Ty Arthur
BloodyaugustThe Classics - Ogre Battle
July 30th 2008 23:55
Back when the RPG was nowhere near a mainstream phenomena and a 16 bit console was at the top of the food chain, a game called “Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen” was released in the U.S. with little fanfare that meshed together tactical strategy warfare with strong role playing elements. Although it didn’t bring rake in massive amounts of cash or convert hordes of gamers over to role playing fanatics, it has become one of the most beloved Super NES games since that console’s demise, taking absurdly high bids on eBay and seeing countless ROM downloads. While a few aspects of the combat system took flak from internet critics, Ogre Battle still ranks among the top SNES games alongside favorites such as Chrono Trigger or the Final Fantasy series.
Ogre Battle’s art scheme and sprite based graphics are at the top of the many reasons to love the game. Much like Chrono Trigger after it, Ogre Battle uses two distinctly different graphical styles for different areas of the game. When deploying units and sending them across the various areas of the game to liberate cities from the forces of the evil Zetegenian Empire the sprites are simplistic and slightly dumbed down. When engaged in battle, or occupied in dialogue with the games huge number of characters, the graphical style changes completely to a much more advanced style. Each character is beautifully rendered with a bright and lush color scheme. The game came from Japan, so it goes without saying that many of the creatures were ridiculously cute, such as the pixies or angels, but the game knew how to do high fantasy well and made sure the knights seemed adequately chivalrous and the demons were properly menacing.
The core of Ogre Battle revolved around upgrading units to different classes and re-organizing your armies to have the proper balance of different types of units. You could arrange units into front and back rows of any given army, and each class had different attacks depending on which row they were in. The system for changing class was not solely based on level, like with many role playing games, but instead focused on the units charisma and alignment scores. This was the most frustrating part of the game to puzzle out, as there never was a clear tutorial on how charisma and alignment changed. As a ten year old boy when I first played the game through, I couldn’t grasp the system and found myself regularly trying out new curse words. As an adult coming back to the game, the system is deceptively simple. Charisma and alignment went up when you battled with enemies that were either high level than you or considered “evil,” and went down when battling enemies of a lower level or were considered “good.” It sounds easy, but with the way combat is set up it actually gets incredibly difficult to pull off properly. Despite the high learning curve, the challenge of getting your units into the classes you want is very rewarding.
Ogre Battle also had a huge number of hidden characters, items, and sub-plots. Most of these special features were dependent on having either a very high or very low reputation, so you couldn’t find all of them in just one play through the game. If you crushed your enemies mercilessly, accepted bribes from thieves, and allowed enemy forces to take back cities you had previously liberated, you might find that most of the NPC’s wanted nothing to do with your rebellion against the Empire and would shun you, while a few evil characters would want to work with you. On the other hand, if you always were seen as the underdog battling adversity, avoided low men and their schemes, and protected your cities at all costs, suddenly knights, wizards, and even gods would be begging to join with your noble cause.
The only real criticism that Ogre Battle ever received was from the battle system. Unlike traditional role playing games, you could not directly control your units in combat. This added another layer of realism, for as the leader of the troops you gave indirect orders for how to behave in battle. For example, if you set the battle tactics to “Strong” your units would only attack the enemies in their range who had the most hit points. If you changed the battle tactics to “Best” they would instead go after the units who had the most devastating attacks. This seriously annoyed control freaks, but if really didn’t need to, as you could change the tactics at any point during battle, so if you understand how it worked and paid attention to the order that your units attacked in you could basically control who they would fight each round anyway.
If you want to take a little trip down memory lane and see where strategy warfare games got their start, do yourself a favor and check out Ogre Battle.Your text goes here
Ogre Battle’s art scheme and sprite based graphics are at the top of the many reasons to love the game. Much like Chrono Trigger after it, Ogre Battle uses two distinctly different graphical styles for different areas of the game. When deploying units and sending them across the various areas of the game to liberate cities from the forces of the evil Zetegenian Empire the sprites are simplistic and slightly dumbed down. When engaged in battle, or occupied in dialogue with the games huge number of characters, the graphical style changes completely to a much more advanced style. Each character is beautifully rendered with a bright and lush color scheme. The game came from Japan, so it goes without saying that many of the creatures were ridiculously cute, such as the pixies or angels, but the game knew how to do high fantasy well and made sure the knights seemed adequately chivalrous and the demons were properly menacing.
The core of Ogre Battle revolved around upgrading units to different classes and re-organizing your armies to have the proper balance of different types of units. You could arrange units into front and back rows of any given army, and each class had different attacks depending on which row they were in. The system for changing class was not solely based on level, like with many role playing games, but instead focused on the units charisma and alignment scores. This was the most frustrating part of the game to puzzle out, as there never was a clear tutorial on how charisma and alignment changed. As a ten year old boy when I first played the game through, I couldn’t grasp the system and found myself regularly trying out new curse words. As an adult coming back to the game, the system is deceptively simple. Charisma and alignment went up when you battled with enemies that were either high level than you or considered “evil,” and went down when battling enemies of a lower level or were considered “good.” It sounds easy, but with the way combat is set up it actually gets incredibly difficult to pull off properly. Despite the high learning curve, the challenge of getting your units into the classes you want is very rewarding.
Ogre Battle also had a huge number of hidden characters, items, and sub-plots. Most of these special features were dependent on having either a very high or very low reputation, so you couldn’t find all of them in just one play through the game. If you crushed your enemies mercilessly, accepted bribes from thieves, and allowed enemy forces to take back cities you had previously liberated, you might find that most of the NPC’s wanted nothing to do with your rebellion against the Empire and would shun you, while a few evil characters would want to work with you. On the other hand, if you always were seen as the underdog battling adversity, avoided low men and their schemes, and protected your cities at all costs, suddenly knights, wizards, and even gods would be begging to join with your noble cause.
The only real criticism that Ogre Battle ever received was from the battle system. Unlike traditional role playing games, you could not directly control your units in combat. This added another layer of realism, for as the leader of the troops you gave indirect orders for how to behave in battle. For example, if you set the battle tactics to “Strong” your units would only attack the enemies in their range who had the most hit points. If you changed the battle tactics to “Best” they would instead go after the units who had the most devastating attacks. This seriously annoyed control freaks, but if really didn’t need to, as you could change the tactics at any point during battle, so if you understand how it worked and paid attention to the order that your units attacked in you could basically control who they would fight each round anyway.
If you want to take a little trip down memory lane and see where strategy warfare games got their start, do yourself a favor and check out Ogre Battle.Your text goes here
| 83 |
| Vote |
