The GWJ JRPG Club - Q3 2019 - Tactics Ogre! ["Gaiden" Game]

LastSurprise wrote:

I looked up a little bit too.

Spoiler:

It looks like it's another end-of-chapter choice, but only available from the Chaos route. Is that what you saw?

Yes, exactly what I read.

Spoiler:

It's not really a logical choice, at least for me, so I can see why I wasn't even aware of this route previously. But now I'm quite interested to check it out.

One thing I was wondering, you can use your Wheel of Fortune to review your route and all battles and events you've taken part in so far. Also, I remembered being able to jump back and forth to redo battles or even take different paths. So I thought it was strange that the game wasn't letting me do this as I wanted to zip back and try to recruit someone I missed. I checked online and found out that you do have to complete the game at least once. After that, you can jump back and forth as much as you want, say do Law instead of Chaos, etc.

Edit: I'm currently at the end game section. Until now the game has mostly matched enemy levels to my own except for certain optional areas. However, the few battles had enemies 1-2 levels above me and the end game zone seems to be 3-4 levels above me. So I'm going to have to do some quick levelling before I finish up.

Finally catching up! I entered chapter 2 tonight and wow this game is fantastic once it starts to click! It's nice fiddling with my party, trying to plan out the best class/skill combos and micro-manage gear/arcana. Loving it!

So far I'm using MC as a warrior, 2 archers, a berserker driven by AI, a knight for heals and that sweet aura, an earth wizard for debuffs and dropping giant goddamn boulders on people's heads, and filler. Canopus is always the MVP, but my archers are getting close with their great bows and levelled up skills. I've started levelling a beast tamer because I saw a giant octopus in a random encounter and wanted one (sidenote, I love the cute little skull on the female beast tamer's head!)

Spoiler for the final fight in chapter 1

Spoiler:

That was a really hard choice! I ended up slaughtering the town, figuring 1) it's a small sacrifice for greater gain, 2)Well...King's orders. Still made me feel queasy. Didn't like either option. Great writing so far to make me feel so strongly about this one.

I'm still on the same mission, as I was only able to grab a few minutes to play over breakfast. Really wishing I had this on a mobile platform, it would be perfect for my commute. But! I did find a couple other cool things:

Last night, to play some co-op Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, I managed to get my Dualshock 4 working with my PC. Having a controller will make the game much easier to play. Now to map fast forward onto a button I don't use!

Also, within that same mission, I was able to use the recruitment skill to snag an enemy knight. This is my first time actually recruiting a unit. I really like how the skills essentially function as a bonus action, so I can move, attack or cast a spell, and then try to recruit someone (the bonus action for skills also makes the Wizard / Witch's "meditate" super handy). Also, units are apparently much easier to recruit when they are injured -- my newfound teammate was promptly knocked out by an enemy golem. But I view that as a plus! Recruit becomes a way to (1) deprive the enemy of a unit and (2) make at least one enemy unit waste a turn attacking their weakened, former teammate.

Despite intending to focus on the Q3 selection already nier at hand, I decided yesterday to pick up this Tactics Yogurt thing after all despite little experience with the genre. Barely made it through the introductory spoon-feeding over lunch, but it was enough to stir my interest. It does feel pretty overwhelming though, and I can't yet decide one whey or another if it's something I'll manage to see through. There's almost too much to digest in the Warren Report already, and I need to go back through some of those tip lists for guidance on how to best proceed with my guy Dannon and the Order of Acidophilus.

Good grief! I had a baby and now I'm like 2 weeks behind on this. I also have to figure out a way to play it.

Congratulations on your spawn!

benign1 wrote:

Despite intending to focus on the Q3 selection already nier at hand, I decided yesterday to pick up this Tactics Yogurt thing after all despite little experience with the genre. Barely made it through the introductory spoon-feeding over lunch, but it was enough to stir my interest. It does feel pretty overwhelming though, and I can't yet decide one whey or another if it's something I'll manage to see through. There's almost too much to digest in the Warren Report already, and I need to go back through some of those tip lists for guidance on how to best proceed with my guy Dannon and the Order of Acidophilus.

It's like Final Fantasy Tactics, but harder
Save before and after everything, use multiple save slots, and look up best class skills until you get a hang of your play style so you don't waste items/time/characters. The Wheel of Fortune is your friend! Rewind those messed up turns! Just remember that it does not change the outcome if you do the same thing.

A_Unicycle wrote:

Congratulations on your spawn!

Thanks!

You can “cheat” the system by doing basically the same thing in a slightly different way. For example, the enemy parries your attack from the left side, try attacking from the right side. The odds of success may be the same but you’ll get a new random roll.

I’ve finally moved into the endgame area, about 5 battles in. I’m 2 levels below the enemy but holding my own. Just the first battle was tricky, the enemy had the high ground and a bunch of archers. Only narrow paths on either side which quickly get clogged up by melee units.

I'm still trucking along in chapter 2, I'm now looking at ways to optimize my party, right now it feels like I have way to many people on the front lines, besides archers any classes that are must have? I finally unlocked crafting, but so far can only make usable items.

I noticed game has a calendar of sorts, does it effect things in any ways if I go back and level up some of the other classes on random battles? Also how does enemy scaling working? Is it per battle basis or is it based on average of your highest class?

Enemies scale according to some average level of the classes of the units you put into battle. So, say you put in your 5 best lv 10 units, and one lv 1 unit that you're trying to level up. You should notice the enemy is either lv 9 or 8. Certain optional areas in Ch 4 have a fixed level (or minimum level). Also, towards the end of the game, the story missions have a minimum level. A combination of having upgraded equipment, buffing your characters with tarot cards, and using certain story characters that have naturally higher stats than those you recruit randomly should allow you to defeat enemies 2-4 levels above you but the grind will increase.

By far my most useful classes are Archer, Ninja/Kunoichi, and Dragoon. Archer is good for range and picking out soft targets like healers in the back lines. They can also one shot a lot of enemies in the end game using the skill Tremendous Shot (40TP). Their big negatives are being less mobile and losing effective range when shooting uphill (as opposed to magic users). Ninjas are easily the best melee character, they can duel wield 1H Katanas and do close to double the damage of other melee units. They can move one unit further in a turn making it easy to get into the enemy lines. One of their skills, Steelstance (50TP), halves physical damage until the next turn. They can earn that 50TP in just one round of attacks, enable Steelstance, then repeat. Use your Cleric/Priest to cast Boon of Swiftness on them for extra havoc. Finally, Dragoon is deadly against Beasts and Dragons. Normally these are a pain to take out due to their increased armour and large HP pools. But Dragoons get the skills Beastslayer (40TP) and Dragonslayer (50TP) which allow you to do 200-300HP in a single hit. That's almost a one hit kill. Early on, most Beast/Dragon battles occasional battles where you run into a beast trainer say. But, towards the end of the game almost every second battle has 2-4 of them running around.

No idea about the calendar but it will help to do some random battles if you have a class you want to make use of that is too low level to be effective. Also, there's an optional area that becomes available in Ch 2 that has a bunch of small maps for 6 v 6 where you start close to the enemy. You can knock these off in a few minutes each and get a bunch of levels and skill points quickly.

I've finished a couple more chapters: one against a force led by a ninja, and one led by a former friend. The ninja battle definitely left me wanting one, as the class seemed very powerful, but ultimately was the easiest battle I've faced so far. The ninja got out in front of all other enemies, so I was able to focus fire on him and end the battle without killing a single other unit.

Spoiler:

As for the other, against Vyse, it started out well but went downhill, quickly, once he got within melee of my characters. I am super jealous of his ability that lets him strike twice in melee. I gather this is a high-level fighter skill that none of my characters will be able to access for a long time, but of course the computer cheats.

Fastmav347 wrote:

I noticed game has a calendar of sorts, does it effect things in any ways if I go back and level up some of the other classes on random battles?

I don't know if the calendar here work similarly to the calendar in Ogre Battle: Person of Lordly Caliber (N64). There, the game would sometimes give little scenes or Warren report entries when you hit a character's birthday. Also, the main character would get birthday presents. I think the calendar also affected which goods the shops would carry and some side quests.

KozmoOchez wrote:

It's like Final Fantasy Tactics, but harder :D

I've been wanting to ask how everybody finds this game, compared to Final Fantasy Tactics, and this provides the perfect opportunity! Obviously, there are a lot of similarities. I haven't played much FFT, but I actually find Tactics Ogre to be much more approachable, for a few reasons: (1) I found the menus in FFT more confusing and cumbersome; (2) I really dislike systems, as in FFT, that tie XP to actions taken and encourage you to grind actions; and (3) in FFT, the enemy is really good at using low-level black magic that can hit multiple units at once, which led me to really struggle with the early maps and encouraged early grinding (that I found off-putting).

What does everyone else think?

KozmoOchez wrote:

It's like Final Fantasy Tactics, but harder :D

LastSurprise wrote:

I've been wanting to ask how everybody finds this game, compared to Final Fantasy Tactics, and this provides the perfect opportunity! Obviously, there are a lot of similarities. I haven't played much FFT, but I actually find Tactics Ogre to be much more approachable, for a few reasons: (1) I found the menus in FFT more confusing and cumbersome; (2) I really dislike systems, as in FFT, that tie XP to actions taken and encourage you to grind actions; and (3) in FFT, the enemy is really good at using low-level black magic that can hit multiple units at once, which led me to really struggle with the early maps and encouraged early grinding (that I found off-putting).

I gulped a little at the Final Fantasy Tactics but harder comment, as I've bailed out of FFT twice over the years, but the comments about grind and xp vs FFT are encouraging. Also it's been a few years now, so maybe my perspective has changed. Time will tell I guess, for now I've only completed the first not-entirely-handholdy battle.

We got hit with a massive rainstorm on Monday and had some "human error" issues with our sump pump system that resulted in a two-day Life Side Quest called "Clean your Flooded Basement". Now that that's behind me, I'll have time to get back to this again.

KozmoOchez wrote:

Good grief! I had a baby and now I'm like 2 weeks behind on this. I also have to figure out a way to play it.

Congrats! Awesome! What class will you make him/her?

First one? If so, Baby Bjorn things are great (eventually) for two-handed activities.

So I played FFT for the first time a couple of years ago, and I'm deep into LUCT now. I think any given encounter in this game will be slightly harder than one in FFT, but that is also mitigated by the turn rollback feature. OTOH, FFT has some MASSIVE difficulty spikes that I really haven't noticed in this game, outside of going to the Necromancer fight underleveled. Maybe some of the dragon fights could be considered hard since I haven't been using Dragoons, but just bottling them up with knights and hammering them with blunt weapons and magic have made those fights simple, if a bit tedious. Grinding is also somewhat necessary in FFT especially near the end, and that hasn't been true in this game.

Then again, I'm rolling with 3 archers so maybe that's just easy mode.

LastSurprise wrote:
Spoiler:

As for the other, against Vyse, it started out well but went downhill, quickly, once he got within melee of my characters. I am super jealous of his ability that lets him strike twice in melee. I gather this is a high-level fighter skill that none of my characters will be able to access for a long time, but of course the computer cheats.

That character is a Ranger class which can also dual wield like a Ninja. The differences are that the class uses swords instead of katanas and can also shoot bows pretty effectively. But in the end, the Ranger can't melee as well as a Ninja and can't shoot as well as an Archer (no Tremendous shot skill), so I haven't found it that useful.

I'll probably post more as I think about it but the chariot system in Tactics Ogre is the clincher for me. It makes the game much more enjoyable. I played and enjoyed FFT a lot back in the PS1 days, never did finish it though. I finally got around to playing the PSP remake and in one of the first battles, I cast my fire spell and missed my target by one square. Whoops, time to rewind, eh, no rewind, wtf, screw this, close.

Let me tell you when I rely heavily on the Chariot: every time my mages shoot someone in the back by accident. Rewind that s***!

Mr GT Chris wrote:

I'll probably post more as I think about it but the chariot system in Tactics Ogre is the clincher for me. It makes the game much more enjoyable. I played and enjoyed FFT a lot back in the PS1 days, never did finish it though. I finally got around to playing the PSP remake and in one of the first battles, I cast my fire spell and missed my target by one square. Whoops, time to rewind, eh, no rewind, wtf, screw this, close.

Too true. I managed to finish FFT, but it was a bit of a slog. Especially with the PSP version slowdown. And I actually finished it AFTER finishing Tactics Ogre.

I'm slightly proud of this, because I also started with the PS1 version. I bought that game in like 1999 or whenever it was released. I picked up a PSOne with the attached screen so I could hole away in my den and play it. Never finished it.

The Vita hit the sweet spot of portability that allowed me to finally get it done.

LastSurprise wrote:

Let me tell you when I rely heavily on the Chariot: every time my mages shoot someone in the back by accident. Rewind that s***!

One hundred percent right here. I'm near the end of the game and I still do that garbage because I get angles wrong or something.

And finished the final battle (Law route). There was actually at least one new scene in the ending because I was able to rescue someone that I hadn't before. I'm sure I'll play more to explore some of the other routes and try to recruit characters I missed. Anyway, I'll post more once a few more people have finished.

Been traveling so I've been super duper tired. I'm still in the intro basically. So I will try to rush to chapter 2.

In terms of hours, how far is everyone? I'm not sure how far behind I am!

I've spent about 10 hours playing, and I'm 2 fights into chapter 2.

I’m a little bit farther than you, but not much. I think I’m on the fifth fight in Chapter 2. It’s the first map after that stretch of four, or so, that you see from the chapter’s beginning (on Chaos).

My goal is to hit the end of Chapter 2 by the end of the month. From a brief glance at a FAQ, Chapters 3 & 4 are considerably longer, so I’ll probably aim for one a month, there.

That sounds like a good plan, I'll try to keep up! o/

I'm at about 33 hours and have made some good headway into Ch.4. Still, that makes discussing what's going on with GT Chris work for me, since we were on the same route and I've been trailing just behind. I want to definitely finish the Law route this month, and if it wasn't for the final Splatfest in Splatoon 2 going on this weekend, I'd probably finish it this weekend. Might still pull it off.

That said, I plan to flip over and do the Chaos route after I finish the story, since I'd like to see how the story played out the other way.

I'm up to what looks like is going to be the end of the game/final dungeon, so I'm going to post some assorted thoughts on Ch. 4, since once I beat the game I'll probably just want to talk about that. In spoilers, obviously.

Spoiler:

There were a lot of uphill fights in Ch. 4, almost like that is one of the main way the can make the game difficult. It just means you have to wait a bit longer and absorb a bit more damage before you begin the inevitable snowballing.

A lot of guys seem to think we are some unstoppable force, with Dark Knights not wanting a straight up fight, and many defenders having be be threatened or intimidated into fighting us. No one really thought they could beat us as we traipsed through Bakram, which was kind of funny considering the upstarts we had been.

I don’t know why I wasn’t thinking the Dark Knights would turn on each other and fracture, but it was interesting to watch. The split made Lanselot seem almost honorable by comparison. The narrative had gotten fairly simple straightforward, with less treachery and conflict on our side, so it also seemed like that was the game keeping the politics and division going to keep things from getting boring

A nice gameplay-meets-narrative touch; during the fight with Brantyn, his knights moved to surround and protect him, while he just kept retreating away from my advancing squad. But when he did fight, he hit like a truck.

Taking Heim castle and ending the war actually felt good, just from a narrative level. It was plenty obvious the game wasn’t over, but it was nice to see a clearly good thing happen. And I’m glad I drag Catiua along for fights now for the dialogue, even if she doesn’t pull her weight because she’s underleved.

And I'm also taking Vyse with me everywhere now, and he's nearly caught up in level. The Ranger class and it's dual wielding definitely seems inferior to the Ninja, but it's still fun to have him and Denam up front double stabbing everything after their split earlier in the game. I still think the Wallister Alliance joined Denam and forgave him in the involvement in the massacre too easily, though.

I think the uphill fights make it more challenging for anyone who is just relying on Archers. Shooting uphill vastly reduces their range. They're still useful but you're going to be taking a lot of fire from above before you can hit back. Some strategies are using Canopus as a dedicated archer. His flying ability helps him get up the slope quickly without relying on whatever winding routes are available. Also, the range of magical attacks is only impacted by horizontal distance so you can hit anyone within range with your magic users as long as you have line of sight on them, no matter how high they are. Alternatively, there are certain attacks like Meteor or Judgement that don't even require line of sight. Fusel range is also unaffected by height from what I can tell. Finally, having characters that can navigate the terrain quickly like Ninjas will help you close the distance. At higher levels you can add skills to most classes like Jump and Move (one extra square of movement) which also will help with this.

Chapter 4 Law spoilers:

Sundown wrote:
Spoiler:

There were a lot of uphill fights in Ch. 4, almost like that is one of the main way the can make the game difficult. It just means you have to wait a bit longer and absorb a bit more damage before you begin the inevitable snowballing.

A lot of guys seem to think we are some unstoppable force, with Dark Knights not wanting a straight up fight, and many defenders having be be threatened or intimidated into fighting us. No one really thought they could beat us as we traipsed through Bakram, which was kind of funny considering the upstarts we had been.

I don’t know why I wasn’t thinking the Dark Knights would turn on each other and fracture, but it was interesting to watch. The split made Lanselot seem almost honorable by comparison. The narrative had gotten fairly simple straightforward, with less treachery and conflict on our side, so it also seemed like that was the game keeping the politics and division going to keep things from getting boring

A nice gameplay-meets-narrative touch; during the fight with Brantyn, his knights moved to surround and protect him, while he just kept retreating away from my advancing squad. But when he did fight, he hit like a truck.

Taking Heim castle and ending the war actually felt good, just from a narrative level. It was plenty obvious the game wasn’t over, but it was nice to see a clearly good thing happen. And I’m glad I drag Catiua along for fights now for the dialogue, even if she doesn’t pull her weight because she’s underleved.

And I'm also taking Vyse with me everywhere now, and he's nearly caught up in level. The Ranger class and it's dual wielding definitely seems inferior to the Ninja, but it's still fun to have him and Denam up front double stabbing everything after their split earlier in the game. I still think the Wallister Alliance joined Denam and forgave him in the involvement in the massacre too easily, though.

Spoiler:

For Vyse, I was also confused by this but according to what I read somewhere, he is far more effective with daggers than swords for (reasons). Something to do with his stat breakdown.

I found the reunion with Catiua quite emotional and there are different ways that it can play out. I'm also curious about which of the optional characters you've recruited. There are some that are really easy to miss.

The whole mission of the Dark Knights is a little weird, what did Lanselot really want to achieve. It sort of made sense that the Bakram were on the back foot because you had effectively united 2/3 of the land against them (and their unreliable Dark Knight allies), and there's also the Bakram resistance who were against Brantyn, although I get confused with all these different resistances.

Now that I've hit end credits I have complete access to the Wheel of Fortune and can jump to Anchor points in the time line. Usually about 3 per chapter. The way it works is pretty nifty. You keep all characters, stats, etc. You can even deploy characters in battle even if it doesn't make sense for them to be there for the story (no wacky dialogs or exchanges of course). Now as to how it's useful. If you missed recruiting someone first time round, you can jump back to just before what you missed, recruit the character, jump forward to any point later and it will be as if that event had always taken place. In terms of different routes, like Law/Chaos, this will actually open up new branches in the timeline. You can still jump back and forth between them. Anyway, the way it's all laid out and labeled makes it easy to follow.

I ended up staying on Chaos route at the end of chapter 2. Neutral choice just didn't feel right.

And credits rolled for me on the Law route. I plan to do the world chariot to play through the Chaos route next.

First, thoughts on the final missions of the game in spoilers.

Spoiler:

You know what I hate? Petrification. Especially since everyone in the Hanging Gardens had it and targeted it at Denam. I finally had to put the petrification resist skill on him and lost some defense elsewhere just to make that go away. And he still got petrified.

Loved the music and the mood of the descent into the tomb, after the gardens. First it is a fight against zombies and knights, with some already damaged or dead. Great tone setter. Then a last stand by the black knights with good, ominous music set to it as they know they cannot hold.

The first phase of the final boss was a buttkicker, and I had to restart once after getting overwhelmed. The Canopus doppelganger was tearing up my team, to no real surprise. It’s terrifying to be on the business end of his huge attacks against soft targets. The second go around, I made sure the Canopus doppelganger was close so I could kill him ASAP, and I bottled up the Denam doppelganger while throwing everything I had at the boss. It worked, and only two of mine got knocked out that way. The second phase was actually a cakewalk. He only got off his huge attack once, and it didn’t kill anyone. I was just plinking him with damage, but then I noticed that his TP gauge was still filling up fast, I had my mages use their little-used reduce TP and MP spells to neuter him. He couldn’t use his heavy attacks since he didn’t have the juice for it, so I could just chip away or use the occasional finisher to take off a big chunk while he could do at most 80 damage with a regular attack. Still enough to down someone already weakened, but not enough to offset what I was doing to him. Surprisingly effective.

The ending cutscenes revealed that Vyce hadn’t actually forgiven Denam for participating in the massacre, counter to what I said before. And since the where-are-they-now (I love it when games do this) epilogue covered the unique characters on my team, I’m curious how they handle that for the chaos route.

As for recruiting uniques, I tried to get Ravness, but apparently I messed up a dialogue option with the unique dragoon (I thought both answers were the same. Apparently not). I plan to go back and get her before playing the Chaos route. Also, not getting the unique dragoon was part of why I never really used one for my team and instead wound up using two knights, since that was the best way to bottle up beasts and dragons while the rest of my team wore them down.

And now some general impressions of the Law route, although there will be more room to think about it and discuss later. Minor comparison to FF Tactics included.

Spoiler:

I like that the story in this was fairly grounded. Lots of plotting and politics involved, but still remained in the realm of the non-supernatural until the very end, unlike FFT. The story also seemed very character driven, with everyone acting on their own interests/honor each step of the way. It makes for a more thought out and real feeling story.

I also think the first couple of chapters were the strongest. The struggle against a greater power in Ch. 1 made for a great underdog story, although when first playing through it, I hadn’t watched the intro cutscene you get from waiting a couple of minutes at the main menu. If I had, I would have known that the war between the Wallister and the Galgastani was more of an ethnic cleansing, which puts more context to the desperation of the Duke to unite the Wallister to oppose Galgastani. My choice was that of supporting the massacre at the end of Ch.1, and then the Law route was a long series of internal politics in who would control the Rebellion, and those who opposed it for cynically killing their own people. The battle raged both on the battlefield and the hearts and minds of the people, and the latter did not reside with the Duke. This is even more interesting thinking back on it. I think the peace between the Resistance and the New Wallister Alliance was tenuous when the two were consolidated under Denam, although it did not become a plot point.

From then on, it is a fairly straightforward fight to beat the Galgastani through Ch. 3, although my thoughts were on the themes of loyalty and humanity, and making it clear that many times the enemy are people too, and not the monsters we like to think they are. And then Ch. 4 was straightforward as well, as we roll over the Bakram, talk Catiua back into the fold (although she could kill herself, and I’m very interested in how the story goes if that happens. Maybe the next playthrough?), and then finishing off the Black Knights who stayed and ending the war. It ended well and wrapped up a lot of threads, but I think the game was at it’s best during the beginning when it was more plotting and scraping by, unlike the back half of the game when it was clear that a sufficient application of force was enough to solve our problems.

Many characters commented on Denam doing what he did for power, but I guess my reading on him said otherwise. This is the Law route which I think was a lot about loyalty, so I read him doing what he did, including becoming a figurehead and leading the army for the sake of others, not himself. So any accusations to the contrary, primarily from the Bakram king and the Dark Knights, came off as projecting and rationalization for themselves.