The first time I tried to play Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen, I didn’t know how there could be any sort of strategy or planning when every map was just continually battling enemies that are continually attacking you.
How anyone could take the time to be concerned about making sure each unit only fought higher level enemies with lower alignment (if the unit contained good characters, like Knights), or ignored those rules (if the unit contained evil characters (like Wizards), while also juggling reputation, the time of day (good characters stronger in day, evil ones at night) along with fifteen thousand other fiddly bits… every time, I put the game aside and promised to get back to it later.
I’ve had the GameFaqs for the game in a tab in my browser since last winter. Every time I saw it, I promised myself that sometimes I would figure it out and just — play through it. Especially since I found the actual SNES cartridge in a store downtown, taunting me until I bought it. It’s why I have made the commitment to finally play and finish this game, no matter what.
Each map takes me between two and three hours to complete. I’ve tried a bunch of different strategies — waiting for the enemy to come to me, rushing the boss, slowly taking territory while building my forces — and it always ends up taking the same amount of time. Multiply that by the 30 maps in the game (including hidden maps) and it’s going to end up being an 80 hour game.
And that doesn’t even include the whole SECOND part of the game, the hidden part, the hours spent on the main screen, forming groups, planning upgrades, poring through the FAQs trying to figure out a path through the many, many rules and systems in the game to attempt to get the game’s best ending. There’s at least a dozen endings, and they vary based on your decisions throughout the entire game. Some things won’t be open to you if your reputation is low, or high, or in the middle, so the FAQs give lots of hints on ways of getting your reputation in the exact necessary range to move the story forward in the best way.
Aisha is the lady confronting the Dark Knight in the header image. The DK killed her mother, and he thought he’d killed her as well, but she escaped and is now bent on revenge. If you hadn’t found the secret temple where she was hiding, and made sure she confronted him before you killed him, you wouldn’t have this scene.
The Kastolatian Sea is ruled over by Queen Porkyus, a nixie who is trying to save her people, the mermaids, from being wiped out by humanity. There is a rumor that eating mermaids can make you immortal, and so they have been hunted by the human inhabitants of the Kastolatian Sea until the only thing the mermaids could do, with their tails back against the coral, is to hunt humans in return and liberate their land.
Queen Porkyus is a high alignment, good character and a hero to her people. Players have been trying to to find some way to come to a peaceful resolution and show her that there is another alternative to the evil Empire and that mermaids have a place in the rebellion where they can fight to keep this land their own.
She will not back down, and so the player is forced to kill her and take the alignment hit. Because of the player’s actions, her race is doomed to extinction, although some wild merfolk will still be found here and there. And to the best of my knowledge, nobody has become immortal after eating mermaid flesh.
According to the stage map in the manual, it is possible to skip this map, and the several that it gates, and still reach the end game, though of course the best ending requires doing this map, as the holy sword Brunhild is found here.
Next map is Diaspola, where I will be able to buy the item that will convince Deneb to join the resistance. I’m looking forward to having her on the team, even though she is thoroughly evil.
