Megaman Battle Network
RPG - GBA
Battery Backup - 1 slot
1 player
Megaman has been in a lot of different games over the years. Of course, he's most recognizable in the action-platform series that spanned most consoles since the late 80s. But he's also been in fighting games, an adventure game, a driving game, and here comes another: role playing. RPGs have been predominantly stale and I was worried that this game would take the same route. But despite retaining some of the usual problems of jRPGs, Megaman Battle Network is a bold move to push RPGs in the right direction.
The story revolves around a boy, Lan, and his portable exploration device (PET) Megaman. While most of the world looks like your everyday settings, once you "jack in" to the network, you're transported to a cyberrealm of internet viruses, hacking programs and net addresses. And it works quite well. The game is full of net jargon and in-jokes. While the actual plot won't win any awards, the environments are fascinating enough to keep you playing. Some of the areas are pretty gimmicky with invisible paths, slippery icy roads, and doors that open up only if you meet certain criteria. It's actually refreshing, because it's something that's more akin to adventure games than RPGs.
The core of the game however, is the battles. They are a flash of Capcom brilliance. I don't know if any written description can do it justice. It's a mix of Megaman, fighting game, and Magic the Gathering, if that makes any sense. The battles occur in real-time on grids. On one side is a 3x3 grid where Megaman can roam. The other side is a 3x3 grid where the enemy can move. It's an all-out action game with limited movement. You can move anywhere within your bounds, all the while firing at the enemy at will. You'll even gain the ability to charge up your shots to do more damage. It's somewhat similar to traditional Megaman games because you still have to learn enemy patterns, and with multiple enemies on screen, it gets pretty intense to dodge all their attacks.
But as adequate as the battles are in its real-time action, Capcom added an additional layer of strategy to it which turns it into something phenomenal. There is a meter that runs in real-time at the top, and when it's filled up, you have the option of pulling up a menu to equip chips. These chips give you special kinds of attacks. Some are good for doing damage to an entire row of enemies. Others are healing items that will boost up your HP in the midst of a fierce battle. And others will affect the board, such as stealing a column from an enemy. It essentially increases your grid to 4x3, and decreases theirs to 2x3. Once you have a chip, you can choose to activate it at any time during the battle so you have to time it for when it'll be beneficial for you. These chips come up 5 at a time and are randomized out of a "deck" you put together. Think of it like a 5 card hand. You can generally only choose one chip per round.
The awesome thing is you can choose to "pass", and when the meter fills up again, you get the original 5 chips and another set of 5. You can do this one more time for a total of a 15-chip hand. This not only increases the opportunity of getting a chip you want, but allows for combos. Most of the time you can only choose one chip per round, but if you have multiple copies of a chip, you can select as many of them as you want. So if you have two cannons that do 120 damage each, you can select both of them and you'll have 2 cannon bursts to be used whenever you feel like unleashing them. But more than that, each chip has a letter. So you can also equip chips that have the same letter. So it doesn't necessarily have to be the same type of chip. One common combo is that the steal chip and the sword chip generally have the same letter. So you'll steal a column from the enemy to increase the area you can move. That brings you closer to the enemy, so you can more easily slice them with a sword. Finally, there's a third dimension with the chips in the form of secret combos. If you get a certain combination of chips, then your secondary weapon may change into something special. The easiest one is probably getting the same chip with letters in succession. If you equip a 120 damage cannon A, a 120 cannon B, and 120 cannon C, then it changes into a special type of 120 cannon. Instead of having 3 maximum bursts of 120 damage, when you activate it, you get 10 seconds to shoot your secondary weapon. Within that 10 seconds, you have the ability to do unlimited bursts of 120 damage. So this chip aspect adds a whole new dimension of discovery and strategy. You can also customize your "deck" to your liking. You don't have to use these chips at all, but it certainly helps make battles more varied and more fun.
As it is a Japanese RPG, it generally sticks to the tried and true formula. There's still random battles... too frequent for my own taste. That's really my one knock against it. The system is fun, but you get dragged into too many of them. Admittedly, it was plentiful enough to make me lose interest in the game. I had to put it down for months, because the frequency really was that irritating. But there's also ways that it breaks free from convention. I really like how leveling up is done through purchases. When you defeat enemies, depending on how well you fought and an element of randomness, you either get chips or money. You don't gain experience points. This keeps the game balanced, and you're never too overpowered for any area. Instead, you can find and/or buy items that will allow you to boost your stats. So it's a welcome change, and a way around the power-leveling that you normally see.
Overall, Megaman Battle Network is a fresh take on the formulamatic jRPG genre. The fantastic battle system shows that an RPG can be fun if gameplay is emphasized. It's really one of the best implemented systems in all of RPGing. It's frantic. It's strategic. It's both! And at 20 hours of gametime, it's at just about the right length too. Unfortunately, it doesn't completely break away from old RPG conventions. The frequent random battles get old fast, and ultimately keep the game from reaching its full potential. But it's not enough to squash out the ingenuity of the battle engine. Congrats, Capcom. You've surprised us all.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Halo Combat Evolved
Halo Combat Evolved
First Person Shooter - Xbox
1-2 players campaign / 1-4 players deathmatch
Yup, I'm quite a few years too late, but that's ok. Bungie's Halo series is well known, and probably THE reason that most people bought an XBox. It's a celebration for console owners, because there's been a great gap since the phenomenal Golden Eye 007 for a quality FPS. Is Halo all it's cracked up to be? Well, yes and no.
Let's get this straight. Halo is pretty darn good. Multiplayer is what everyone talks about and yes, it's an awesome party game. A variety of locales, weapons, and vehicles make each stage unique. The controls are extremely tight, and I especially love the intuitive dual analog control. Makes sniping people an absolute hoot.
But as nice of a deathmatch game it is, I care more about the campaign. What makes Halo noteworthy is the 2p co-op. Yup, 2 players can have at it taking down Covenant scum, and certainly adds a new dimension to the game. But a partner isn't needed. At its heart, it's a fulfilling 1 or 2 player experience. It plays out like modern FPS where there are story cutscenes, but also in-game dialog between your character and NPCs/AI-controlled allies. Sometimes the action going on will impair hearing of this dialog, but perhaps that makes it more realistic.
Where it shines is the environments. The scope is unmatched of any FPS I've played thus far. The outside scenery is absolutely huge, spanning a lot of ground and height. Many of these stages give you ground and air vehicles in order to traverse them quickly. This gives the game a very epic and expansive feel that most other FPSs lack. There is a lot of wide open space for varying tactics. Where it falters though, is the interior environments. Level design for indoors is extremely repetitive and lacks personality. It comes off as a big disappointment because its contrasted by the amazing outside environments. One stage for example has the same floor layout for each of its 10+ rooms, and it made you wonder if you were really getting anywhere. Also it made me wonder if Bungie could be any lazier.
But getting past that one flaw, you'll see why Halo is so highly regarded. It's an excellent multiplayer game, whether campaign or deathmatch. And the amount of effort put into making this a living breathing world is incredible. While the game has lofty goals, the fact that it misses the target on the interior levels drags the game down a bit. Still, it's one of the finer examples of the genre on any game system.
First Person Shooter - Xbox
1-2 players campaign / 1-4 players deathmatch
Yup, I'm quite a few years too late, but that's ok. Bungie's Halo series is well known, and probably THE reason that most people bought an XBox. It's a celebration for console owners, because there's been a great gap since the phenomenal Golden Eye 007 for a quality FPS. Is Halo all it's cracked up to be? Well, yes and no.
Let's get this straight. Halo is pretty darn good. Multiplayer is what everyone talks about and yes, it's an awesome party game. A variety of locales, weapons, and vehicles make each stage unique. The controls are extremely tight, and I especially love the intuitive dual analog control. Makes sniping people an absolute hoot.
But as nice of a deathmatch game it is, I care more about the campaign. What makes Halo noteworthy is the 2p co-op. Yup, 2 players can have at it taking down Covenant scum, and certainly adds a new dimension to the game. But a partner isn't needed. At its heart, it's a fulfilling 1 or 2 player experience. It plays out like modern FPS where there are story cutscenes, but also in-game dialog between your character and NPCs/AI-controlled allies. Sometimes the action going on will impair hearing of this dialog, but perhaps that makes it more realistic.
Where it shines is the environments. The scope is unmatched of any FPS I've played thus far. The outside scenery is absolutely huge, spanning a lot of ground and height. Many of these stages give you ground and air vehicles in order to traverse them quickly. This gives the game a very epic and expansive feel that most other FPSs lack. There is a lot of wide open space for varying tactics. Where it falters though, is the interior environments. Level design for indoors is extremely repetitive and lacks personality. It comes off as a big disappointment because its contrasted by the amazing outside environments. One stage for example has the same floor layout for each of its 10+ rooms, and it made you wonder if you were really getting anywhere. Also it made me wonder if Bungie could be any lazier.
But getting past that one flaw, you'll see why Halo is so highly regarded. It's an excellent multiplayer game, whether campaign or deathmatch. And the amount of effort put into making this a living breathing world is incredible. While the game has lofty goals, the fact that it misses the target on the interior levels drags the game down a bit. Still, it's one of the finer examples of the genre on any game system.
Friday, January 28, 2005
Fatal Frame
Fatal Frame
Survival Horror - Xbox
Backup memory - 8 save slots
1 player
If you told me 5 years ago that a video game could scare the pants off of me, I wouldn't have believed you. Fatal Frame, or Zero, as it's known in Japan, is Tecmo's entry into the crowded Survival Horror genre. And boy does it do its job.
The moment you step into the game world, you live it. The lighting (or lack thereof), silence, camera usage and sparse use of ominous music all make for a perfectly crafted Japanese horror experience. You don't just buy into the world, you feel it. It also helps that the vibration effects in the controller helps to maximize that. It's everything I like about Japanese horror films - suspense, disturbing imagery that lingers in your mind, mysterious vibe, and that unsettling feeling - only extended for many hours. This is a game where you may have to turn the game off for the night. It truly is that creepy. The only sour point is that the English dubbing kinda hinders the serious feel, as there are definitely badly acted parts. I saw the Japanese version, and it's far more convincing. The dubbing is the only minus I can give to the game.
What's incredible is that it's not only the use of artistic direction that makes Fatal Frame scary, but the game mechanics support it too. Normally you walk about in third person, similar to Resident Evil or Silent Hill. It has normal controls meaning that up means walking up, down means walking down, etc, which I'm sure haters of the RE "tank-controls" will be happy about. However, the only weapon in the game is a camera, and when you want to use it, it puts the game in first person. The first person view enhances the claustrophobic feeling because it's not always easy to see where the ghosts are. It totally puts you into the shoes of the main character. The only quirkiness is that in third person, left analog controls movement of your character. But in first person, left analog is for controlling the camera and right analog controls movement of your character. It's a little disorienting at first to have that reversed, but you quickly get used to it.
It's a clever combat system though. It's like a slower-paced FPS, with an emphasis on timing and precision. See, while you can take pictures in rapid succession, you do the most damage when your camera is charged up. Charging requires that you point the lens directly at the ghost. So the longer you wait before you shoot, the more powerful it is. But the longer you wait, the more chance the ghost has to attack you and dish out a lot of damage. On top of that, the more accurate the photo of the ghost, and the closer the ghost is to you, the more points you get to upgrade your camera. So there is this system of maximum risk = maximum reward. It is by far the most sophisticated game system of all the survival horror games.
All of this is contained in nice package. Yes, it does come with more than one ending, an additional difficulty level, a score-based battle mode, and its fair share of unlockables. But at its roots, it's an engaging adventure game where you unravel the plot by searching for clues and solving puzzles. The fact that Tecmo coupled it with a frightening atmosphere and made a genuinely good game out of it puts this at the very top of my list. Definitely one of the greatest games to come out in this generation.
Survival Horror - Xbox
Backup memory - 8 save slots
1 player
If you told me 5 years ago that a video game could scare the pants off of me, I wouldn't have believed you. Fatal Frame, or Zero, as it's known in Japan, is Tecmo's entry into the crowded Survival Horror genre. And boy does it do its job.
The moment you step into the game world, you live it. The lighting (or lack thereof), silence, camera usage and sparse use of ominous music all make for a perfectly crafted Japanese horror experience. You don't just buy into the world, you feel it. It also helps that the vibration effects in the controller helps to maximize that. It's everything I like about Japanese horror films - suspense, disturbing imagery that lingers in your mind, mysterious vibe, and that unsettling feeling - only extended for many hours. This is a game where you may have to turn the game off for the night. It truly is that creepy. The only sour point is that the English dubbing kinda hinders the serious feel, as there are definitely badly acted parts. I saw the Japanese version, and it's far more convincing. The dubbing is the only minus I can give to the game.
What's incredible is that it's not only the use of artistic direction that makes Fatal Frame scary, but the game mechanics support it too. Normally you walk about in third person, similar to Resident Evil or Silent Hill. It has normal controls meaning that up means walking up, down means walking down, etc, which I'm sure haters of the RE "tank-controls" will be happy about. However, the only weapon in the game is a camera, and when you want to use it, it puts the game in first person. The first person view enhances the claustrophobic feeling because it's not always easy to see where the ghosts are. It totally puts you into the shoes of the main character. The only quirkiness is that in third person, left analog controls movement of your character. But in first person, left analog is for controlling the camera and right analog controls movement of your character. It's a little disorienting at first to have that reversed, but you quickly get used to it.
It's a clever combat system though. It's like a slower-paced FPS, with an emphasis on timing and precision. See, while you can take pictures in rapid succession, you do the most damage when your camera is charged up. Charging requires that you point the lens directly at the ghost. So the longer you wait before you shoot, the more powerful it is. But the longer you wait, the more chance the ghost has to attack you and dish out a lot of damage. On top of that, the more accurate the photo of the ghost, and the closer the ghost is to you, the more points you get to upgrade your camera. So there is this system of maximum risk = maximum reward. It is by far the most sophisticated game system of all the survival horror games.
All of this is contained in nice package. Yes, it does come with more than one ending, an additional difficulty level, a score-based battle mode, and its fair share of unlockables. But at its roots, it's an engaging adventure game where you unravel the plot by searching for clues and solving puzzles. The fact that Tecmo coupled it with a frightening atmosphere and made a genuinely good game out of it puts this at the very top of my list. Definitely one of the greatest games to come out in this generation.
Friday, July 23, 2004
Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance
Action - Game Boy Advance
Backup Memory - 3 save slots
1 Player
After the huge success of Symphony of the Night, the Castlevania series was changed forever. Fusing RPG elements and fluid animation with the tried and true whip-action formula, many people rediscovered the series for the first time. When the GBA debuted many years later, another Konami team tried its hand at a portable CV game resulting in "Circle of the Moon", which got all around excellent reviews. But now the SotN team reassembled to make this 2nd GBA offering. How does it rate?
Symphony of the Night influences are everywhere. While the heart of the game is slaughtering monsters with your whip, exploration becomes a prime element. You get to roam a large castle, and as you acquire more powers/items, you're able to see and open up more of it. Backtracking becomes second nature. And as you kill enemies, you acquire experience points that allow you to level up.
There are some things that make Harmony of Dissonance unique. For starters, this is probably the first game in the GBA library that looked really good. The sprite artwork and vibrant colors are striking. There's a lot of graphical effects such as parallax scrolling and transparencies that show off the GBA's graphical power quite nicely. In the area of gameplay, a new magic system is implemented. You are able to acquire different elementals, which when combined with your secondary weapon (axes, daggers, etc), can perform a unique type of magic. You are able to switch between the different elements on the fly, so it's easy to experiment. You are also given a dash button, which comes in very handy for avoiding enemy attacks. Another nice aspect is that HoD provides some puzzles that break up the monotony. Unfortunately, the puzzles aren't enough to save a sinking ship.
Monotony reigns supreme here. The game is never a challenge because there's so many things that prevent you from dying. From the least of the skeletons to Dracula himself, the enemies are all slow-moving and stupid. There are no one-hit deaths. And if by chance, you manage to get hurt, there are tons of save/healing spots scattered throughout the castle. Enemies will also drop potions which restore your life. All the while, you're leveling up every 5 minutes whether you want to or not, just by walking from place to place and clearing the way. As a result, you're able to kill enemies in fewer hits, and able to withstand much more damage. The balance is entirely screwed up, which makes the game an absolute bore. No risk means no tension.
This irritation extends to what Castlevania has become as a whole. Since all areas are interconnected like Metroid, there are no bottomless pits. If you fall in a pit, you'll simply end up in the room below. Although that makes for tidy level design, it simply removes the platforming aspect from the series. There's little consequence for poorly executed jumps. Another issue is that the series was always action focused. With this RPG fusion, you must now go through weapon/armor equipping screens every time you acquire equipment. This happens often. It interrupts the flow of the game by forcing you to pause in order to navigate through windows. It's this mess of conflicting elements that make it hard to enjoy.
Overall, I thought the game was a long drawn-out chore. While it wasn't 100% awful, the good could not make up for the subpar foundations it was built on. I didn't even get into talking about the awful music either. I imagine your mileage will vary depending on how much you like "Metroid" type of mazes and backtracking. I don't think I have a preference either way on Metroidvania or a linear map. But when fused with a RPG system where your character constantly gets stronger, the backtracking makes an already easy game, much, much easier. True, the game offers several reasons to replay such as a Boss Rush mode, and the ability to play as a 2nd character. But what good are these replay options when you never ever want to touch the game again?
This game exemplifies what's wrong with gaming today.
Action - Game Boy Advance
Backup Memory - 3 save slots
1 Player
After the huge success of Symphony of the Night, the Castlevania series was changed forever. Fusing RPG elements and fluid animation with the tried and true whip-action formula, many people rediscovered the series for the first time. When the GBA debuted many years later, another Konami team tried its hand at a portable CV game resulting in "Circle of the Moon", which got all around excellent reviews. But now the SotN team reassembled to make this 2nd GBA offering. How does it rate?
Symphony of the Night influences are everywhere. While the heart of the game is slaughtering monsters with your whip, exploration becomes a prime element. You get to roam a large castle, and as you acquire more powers/items, you're able to see and open up more of it. Backtracking becomes second nature. And as you kill enemies, you acquire experience points that allow you to level up.
There are some things that make Harmony of Dissonance unique. For starters, this is probably the first game in the GBA library that looked really good. The sprite artwork and vibrant colors are striking. There's a lot of graphical effects such as parallax scrolling and transparencies that show off the GBA's graphical power quite nicely. In the area of gameplay, a new magic system is implemented. You are able to acquire different elementals, which when combined with your secondary weapon (axes, daggers, etc), can perform a unique type of magic. You are able to switch between the different elements on the fly, so it's easy to experiment. You are also given a dash button, which comes in very handy for avoiding enemy attacks. Another nice aspect is that HoD provides some puzzles that break up the monotony. Unfortunately, the puzzles aren't enough to save a sinking ship.
Monotony reigns supreme here. The game is never a challenge because there's so many things that prevent you from dying. From the least of the skeletons to Dracula himself, the enemies are all slow-moving and stupid. There are no one-hit deaths. And if by chance, you manage to get hurt, there are tons of save/healing spots scattered throughout the castle. Enemies will also drop potions which restore your life. All the while, you're leveling up every 5 minutes whether you want to or not, just by walking from place to place and clearing the way. As a result, you're able to kill enemies in fewer hits, and able to withstand much more damage. The balance is entirely screwed up, which makes the game an absolute bore. No risk means no tension.
This irritation extends to what Castlevania has become as a whole. Since all areas are interconnected like Metroid, there are no bottomless pits. If you fall in a pit, you'll simply end up in the room below. Although that makes for tidy level design, it simply removes the platforming aspect from the series. There's little consequence for poorly executed jumps. Another issue is that the series was always action focused. With this RPG fusion, you must now go through weapon/armor equipping screens every time you acquire equipment. This happens often. It interrupts the flow of the game by forcing you to pause in order to navigate through windows. It's this mess of conflicting elements that make it hard to enjoy.
Overall, I thought the game was a long drawn-out chore. While it wasn't 100% awful, the good could not make up for the subpar foundations it was built on. I didn't even get into talking about the awful music either. I imagine your mileage will vary depending on how much you like "Metroid" type of mazes and backtracking. I don't think I have a preference either way on Metroidvania or a linear map. But when fused with a RPG system where your character constantly gets stronger, the backtracking makes an already easy game, much, much easier. True, the game offers several reasons to replay such as a Boss Rush mode, and the ability to play as a 2nd character. But what good are these replay options when you never ever want to touch the game again?
This game exemplifies what's wrong with gaming today.
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis
Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis
SRPG - Game Boy Advance
Backup Memory - 3 save slots / 1 quicksave
1 Player
Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together is a tough act to follow. Considered by many to be THE strategy RPG to play, it really relied on planning. FFT vs TO:LUCT arguments aside, the combination of unrelenting difficulty and the unique timing system, which gives you a faster or slower turn depending on what your actions were the previous turn, makes Let Us Cling Together a classic.
Knight of Lodis was known as "Gaiden"(side story) in Japan. I'm not sure why it's known as a side-story, because there is a definite connection between the events of this game and Let Us Cling Together. But not all elements from both games are related. Several members of Quest, the creators of the Ogre games, have joined Square, leaving this franchise with newcomers and a handful of the old staff. Can they duplicate the efforts of old Quest?
In a word: no. Knight of Lodis is absolutely boring. I do not claim to be a SRPG fanatic, but I've played a variety of different titles in my lifetime. This is easily the weakest one I've tried.
You know the drill. You pick units and place them on a grid. Every turn, you move each individual unit, attacking or healing if necessary, with the goal of terminating the enemy units one by one. So you use your melee units to take them straight on, and use spellcasters and ranged units to clean them up from afar.
But where KoL fails is that it's nothing more than that. Shining Force 3 has a friendship system where each character gets bonuses based on vicinity and assistance. Super Robot Wars and various others have defense settings where you could defend, counterattack or dodge. Black/Matrix has you consider the effect of dead corpses on the ground. TO:KoL just strips the SRPG down to its basic nature of moving and attacking. It removes the brilliant WT system from Let Us Cling Together, and instead allows you to move all your units at once. This reduces the game to the only strategy of surrounding an enemy unit and hitting them til they're dead. Since you can move your 8 characters all at once, it's simple to kill whoever you want during your turn. Also in games like Langrisser and Advance Wars, there are consequences to sticking a particular unit next to an enemy so it's actually a risk. Here, it's pretty negligible whether you stick a wizard or a knight to block an enemy's path.
Herein lies another of TO's faults. It's easy. The AI is dumb as a brick. Sometimes they could be in range to kill one of your party members on their turn, but instead do something absolutely illogical. Sure that means less frustration for you, but if you wanted a game to hold your hand, why do you play games in the first place? Even later levels are not much harder. I've come across one level where I actually had to plan out what I'd do. One level out of the 40 odd scenarios they throw at you.
And worst of all, the pacing is extremely slow. You can't choose to skip animations, nor can you do anything to speed up the slow walk speeds of the characters. Due to lack of GBA buttons, there's no shortcut buttons for anything, so you must navigate through menus to do every little thing. Everything moves so sluggishly that it's no wonder I'm so bored.
The main draw of the Ogre series is how you can change classes. There's about 12 or so classes in the game. Some are pretty similar (Cleric vs Priest for instance), and some are completely different. In order to become a specific class, you have to fulfill a set of invisible requirements. In general, one of these requirements are medals. That's the only thing new in this outing. Depending on what you do, you are rewarded with medals that either help your stats or can allow a class change. But unfortunately, obtaining these medals also end up being fulfilling a list of invisible requirements. Invisible meaning without GameFAQs.com, you wouldn't know how to get many of the medals, and thus many of the classes. How silly is that?
Even more ridiculous is the last part of the game. It's so ridiculous that I have to mention it. The game forces you to fight 5 fights in a row with no ability to save, aside from the 1 quicksave. In the final battle, if you just happened to not have a specific item equipped, you cannot damage the last boss at all. They don't tell you this until you try to attack the last boss and by then you can't switch chars/equip anymore. So the game "story" continues and has the last boss annihilate your party, and you get the bad ending with credits and all. That means if I want a chance at the good ending, I've got to fight 5 more 1-hr long battles from the last point they let me save. Brilliant game design.
This is junk. A strategy game without difficulty is no strategy game at all. Add in painfully slow animations, a stripped-down-to-minimum SRPG engine, and some truly terrible decisions in game design and you've got Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis. I honestly can not see any redeeming factors to this game. It took me over a year to finish and I only got there because I forced myself to, in hopes that I would find something others were seeing in it. But alas, my frustrations just grew as the months went by. If there's any plus to it, the storyline is quite elaborate. A little too elaborate for me, as I lost track of it way early in the game, but people familiar with the Ogre universe will probably get it. Recommended only if you like the Ogre saga story. Otherwise, don't bother. It's a disgrace to what the original stood for.
SRPG - Game Boy Advance
Backup Memory - 3 save slots / 1 quicksave
1 Player
Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together is a tough act to follow. Considered by many to be THE strategy RPG to play, it really relied on planning. FFT vs TO:LUCT arguments aside, the combination of unrelenting difficulty and the unique timing system, which gives you a faster or slower turn depending on what your actions were the previous turn, makes Let Us Cling Together a classic.
Knight of Lodis was known as "Gaiden"(side story) in Japan. I'm not sure why it's known as a side-story, because there is a definite connection between the events of this game and Let Us Cling Together. But not all elements from both games are related. Several members of Quest, the creators of the Ogre games, have joined Square, leaving this franchise with newcomers and a handful of the old staff. Can they duplicate the efforts of old Quest?
In a word: no. Knight of Lodis is absolutely boring. I do not claim to be a SRPG fanatic, but I've played a variety of different titles in my lifetime. This is easily the weakest one I've tried.
You know the drill. You pick units and place them on a grid. Every turn, you move each individual unit, attacking or healing if necessary, with the goal of terminating the enemy units one by one. So you use your melee units to take them straight on, and use spellcasters and ranged units to clean them up from afar.
But where KoL fails is that it's nothing more than that. Shining Force 3 has a friendship system where each character gets bonuses based on vicinity and assistance. Super Robot Wars and various others have defense settings where you could defend, counterattack or dodge. Black/Matrix has you consider the effect of dead corpses on the ground. TO:KoL just strips the SRPG down to its basic nature of moving and attacking. It removes the brilliant WT system from Let Us Cling Together, and instead allows you to move all your units at once. This reduces the game to the only strategy of surrounding an enemy unit and hitting them til they're dead. Since you can move your 8 characters all at once, it's simple to kill whoever you want during your turn. Also in games like Langrisser and Advance Wars, there are consequences to sticking a particular unit next to an enemy so it's actually a risk. Here, it's pretty negligible whether you stick a wizard or a knight to block an enemy's path.
Herein lies another of TO's faults. It's easy. The AI is dumb as a brick. Sometimes they could be in range to kill one of your party members on their turn, but instead do something absolutely illogical. Sure that means less frustration for you, but if you wanted a game to hold your hand, why do you play games in the first place? Even later levels are not much harder. I've come across one level where I actually had to plan out what I'd do. One level out of the 40 odd scenarios they throw at you.
And worst of all, the pacing is extremely slow. You can't choose to skip animations, nor can you do anything to speed up the slow walk speeds of the characters. Due to lack of GBA buttons, there's no shortcut buttons for anything, so you must navigate through menus to do every little thing. Everything moves so sluggishly that it's no wonder I'm so bored.
The main draw of the Ogre series is how you can change classes. There's about 12 or so classes in the game. Some are pretty similar (Cleric vs Priest for instance), and some are completely different. In order to become a specific class, you have to fulfill a set of invisible requirements. In general, one of these requirements are medals. That's the only thing new in this outing. Depending on what you do, you are rewarded with medals that either help your stats or can allow a class change. But unfortunately, obtaining these medals also end up being fulfilling a list of invisible requirements. Invisible meaning without GameFAQs.com, you wouldn't know how to get many of the medals, and thus many of the classes. How silly is that?
Even more ridiculous is the last part of the game. It's so ridiculous that I have to mention it. The game forces you to fight 5 fights in a row with no ability to save, aside from the 1 quicksave. In the final battle, if you just happened to not have a specific item equipped, you cannot damage the last boss at all. They don't tell you this until you try to attack the last boss and by then you can't switch chars/equip anymore. So the game "story" continues and has the last boss annihilate your party, and you get the bad ending with credits and all. That means if I want a chance at the good ending, I've got to fight 5 more 1-hr long battles from the last point they let me save. Brilliant game design.
This is junk. A strategy game without difficulty is no strategy game at all. Add in painfully slow animations, a stripped-down-to-minimum SRPG engine, and some truly terrible decisions in game design and you've got Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis. I honestly can not see any redeeming factors to this game. It took me over a year to finish and I only got there because I forced myself to, in hopes that I would find something others were seeing in it. But alas, my frustrations just grew as the months went by. If there's any plus to it, the storyline is quite elaborate. A little too elaborate for me, as I lost track of it way early in the game, but people familiar with the Ogre universe will probably get it. Recommended only if you like the Ogre saga story. Otherwise, don't bother. It's a disgrace to what the original stood for.
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