Tactics Ogre: Reborn Review (brunno)
Absolutely loved this game, I just got the last achievement on it and I loved each and every second spent on this masterpiece.
I'll write my review talking about the game as it is and talking about the remake comparing it to the old version and things that got better and worse.
Note: I've never played the PSP version, so I am comparing Tactics Ogre: Reborn to the Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together from Super Nintendo
I would like to begin with one important point, IGNORE reviews that says that Tactics Ogre Reborn is bad and compare this game to Final Fantasy Tactics, saying that you should only play the latter, there is a huge chance that you will like BOTH. There are many people that came to this game expecting it to be similar to FFT, which is not the case and its not a problem.
If you played Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together on SNES/PS1, you already know that they are different and both are amazing.
Tactics Ogre Reborn is one of the best games of Tactical RPG you will ever find. Your choices have a great impact in the story, not only sidequests but the main story as well. You can play three different timelines and these timelines are determined by your choices, each of them have different battles, different dialogues and change which characters die and survive. Some characters are bounded to death, they will die in every timeline, however, each route change the way they die so playing all the three lines will be satisfying since it tells you a different story.
The gameplay is really fun, with options to make the animation faster, cool designs, the possibility of changing the camera angles and many other things, you will have a lot of fun attacking, landing critical hits and using the abilities in general.
You can choose between multiple classes to make each character in your squad unique, classes like Knight, Valkyrie, Archers, Mages and some other exclusive endgame classes that you unlock by completing sidequests and recruiting special characters, like, Necromancer, Shaman, White Knight. You can also recruit non-human characters and they're pretty useful aswel, like Lizards, Wingmen, Undead units and beasts like Dragons, Golems and other animals. These non-human characters also have different classes and are pretty strong too.
This game has voice acting, the characters are dubbed and its really nice to listen to the dialogues. 99% of the characters have a good dub, its such a shame that the few characters that the dub didnt do justice were two important ones, Dark Knight Lanselot and our loved Arycelle dubs arent that great...
The Eng dub of Ryuuji Sakamoto from P5 is the voice behind the protagonist, I loved it haha
To decrease the amount of grind necessary, after beating the game you have the option to travel to previous keypoints of the game, this way you can play the three different time lines without having to begin from 0. You maintain your units, items, levels and you can travel to the timeline that you've beat the game anytime you want.
The story is awesome and its really important, you get attached to the characters, you feel sad when they leave and you also feel disgusted when you play the other timelines and make options that goes against what you truly support. It is so nice to see the development of the protagonist and his friends and how they help each other to achieve their goals.
One of the issues that I have with this game is the map design for the end game maps. A lot of times you will find yourself changing the camera angle to see from above, it is nice to have this tool but its not great that you will find yourself needing to use this tool a lot in end game maps, I wish they designed the maps a little bit different in the endgame to avoid this.
Tactics Ogre Reborn as a REMAKE
A lot has changed from SNES to this one and it changed for the better, one of the main issue with remakes that scares players that loved the original version of the game is that the remake changes it so much that it doesnt feel like its a remake but a brand new game.
Fortunately, this is not the case here, the remake is AWESOME! They changed things for the better and the game feels just like the Tactics Ogre that you've played in Super Nintendo!
The graphis are way better but is still a beautiful pixel game! The bossbattle got a lot better and way more challenging and the boss has cool 3D attacks, you will LOVE to see it.
One thing that is hard to adapt is some changes in character names, Kachua is now Catiua, Nybbas is Nybeth, Vice is Vyce, Denim is Denam and our lovely Aloser is now Arycelle...other names changed too but you get the point, important characters have now a different name, not a big issue but damn, Aloser will always be ALOSER in our hearts haha
Our Hell's Gate had it name changed too, it is now Palace of the Dead, I not gonna lie I like the old name better, but again, its not a big issue.
I feel that the developes are into our community, which is pretty nice, there are moments that shows that they understand and like our memes about the game and the characters we love, for example, in the Palace of the Dead there are some floors that you have a random chance of facing strong enemies, that are like minibosses, one of them is a SUPER STRONG Archer that will most likely Oneshot any unit from your party and guess what, her name is ALLOCER, there is no way this is a coincidence, I loved this pun from the developers to our lovely Aloser, the best archer ever!
Another example is Barbas famous dialogue about true knights, he has a new dialogue where now he includes himself as a true knight, even though he uses hammers, you will laugh when you see it hahahah
A good thing about this remake is that every class is now useful, obviously some classes are stronger than others and honestly, they should be or it would be pointless to complete sidequests to unlock them, but, now you can play every class you like in the endgame without feeling useless. They changed how you obtain skills, each class has unique skills and passives,
This is not only possible by skills though, there are so many new items and they have unique effects, there are also set effects, for example, there is a set called Reeking Set, if you use three parts of it (Armor, Gloves and helmet for example), your character will not be targeted by others.
The Item slots are now pretty different. You have 4 slots for consumables and a whole new part for gear like weapons, armor and acessories.
One thing that I really liked is the new option in the shop which is craft, there are many strong weapons and armor that can be crafted in the shop which decrease the necessity of dropping items. Item drops here are pretty much optional and you can for sure beat the game without endgame equipment.
There is also a tool called Chariot of Time, which allows you to go back turns IN battle as much as you like so you can drop the items that you want without needing to reload and beginning the battle from scratch.
It also prevents you from needing to quit the battle and begginning it again just because one of your characters that you have for more than 100+ hours got a critical shot and got pushed of the edge. It was so painful playing Hells Gate in SNES and losing a character in this way, I am glad that they added such option.
They changed the way characters DIE, in SNES as soon as they get their hp dropped to 0 they are gone forever, in this game they will become a corpse in the ground and takes 3 turns before they truly die. If you played Final Fantasy Tactics you know how it works.
I would like to thank every person involved in the development of this game, you can feel that they loved being part of it and it was so satisfying to play a new version of a game that marked my childhood and seeing that it is better. Thank you, truly, I had a lot of fun and there are still things that I can do in game!
10/10, totally recommend this game.