First Impressions: Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PSP)

Wow, okay.  I bought Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together because I liked the look of the game, I'd heard nothing but good things about the Tactics Ogre/Ogre Battle series and because the game was on sale when I bought it through Amazon back in December 2011.  I started it up, but then relinquished my PSP to Conklederp since she was just getting into Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, which I had suggested she try out, so that was my own doing.  Jump ahead to February 2013 when I restarted the game as I had no idea where I was supposed to go or what my motivations for doing anything was and I played on-and-off until April.  I don't remember what happened back in April, but I've finally picked the game up again a couple of days ago.

I've actually tried writing this article a few times and each time I go off on tangents about certain aspects of the game which leads to a history of this game, Final Fantasy Tactics and tactics games in general.  But lets get down to things about the game, which is why this article is in existence.

It's a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics.  The look of the game, the character design, the complicated political plots that are reminiscent of something you'd find written by George R. R. Martin.  I don't understand all of the political intrigue and back stabbing, but I'm sure that that epiphany will surface on it's own in the later chapters.  Even the music is composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto (FFT, Vagrant Story, FF XII).

What's interesting and much welcome about TO:LUCT, similar to what was done in FFT:TWotL, is a historical record of sorts is kept in game by a "historian."  This means that I can go back and look through a timeline of important events and watch cutscenes of said events.  There's even a record of NPCs and their backstories before the events in the game take place.  The game is detailed in a way that allowed me to pick the game up after not having played for nine months and I felt I knew what I was doing and why I was making those decisions.

One drastic element that is added to this game is the ability to rewind turns during a battle to have them replay differently.  For instance, you move your mage over a couple of squares to a better vantage point on an enemy who is already being attacked by one of your own fighters.  You cast a fireball spell that accidentally hits your fighter in the back of the head.  Or if you moved a thief to a spot you had thought was going to give you a tactical advantage, but then that thief is gang-killed.  You have the ability to rewind time to any point in the battle.  For posterity sake, the game keeps track of how many battles you won using this feature.

Two very much welcome features to this game happen when you're losing a battle.  First off, your characters do not permanently die.  I found this out during a boss battle and thought that I would give up the life of one of my characters as I just won a difficult (~45 minute) battle.  As my characters timer reached zero, they said something about "living to fight another day."  When the battle was over, they didn't gain any skill points, but they did gain some XP.  The second thing about losing, is that if you are about to lose a battle completely, you can, with the click of a button, retreat from that battle.  You will then gain some skill points and some XP, but obviously not as much as if you had won the battle.

Battles in TO:LUCT are about as cumbersome as they are in FFT, but that's one of the reasons why I fell in love with FFT and why I really like TO.  Conklederp will confirm that my swearing increases ten fold every time I'm in a battle; if it's missing an attack chanced at 80% accuracy or being gang-killed.

Okay, I'm going to limit myself to talking about only two more aspects that I love about TO.

First.  Apparently the music in the game has been re-orchestrated and it sounds great.  Granted I didn't play any of the original releases of this game so I cannot say "how much" better or worse it sounds, just that it sounds very much like Hitoshi Sakimoto. And, and, AND!, there's a music player included in the menu that also has a notation from the Hitoshi Sakimoto or the arranger Masaharu Iwata about the song.  How flipping awesome is that!?  I love that Square Enix acknowledges the music side of the game to include information about it's composition.  This should be standard in every video game.

Lastly, is the "Personality Test" based around a fictional tarot deck, that is supposed to alter (slightly?) the game based on your answers.  I have no information about how this actually happens, but the questions themselves, I felt, put you in the mindset that this world won't necessarily be a friendly one and that tough choices are ahead.  Below are a couple of my favorites.

XVI: The Tower

A Fire engulfs your home.  Whom do you save from the flames?

-My Beloved

-My Child

-My Parents

(I love how this question is worded.  It's stating that all three are in a burning house, but you can only save one set: your beloved, child or your parents, then watch as the rest die).

XVII: The Moon

In a fit of passion, you take your friend's lover.  What will you do next?

-Keep the lover for my own

-Savor the moment

-Put it from my mind

(The added layer to this question is self imposed, in that I already have a fiance.  So in this instance, I knowingly take my friends lover, running the very high risk of ruining my current relationship, what then would/do I do?  No one is coming out of this unscarred).

So after a nine month hiatus, I'm back into this game and I'm really liking it.  There have already been a number of times when the story split based on a decision that I made and each time I've questioned if I made the right one.  Granted I could "go back" to see what would have happened if I made a different decision, but I don't want to know that, at least right now.  I want to live with the consequences of my actions.  I feel that's where a lot of character development (implied or self induced) comes from and I don't want to rob myself of that emotional experience.

In closing, if you've played Final Fantasy Tactics, you will not at all be disappointed with Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

Introduction to a Theory about Video Game Music Composers

"This is the first entry in what I hope to be a series of posts about composers/programmers of music in video games.  And not just any composers, but composers that we either don't know much about or have miss-attributed soundtracks to.  What do I mean by "miss-attribute?"  Okay, when you think of the music from the Legend of Zelda series, who comes to mind?  Right, Koji Kondo.  Except that he didn't write the music for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.  That soundtrack was composed by Akito Nakatsuka.  Who is that you ask?  In short, he also wrote some of the music for Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!"

The above was my going into what was originally planned as a series of about nine to ten posts, focusing on individual composers and why some soundtracks are miss-attributed to them.  As an avid collector of soundtracks, I had thought that knowledge of video game composers would be about as prevalent as knowledge of film music composers.  Granted I only know of a couple by name, and those're some of the big guns: Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, Koichi Sugiyama, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yasunori Mitsuda, Robin Beanland and David Wise.  

As it turned out, this happened to be one of those instances where when you grow up with a particular thing, like a dad who collects and chops/cuts and stacks firewood, that you think that all dads do that.  Turns out a lot of dads do not drive out on county roads looking for felled trees or asking people who have had trees cut  down if they would mind if their wood was taken out of their gutter.  Who knew that wasn't normal?  Turns out knowledge of who the composers of video game music are and what games they've composed for is not common knowledge.

I found this out when I put up a survey seeing if 1)  If people knew who wrote the music to a particular video game and 2)  If they knew, then they were to put down their answer by name.  My theory was for example, that if someone would think that because Koji Kondo wrote the music to Super Mario Bros. that they might think he wrote the music to Dr. Mario.  Or, as in the first mentioned example of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!. 

In the following post I will give the results and my initial analysis of the data that I collected from the survey (which when I last checked was only 20 people).  So with this in mind, I will now leave you with a couple youtube-ified tracks from various video games soundtracks that I absolutely love:

Tooth & Claw by Robin Beanland : Killer Instinct

Overworld by Koichi Sugiyama : Dragon Warrior

Sacrifices by Yuzo Koshiro : ActRaiser

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Can Just Hear It Now

P.S.  If you would like to take the aforementioned survey, here is the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XSYPF3N  And please do not look up any information before taking the survey as I am/was trying to find out people's existing knowledge.  Thank you.

Critique: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Grimoire of the Rift (DS)

This is a post about a game where the main focus is a book/tome, so get ready to do some reading.

I bought this game so long ago, I've completely forgotten when it was that I had started playing.  I think it was just over a month before PAX08 (end of August 2008). But anyway, 177 hours, 40 minutes and 1 second after starting it, I finally completed Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Grimoire of the Rift. Another way of looking at is that I spent 7 days, 9 hours, 36 minutes and 1 second playing this game. The previous record was about 130 hours to complete Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and now coming in 3rd place is Final Fantasy XII which took me about 122 hours. So why did this game take me so long to complete? What are my thoughts about the game after having invested so much of my time into it. And why was this the second most frustrating game that I've completed (The top award goes to Goldeneye 007 just because of the level "Aztec" on 007 Agent Mode: The Kid can back me up on this). 

Beware, Thar Be Spoilers Ahead. Ye've Been Bloody Damn Warned.

Not initially knowing the differences between Normal and Hard Mode, I thought I would try out Hard Mode and if it was too difficult to start out with, I would switch over to the Normal Mode. Upon selecting Hard Mode, I was greeted with the following statement from the game, "Hard mod is designed for players seeking a greater challenge. Enemies deal more damage and battles are more difficult on Hard mode. The story and quests are identical to Normal mode." Personally, I didn't think the game was overly difficult. Not any harder that the first Final Fantasy Tactics and I can only imagine how much easier the game is on Normal Mode. In short, I was looking for a challenge.

Unlike the first Final Fantasy Tactics Advance game on the GBA, the character Luso in FFTA2 is actually transported to the world of Ivalice vs. being transported to a dream realm created in the likeness of Ivalice. The general main story of the game then revolves around Luso's attempt to fill the pages of the Grand Grimoire with his adventures in order for him to return to his own world. As is the case with FFTA, there're a shit load of side missions (280 to be exact) along with the 20 required missions to complete the game. This is where my first beef with the game comes in. 

The Main Story? It sucks. Hypothetically speaking, you could complete the game only having passed these 20 missions, raising levels by fighting wandering monsters (although that would take a very long time......) and have almost no coherency for what's going on in the storyline of the game. For example: There're a whole series of side quests dealing with a group called Carm Mercantile who later turn out to be front for a lager organization called Khamja, an assassins guild within the Jylland region of the world of Ivalice. Early on in the game, Carm Mercantile appear to be an organization that are out to help endangered creatures and protecting them from poachers. Only later is the connection revealed, again, in a side quest.

Then there's another whole side quest dealing with an invading guild called Duelhorn. This storyline starts out with rumors of a foreign guild looking into other clans in the region followed by the guild trying to take over clans and trying to stake a claim in this region. Eventually the Khamja organization starts to take notice of Duelhorn and there turns out to be some contention between the two organizations. There are 11 missions to this part of the story, which I found to be much more intriguing than the main story.

Yet another very involving and awesome side story revolves around this Paladin who is being haunted/chased by a relentless zombie.  Again, I felt that this story was better constructed than the main story line.

Then!, one of the main characters in your clan, Adelle starts off as being a kind of annoying girl who tags along / steals from you. Later, it turns out she's apparently part of a near immortal race that only go by "Gifted Ones." The game even hints that she's significantly older and that her race don't age past a certain point. Adelle then has a bunch of missions directed towards her and her self discovery of who she is and how to wield her power, which saved my ass in the final battle. (The "Elpe" ability which sacrifices yourself to raise and fully heal your entire party). It was a pretty intriguing story that again, was not required to complete the game.

One last side mission, that was only a single event came across, to me anyway, as fairly mature compared to the rest of the games themes. There was a notice posted at a pub, which is where you find out about missions and accept them, that read:  "I love someone whom I can never have.  The very thought haunts me each moment I draw breath.  It is more than I can bear.  And so I wish to quit this mortal life.  There is a substance known as zombie powder which may grant me the relief I so desperately seek.  Please, find this and bring it to me.  End my suffering. ~Gleifin.  Now I'm starting to wonder if this Gleifin person was the Paladin character previously mentioned.  I'm not sure if this quest had multiple endings or if you just failed if you didn't give the zombie powder to Gleifin.  The tone though, compared to other quest posts like "It's nearly my mother's birthday, and I want to give her some flowers as a gift, kupo.  I need someone to gather some pretty pink flowers for the bouquet.  Genne, Devoted Son."  It's just a complete 180.

Alright, enough with the pros/cons of the storyline. The next thing that really bothered me was the accuracy rating during battles. Yes, I know that the game warned me that battles would be more difficult on the "Hard Mode," of which I did fully expect. What bothered me was the frequency I would miss with an 80% accuracy rating or higher. I do not have any statistics to back me up and yes I did try for a while to chart each of my battles along with the accuracy rating for each attack that was put forth by both sides but in the end, it became too difficult; especially with the casting of "Accuracy Up/Down" and that the accuracy would be different depending on what side of the body the character was attacking. Conklederp can attest to the number of times I was quietly playing while she was doing homework and I suddenly let out with a "Ah, that's bull fucking shit!!/ Seriously !? Fuck! / Motherfucker!!!" or some variation thereof. It was all because I had selected an enemy to attack, had maybe 75% to hit and missed. Okay, that's understandable. Next character goes to attack this stealthy bastard, this time, 90% because I was attacking from the back. Miss!  I don't remember which mission I was on, but it was located in The Galerria Deep and I had to take out a thief who your character had helped out earlier in the game. This time, only 1/3 of the attacks actually hit him even though I had over 70% with nearly every attack. If the character is going to be hard to hit, then it should be reflected in the % To Hit, not in some abstract algorithm within the game that it's not telling you about just because the character is akin to miniboss and because I was playing it on Hard Mode. Another similar story was when I was about to kill a boss character, I had 99% accuracy, it was the kill shot from behind and I missed. The boss's move was next, so naturally they healed themselves, moved away and forced the battle to take another 5 minutes. Blarg!! Shisno!!

With the first FFTA, I talked to a couple people and read a number of complaints online that the Laws in the game were too cumbersome and annoying, especially as the game progressed. By the end of that game there were three laws to consider before each battle. Apparently the Laws system in FFTA2 was an improvement. I aim to disagree. The Laws in FFTA were predictable in that if you knew where you were going to be in a battle, you could look ahead to plan what Laws would be in effect that day so you could work around them without penalty. In FFTA2, the only way to find out about the Law was if you had done that mission/battle before. Often times, the Law would intentionally make the battle more difficult. Such as, you're going into a battle with a bunch of Flans/Jellies and the law is "No Non-Elemental Attacks." So, all your attacks have to have an elemental basis such as casting Fire or having a weapon imbued with Ice. However, the White Pudding creature could only be harmed by non-elemental attacks such as Holy or Dark. So basically you're forced to break the Law if you want to succeed in this battle.

Additionally, some of the Laws were rather ridiculous. The one that really annoyed the piss out of me was "No Knockbacks." So with this restriction, it's against the Law to attack someone and knock them back one square. There are only a couple specific attacks that knockback characters such as "Knockback" and "Blink Counter." If you happen to perform a Critical Attack with an algorithm that I'm not familiar with, you'll knock your enemy back one square. Now how the hell is that supposed to be regulated? The only thing I came up with to comply with the law was to place a character behind the enemy I was going to attack, then with another character, attack my enemy so that just in case I did perform a critical attack, they weren't knocked back. Fucking_annoying. Granted the penalty for breaking a law isn't too strict in that you loose whatever benefit you chose at the beginning of the battle and you loose the ability to resurrect slain allies. Yes, I was one of those anal people who, early on in playing, would reset the game if I ended up breaking a law because I thought that I would miss out on some form of loot that I would need later or would only be offered once in the game.

I'm still kind of on the fence about the whole Auctions thing in this game. I didn't like that clans would basically buy via simultaneous eBay-type bidding the rights to have control over a territory. I liked how in FFTA that you had to fight over territories and that at random times your territories would be threatened and if you didn't address that threat, then it would be taken over. By the middle of the FFTA2, after you've visited all of the areas and "won" them in auctions, you start bidding on rare equipment and items which you could pretty much assure that you will win everything. I did like though that early on, rival clans would be upset if you won too often and would attack you in retaliation.

Now onto other things that I liked. I'm guessing that because Square Enix was using a very similar engine from FFTA that additional races needed to be introduced to keep the game from becoming stale, which I was fine with. The two changes were that Seeq's were brought over from the Final Fantasy XII Ivalice world and Gria's were the brand new race. Seeqs were basically a more tank type of Bangaa, which was fine with me. I ended up only having 1 in my clan as I wasn't able to recruit one until late in the game.  I really like the Gria's as they had the ability to fly (and who wouldn't like that?) and had some pretty cool and devastating attacks. That pretty much sums up my feelings on the Gria: they could fly and had cool attacks.

There were some other new jobs for the established Bangaas and Humes I also really liked. My favorite of the two were probably the Master Monk and Cannoneer for the Bangaas. Master Monk was like a more kick ass version of the White Monk job which was already pretty awesome and a required job class for all the Bangaa in my clan. For the Humes it was the Parivir and when combined with the Ninja's Duel Wield ability, they did some major damage.

Hmmmm, I also liked the music for the most part. Nothing too original as it seemed that a lot of it was pulled or in the style from FFTA and FF XII, which didn't bother me.  It's more good atmospheric and background music from Hitoshi Sakimoto.

By all appearances, you could conclude that with all of the things that I disliked about this game, that I would have hated it. Why then would I invest 177 hours playing this game?  Well, all that I can say is that the side quests, as previously mentioned, were a lot of fun and were emotionally stimulating. As it happens with a lot of Final Fantasy games, I get attached to the characters, especially the grunts who may not be a main character. It was a very enjoyable game for the most part, even though the main storyline wasn't very interesting and pretty weak, but with all of the side quests, they really helped to flesh out the world. It probably would not have taken me this long to complete the game if I was going straight from beginning to end. Instead, I went from beginning, finished 277 missions to the end of the game. 

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Grimoire of the Rift a fun game and I'd recommend it, unless you're going to be playing it around your conservative grandparents or in churches.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

It Will Eat Up Your Life