Believe it or not, I’m still holding true to my commitment to play an hour of games every day. I haven’t been able to work on free choice selections, unfortunately, but my job requirements haven’t exactly been onerous. You can check out the latest episode of Active-Time Babble for my thoughts on Atlus’ Radiant Historia. (Spoiler: it’s good!) And then there’s Tactics Ogre….
I’ve hit the point where my character customization choices are starting to have impact. I’ve focused on creating a defensive party with high constitution and a wide spread of evasive skills, and now I’m kind of steamrollering everything in my path. I choose to believe that this isn’t a sign the game’s difficulty has been nerfed, although it has to a certain point; characters no longer level up individually but rather by class, so that once the (for instance) Knight class reaches level 10, all Knights in your party (regardless of tenure) are level 10. No more need to let the game auto-battle through dull training missions between story battles! So, I’m pretty hooked.
I’ve also discovered that there are a handful of story sequences that can only be seen by checking through the Warren Report. It’s so nice to play a game that recognizes my compulsion to poke around in its supplemental bits and reward me for my trouble.
Hrmmm, the leveling-up-a-class mechanic seems interesting and streamlined, but I feel like it would give me much less personal investment in particular characters, something that I always enjoy in tactical RPGs. Is that the case, or is the story involving enough that it’s not a concern? Thanks!
I thought the mechanic worked great in Valkyria Chronicles, for what it’s worth. Anything that reduces the need for random-battle grinding can’t be all bad in any event.
Love the header for ATB.
That’s kind of weird, that you’re mowing them down even though your emphasis seems to be on tanking. Course I haven’t played the game yet, so I have no real point of perspective here.
It’s not really weird. By playing defensively, I minimize the damage I take while I focus on dismantling their team one by one. I basically destroy the enemy a warrior at a time, and they have trouble hitting me back (and when they do, they don’t inflict much damage).
I guess I haven’t read up on this game enough, but does this imply that there isn’t a class/Job system? I mean, with Valkyria Chronicles the “level up one dude, everyone who’s in that class levels up, too” mechanic makes sense because everyone is hard wired in their specific class.
You can change classes, but there’s not as much incentive to multiclass as in Final Fantasy Tactics. Class-specific skills can’t be set as secondary abilities for another class.
I think you might have said something about it before in the grind or atb (I have a terrible memory), but how is the newer, kinder, gentler tactic ogre handling death. Is it still if a character dies, he’s kaput unless you are all the way into chapter 3 and you get the resurrection spell and manage to cast it on the character during the battle?
My understanding is that you get three turns to revive them like in FFT, and if you don’t revive them during that time, they’ll disappear from the battle field and lose a “life.” Characters have three “lives” and won’t permadie unless you lose all three.
And apparently there are resurrection items you can buy in stores.
This is correct. The res items are really just a way of keeping the death timer from running out, though. The instant you bring a character back to life with 10% HP, every enemy on the field will instantly target him/her and score a fresh kill.
Also, once a character permadies you can elect to have a party member inherit their skills.
Awesome. You’ve just made me want to purchase this game now.
any word if this will be available as a download? i think i’m the only person in the world who prefers the pspgo…
Dang, I wasn’t really super-interested in this, due to my difficulties in maintaining any sort of momentum in SRPGs (including this one, of which I have the PSX version). But now, it sounds like some of the grind-happy gameplay is gone, leaving something that might maintain a better pace. I may have to give in on this one.