just one of the first tactical role-playing games but it’s still one of the best.

Formats: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £44.99
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix
Release Date: 11th November 2022
Age Rating: 12

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The original inspiration for Final Fantasy Tactics gets a new remaster, that reconfirms Tactics Ogre as one of the best ever tactical RPGs.