Christmas Loot: Knight of Lodis and Prince of Zenobia

I have this theory about Pokemon. It’s a scam built on a web of lies. See the Pokemon in the picture? Sure, they are toys, but let me blow your mind a little. They are the actual size of the real Pokemon. They are Pocket Monsters. How does a two meter tall, 300 kilogram monster hide in grass, or fit in a pocket? How do they fit in Pokeballs? How come even the homemade pokeballs you made from scraps of cloth and metal in Pokemon Arceus worked? No shrinking tech there. Nope. The truth is that Pokemon are only about 10cm tall, max, and when your character is riding a Pokemon around in a game, that is a vehicle simply named after a Pokemon. You never see a Pokemon next to a normal animal. And that is because you would see how small they truly are. The manga, anime and video games are using artistic license to hide reality.

Learn the truth. Speak the truth.

Anyway. This post isn’t about Pokemon. It’s about ogre battles.

I love this series. I’ve played March of the Black Queen (SNES/SFC), Let Us Cling Together (PS1), Person of Lordly Caliber (N64) and most of Knight of Lodis (GBA). These games together, along with Prince of Zenobia, form a long running series under the Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre banner. Games in the “Ogre Battle” series are real time tactical games you don’t often find these days. Games in the “Tactics Ogre” series are turn-based tactical games that are somewhat more common. A continuing plot runs through the mainline games, with the side stories (Knight of Lodis, Prince of Zenobia) exploring what is happening elsewhere during the main plot.

I said I played through most of Knight of Lodis. That was on my Analogue Pocket, using a GBA core to run a ROM image of the game. I got most of the way through the game, too, when for some reason, and I don’t know that reason, it overwrote my game with garbage data. When asked what I wanted for Christmas, I said I needed to see that last ten percent of the game. I’d only replay it on the actual cartridge.

And Christmas morning, I got it. Very happy! But also a little overwhelmed, because this game isn’t short. It’s not particularly long, either, but I’d spent a lot of time with the game just a month or so before, and I have so many games on my backlog…

But it was a Christmas gift, that I asked for, so I dived once more into the world of Ogre Battle as Alphonse, a teenage noble given command of a small squad of soldiers that is lost at sea and run aground on an oddly strategic island claimed by both sides in a holy war. His loyalties and morals are tested again and again until he finally finds the strength to carve his own path through life.

Anyone familiar with the Ogre Battle series (and I include its cousin, Final Fantasy Tactics (and no so much its sequels), here) knows that the plots are twisty, and the various decisions made through the game can lead to very different endings.

I’m a few hours into the game, but I won’t spoil too much of the plot so I can write about it as it comes up.

Ogre Battle Gaiden: Prince of Zenobia is a real time strategy game in the vein of March of the Black Queen and Person of Lordly Caliber: You manage your armies on the field in real time, and then switch to a separate battle arena when your army meets an enemy army.

So there are several problems with me playing this game:

For one, it’s in Japanese. I took Japanese in college, but that was awhile ago and I don’t remember much beyond being able to sound out kana. Second, it’s for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, a handheld I don’t have. Now, the Analogue Pocket can play those games… with an adapter, currently back ordered.

There is a fan translation. I haven’t been able to get it to work, yet, but when I do, I’ll either play it on an emulator on my PC, or just have Google Translate attempt to get me through the original text. That’s what I did with the screenshot above… and it seems like maybe the translation had some issues there.

So, more on that later. For now, I am focusing on getting all the way to the end of Knight of Lodis, and finally see how the story ends.