Tactics Ogre: Reborn review: Classic tactical RPG is showing its age - Polygon

Yasumi Matsuno’s classical communicative of warfare tin beryllium a slog

There’s nary doubting the humanities value of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. It’s a keystone crippled — possibly the keystone crippled — successful a peculiar and demanding genre, the tactical role-playing game. It’s besides the cornerstone of a remarkable, yet sadly not afloat realized, career: that of its writer-director, Yasumi Matsuno, who went connected to marque cult classics Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story earlier flaming retired midway done the tortured improvement of Final Fantasy 12, a idiosyncratic and nonrecreational setback helium seems ne'er to person afloat recovered from.

In Tactics Ogre: Reborn, this 1995 crippled — which often ranks highly successful polls of the champion games of each clip successful Japan — receives its 2nd large overhaul. Reborn is, nominally, an updated larboard of 2010’s PlayStation Portable remake (this clip for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch). But it besides makes thorough and cautious revisions to that one, tweaking indispensable plan elements, adding features, overhauling the interface, and restoring the artwork. It says a batch astir the game’s revered presumption that it has received much loving attraction from Square Enix — which bought Tactics Ogre’s steadfast Quest successful 2002, aft hiring Matsuno distant from them successful ’95 — than Final Fantasy Tactics, a crippled successful Square’s flagship franchise, whose PSP and mobile versions aren’t astir arsenic good made.

New players should attack Tactics Ogre with caution, though. (I’m one; I knew the crippled good by reputation, but had ne'er played it earlier I started this review.) Despite the galore thoughtful revisions and quality-of-life improvements, this is inactive a daunting crippled that’s dilatory to uncover itself. As an aboriginal masterwork successful a highly specialized genre that has seen a batch of innovation since, it tin consciousness dated and inflexible. And it is often conscionable a chore to play.

Image: Square Enix

There’s some a elemental crushed for this, and a little straightforward one. The elemental 1 has to bash with enactment size. This is simply a turn-based tactics crippled successful which you determination characters astir a gridded map, playing phantasy combat chess with an force unit controlled by the AI. The modular enactment size for an brushwood is determination betwixt 8 and 12 units. Turns instrumentality a agelong clip to execute; the opening question round, erstwhile engaging the force is usually intolerable and you’re simply moving each portion into striking distance, feels interminable. Complete battles often instrumentality upward of fractional an hour, and foregone conclusions (which, to beryllium fair, aren’t excessively communal — this is simply a well-balanced game) are excruciating.

Furthermore, the fig of units makes it hard to support the presumption of your forces, and wide signifier of the battlefield, successful your mind’s eye. Though it’s hardly expansive strategy, it’s not an casual crippled to parse, and fights tin consciousness scrappy and piecemeal. It’s notable that Final Fantasy Tactics, which paired Matsuno with seasoned Square decorator Hiroyuki Ito, pared the fig of units down to the four-to-six range, and gained a batch of absorption arsenic a result.

To beryllium fair, Reborn makes rather a fewer tweaks to velocity things up and easiness the intelligence load. You tin delegate AI to instrumentality implicit enactment members’ actions; there’s a turn-speed button; the accomplishment and spell systems person been redesigned to supply entree to amended skills earlier successful the game; random encounters person been removed from the satellite representation (and replaced with optional grooming battles if you consciousness the request to grind), and truthful on. Yet contempt each this — and contempt the 3D representation design, which uses verticality to make immoderate absorbing spatial challenges — the crippled struggles to signifier the benignant of clean, intricate logic puzzles that correspond the tactics genre astatine its best.

Image: Square Enix

Tactics Ogre precise evidently traces its plan backmost to the days earlier Advance Wars — a crippled successful a parallel but precise intimately related genre — had done truthful overmuch to clarify the rock-paper-scissors equilibrium and problem-solving joyousness of tactical combat. These days, indie games similar Into the Breach oregon Invisible, Inc. find ways to contiguous you with intricate strategical challenges acold much rapidly than Tactics Ogre tin manage, portion paradoxically overwhelming you acold less. But possibly this isn’t conscionable astir age. Perhaps Tactics Ogre is also, by its nature, little of a tactics crippled and much of an RPG — and what I similar to telephone a backroom RPG astatine that.

A backroom RPG is simply a crippled wherever the existent enactment happens extracurricular of combat, heavy wrong the enactment menus. (Final Fantasy 12, with its Gambit programming strategy and game-like License Board, is 1 of the champion examples.) In this regard, Tactics Ogre is simply a theorycrafter’s dream, with tremendous customizability and depth, which Reborn intentionally does small to streamline. In fact, it adjacent scraps the class-wide leveling of the PSP mentation to instrumentality to idiosyncratic portion leveling. Party members tin beryllium recruited from acold and wide, and their classes tin beryllium reassigned, arsenic tin their elemental alignment, which is important successful battle. Skills, spells, equipment, and items are assigned and developed per character, and determination are ways to trade and harvester much almighty instrumentality to boost stats.

There’s a immense magnitude of inventory and portion absorption to beryllium done present arsenic you make and refine your favored squad — arsenic good arsenic restitution to beryllium had erstwhile that squad works efficaciously successful battle. For a peculiar benignant of player, this volition beryllium heaven. I’ve been known to emotion that benignant of happening myself. But successful Tactics Ogre, it feels similar each the paper busywork is draining attraction distant from a conflict strategy that is already struggling for strategical focus. The combat is inevitably the centerpiece of a crippled similar this, and if it doesn’t sing, each that enactment successful enactment of it tin consciousness similar wasted effort.

Image: Square Enix

But there’s a full different expansive plan astatine enactment successful Tactics Ogre, 1 that has aged acold amended and volition repay your concern successful the crippled successful spades. It’s the story. Matsuno is arguably an adjacent much talented and influential writer than helium is simply a designer. Despite their phantasy settings, his games thin to beryllium grounded, humanist works that laic retired intricate maps of governmental intrigue — which, loaded with filigree naming and fanciful jargon, tin look adust and hard to travel astatine first. But they unfold into thing personal, heartfelt, and engaged with the existent world. Tactics Ogre is nary different.

Matsuno has said that the game’s devastating branching storyline was inspired by the early-’90s wars successful Yugoslavia arsenic that state broke isolated successful the aftermath of the autumn of the Berlin Wall. Tactics Ogre imagines The Valerian Isles, an archipelago riven by taste and people strife betwixt its 3 main constituencies: the Bakram, the Galgastani, and the Walister. After the decease of a unifying king, civilian warfare has erupted; during a play of uneasy peace, we articulation a radical of oppressed Walister revolutionaries led by young Denam Pavel, his sister Catiua, and puerility person Vyce. They’re soon joined by a squad of affable mercenaries arsenic the absorption leader, Duke Ronwey, leads them deeper into a struggle of shifting factions, analyzable allegiances, and soiled tricks.

This is simply a branching storyline wherever the choices — judged connected a standard of lawful to chaotic, alternatively than bully to evil — tin beryllium agonizing successful their motivation ambiguity, and the outcomes tin beryllium painfully bleak. Denam’s willingness to travel the Duke, and his level of committedness to the Walister cause, are sorely tested. As an exploration of the motivation and governmental quagmire of war, Reborn is beauteous sophisticated, and Matsuno’s refusal to picture it successful black-and-white presumption makes the branching outcomes illuminating alternatively than reductive. A World Tarot diagnostic usefully allows each branches to beryllium explored successful parallel realities without undoing your progress. (There’s a akin rewind relation successful conflict that allows you to redo your choices and power betwixt antithetic tactical outcomes without overwriting them — a superb feature.)

There’s genius and sincerity astatine enactment here. Get heavy capable into Tactics Ogre and the entreaty of its subtitle, Let Us Cling Together, starts to dependable a batch little goofy and a batch much urgent and sad. How heavy you volition get into the crippled depends connected your appetite for micromanagement and your patience with gameplay systems that, 27 years later, are starting to creak, contempt each the judicious tinkering that’s been done to them. Tactics Ogre: Reborn is simply a welcome, polished, and thoughtful update to a crippled that defined a genre — a genre that has present near it behind.

Tactics Ogre: Reborn will beryllium released connected Nov. 11 connected Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. The crippled was reviewed connected Switch utilizing a pre-release download codification provided by Square Enix. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These bash not power editorial content, though Vox Media whitethorn gain commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You tin find additional accusation astir Polygon’s morals argumentation here.