Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber
Ogre Battle Saga Episode VI
Some Music for you: Listen to it.
Oh God not another one, Khuutra, come o-
Shut up!
*sigh* Okay, what is it this time?
This time I'm telling you that you need to play Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber. It is available iin Japan, the US, and Europe on the Virtual Console for the Nintendo Wii. It requires either the Classic Controller or the Gamecube controller - though this is the one N64 game where I find I'm preferring the Classic Controller thanks to the superior D-pad functionality.
All right, all right. I admit I haven't been let down by your recommendations very often. What's the deal with Ogre Battle 64?
Do you remember Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen on the SNES?
Yeah.
It's like that.
But awesomer.
Well, what makes it different from the SNES Ogre Battle? I played that one, and it was tough, and the story wasn't very clearly told in parts, and I didn't care much for the battle system.
Ogre Battle 64 goes out of its way to correct all of those problems! For real.
In the first place, the game's sory is still communicated through the whole "visit towns and learn things" bit, but that's only to flesh out stuff that you might not be thinking about otherwise: the story's more meaty and important parts are told through the traditional cutscenes you've come to expect.
The difficulty in Ogre Battle 64 is much more manageable, not because things are easier so much as because they're more balanced now: enemies without leaders will wander aimlessly until you hunt them down and butcher them, and enemies don't just automatically replenish all troops when they retreat! They take just as long to heal as you do, and aren't able to overwhelm you as easily anymore.
That does sound pretty good. Would you recommend this game instead of the predecessor?
YES. A thousand times yes. There's a couple of htings in the ending you won't get without knowing how the first game ends, but yes, this game is better. It's better for newbies, it's better for people who like stories, it's better for people who like micromanagement and class systems, it's just better.
I don't actually know what Ogre Battle's about. Why don't you tell me?
All right.
Ogre Battle is about micromanagement, at its core. You spend your time creating an army and sending it into battle - you have three basic modes in which the game is played.
The first mode is in the Organization screen, where you control the size and makeup of your army. Your army can have up to 200 people in it, divided into units of up to five characters apiece. You can set an almost ridiculous number of things for each character: their armor, helms, their weapons, their shields (or spellbooks), their accessories, their names, their class... on and on. The biggest part of your pre-battle strategic approach will be defined here, since the makeup and positioning of units determines how effectively (and often!) different soldiers attack or defend.
The second mode to worry about is the Map mode, where you send different units out over an area in an attempt to gain hold of and control strongholds, using the lay of the land and your own units' abilities to gain a tactical advantage. The other biggest part of your strategies will come into play here, as the units you've assembled go into battle and function more effectively in some areas than in others.
The final mode is in the battles themselves, which are somewhat like those in Ogre Battle only much more impressive to look at.
This sounds very complicated!
It really isn't, though it can take a bit to get into. The game provides a tutorial, and the first few missions are easy enough that anyone can beat them to get a better handle on the mechanics of the game.
For the first few hours it's all "kumbaya" and shit.
All right, let's say I'm interested. What makes the story so good?
It's a story full of political intrigue, betrayal, plot twists, and crazy demons out to conquer the world, written by the same guy who wrote Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, the part of FFXII that doesn't involve Vaan or Penelo, and Tactics Ogre. It features a cast of characters as long as your arm, each of whom has a distinctive position and personality and purpose in the story, and all of whom have particular perspectives that they bring to the table. It deals with concepts like ethnic cleansing, slavery, the sovereignty of nations, the relationship between men and the gods, all that good stuff. It's one of the legitimately best-written games in the medium, but....
Wait, there's a but?
Well, the game was translated by Atlus.
THIS GAME WAS TRANSLATED BY ATLUS!?
Hold your horses, this isn't the Atlus you know. Back in the late nineties, Atlus hadn't really hit the big time in the West yet, and made a name for themselves primarily by localizing games produced by other companies. Ogre Battle 64 was one of those games.
Thing is, back in the day Atlus did a terrible job of things. Ogre Battle 64's translation is rife with typos, oddly phrased sentences, and sometimes bad grammar and stuff. In a lot of places it's just awful.
Is it so bad that it obfuscates what makes the story great?
Thankfully no, but I thought it fair to warn you going in: the translation isn't great, and the story and characters are great in spite of the English translation, rather than because of it.
Well, all right. Will I be getting my money's worth with this game?
Ogre Battle 64 costs 1000 Wii Points in NA and JP, and 1200 in EU because it's a Hanabi Festival game. For those points you get a game hat should last you at least 40 hours for the first playthrough, and that's if you're already familiar with the Ogre Battle system.
A more liberal estimation for a first playthrough would be anywhere between 60-80 hours.
That is pretty lengthy! I bet it has no replayability.
You bet this because you are a stupid.
The game is one of the most replayable games of its length that I have ever played. I myself have clocked in over 200 hours in it before buying it on the VC, and I'm playing it again because that's just how I roll. It's worth playing over and over, and almost never stops being entertaining or interesting.
How in the Hell can an 80 hour game be that replayable?
Well, in the first place it's replayable because the different makeups of your army from game to game change the experience of playing immensely. No two games feel the same!
The second and much bigger thing is that choice matters. In this game there's an invisible metric called the Chaos Frame which measures whether you, the player, are Lawful or Chaotic, and whether or not you treat the citizenry well. The Chaos Frame determines what major characters will join your party in a variety of situations, and also how certain missions go.
Chaos Frame is affected by liberating towns (by taking control of them with units whose alignments matches a town's morale) versus capturing them (by taking control with a unit that has different alignment), and also by several story decisions you make throughout the game. The entire makeup of the final third of the game is seriously affected by some story decisions you make, and the shape of events is almost entirely up to you. The outcome, the final battle, is similar in a lot of cases, but the journal and the ending could not possibly be more different.
It's almost endlessly replayable. I expect to put in another 100-200 hours into the VC version of the game, and I'm a lot faster now than I used to be.
Does the game have a lot of secrets?
You have no idea.
I don't think that 1000/1200 points is a fair price for an N64 game!
That is because you're not familiar with this one. Outside of being worth that much easily on its own, Ogre Battle 64 is also pretty expensive as far as N64 games go - in territories where it was released it can go for anywhere from 40-60 bucks, and playing it in the EU would be a lot more expensive than that for obvious reasons.
Ogre Battle 64 is worth it. I promise.
Why do you recommend this game so strongly?
It's my favorite RPG from the Saturn/PS1/N64 generation. I mean it. I like it more than any other.
Go. Spend your points on it. Prepare yourself for one of the biggest, best, and most complete games on this platform or any platform. This is a Virtual Console game so good, so valuable, that it nearly justifies the service by itself.
Will you make some icons for us to use?
Hell yes! Here is a sample:
Lots more can be found in my image folders right here on VGChartz: between them I have about three dozenn icons to choose from!
The first album is found here, and contains mostly main characters and a few classes!
The second album is found here, and contains classes and monsters!
Come on, guys. Let's play Ogre Battle 64 together!
But I'm RolStoppable!
*RolStoppable should not play this game or any other RPG recommended by Khuutra.
