A long time ago, a great war was fought between a few units composed of three to five individuals. Some of these individuals were dragons, liches, vampires, Dragoons, and level 23 Paladins. If the rebel soldiers fought enemies weaker than them, they became evil, EEEVIL, and people would balk at them efficiently liberating towns. Apparently even level 18 Seraphim will buckle under the horrors of warfare, turning into the pixel art equivilant of Coronel Kurtz. So the leader of the rebellion came up with a genuis political tactic; he'd avoid all combat and just ride a fucking griffin around after the real soldiers constrain the flow of enemies, who apparently all march in a straight line to your base. By the way, this game is a classic.
Ogre Battle has geektastic pixel art, reinforced by the class tree that allows you to focus on sculpting individual soldiers into a particular class, and then being rewarded with anything from a color change to a full-on revision. The tactical gameplay, with its tarot cards and deterministic battles, makes for a great game to play on a ZSNES emulator, with the tilde "~" key often held. There's plenty to geek out about micro-managing units and consulting the FAQs about particular secrets. But that's not why this game is interesting, only why it's fun.
The game was an early attempt at utilizing a political rhetoric in the rules. The way your characters' alignment shifts based on who they kill, the way that reputation is adjusted according to how your liberate towns and how much tribute your extract, along with a dozen other rules and exceptions, make this more than just another power fantasy RPG. This is game that tries to be about human responsibility. It definitely fails; the strategic AI is too simple and the rules too blunt so that you can game your way through every scenario in the manner satirized above. Not to mention, getting the most out of the game, achieving the best ending, involves a lot of minutia you need to get right before you complete a map, stuff you really need the FAQ for. You can even fuck it up just by some stupid boolean over-write bug (this game is a relic of the pre-OO programming days). But hey, it tried, and the pixel art rules.
If you've heard of this game but never knew you'd get a chance to play it, or you want to learn about key milestones in the history of RPGs, Ogre Battle is canon.
Turn based strategy
Great to see this game get some due here--thanks for a great post. The game does fail, yes, but it had the right idea, and I think what it was trying to do was never quite accomplished, despite the release of some fantastic turn based strats out there at this point (FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre, and, most recently, Jeanne D'Arc). But the idea of using what you refer to as the "political rhetoric" within the ruleset has never fully been executed in anything more than a cursory, window-dressing manner within this kind of game. Unless I missed one along the way, in which case, I'd be happy to be educated.
One question too: I know a lot of people glom this in with "RPG", but I think of this kind of game as either a sub category or separate category of "TBS" (turn-based strategy)--with RPG elements. To me, there's a huge difference between playing Final Fantasy VII and FF: Tactics. Am I alone in this?
Ogre Battle!
Ah, Ogre Battle! Certainly a classic. The SNES and PS2 versions apparently had small runs, so they're in demand by collectors. More trivia: This is the first in the Ogre Battle series; this installment's subtitle is "The March of the Black Queen". Music fans will note that both "Ogre Battle" and "March of the Black Queen" are songs by Queen.
Anyway...Now that I think about it, I'd have to say this game is unique; however, it's much closer to FF Tactics than FFVII. I don't think the battle system is important so much as the pacing. In FFVII you control half a dozen party members who wander around a mostly open overworld, playing through a fairly linear story with sidequests along the way, with (fairly short) random battles cropping up fairly often. Most of the focus seems to be on the exploration/chatting phase of the game. With FFT, your group is about 20 strong, the "real" characters supplemented by drones, "ordinary" people who you train in different classes. The "overworld" is more of an explicit graph; there are more necessary "story" battles and much fewer random ones, but the battles themselves are intricate turn-based tactical affairs. These battles are where you spend most of your time.
With Ogre Battle thinks are quite different from either of those. Ogre Battle comes in a series of levels, I think they call them "fields" (shades of arcade games!). You organize your soldiers into units of three to five and send them to wander the map like playing pieces, while the enemy's units stream forth from their base. You liberate towns (you don't have to, but it gets you money and plot) and your units fight with the enemy units. The battles themselves are pretty simplistic, most of the action happens automatically. (!) There are three actions you can perform during a battle. First, you can change the "strategy" your guys use (attack the weakest link, attack the strongest guy to take him out first). Even if you change your strategy, though, your guys still do set actions; a fighter will hit someone with a sword, a cleric will heal. (Unless you put your cleric in the front row, something you can do in the organization stage. Really, though, it's less "Which row should I put this guy in?" and more "This unit belongs in the back row or he's useless".) Okay, the second action you can do during battle: Tarot cards. These can hit the enemies with a big magic attack, heal your guys, or do other neat things. This is good stuff, but tarot cards are limited (you get 'em from liberating towns). And the third action you can do in battle: Retreat.
My point (yes, there is one) is that Ogre Battle feels more like a board game that an RPG. The action happens on its own, but you can pause and tweak at any time. You spend time raising armies (they look like miniatures, actually) and training them. It has a more sweeping historical scale than a personal one.
Yes, TBS
I totally agree, hence the strategy tag up top.
Of course, the most interesting part of this for me was scultping units up the class tree, that's a whole other kind of play, maybe.
Class Tree, yes
It had never occurred to me, but yes, that's totally true--crafting units as they move up the class tree is just as valid a game mechanic as the fighting or the advancement of the story points. And of course that can completely drive players to try all kinds of things (FF Tactics, with its 8.3 zillion classes, for example) at the expense of the other game mechanics.
And the lack of it can also become a flaw in games (the Fire Emblem series, for example, gives you pretty much two choices at a certain level-advancement stage, and that's it--no real customization at all. Which is exactly what is missing from those otherwise great games).
I play these kinds of games pretty much exclusively now, and I had never seen that point made before, but it's a really good one. Thank you. It goes without saying, more articles like this, please : )
Hey, I aim to please.
Hey, I aim to please.
The Knights of Lodis
I have to give a shout out to this game's GBA sequel, if only to justify my 300+ hours spent with it. Ah, to be a pre-teen and idly spending countless hours engrossed in a strategy-rpg.