You know me. I love RPGs. I love portable games. I love classic games. And man, do I love me some Yasumi Matsuno. So I suppose I’m just being predictable when I say that I am incredibly excited for the comprehensive remake of Tactics Ogre that’s just been announced for PSP. Starring none other than Yasumi Matsuno and the usual accomplices (Yoshida, Minagawa, Sakimoto, Iwata, etc. etc.)! It’s very slightly less awesome than if they were making a new game altogether — say, another title in the Vagrant Story mold — but the prospect of a portable, fully 3D, and above all properly balanced rendition of Tactics Ogre is hardly anything to sneeze at. Maybe I’ll finally be able to see the outcome of the story rather than getting stuck in those multi-battle missions where your party’s health isn’t restored between fights! And by “outcome” I mean “outcomes.” I’m gonna play this sucker through every story iteration, you’d better believe it.
17 thoughts on “Yiazmat triumphant”
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I’m also a sucker for Matsuno games. It’s great to see him working on an Ogre game again especially, even if it is a remake.
The prospect of a version that runs better than the PSX version just makes me more excited. I just hope the localization doesn’t take the same route that War of the Lions did. It was interesting, but overall the flowery dialog just seemed kinda forced and many of the name differences were alienating to people who played the original.
I like Matsuno’s games, but I’ve never played a Tactics Ogre game aside from the excellent GBA game called The Knights of Lodis. I don’t remember it very vividly, aside from the fact that it was a pretty good replacement for the dismal FFTAdvance.
As usual, Parish’s excitement is infectious. A game I might normally say ‘another portable RPG remake? cool.” But now I’m really looking forward to this.
@Regulus – I loved War of the Lions’ re-write. It only made the story mildly more comprehensible (just as with FFXIII, if you need an index, then you fail), but it was entertaining in its own right, and it fit perfectly within the Ivalice setting.
I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Hm… Dolgare (now Dorgalua, apparently), is referred to as the “Dynast-King” on the official NA site. Is that a Matsuno thing, or a clue as to who’s behind the translation/localization for this game?
Hopefully this is a warm-up for Matsuno to get back into making more wonderful story driven games. Perhaps another proper Ivalice game?
I am excited by this news for the remake itself, though. I think I got about 75% through one storyline before I got bogged down trying to make a good snapshot sword to get through Hell’s Gate.
I’m looking forward to the FFT iOS port, and hopefully they will port Tactics Ogre as well. I’d love to pick up either for $10-20, but they’re not worth buying a PSP over.
I’m always amazed when I see people who prefer the PSX translation of FFT to the PSP one. The dialogue in War of the Lions is both artistic and comprehensible, whereas the PSX dialogue generally felt like a bare translation at best.
I can understand how the flowery dialogue of the remake can turn some people off, but I too would be surprised by anyone who actually -prefers- the original translation. My god, it’s terrible. Laughably so.
Plus, any game that sneaks in ‘spoony bard’ gets props in my book.
It’s not so much that I prefer the PSX translation… I just feel that the PSP’s has problems. The poetic faux-Early Modern English doesn’t do much for me. I feel like there are probably better ways to write semi-arcane sounding dialogue. Ways where nuance could have separated the individuals a little better, instead of simply having 3 dialects depending on the character’s class (High, low, or… demon).
The Welsh/Gaelic/Scandinavian/etc location and generic names were pretty cool, actually, but it was a little awkward struggling to find a pronunciation for a lot of them. Seems almost “anti” localization if you actually make the names more difficult to pronounce.
I really disliked that so many of the names were so different from the original translation, though. It doesn’t bother much me for incidental characters like Balbanes/Barbaneth or the corrections, like Cuchulainn (must have missed Wiglaf, I guess). Same goes for insignificant changes like “Orlandeau.” I feel like names such as Algus should have remained, however.
Really, though, I don’t prefer one over the other. Hell, if the slowdown hadn’t left such a bad taste in my mouth, I’d probably actually prefer the new dialogue. I just hope we don’t get the same kind of localization for this new TO release.
If this was a new game I might think about getting a PSP. If it was a new Ogre Battle I’d already have done it.
Face it Parish, you’ll your Vagrant Story sequel is about as likely as my true Parasite Eve sequel. =(
Oh, great news. Any chance that the sprites won’t be all smudgy like in War of the Lions?
Sweet. Great to see Matsuno back in the director’s chair, and the remake is looking nice. Menawhile, I hate to be one of “those” people, but I just have to hope this ‘getting the band back together’ with Matsuno’s old crew presages them getting to work on something new for a platform I actually own.
Yay! For a long time I was worried Matsuno would never be working on a game like this again.
b-b-but the Internet kids told me Matsuno’s games have bad writing…
Wasn’t Tactics Ogre worse than FFT?
Only if you get hung up on the load times and static map. Oh, there we go, those are gone.
TO is different than FFT, but I wouldn’t claim one as better than the other.