TACTICS OGRE LET US CLING TOGETHER PSP AKA GAME OF THE YEAR

[Damian79]

I think you missed my point.  I was referring to the bonus you get for having multiple of the same class.  They shouldn't have added that.  If they didnt i would have a more diverse team.

[Himu]

I rarely use that bonus aside for my archers.

[Damian79]

Funny story, i dont have a single archer on my team.   And is it me or doesnt crossbows suck for some reason?  Low damage, will hit things in its way etc etc.

[Himu]

Crossbows are ass. It's why I"m contemplating switching Canopus to archer, but by doing that he'll have a lower move stat.

And I love my archers. My hawkman archer can fly on roofs and snipe fuckers with tremendous strike like mupepe's snake does a girl's donut hole.

[magus]

I really like it. Less emphasis on stone throwing, and "grinding" characters out ain't too bad.

you know himu i keep hearing about how "there is no grinding here!" but the truth is that without grinding it's impossible to introduce any new job in your party which is incredibly stupid... they should have let class start at the level you recruit them "you got a level 12 terror knight? WHOOPS NOW HE'S LEVEL 1! HAVE FUN HAVING A USELESS GUY HANGING AROUND!"

[Damian79]

Yeah that part sucks.  I once had 3 lvl 1 ninjas.  NOT FUN.

[MoxManiac]

Funny story, i dont have a single archer on my team.   And is it me or doesnt crossbows suck for some reason?  Low damage, will hit things in its way etc etc.

Use two handed bows. They are amazing. Super insane reach, and line of sight is usually generous too (i.e. you won't have to worry about your allies blocking shots like they do for magic)

[Bebpo]

I just started playing this and it feels weird that everything is so low damage so far (just a few maps in).  Been too long since I played the original so I don't remember, is it normal throughout the game for it to take 3-5 attacks on a character to kill them?  I'm doing like 15-30 damage attacks on guys with 120hp.  Also is it normal for there to be lots of blocking attacks on both sides?

Just feels weird because I've been playing a lot of SRW and am playing Disgaea4 and in those games grunts die in 1 hit and hardly anyone blocks so you blow through the maps quickly by slicing up dudes in 1-2 hits and continuing on forward.

[magus]

it gets better when you have better equipment,my warriors equipped with hammer could kill most guys in 2 hits assuming both hits... hit

still too slooooooooooooooooooooooow

[Shaka Khan]

I need to play this. What's the latest reliable CFW released?

[OptimoPeach]

^ http://wololo.net/wagic/cfw-for-dummies-tn-hen-6-20-or-6-35-cfw-pro-which-one-is-better/

You know, I wouldn't have a problem with how class changing works in this game if there weren't level requirements for weapons and armor. So dumb

I'm also really favoring magic and ranged damage since it seems like every battle ends up being one big clusterfuck of gridlocked melee units.

[Bebpo]

This game is as amazing as I remembered it.  About 10 hours in now, somewhere in chapter 2.  The gameplay is sooooooooo good and the story/music/art is amazing as it always was.  I went chaos route when I played the ps1 version a decade ago, so I'm going law route this time and it feels mainly fresh.  Love all the optional stuff like the rumors that lead to optional maps.  Character making is so satisfying with all the skills/classes/equipment.  While Disgaea 4 is a solid srpg, playing both concurrently, TO is just leagues better.  But then it's not really fair comparing the best srpg ever made with other stuff :X  Might put D4 on hold and just focus on marathoning TO.  It's really hard to put TO down, I can play it all day.

[Shaka Khan]

I'm a couple of hours in myself (first time TO player) and every element in this game feels solid, I'm really digging it. The only niggling issue I have so far is that I can't see stat changes when I'm about to buy equipment, but that's probably due to how big my party is going to be later in the game, so keeping track would be a hassle.

About the in-battle tarot cards: is there a limit to how many times I can use it? sometimes it feels like cheating!

[OptimoPeach]

I haven't even had to use the tarot cards you pick up because the chariot tarot is so crazy imba. I guess it's good in that you don't waste hours of your life replaying the same battle over and over and over because of RNG, but it's still way too easy to abuse

How much does the whole chaos/law thing affect the game? Like is it two totally different storylines you're picking from? I went chaos

[Shaka Khan]

Yeah sorry, I meant the chariot card (L button).

[Shaka Khan]

Wait a second, you can save multiple quicksaves which don't get erased once loaded? This game is so forgiving.

[TEEEPO]

This game is as amazing as I remembered it.  About 10 hours in now, somewhere in chapter 2.  The gameplay is sooooooooo good and the story/music/art is amazing as it always was.  I went chaos route when I played the ps1 version a decade ago, so I'm going law route this time and it feels mainly fresh.  Love all the optional stuff like the rumors that lead to optional maps.  Character making is so satisfying with all the skills/classes/equipment.  While Disgaea 4 is a solid srpg, playing both concurrently, TO is just leagues better.  But then it's not really fair comparing the best srpg ever made with other stuff :X  Might put D4 on hold and just focus on marathoning TO.  It's really hard to put TO down, I can play it all day.

what rumors 

[Bebpo]

I meant the "talk" section.  Which are basically rumors/talk of the town.  If you read certain ones they unlock additional scenarios you can follow up on.

Wait a second, you can save multiple quicksaves which don't get erased once loaded? This game is so forgiving.

Yeah, but why would you take the time to save, quit to title, reload when you can just hit L   Chariot system is awesome because it removes the need to quicksave abusing.  I already miss the chariot system in other srpgs when I accidently hit the wrong button and do something stupid (you wouldn't believe the amount of times in TO I've healed myself when I wanted to heal someone else, or shot an arrow at a rock because I hit the button before I was on the target tile).  I'm always in a hurry when I play srpgs so I make dumb unintentional mistakes and Chariot saves me from them.

[magus]

How much does the whole chaos/law thing affect the game? Like is it two totally different storylines you're picking from? I went chaos

yea it should be like that

[Bebpo]

magus, which route did you go?  I'm guessing everyone goes Chaos the first time, though as fucked up as it is, Law is apparently the more happy route

[magus]

chaos
i liked the whole "DEFY EVERYONE" angle of it

[Bebpo]

I dunno how I feel about the class system.

Pros:
It gives you more variety/options to change on the fly within your leveled classes without much detriment.  If there's a map full of dragoons you can flip an entire cast into dragoons and take them out and then switch back.  If you feel you need a certain job in your party you can throw one easily.

Cons:
The problem is that this only works for the job classes around your base team level.  For all 50 other job classes, getting them to that base level is a time consuming pain in the ass.  If you go the recruiting method and keep recruiting them and letting them share in the end battle xp, it'll still take like 10 battles doing this because xp curves off after the initial map or two.  If you bring them into battle to get xp, they are useless and can't do anything and just hide in the back and rob you of a unit for 10 battles until they are up with everyone else. 

I spent the whole afternoon getting the Dragoon class up to the general level of the rest of my party.  And that's just ONE job in a game that has dozens upon dozens.  The way the class system works basically makes you not want to use new job classes, which is lame.  But it does make you want to switch jobs around between your leveled classes.  It's like they made a job system that is half-awesome and then half sucks. 

And yeah I think if the equipment didn't have level requirements it would have helped since with up to date weapons/armor they at least might be able to hold their own after a couple of maps.


You know, I remember back in the day when games with job classes let you change jobs and keep your current level, so you could experiment between jobs all the time with no detriment.  Give them all a try.  These days I swear gaming has regressed and every single game with jobs has some distinguished mentally-challenged system that makes you grind for 5 hours everytime you want to try a new job :\

[Himu]

What are you talking about? Even in games like FF5 you have to start all over and grind a bit. In FFT you do the same thing.

[recursivelyenumerable]

You don't have to grind in FF5, since job level mostly just determines which abilities you can use from other classes. Same with the weapon system in FF9. Pretty ingenious system really.

[Bebpo]

Plus FFX-2 you don't have to grind iirc.  There are just as many job class rpg/srpgs that let you switch jobs freely without any detriment as there are ones that boot you back to lvl.1

Oh well, just hit ch.3 neutral at about 20 hours now.  Leveled the Dragoon, Terror Knight, Ninja, and Beast Tamer while doing the last half of ch.2.  So at least I have a good 10 or so available jobs.  Might be all I need for the rest of the game if I keep them all around the same levels.

[Himu]

Meh. It's an srpg. Name one srpg that doesn't require SOME grinding. Disgaea is all about grinding. FFT handles new characters and jobs similarly, though there's advantages like being able to use other jobs skills. About every srpg I've played of note that features class changes has grinding of some sort and it's not anything new. Either way, I got most of my guys up to level in a mere 3 or so battles and don't see WBA the problem is aside from the fact you expect an srpg to cater to you in this manner.

[magus]

no no no you can't lump disgaea with this

in disgaea character makes jumps of 100 levels,weapons gets boost big enough to make them thrice of powerfull,and this happens in blazing speed,that jump of 100 levels happens in a single attack,not battle,ATTACK! basicaly you turn your godly unit into more godly unit and that's why disgaea rocks

where in tactics ogre you have a useless guy getting slightly useless after a 20 minute battle,after 2 hours,maybe there is a slight chance he will be actualy a usefull addition (probably as long as he can wield an hammer)

[Shaka Khan]

Suckers. I'm personally switching between 2x and 4x EXP whenever I want to level up an all-new party/recruits.

12 hours in and I think this is a serious contender for GOTY and probably one of my favorite SRPGs of all time. If I look harder I'll definitely find a few niggling issues, but the game does so many things right that I can't help but overlook them.

[Bebpo]

I'm in the last chapter now and it's all pretty cool stuff, but getting story characters late in the game seems counterproductive.  Even if you switch them into a class that's at a high level, the fact story characters come with ZERO SP and like 3-4 skills is a huuuuuge detriment.  My common no-name dudes have like 10-12 skills and rank 3/4 weapons.  That's thousands of SP.  At the end of the battle these new story characters get like 100 SP per battle.  It's not the XP, but unless I'm missing something there's no way to grind their SP really quickly to catch them up on skills.

I'm the kind of srpg player that likes to include every story character in his party so I can see all the dialogue exchanges in any map, plus they usually have better stats than no-name recruits.  But here it seems like using late game story characters is like playing with a handicap since they just aren't as good as your no-names you've been building up the whole game.  It's one thing if you get the story character early enough that SP isn't a huuge deal, but by 30 hours in when everyone has tons of SP stat buffing and skills, they seem sucky. 

And then I got these two Xenobia white knight guys lvl.3 that I'm not really sure what to do with.  I could spend a couple of hours and level them, but I already have a party of competent tank/healer knights and I made Vyce a knight soooo what is the benefit of grinding them to usefulness besides having more story characters in your party.

[OptimoPeach]

20 hours in

Yeah, I still say the leveling system is crap, and all the ghey, gussied up dialogue is really starting to wear on me, but pretty much everything else is A++++. I even bought a legit copy so I don't have to feel bad about pirating it

Dunno why I felt the need to make a general praise post since it seems like the only people reading this thread are already playing. Oh well

[demi]

Would you say FFT or Tactics Ogre is worth my hard earned time in 2011

[OptimoPeach]

Tactics Ogre unless you've only played FFT like once

[Bebpo]

Would you say FFT or Tactics Ogre is worth my hard earned time in 2011

Have you played Tactics Ogre before?

Actually it doesn't matter.  Unless you've played it within the last 3 years and you remember every little part of it, TO is worth every second of your time.


Don't get me wrong.  The game has it's flaws.  Back in the day I'd give the original TO a 10/10 when it first came.  It's the best srpg I've ever played.  This PSP version is multiple times better than the original, but I'd give it a 9/10 by today's standards.  It has A LOT of really good things.  In the writing, the non-linear branching, the gameplay systems, the map designs.  Lots and lots of great to genius stuff in there.  It also has some things that make you go "huh" and are stumbles in the game/plot design.  Like for one thing, the game has the most obscure hidden shit of any game you will play in the last decade.  If you don't want to miss stuff you have to play with a guide in front of your face.  Though I'd recommend on the first time to not use one and just not care about missing all the optional recruitable characters. 

But yeah, despite some hiccups, it's still one of the best srpgs on the market by today's standards.  While people exaggerate about there being an insane amount of jobs to choose your party from (I'm in the last 5-10 hours and there's maybe 20 real classes and a lot of them are similar), the game still has good variety in letting you assemble many different types of succesful parties.  It's a lot of fun making your own personal crew that's different from everyone else you know who played the game and going to town on the enemies, creating your own strategies with your job types. 

The maps are a lot of fun.  Probably more fun than any other srpg I know.  They have just that right amount of challenge that every fight feels like an unique battle and a good challenge to overcome through strategy.  The chariot (aka redo system) keeps it from being too aggravating.  The only thing I don't like about the maps is a lot of classes have really shitty movement so it will take them the entire battle to get to the enemies.  Which is why sometimes you gotta ditch the slow movers and make parties of ninjas and flying dudes

It's really addicting too.  I'm over 30 hours and I don't feel like I've put that time in at all.  The main game is about 35-45 hours for one route and then there apparently is a TON of post-game content, plus the ability to rewind time like Radiant Historia and redo branch decisions and go down other routes.  So potential if you have no other games to play and you really like it, you could put 100 hours in.  I'll probably bail when I finish the main plot and do a little post-game since I have other stuff I wanna play.  But the content amount is good.

The story is pretty neat and unless you hate political backstabbing medieval tales, you'll enjoy it. 

[Bebpo]

I tried doing the recruit ___ person in ch.4 where you fight lvl.21 templar knights with two lvl.22 boss leaders.

I thought with my lvl.20 party with lvl.23 denam + hobyrim ninja pair I'd be fine.

I was wrong:


The combination of a huge amount of knight walls blocking all movement with rampart aura + non-stop healers healing them + archers and mages being little bitches from back = FUCKAGHAGHAH as seen above.

The worst was that as seen in that picture they kept fucking BINDING my denam who was my main attacker and so he couldn't move for like 3-5 full turns and was useless.  I don't have any items/spell scrolls that cure it.  So 1 of my 2 best attackers was taken out of the picture and they kept healing themselves and blasting me with finishing moves from a distance while Hobyrim caught up to them.



In the end after like 80 mins of fighting, I had 3 characters left, what you don't see in that pic is my archer was also flashing red 10hp along with 10hp denam and full HP Hobyrim in the south.  I took out their templar but he took out my archer first.  So it was my flashing Denam & Hobyrim ninja attack squad left against the remaining full HP enemy leader.  Thankfully they are killer damage attackers with double attack using crafted ninja swords and steelstance to knock down damage.  Finally won after like 90 mins. 

HARD BATTLE

[Bebpo]

Cleared the main story ~43 hours.  The last boss was so Matsuno.  Only in a Matsuno game will your characters who are doing fine in the endgame suddenly do 1 damage against the final boss    Out of my 12 person party, 3 characters could do about 40-50 damage, the other nine did 1 damage.  At least I had 3 damage dealers for the fight.  That could've been really bad with fewer.  Party was about lvl.24/25/26, so I didn't feel overleveled for the final bosses, nor underleveled, but just about right where there was a good challenge but it was doable.

Love how much post-game content there is.  Not only all the CODA post-game chapters, but going back in time and doing all the side stuff, recruiting, branches you missed.  Great stuff.  Will keep playing this when I have handheld time until SRW Z2 comes out later in the month.

Overall the game was just as amazing as I remembered it to be.  Fantastic story, fantastic gameplay.  At the end of the day, I think the class & SP systems are wonky and slightly distinguished mentally-challenged and not well thought out, but your learn to deal with them and work around their flaws and the actual battles are pure srpg gold.  Since I like using all story characters, my endgame solution to dealing with all these story characters arriving in lvl.1-5 classes with 0 SP and 30 hours behind everyone else was just to MAKE EVERY STORY CHARACTER A NINJA. 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hobyrim = Ninja, Vyce = Ninja, Xaban = Ninja, Ozma = Ninja 

[close]

I would have liked to have a more varied party, but I wasn't in the mood for the extra grinding to make them useful in their own classes.  In the end I think I had like 5 or 6 ninjas with double attack, jump + 1, move + 1, counter attack II, strengthen II, fortify II, steelstance who'd rush the map right at the start and jump around everywhere taking out enemies in 1 attack each and then going into steelstance.  Then 1 or 2 archers in the back using temendous shot and killing healers and mages from a distance + Canopus flying around with a bowgun doing the same.  Then a couple white knights healing and blocking and 1 mage buffing and doing indirect high damage spells from a distance.

My favorite part of the last dungeon was after getting sick of all the fucking petrifying spamming I turned around and tried using MY petrify spell with my mage and oh man, nothing like 100% petrify rates   I'd stone half the templars and then kill the rest easily and go back and take my time destroying all the stone ones.  It was gloriously satisfying. 

[Verdigris Murder]

Just got sucked back into this. 200 plus hours, and now am on level 37 of Palace of the Dead.
I have a Warlock, but tbh he's mostly useful for Paradigm Shift. Does he actually get good, because his area spells seem to do nowt with undead folk.

Still. This damn game. It keeps giving.

[Joe Molotov]

PSVita GOTY

[Verdigris Murder]

Yeah. It's basically one of the greatest. Better than The Golden easily.

[mjemirzian]

I don't like Tactics Ogre, but I like tactics games for their strategy, not sandbox grinding.

[mjemirzian]

Depends on his definition of grinding. I'd start by naming some SRPGs that forbid grinding entirely. One I can think of right now is Elven Legacy for PC. It has no free battles, no repeating battles, time limits on every stage, and a tough scoring system. Obviously it can't require grinding if you're not allowed to grind in the first place.

Btw I beat Tactics Ogre PSP while fleeing from every random encounter (aka no grinding).

[Flannel Boy]

Who doesn't love to grind.