Inside the Closing Fantasy model, one of the crucial well-known sub-series is the Ivalice Alliance. Set inside the fictional land of Ivalice, the handful of initiatives that comprised these video games have been marked by their concentrate on a extra grounded setting that explored the dramatic politics of a magical medieval world. Nevertheless, earlier than Ivalice got here alongside, its creator—Yasumi Matsuno—initially labored on one other unrelated sequence known as Ogre Battle that featured an early model of the setting. Ways Ogre: Let Us Cling Collectively on the Tremendous NES was the second launch on this sequence and was largely seen as one of many best SRPGs ever made, however it by no means fairly garnered the next many believed it deserved. Now practically 30 years later, Sq. Enix has determined to offer it one other crack at discovering a broader viewers with Ways Ogre: Reborn, a remake of the PSP remake they made a couple of decade in the past. Although it nonetheless reveals its age in some methods, Ways Ogre Reborn does an important job of cleansing up this SRPG traditional and presenting it to a brand new era.
Ways Ogre locations you within the function of Denam, a Walister teen dwelling below the bootheel of the ruling Galgastani within the wake of a civil warfare that came about a number of many years in the past. Sick of dwelling in oppression, Denam ropes his sister and finest pal into becoming a member of a resistance to overthrow the ruling regime. As extra allies be a part of and the resistance escalates right into a full-scale warfare, Denam is examined as he navigates the political and ethical panorama whereas staying true to his authentic beliefs.
It is a gripping and darkish story throughout, although it does really feel a bit of dense at first. The higher concentrate on political squabbling right here is welcome, however the lack of introduction to main names and occasions could make it really feel such as you’re watching season 4 of Sport of Thrones with none of the context. Finally, you get a way of it however it may be so much initially to trace all of the relationships and motivations happening.
When you do get into it, there’s loads of plot to get drawn into, particularly given the presence of a number of routes and endings relying on key selections you’ve gotten Denam make at sure factors within the story. No matter what you select, vital characters will die or abandon you, and in case you’re ever curious how issues would possibly’ve gone in case you selected in a different way, there’s a useful characteristic to return in time to main plot factors and play out the opposite path.
Gameplay in Ways Ogre takes the form of a normal isometric Technique RPG, whereby you give orders to a crew of round a dozen warriors to attain victory over a equally matched enemy crew. Each character has a small assortment of weapons, abilities, assaults, consumables, and magic at their disposal, and so they can every transfer a brief distance each flip and take (with some exceptions) one motion. If somebody dies, you normally have three turns to hustle somebody over to them to situation a revive; in the event that they don’t make it in time, the incapacitated unit is useless for good and takes all of your hours of onerous work and funding with them.
So far as this style goes, Ways Ogre is about so simple as the setup will get—not one of the relationship transport of Fireplace Emblem or character stacking ridiculousness of Disgaea to be seen right here—however it clearly has the basics down effectively. It doesn’t take lengthy earlier than you get a grasp of the essential movement of a typical battle, and there are many attention-grabbing variables thrown in to maintain each combat feeling attention-grabbing.
For instance, not solely do terrain sorts have totally different results in your stats, however one should take elevation into consideration when shifting and attacking models. Firing an arrow at an enemy at too excessive a place could solely end in you hitting a wall, or worse, an ally who was standing in the way in which. There’s additionally an intensive elemental system at play, whereby each character belongs to a component that’s weak to some assaults and powerful in opposition to others. Elements similar to this imply that sending in your Berserker to wash home isn’t at all times a viable choice, it’s a must to think about how your selections could have penalties.
Fortuitously, Ways Ogre: Reborn isn’t punitive in the way it treats your decision-making abilities. There’s a useful new characteristic known as the Chariot Tarot that means that you can roll again to earlier turns in case you don’t like the end result of a alternative you made, and doing so will even create a branching timeline so you may return to the preliminary alternative in case your redo turned out even worse. Certainly, this Chariot Tarot feels a bit of damaged—Fireplace Emblem’s Divine Pulse, for instance, felt prefer it couldn’t be used practically as a lot as a crutch—however we respect the way it permits for a way more dynamic type of problem scaling. These of you who need that old-school problem can merely not use it, whereas gamers who wish to maximize their effectivity in a battle can cling to the ‘Golden Path’ they make by constantly discovering the perfect consequence.
One other new change for this remake is the introduction of Buff Playing cards, that are randomly spawning collectibles in a battle that may give you a large edge. Every card will increase a stat for the character who picks it up, and that buff will stick to them for the rest of the battle. Typically, it’s a must to go a bit of out of your option to choose one up, however these playing cards can utterly flip the tide in case you’re sensible about who you ship to seize one and when.
Plus, issues are made a bit of extra attention-grabbing by the truth that enemies will be equally buffed by them, which introduces a defensive aspect to snatching up playing cards earlier than your foes can energy up an excessive amount of. Although we felt generally these buff playing cards have been a bit of too highly effective for their very own good, they nonetheless add a welcome dynamic aspect that matches fairly effectively with the already deep fight system.
Between battles, you journey a world map that means that you can top off on provides, observe the principle story, or break off for some facet plots and dungeons that may web you some tasty rewards. We appreciated the elimination of random battles right here—any grinding you wish to do can now be achieved through a manually activated ‘coaching’ battle—although the Union Degree appears like an unfair handicap. With this mechanic, your get together is given a max stage cap till they progress the story additional, which may make among the tougher battles really feel unnecessarily troublesome once you aren’t in a position to grind a bit forward of time to stage your characters additional. Nonetheless, even this strictly imposed ceiling is softened a bit on condition that any expertise gained on a maxed-out get together is transformed right into a consumable useful resource that you may later dole out your self.
Relating to character development, one of many largest adjustments made on this remake is a elimination of the previous class-based system in favor of 1 that’s a lot much less reliant on grinding. EXP is doled out after the battle is over to all get together members equally, with the decrease leveled members getting a barely bigger reduce. As they stage up, characters’ stats will naturally be influenced by the present class they’ve outfitted and so they’ll be taught new energetic and passive abilities unique to that class. You possibly can solely equip 4 of those abilities at a time, which may really feel somewhat limiting given how a lot alternative you’re given later, however we appreciated the chance to load out characters in a different way relying on the combat they might subsequent be in.
Maybe most significantly, reclassing characters now is an easy matter of utilizing a consumable useful resource to change them to your most popular class, the place they’ll immediately have all of the unique abilities unlocked for that class and their stage. Within the final model of Ways Ogre on PSP, you would need to begin over from stage one with each reclass, which meant a laughable grind was wanted simply to get that character to the place they have been earlier than. Now, the tedium has been eliminated, however the depth continues to be there.
It’s quality-of-life adjustments like these that actually elevate Ways Ogre Reborn, as practically all of the antiquated rougher edges have been smoothed out with well-implemented trendy fixes. Scared of creating the incorrect selections? Simply bail your self out with the Chariot Tarot. Irritated by having to micromanage each member of your crew? Activate the surprisingly competent AI on most of your crew and simply fear about a number of characters. Bored by the generally glacial tempo of battle? You possibly can double the animation pace on the press of a button. It’s very clear that the builders of this remake spent an terrible lot of time truly taking part in it; because it appears like practically each place within the sport design that could possibly be some extent of irritation has been given an answer.
That mentioned, Ways Ogre generally can’t get out of its personal method. A part of that is most likely because of the authentic launch launching practically three many years in the past, however there are sometimes factors the place the sport would clearly be a greater expertise if it was reined in a bit. For instance, sprawling vertical battlefields sound like an important thought, till it’s a must to spend two complete rounds individually guiding 12 models up a hill to the middle of the battlefield simply to allow them to start to interact the enemy. This remake does so much to chop again on the tedium, but it additionally wasn’t unusual for us to spend half an hour taking part in out a battle that was largely simply going by the motions.
Past this, it usually appears like main strategic selections and performs are blunted because of the diluted worth of particular person models. Having practically 30 models on the sphere duking it out doesn’t make you’re feeling such as you’re presiding over some cohesive epic battle, however somewhat such as you’re watching a disconnected sequence of comparatively boring catfights between characters attempting to chop one another with spoons. In a contemporary title like Into the Breach, for instance, every member of each your crew and the enemy crew appears like a completely important contributor to the broader battle, which makes every battle between models nail-bitingly intense. Even titles with bigger squads like Fireplace Emblem nonetheless handle to be rife with massive performs and key moments that pressure a change of tack. Ways Ogre generally manages to engineer moments like this, however right here the resolutions of most battles felt somewhat anticlimactic and muted.
As for its graphical presentation, Ways Ogre: Reborn is somewhat disappointing, particularly when in comparison with Sq.’s ongoing utilization of HD-2D. The spritework right here is nice, however it employs that gross pixel smoothing filter that trendy sport corporations love to make use of with their re-releases of older video games. Most sprites thus have weirdly formed curves and colours that are inclined to run collectively like water was spilled on a portray. In the meantime, the maps have some nice-looking tilesets and environmental particulars, however it doesn’t take lengthy earlier than you begin noticing simply how a lot property are being reused. Ways Ogre’s visuals are no less than satisfactory, then, however after seeing how Sq.’s beautiful new rendition of Stay A Stay seemed only a few months in the past, it’s onerous to really feel like Ways Ogre didn’t get shafted right here.
Fortunately, the audio facet of the presentation did fairly effectively this time round. Not solely has the unique soundtrack been given an orchestral remedy, however all the script has been spruced up with a full voice forged. There are each Japanese and English voice performances right here, and we significantly preferred the considerably nostalgic method by which they’re executed. Not one of the actors are unhealthy of their roles, however there’s only a trace of that type of timeless cheesiness of voice performing that was current in lots of video games within the ’90s.
