I played about 4 more stages of Ogre Battle since my last update, but
I think I'm going to move on. I could have skipped the game completely
since it came out in English, but since it's such a highly spoken-of
game and I enjoyed OB64, I decided to give it a try. I'm not enjoying it
that much, though.
The main problem is that the
stages are too long and have too many enemies in them, and there seems
to be little in the way of viable strategy other than holding in one
place and waiting for all the enemies of the stage to come. If you kill
the leader then you'll have to fight the unit again (unless you can
manage to get a flying unit behind them to pick them off). I tried using
other strategies and trying to play more quickly on the stages but the
result was always my towns being recaptured or units killed.
Then
there's the alignment and Chaos Frame (reputation) system, which are
interesting but not very well implemented. The things that make you gain
and lose alignment (and CF) seem to punish you for playing the game
normally, and require you to jump through a lot of hoops just to keep a
consistent alignment and CF, much less what you need for the best
ending.
I can definitely see why people
rate this game so highly. You can do a lot of customization with your
units and squads, and the multiple endings make the game very
replayable. You can rush through the game, or you can really take your
time and try to get every optional character and event, and the best
ending.
So even though I'm moving on to the next
game I would not necessarily rate this game below average. With some of
the other games like Light Fantasy the game is just garbage, but with
this game I think it's a pretty decent game that I just personally don't
like that much. Rather than spend weeks going through the game it's
probably better for me just to go to the next game.
Both
Zenic and Shen Nung will get here eventually so I'll be interested to
see their reviews (although it came out in 1995 in the US so it won't be
for a while.)
I had the same experience: Arguably a good and interesting game, but it was way too bothersome to actually finish it, especially on the "good" side...
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a game of its time, but that time was awhile ago. I think it's difficult these days to play slower-paced games.
ReplyDeleteLove this game! This game gave rise to a whole new franchise, and it's easy to see why -- it's an innovative, unique strategy design with details too numerous to count.
ReplyDelete