Trom's Weekly Video Game Review Thread
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TheeGoatPig
There is no R in my name
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deathlynx said:Cummon! Who's it gonna hurt? Just one more game...You can handle it!
No I CAN'T!!!
Graaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgggggggggggg.........
*runs out of the office and jumps down the long stairwell head first*
Trombonus
A bit older, a lot wiser.
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I've been playing Ruby, Leaf Green and Colisseum Since I can't buy the new ones.deathlynx said:Mrs got Pokemon Pearl for our Anniversary and I've been playing Leaf Green on the GBA
Actually, I haven't been playing much of anything lately. 
deathlynx
Muse Herding Lynx
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Too busy with writing?Trombonus said:I've been playing Ruby, Leaf Green and Colisseum Since I can't buy the new ones.
Yeah, I know been busy on the back yard...
I also have saphire around somewhere (well, we have all but emerald and now Diamond) but I've been concentrating on Leaf Green 'cause I hadn't finished it yet...Just finished off the final four and have around 75 hours or so...
Trombonus
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Actually both and going down to school to see about credential stuff. After everything I've worked on it still looks like I'm not going to make it in.deathlynx said:Too busy with writing?
Yeah, I know been busy on the back yard...
I also have saphire around somewhere (well, we have all but emerald and now Diamond) but I've been concentrating on Leaf Green 'cause I hadn't finished it yet...Just finished off the final four and have around 75 hours or so...
deathlynx
Muse Herding Lynx
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Ug, sorry to hear it! Don't forget to take some time for you and just kick back and relax...Trombonus said:Actually both and going down to school to see about credential stuff. After everything I've worked on it still looks like I'm not going to make it in.
Trombonus
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Week 5: Ogre Battle64
I'm going with an old review this week. I've been really busy this week and I'm just a bit worn out. Anyways, here's me review for Ogre Battle 64.
After looking through my old strategy guides, I came across an older game I used to play religiously, Ogre Battle 64, and decided to make that the review for this week. While not really well known, the Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre series has a huge cult following, and for good reason. So without further ado, my review of:
Ogre Battle 64
System: Nintendo 64
Genre: Strategy RPG
Ogre Battle 64 takes place in a world filled with knights and monsters. Standard fare for RPG's, but there are some things that set this apart. For one, this is a strategy RPG. Usually when you think RPG you think of a small group of individual characters following a linear story. In a strategy RPG, you take control of an entire army of characaters. However, the truth is that you don't really have any control over the actual battling.
The real game lies in the preparations for battle. Each stage takes place on a map, littered with cities, castles, and other areas you have to "Liberate" or "Capture", but more on that later. You are given a set amount of characters at the start, and your army grows as you complete missions, promote the characters you have, and recruit new characters. Inbetween missions you have the opportunity to set up your army for the battle ahead. Battles are fought by groups of characters called units. Each unit differs depending on the type of characters you place in the army, and certain characters do better together than others. They have advantages in certain terrains, and are best used when taking advantage of those, um, advantages. For instance, if your units leader does well on mountain terrain, you want to place other characters that do well in mountain terrain in the unit with him. Careful planning is the key to success in this game. at this time you can also strengthen your characters.
Most characters start out as weak soldiers, which do nothing more than run up and jab the enemy weakily with a spear. As they battle though, they become Fighters and Amazons, depending on the gender of the leader of the unit they were in when they got promoted. From there they level up, and you can eventually promote them to all manners of characters, from spellcasters to fighters to healers. Then from there they usually have another promotion ahead of them. In order to promote a character, they must meet certain statistical requirements. Of course it's not quite as simple as that. You also have to have the right equipment for that character, then usually there's some sort of alignment requirement.
Alignment is hard to describe. It's almost like how good or evil a character is. Actually, a better description would be how much honor that character has. A character with a high, or lawful, alignment follows the rule, and doesn't battle with characters that are weaker than they are. A character with a low, or chaotic, alignment doesn't care about stuff like that, and is more like a bully than anything. There are many actions you can take to raise or lower alignment. by placing characters with the same kind of alignment is a good way to raise or lower it faster. Certain characters wont be able to grow if their alignment isn't right.
When you're ready to go, you can either enter the next mission, or revisit a previously beaten map. If you choose the latter, you don't have any enemy units to fight, but you may run into random monsters on your way. These creatures come in a wide variety, and it is possible to recruit all of them. They come in all shapes and sizes, from the weak fairies, to the six different types of dragons. That's right, six, each with the power to evolve into a stronger form. Yes even monsters can change form. The other benefit of going to previously cleared areas is that on each map there are several hidden items strewn across the area. During missions, you have several enemy units to worry about, and often don't have time to send units away to look for them, espescially when under attack. Thus going back when there are no units is very advantageous.
Speaking of missions, when you enter a mission, you are shown the next segment of the story, then go to the briefing area, where you review the map and get startegical tips from your advisor. These help immensely, and it certainly doesn't hurt to know they lay of the land before you head out. Of course, sometimes the enemy throws a monkey wrench into your plans, but a great leader adapts to anything right. Anyways, these missions test your strategy, and the strength of your units. you have to pick the right time to use each units, and even what units to use period. You can only have 10 units out at any given time, and eventually your army will get so big you'll have the maximum of 15 units in reserve. The unit containing the main character is always out though, giving you 14 units to choose from, and 9 empty slots.
Each unit is individually controlled, and you can direct them to any location on the map. These units wont take the straight path however. if you want them to go to a city on the other side of a forrest, the unit will go around the forrest, unless it is filled with characters that do well in forrest terrain. Of course, a unit filled with "Sky" characters can go anywhere they want.
During the mission, you have a headquraters. You lose the mission if your headquarters is captured by an enemy unit, or you main character Magnus is killed. Even if you lose a few characters, or even a complete unit, the game still goes on. dead characters can be revived at witch huts for a price, or by special, rare, and expensive items, but it's better not to risk it. If you lose a character, there's a chance it could turn into an undead character. These are still useful, but usually not as strong as when your character was still alive, and you don't have all the classes available to you. Anyway, as I was saying, you have to figure out a way to protect your headquarters, and strengthen your leader without killing him. The easy way would be to keep your leader behind the front lines, not allowing him to fight, but then as the game goes along he becomes incredibly weak, and your chances of losing are much greater, as the enemies attack your headquarters more and more as the game goes on. It's better to keep him involved and make him really strong, so you don't have to worry about him dying so much.
The enemy units do one of two things. They either stay in the city their assigned, or they come after you and any cities you've captured or liberated. What's the difference between capturing and liberation you ask? Well, this is a huge influence on the game, but you don't have any idea how it happens. It's called the chaos frame, and it influences the ending of the game, and what characters you can recruit. A low chaos frame gets you a bad ending, and makes it so you can't recruit the good characters. A high chaos frame gets you a good ending, and makes it possible to recruit the aforementioned good guys, but not the evil characters. The unfortunate thing is that this is built deep within the game, and you have no idea where you stand with this, or how your actions are affecting it. The only signs you get are when you recruit the good characters, but that doesn't nescessarily mean you're going to get the best ending at the end of the game.
The key is whether you liberate or capture cities. Each city has a morale value, ranging anywhere from 1-100. If a city has a hi moral, you want to use a unit with a high alignment to liberate it. Inversely, a low morale requires a unit with low alignment. This causes the city to be liberated, which raises your chaos frame value. Capturing happens when you use a unit of opposite alignment to get a city. This lowers your chaos frame. There are other things that influence the chaos frame, but this is the big one. There's no way of telling if a unit has high or low alignment, but you can make a good estimate by looking at the characters comprising the group. If most are high alignment, you can assume the group is highly aligned and vise versa. If you've been mixing up the groups a bit and have some characters of a high alignment, and some of a low alignment, then they're probably about in the middle, and should be relegated to liberating towns with average morale scores, which is just as important. That's why it's important to have both high and low alignment units, as well as average units. The game will tell you if you've liberated or captured a city. also allowing an enemy to capture a city you've won will also lower the chaos frame, so it's important to keep them well guarded.
As you can see, there's a huge amount of stuff to think about in this game, but that to me is what makes it fun. There are so many combinations of characters, and trial and error is a big part of the game. Fortunately the game is pretty forgiving early on, and allows you to get used to the feel of the game. It's not especially hard to pick up, but it's difficult to master. The first time I played through it I didn't know half the things involved with the games mechanics, and ended up getting the bad ending. my second go around was alot harder, because I had to think alot more about unit construction, and which units to send where. before I just sent my strongest unit to slaughter everyone. You can do that, just don't be surprised with the end result.
For what it was, the graphics were really good. the characters were well animated. The music is fantastic too.
While you don't control fighting directly, you get to watch as battles occur. Each character has a set number of attacks depending on where you put them in the units formation, and when all the attacks are over the battle ends. The winner is the unit that dealt the most damage. The point is to stop the unit from attacking you, which you can do one of two ways. You can simply defeat every character in the group, or you can stop their leader. if you just do some damage and let them get away, they retreat back to a city their side owns and heal up. Then they're free to come right back out and attack you again. By taking out the leader, the unit is no longer able to act in this fashion, and just wanders around the map. More strategy. It's important to take the characters out, but usually if you've taken out a leader and the unit's in bad shape, it's best to send a weak unit out to get some experience. Then of course you have the boss unit at the end. This concept works like your main characters unit. defeat this character and the mission is over, whether or not you've liberated all the cities and defeated all the units on the map. Also this unit, as you would figure, is the strongest enemy unit. That's why it's usually best to save this group for last.
When you clear an area, you get money, extra soldiers, depending on how many cities you've liberated/captured, and often a special weapon. Also you may recruit special characters, some of whom have classes unavailable to your regular characters. These characters are usually uber strong, and well worth the effort to get. They usually look different from other characters that may have the same class too.
In all honesty, this is one of my five favorite games of all time. It's not something you want to do for a quick bit of fun though. One mission can take up to an hour, and later missions can take alot longer, even up to a couple or more hours!. Still, it's well worth the time I think, and in my opinion, is one of the best games for the N64, or any system. It's a thinking mans game, so not many people are going to like it, but it has enough going for it that it's worth a chance
Graphics: 97
Sound: 97
Gameplay: 97
Storyline: 97
Overall: 97
Not for everyone, but a fantasticly rich gaming experience nonetheless.
I'm going with an old review this week. I've been really busy this week and I'm just a bit worn out. Anyways, here's me review for Ogre Battle 64.
After looking through my old strategy guides, I came across an older game I used to play religiously, Ogre Battle 64, and decided to make that the review for this week. While not really well known, the Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre series has a huge cult following, and for good reason. So without further ado, my review of:
Ogre Battle 64
System: Nintendo 64
Genre: Strategy RPG
Ogre Battle 64 takes place in a world filled with knights and monsters. Standard fare for RPG's, but there are some things that set this apart. For one, this is a strategy RPG. Usually when you think RPG you think of a small group of individual characters following a linear story. In a strategy RPG, you take control of an entire army of characaters. However, the truth is that you don't really have any control over the actual battling.
The real game lies in the preparations for battle. Each stage takes place on a map, littered with cities, castles, and other areas you have to "Liberate" or "Capture", but more on that later. You are given a set amount of characters at the start, and your army grows as you complete missions, promote the characters you have, and recruit new characters. Inbetween missions you have the opportunity to set up your army for the battle ahead. Battles are fought by groups of characters called units. Each unit differs depending on the type of characters you place in the army, and certain characters do better together than others. They have advantages in certain terrains, and are best used when taking advantage of those, um, advantages. For instance, if your units leader does well on mountain terrain, you want to place other characters that do well in mountain terrain in the unit with him. Careful planning is the key to success in this game. at this time you can also strengthen your characters.
Most characters start out as weak soldiers, which do nothing more than run up and jab the enemy weakily with a spear. As they battle though, they become Fighters and Amazons, depending on the gender of the leader of the unit they were in when they got promoted. From there they level up, and you can eventually promote them to all manners of characters, from spellcasters to fighters to healers. Then from there they usually have another promotion ahead of them. In order to promote a character, they must meet certain statistical requirements. Of course it's not quite as simple as that. You also have to have the right equipment for that character, then usually there's some sort of alignment requirement.
Alignment is hard to describe. It's almost like how good or evil a character is. Actually, a better description would be how much honor that character has. A character with a high, or lawful, alignment follows the rule, and doesn't battle with characters that are weaker than they are. A character with a low, or chaotic, alignment doesn't care about stuff like that, and is more like a bully than anything. There are many actions you can take to raise or lower alignment. by placing characters with the same kind of alignment is a good way to raise or lower it faster. Certain characters wont be able to grow if their alignment isn't right.
When you're ready to go, you can either enter the next mission, or revisit a previously beaten map. If you choose the latter, you don't have any enemy units to fight, but you may run into random monsters on your way. These creatures come in a wide variety, and it is possible to recruit all of them. They come in all shapes and sizes, from the weak fairies, to the six different types of dragons. That's right, six, each with the power to evolve into a stronger form. Yes even monsters can change form. The other benefit of going to previously cleared areas is that on each map there are several hidden items strewn across the area. During missions, you have several enemy units to worry about, and often don't have time to send units away to look for them, espescially when under attack. Thus going back when there are no units is very advantageous.
Speaking of missions, when you enter a mission, you are shown the next segment of the story, then go to the briefing area, where you review the map and get startegical tips from your advisor. These help immensely, and it certainly doesn't hurt to know they lay of the land before you head out. Of course, sometimes the enemy throws a monkey wrench into your plans, but a great leader adapts to anything right. Anyways, these missions test your strategy, and the strength of your units. you have to pick the right time to use each units, and even what units to use period. You can only have 10 units out at any given time, and eventually your army will get so big you'll have the maximum of 15 units in reserve. The unit containing the main character is always out though, giving you 14 units to choose from, and 9 empty slots.
Each unit is individually controlled, and you can direct them to any location on the map. These units wont take the straight path however. if you want them to go to a city on the other side of a forrest, the unit will go around the forrest, unless it is filled with characters that do well in forrest terrain. Of course, a unit filled with "Sky" characters can go anywhere they want.
During the mission, you have a headquraters. You lose the mission if your headquarters is captured by an enemy unit, or you main character Magnus is killed. Even if you lose a few characters, or even a complete unit, the game still goes on. dead characters can be revived at witch huts for a price, or by special, rare, and expensive items, but it's better not to risk it. If you lose a character, there's a chance it could turn into an undead character. These are still useful, but usually not as strong as when your character was still alive, and you don't have all the classes available to you. Anyway, as I was saying, you have to figure out a way to protect your headquarters, and strengthen your leader without killing him. The easy way would be to keep your leader behind the front lines, not allowing him to fight, but then as the game goes along he becomes incredibly weak, and your chances of losing are much greater, as the enemies attack your headquarters more and more as the game goes on. It's better to keep him involved and make him really strong, so you don't have to worry about him dying so much.
The enemy units do one of two things. They either stay in the city their assigned, or they come after you and any cities you've captured or liberated. What's the difference between capturing and liberation you ask? Well, this is a huge influence on the game, but you don't have any idea how it happens. It's called the chaos frame, and it influences the ending of the game, and what characters you can recruit. A low chaos frame gets you a bad ending, and makes it so you can't recruit the good characters. A high chaos frame gets you a good ending, and makes it possible to recruit the aforementioned good guys, but not the evil characters. The unfortunate thing is that this is built deep within the game, and you have no idea where you stand with this, or how your actions are affecting it. The only signs you get are when you recruit the good characters, but that doesn't nescessarily mean you're going to get the best ending at the end of the game.
The key is whether you liberate or capture cities. Each city has a morale value, ranging anywhere from 1-100. If a city has a hi moral, you want to use a unit with a high alignment to liberate it. Inversely, a low morale requires a unit with low alignment. This causes the city to be liberated, which raises your chaos frame value. Capturing happens when you use a unit of opposite alignment to get a city. This lowers your chaos frame. There are other things that influence the chaos frame, but this is the big one. There's no way of telling if a unit has high or low alignment, but you can make a good estimate by looking at the characters comprising the group. If most are high alignment, you can assume the group is highly aligned and vise versa. If you've been mixing up the groups a bit and have some characters of a high alignment, and some of a low alignment, then they're probably about in the middle, and should be relegated to liberating towns with average morale scores, which is just as important. That's why it's important to have both high and low alignment units, as well as average units. The game will tell you if you've liberated or captured a city. also allowing an enemy to capture a city you've won will also lower the chaos frame, so it's important to keep them well guarded.
As you can see, there's a huge amount of stuff to think about in this game, but that to me is what makes it fun. There are so many combinations of characters, and trial and error is a big part of the game. Fortunately the game is pretty forgiving early on, and allows you to get used to the feel of the game. It's not especially hard to pick up, but it's difficult to master. The first time I played through it I didn't know half the things involved with the games mechanics, and ended up getting the bad ending. my second go around was alot harder, because I had to think alot more about unit construction, and which units to send where. before I just sent my strongest unit to slaughter everyone. You can do that, just don't be surprised with the end result.
For what it was, the graphics were really good. the characters were well animated. The music is fantastic too.
While you don't control fighting directly, you get to watch as battles occur. Each character has a set number of attacks depending on where you put them in the units formation, and when all the attacks are over the battle ends. The winner is the unit that dealt the most damage. The point is to stop the unit from attacking you, which you can do one of two ways. You can simply defeat every character in the group, or you can stop their leader. if you just do some damage and let them get away, they retreat back to a city their side owns and heal up. Then they're free to come right back out and attack you again. By taking out the leader, the unit is no longer able to act in this fashion, and just wanders around the map. More strategy. It's important to take the characters out, but usually if you've taken out a leader and the unit's in bad shape, it's best to send a weak unit out to get some experience. Then of course you have the boss unit at the end. This concept works like your main characters unit. defeat this character and the mission is over, whether or not you've liberated all the cities and defeated all the units on the map. Also this unit, as you would figure, is the strongest enemy unit. That's why it's usually best to save this group for last.
When you clear an area, you get money, extra soldiers, depending on how many cities you've liberated/captured, and often a special weapon. Also you may recruit special characters, some of whom have classes unavailable to your regular characters. These characters are usually uber strong, and well worth the effort to get. They usually look different from other characters that may have the same class too.
In all honesty, this is one of my five favorite games of all time. It's not something you want to do for a quick bit of fun though. One mission can take up to an hour, and later missions can take alot longer, even up to a couple or more hours!. Still, it's well worth the time I think, and in my opinion, is one of the best games for the N64, or any system. It's a thinking mans game, so not many people are going to like it, but it has enough going for it that it's worth a chance
Graphics: 97
Sound: 97
Gameplay: 97
Storyline: 97
Overall: 97
Not for everyone, but a fantasticly rich gaming experience nonetheless.
TheeGoatPig
There is no R in my name
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- Posts
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I've never even heard of that one, and I thought I had kept a close eye on N64 titles when it was current.
G
Guest
Guest
Hey TB?
Just wanted to tell you that my kids love Diamond and Pearl.
They've linked before, and they have the cordless attachments to go with Leaf Green and Fire Red, but these games are truly cool.
Just wanted to tell you that my kids love Diamond and Pearl.
They've linked before, and they have the cordless attachments to go with Leaf Green and Fire Red, but these games are truly cool.
Trombonus
A bit older, a lot wiser.
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I have them on emulator (which is basically a program that allows you to play console games on your computer), but it's SOOOOOOO slow. Still pretty fun though. Can't wait to get them once I have some money.sweetsubsarahh said:Hey TB?
Just wanted to tell you that my kids love Diamond and Pearl.
They've linked before, and they have the cordless attachments to go with Leaf Green and Fire Red, but these games are truly cool.
G
Guest
Guest
Trombonus said:I have them on emulator (which is basically a program that allows you to play console games on your computer), but it's SOOOOOOO slow. Still pretty fun though. Can't wait to get them once I have some money.
They link from across the room. And then their characters show up on each other's games, on the TV, in shops, etc. They exchange Pokemon wirelessly - they're having fun.
Son has Diamond, daughter has Pearl. We can barely keep the SP's charged as they've been playing so much.
Trombonus
A bit older, a lot wiser.
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lol, I know how that goes. Nothing more frustrating than having your battery go out in the middle of something important.sweetsubsarahh said:They link from across the room. And then their characters show up on each other's games, on the TV, in shops, etc. They exchange Pokemon wirelessly - they're having fun.
Son has Diamond, daughter has Pearl. We can barely keep the SP's charged as they've been playing so much.
G
Guest
Guest
Trombonus said:
Well thank God the things can plug in! Of course they charge so slowly when they play them that way but we count on overnight charging to help.
JamesSD
Back, at least for now?
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I loved Ogre Battle 64, a game I probably wouldn't have known existed if my college suite mate hadn't hyped the hell out of it.
The other fantastic thing about it was it was a legitimate tactics game on the N64. While Mario Kart, several Zelda titles, Mario 64, and otehr games were lots of fun, The N64 lacked a lot of good strategy or RPG titles. Hence, Ogre Battle 64 was all the more impressive, filling a definite hole for us non-PS owners (I eventually bought a PS2 once they got cheap and I had a job after college)
The other fantastic thing about it was it was a legitimate tactics game on the N64. While Mario Kart, several Zelda titles, Mario 64, and otehr games were lots of fun, The N64 lacked a lot of good strategy or RPG titles. Hence, Ogre Battle 64 was all the more impressive, filling a definite hole for us non-PS owners (I eventually bought a PS2 once they got cheap and I had a job after college)
Darklove666
Literotica Guru
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Ogre Battle...wow...I 'm impressed. Though I never got into the game (I made the mistake of playing it right after FF Tactics) you're right in saying it was one of the best RPG's for the N64.
There was one released for the GBA too.. If I'm remembering right.
There was one released for the GBA too.. If I'm remembering right.
Darklove666
Literotica Guru
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Trombonus said:
did you hear that a FF Tactics game is coming out for the DS?
And a total 3-d remake of FFIV. (That would make the 3rd time I've bought that game, if I pick it up.)
