Ogre Battle - The Best Strategy RPG Ever?

My retrospective and review of Ogre Battle, which analyzes the game's story, characters, graphics, soundtrack, and difficulty. I also include a few criticisms.

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#OgreBattle #RPG #SNES

[thelegacyofgaming]

I wish they made another game like this for the Switch or PC. Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre are in a class of their own when it comes to game design. The sprite work alone is a testament to art itself.

[TimBitten]

I loved all the little secrets in Ogre Battle! Hidden classes, buried treasures, random recruits, sequences of things you had to do to get this or that to open up—it’s all just a real joy to try to unravel. And you really feel rewarded for all your hard work when your favorite units start getting strong, or you find some wild little rare item or troop. That’s something modern games are severely lacking!

[christianeckert]

The complicated story, the tactics necessary, both building units, managing reputation, and keeping units strong enough to survive

[_UPRC]

My favourite game of all time. I never get tired of listening to this game's OST.

[DubiousByName]

I fell in love with this game when I was a kid. Such great memories. The lore is quite interesting and how it is slowly revealed to you through the stages was engaging and stirred the imagination.

[ChosenPlaysYT]

One of the top 25 games of the 90’s across all platforms. It was good for its time. Had to be there live in the mid 90’s to understand.

[AndyGamezoldschool]

Ogre battle was awesome.Nothing like it even today.

[retsz]

I got lucky with this title. I rented it often, but when I heard my local Blockbuster was going out of business, I snagged it and a few other titles. They spent about 2 months trying to collect fees for not returning it, until they finally shut their doors and the calls stopped. 18 year old me took a bit of a credit hit on that one.

[dr.hawkinsmax]

I remember playing this as a kid, all my friends were talking about it, I finally decided to rent it, it was the first game where I had to really use my noggin, but it was good training, because I was later able to play other strategy games, and rpgs way better than before, I have this game to thank for that, and the sequels are just as amazing, I hope they continue this with other games.😊

[Tirpitz]

Best game on the SNES. Bold statement I know. This is coming from a person who thinks FF6 is the second best FF game of all time (and no 7 isn't the best, not by a long shot), which shared that console.

Once you learned how to manipulate the Charisma and Alignment system via the Tactics command you could get some of the best units in the game with relative ease. By this I mean by changing to "weak, strong, leader" multiple times in battle you can determine which character kills what and which doesn't. Very important for changing the aliment and charisma of characters. Though RNG also plays a role; hoping for an Undead Ring and Undead Staff to make a Lich out of Warren and Saradin was always nerve wracking.

The plethora of special characters, classes and items always made each play-through enjoyable. With the 13 or so endings you always had something new to go for. I still remember the first time my cousin and I got the Galf ending, not like we didn't see it coming though lol.

A few of my biggest complaints is that large units were more or less useless with the exception of a Griffin/Wyrm to move quickly across the map for a liberation team. Niche units such as water-based ones where pretty much useless as well. IIRC there was only one or two giant water maps, which is where you actually got most of the water units in the first place. Balance was a bit wonky as well. No reason to use many of the units if you got a Lich, Princess, Devils, and a few others. The Charisma and Alignment system was also a bit to obtuse as well. If you didn't know what ranges you needed or how to change them, you were completely locked out of units, or unit upgrades, like Knight to Paladin. It took me years of playing this game over and over to be able to do this. Countless notes, as well as hand drawn maps also for those pesky hidden treasures. As this was long before GameFAQ's or wiki's! The information was pretty much non-existent, outside the Nintendo Power hotline... I still remember the first playthough; Lans was badass, Lans killed a lot of stuff, Lans' Charisma and Alignment was 0, Lans never became a Paladin. The class marks system in Tactics Ogre was a much welcome change to the class change system.

That said, this game is simply amazing, its really unfortunate it got such a limited release in NA. I actually traded my original SNES cart to a game store for a PS1, controller, memory card *and* the brand new PS1 version of Ogre Battle back in 97' or something.

I would love to see a modern remake of this game like they did with Tactics Ogre, I know it will never happen with Quest going bankrupt and Square's re-release of Tactics Ogre on the PSP game not selling all that well. That's still one of, if not the best PSP title IMO, . Though the _One Vision_ mod is a must, properly balances that game out. As for Ogre Battle, there is just so much more they could do with this type of game. A RTS before RTS was a thing, mixed with RPG elements. It truly was innovative, especially for its time and the hardware used.

Watching this video makes me want to revisit this game, I haven't played it in like a decade, might need to dust it off. I'm not sure why it popped up on my recommended videos, but I'm glad it did.

[anthonyambrose]

I love this game and rented it from my local Blockbuster. When they closed I bought it when they were selling their inventory. I had no idea so few made it to the US! I still have it and it works fine.

[KValeNagle]

Because the instruction manual was almost always stolen and most of us could only play it from Blockbuster (before it was stolen from there, too), there's an interesting effect where most people play the game not knowing the backstory. It's only in the last 20% or less when you're pushing into the highlands that you start to realize that you were the bad guys. I didn't beat it via 3 day rentals as a kid, so it wasn't until it came out on Wii virtual console that I got to experience this.

Replaying Ogre Battle 64 later, it suddenly makes sense that *everyone* distrusts the Zenobians. To the outside world, you came to attend peace talks and then crushed the opposition in a surprise attack and made an empire out of the nearby ruined kingdoms you smashed along the way. Then when challenged by other sovereign nations, you just say "No, but there was like a magic gate with an ogre in it, honest."


Honestly, I can't think of a series that's captured the epic fantasy feel better than the four Ogre games. I'm not sure I've played a series that's come close.

[maskedbadass]

I will always remember this game as "that game I was too dumb to beat because as a 7 year old I had no idea what strategy was so I couldn't get past the first battle." After watching videos describing the battle system it's like, "Wow, I never had a chance."

[Jack-Lack]

One of the most tactical aspects of Ogre Battle is that there are class promotions (often multiple tiers), class promotions will make a character automatically much stronger (for example, the paladin deals 50% more damage than the knight), and class promotions have multiple stat requirements (level, charisma, alignment). If you don't carefully micromanage the evolution of your characters' alignment and charisma stats, they could end-up getting stranded unable to reach a higher tier of class promotion. Even if you power level a few characters, you will eventually hit a wall (perhaps 50-60% of the way into the game) where you just can't win if you haven't successfully promoted several characters to third tier classes. Therefore, the only way to win is to underlevel your characters to keep their charisma high enough to get class promotions. But manipulating their alignment is even harder.

[ghostmail]

Didn't get this game when I rented it as a kid. Picked it up 15 years later. Loved it

[johnromero]

One of the most memorable games I ever played. Although I was good at strategy as a kid, I didn't know the mechanics of the alignment system back then. I was wondering why my units were turning out evil and why the population hated me. Apparently its not good to chase and kill retreating enemies :D

[roguerifter]

March of the Black Queen is my favorite console SRPG even though I didn't get to play it until the summer of 1999. I wish Square would remaster the Ogre Battle games instead of remaking Tactics Ogre (part of the same story but very different in gameplay) every decade or so.

I might have preferred Person of Lordly Caliber but I only knew one person who owned a copy and he sold it while I was midway through my first run.

[Xygor]

What was the most memorable part of Ogre Battle to you?

[MidnightBlackandVictoria]

Man, that game is in serious need of a modern remaster. It really was one of the best.

There is a game alot like it on steam called "Symphony of war"....An indie game that plays extremely similar to Ogre Battle, though I think it needs more variety with units, such as longer class tree's and more monster units (it only has dragons atm). Its worth checking out though.

[razenburn]

A Front Mission game that possessed Ogre Battle's real time map movement and squad system, combined with FM's mech part customisation, would be divine imo.