Okay, so let’s get situated on the Ogre Battle/Final Fantasy Tactics timeline. These games were all developed or at least designed by the same team, play very similarly, so I kind of think of them all as being just one series.
| Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen | 1993 | Super Famicom/Super Nintendo |
| Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together | 1995 | SFC/Saturn/PlayStation |
| Final Fantasy Tactics | 1997 | PlayStation |
| Ogre Battle: Person of Lordly Caliber | 1999 | Nintendo 64 |
| Ogre Battle Gaiden: Prince of Zenobia | 2000 | Neo Geo Pocket Color |
| Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis | 2001 | Gameboy Advance |
| Final Fantasy Tactics Advance | 2003 | Gameboy Advance |
| Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift | 2007 | Nintendo DS |
I think I played Final Fantasy Tactics first, back in the day, and then Tactics Ogre (ported from the SFC), both on the PlayStation. There was a gap until I played Tactics Advance on the GBA, and then I’ve been picking up the other stories since then. Finished FFTA — again. Had a lot of fun with March of the Black Queen and Person of Lordly Caliber, for which I rebuilt my original Nintendo 64 from 20 years ago. I haven’t played Prince of Zenobia, since I didn’t have a Neo Geo Pocket Color.
I do now, though. Kinda.
Analogue specializes in making consoles that play retro games not through software emulation, but through using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to actually simulate the hardware of those old consoles. I bought one of the transparent ones from the recent drop and have been pretty much only gaming on that since. I have old, bad eyes, and normal handheld games just don’t work well with them. The Pocket’s high resolution display is easy to read. And in its dock, I can pipe the video to my monitor and stream it to Twitch… which I have been doing.
Because it can be reprogrammed to emulate the hardware of almost any older console, it can play any Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo, Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, etc etc etc, Neo Geo Pocket Color and so very much more. First thing I did when I got it was to put Othello World (Super Famicom) on it. Second thing was to put Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis on it. I may get to Prince of Zenobia at some point.
So, Knight of Lodis. Considered a side story, it tells a tale from the perspective of Lodis, the aggressor country in most of the other Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre series. That’s a little bit of a cheat, though, as the protagonist leaves Lodis’ army when he meets a beautiful rebel who tells him about the secret lore of a sacred spear, a mermaid, and her human lover. This sacred spear is pretty much the Ark of the Covenant from Indiana Jones; it’s a powerful weapon that can defeat any army. And… I think I am just about to find it, actually.
I could try to describe the plot to this point, but it is just too weird. The protagonist’s former commander is dating an illusion of the knight Ivanna’s sister who is really the spirit of an evil creature called Shaher who has now possessed the former commander and is looking for a shard of the spear that the protagonist carries in order to become the ultimate evil and conquer the world and… well, that’s this small part of the plot.
Final Fantasy Tactics-like games are known for their intricate plots. Ogre Battle wasn’t the first tactical strategy RPG (the original Fire Emblem defined the genre as we think of it today), but the series set a high bar that any new tactical RPG has to measure itself against.
Okay, gotta break in here… I was finishing up The Crypt and was trying to restore from a suspended game when the game file… stopped working. It’s gone.
And that means, I won’t be able to finish this playthrough. Now, I was playing with a downloaded ROM, not the physical cartridge. I am maybe getting the physical cartridge for Christmas (it’s a little expensive), so I might give it another try in a couple months or so.
I’m a little bummed out right now…
Well, maybe we’ll see how the story ends in a couple of months. Until then, enjoy the Crypt battle up until the time I tried to reboot and found out the save file was fried.
This device seems pretty neat; almost neat enough to get me interested in retro-gaming. But, y’know, I have to drive big ugly trucks through the muck at very slow speeds, so I don’t have a lot of free time. 🙂
So last night, since I didn’t have Lodis to worry about anymore, I fired up the PS5. Right there, staring right at me, was Snowrunner. I alllmost selected it… and then I moved to the next game over, Lost in Random.
I got stuff to say about Snowrunner so I really need to give it another chance.