Review: Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen

Hola, amigos. I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I've had quite a busy year. I got married. My wife and I went to Italy. We moved into a townhouse. A bunch of my friends got married and/or had kids. I'm still working nights and weekends. And to top it all off, my wife and I are expecting a beautiful baby girl in a month. Needless to say this has cut down on my gaming and blogging. But right now I feel like it's time for a little nostalgia.

About a year and a half ago, I asked my wife (then-fiancée) for a PS Vita as my big Christmas gift. We had a lot of travel planned for 2013, and I wanted to play Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions and possibly see what the Dissidia nonsense was all about. Then, about two weeks before our wedding, I discovered a title I recognized from my past on PSN -- Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Many moons ago, I really enjoyed Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen on Super Nintendo. Unfortunately I never actually found a copy to buy, which is a bummer because they now go for over $100 (way more if it includes original packaging) due to a limited number of copies released in the United States. So I just rented it from Blockbuster about a dozen times instead. And later in my gaming career, of course I fell in love with Final Fantasy Tactics. Therefore I figured Tactics Ogre would be the perfect combination of those two games. I bought the PlayStation version, and after playing through most of the game I came away feeling very meh about the whole experience, mostly because of the way classes worked and the 100-floor "optional" dungeon (nothing is optional in RPGs). But my attitude changed this past year after finding a Let's Play thread about the new-ish PSP port on Something Awful forums. Square Enix brought back the original production team to clean up some of the shoddy mechanics and add content for the new release, and after toying around with it more than I'd care to admit (especially on our honeymoon, there are long train rides in Europe, don't judge me) the game reignited my interest in the entire Ogre Battle series. Flash forward to a few months ago, when the ease of NHL 14 and my reluctance to join my friends on Final Fantasy XIV led me to fire up the ol' SNES emulator and play the original Ogre Battle once more.

A revolution in under a year? I guess it helps to have dragons and magic.

More after the jump...

I usually wait until the end of the review to talk about the technical aspects, but I want to begin with the music. There are about twenty songs in the game, but only seven of them play during the game's main stages. Plus, there's only one song for the vast majority of in-stage battles. With so much repetition, it would be easy for the music to become annoying and detract from the experience. But the soundtrack is one of its greatest strengths, providing each stage with a driving force behind reaching the goal. The first track, "Thunder", is to me the unofficial theme of Ogre Battle. It plays during the game's first few stages and really sets the tone for the long struggle ahead. My favorite piece of music is "Wall of Defense", which usually appears in stages that are especially difficult or important to the plot. It plays like a war march, with all the excitement and danger of a rebel army charging a stronghold. Another great stage theme is "Go-Go March" with its relentless beat and multiple melodies. In addition to all the stage music, get used to hearing "Atlas" as it plays between stages while organizing units and selecting the next stage. After completing each stage, the player is treated to "Thrill of Liberation", a peppy little victory fanfare that still makes me feel good. There are other great tracks too, and it all amounts to an incredibly enjoyable score.

SPOILER ALERT: She doesn't step down.

The graphics, on the other hand, are a mixed bag. The in-battle sprites, character portraits, and spell animations are pretty average for the gaming generation. However, the maps are bland and lack detail, and the silver and gold unit markers are unimpressive. These unit markers are also the only graphical representation of your army's individual characters outside of battle, and the lack of portraits or more detailed sprites when organizing units is disappointing. Also, changing equipment does not change the appearance of your units, so locating which items are equipped on which units requires looking at the status of each individual character and quickly becomes tedious. However, the graphics don't detract too much from the overall experience. The meat of this game is strategy, in fact it feels similar to a complex board game like chess or Risk. Therefore it makes sense that the unit markers appear like opposing board game pieces on the stage map. So while some of the graphics may be underwhelming, they still feel consistent with the gameplay and thematically solid.

One of my favorite things is watching my units fan out at the beginning of a stage.

As for the gameplay, the strategy can be as simple or as complex as the player desires. Each stage only has one requirement -- move one of your army's units to the enemy base and defeat the stage's boss -- but there are many other things to do on every map. By liberating outlying towns, acquiring rare items, and recruiting unique characters, there are plenty of worthwhile rewards to be had. The plot is revealed by talking to these special characters, enriching the story of rebellion against the Empire by bringing together divergent threads. Constructing an army can be just as fun strategically, building your characters' levels up slowly and focusing on their charisma and alignment stats, or just using your strongest units every time and smashing everything to bits. There are your basic fantasy role-playing units like knights, clerics, wizards, dragons, and the like. But the Ogre Battle series has some lesser-known types such as doll master and hawk man, and when combined with their take on the more traditional classes it creates a wonderful sense of a rich and varied setting. There are over seventy playable classes, and recruiting the right mix for your play style is one of the game's best attributes. Of course being the typical RPG gamer that I am, I have to control every detail possible. In this case, that means having all of my characters with a high alignment stat, and the easiest way to raise your alignment is killing the evil undead units that roam swamps and forests in certain stages. The only problem is, when you're doing this for an army of up to a hundred units, it takes a really, really long time. Oh well, at least the music is awesome.

One of my least favorite things is watching this screen, hoping for neutral encounters. All. The. Time.

For all the strategy of battle and army-building, the story is rather basic. The good king is murdered, done in by a conspiracy between his top mage and a foreign dictator. Now, the new Empire covers the land in misery and suffering and blah blah you know the rest. Twenty-five years later, a wizened old diviner named Warren and the loyal knight Lans pluck a youth from obscurity (the main character) and help him or her form a rebellion. As your army grows and marches west toward the seat of the Empire, you learn more about the evil mage Rashidi, the Empress Endora, and the various generals and other lackeys at their command. However, most of the plot turns are entirely optional. The game can pretty much be steamrolled without any extra tidbits or characters, so the game feels like it barely has any role-playing aspects to it at all. But where's the fun in that? As the young revolutionary leader, the player is able to recruit up to eighteen special characters who range from knights and loyalists to the old crown to imperials fed up with Endora's reign of terror, and from divine warriors and angels from the sky islands to a literal devil from hell. Each recruitment brings together a thread from the story, but it never loses focus on the task at hand, and that is to clobber the Empire. One particularly strong part of the story is the amount of competent female characters present. Not only can the main character be female, but six of the eighteen special characters are also women. Sure, Deneb the witch isn't the most progressive depiction of women in video games, but she's a far cry from the Sorceress of Dragon's Crown. One of my favorite characters is Rauny, the Imperial paladin from the north. She is smart, powerful, and recognizes the bad guys for who they are much earlier than most. She must overcome her emotions to fight her former allies, including her own father. As for other non-playable characters, they are all pretty minor, but they too spice up the story quite a bit. The only downside is in the twenty-nine stages in the main game, each one requires a boss. There are many plot-relevant ones of course, and a few that add some comic relief to an otherwise grim tale. But at some point the development team probably ran out of good ideas for antagonists and phoned in a few boss characters. It's a minor complaint, and one that doesn't affect the game too much since it really is more strategy and less role-playing. Once again, the meat of the game is elsewhere.

To this day I have no idea why I killed bodybuilding twin brothers in a desert.

Even though the amount of luck and randomness drives me crazy, it definitely adds to the replay value. No two rebel armies will be exactly the same, and doing your best to fine tune its strengths is always fun. Also, the list of generic names used for new army members can lead to unintentionally hilarious results. One of the biggest random elements in the game is the Tarot system. The game begins when Warren, the diviner who sends the player on their journey, asks questions based on which Tarot Cards are drawn. The answers affect the main character's stats and the units who initially join your army. Also, by liberating towns and temples on each map, the player can draw a random Tarot Card. Each one will change the liberating units' stats, for good or ill, as well the card itself being given to the player's inventory. Finally, Tarot Cards can be used in battle to devastating effect. In fact, the only way to survive some bosses' magical attacks is by using a World card, and if you don't have one then get ready to die a horrible death. One last thing that influences the game, specifically the ending, is they key items acquired during your campaign. There are thirteen endings in all, and if you're going for the best one your inventory will be chock full of swords and trinkets that someone along the way probably thought were pretty important. Getting them all on every play-through can be tedious. However, skipping the difficult ones can result in seeing different endings, which can also be fun.

Luckily, there are no British police to arrest Arthur Destin this time.

Also, did I mention that all those special items go into your very limited inventory, preventing you from carrying other useful items or equipment?

                        

As I said before, there are a bunch of endings. Unlike the typical fantasy romp, it's no guarantee that the good guys win, even if you beat the game. The player needs to tread somewhat carefully in order to avoid going down an evil path, which can include conquering the Empress only to rule in her stead or even being betrayed by your so-called allies. Of course, every once in a while it's fun to play the game like a total jerk, and you can certainly make bad decisions on purpose. Luckily most of the things you do over the course of a normal play-through tend to increase your charisma, alignment, and reputation. Keeping those three factors in check will ensure happy returns for the rebellion, the exiled prince, and the people you seek to liberate.

Go fichs yourself, Tristan.

In the end, Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen won't win many people over with its story, characters, or graphics. What keeps me coming back to this game is shaping and developing a strategic army that I then use to crush bad guys. Also, the music is really quite good. If you like classic video games, or any strategy games in general, I can't recommend Ogre Battle enough.

The Basics		The Rest
Gameplay	9/10	Rebellion! (Now With More Ladies!)	8/10
Characters	6/10	Strategic Options	9/10
Story	6/10	Tabletop Feel	9/10
Sound	8/10	Grinding Neutral Encounters	3/10
Graphics	6/10	Seriously, "Wall of Defense"!	10/10
Score	35/50	Score	39/50
Final Score: 74/100