I completely forgot about Front Mission; I enjoyed those quite a bit. It’s easy to jump in and at the same time gives you plenty of tweaking depth to play with. Might be a bit on the heavy side but I didn’t find it to be a complete jumble of anything like Disgaea.
And you reminded me that one of the very few Super Robot War game to get an official US release will be coming out for the DS this week. I don’t think it’s a tactical game but the series needs to be mentioned. Most of the games haven’t been available because they mashes up effectively every single giant robot anime show ever into one tactical game. Starting with the Sunrise shows and Gundam and eventually picking… well like I said: everything. And besides the nerd coolness of having Mazinger Z blow up Char or finding out what would happen if the SDF-1 Macross fought an Angel they are pretty good games. The catch is you’ll probably have to obtain them through less than legal methods and use fan translations…
Final Fantasy Tactics is very good, and if you have a PSP there’s a new version for it with some extras added and beautiful cutscenes (yes, I’m a sucker for visual presentation).
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is also great fun, and if you tried and disliked the original FFTA you should be happy to know the new game is better in every way except plot. Yeah, I actually liked FFTA’s storyline, but FFTA2 had so much plot potential and just never went anywhere.
The Fire Emblem series is pretty good though I never really got into any of them because they disagreed violently with my OCD. They are fun though.
Nippon Ichi also makes some nice tactical RPGs, Disgaea being their most famous title. There’s versions for PS2, PSP and DS. They tend to be huge grind-fests though, so if you’re not into that you should scope out whether the games have anything else going for them before getting them. For example I really like Disgaea because it’s got great artwork (I’m a big fan of Takehito Harada), likeable characters and a surprisingly sweet plot, and also if you don’t feel like grinding through Iten World for hours on end you can just play the damn game like a normal person. On the other hand, I heard Disgaea 2 has a much lamer plot and characters and is just a pretty grinding interface (the max level cap is 9999), so I didn’t get it even though I’d enjoyed the first game.
La Pucelle is a good game, but no, Disgaea 2 is better. It’s also different. DG2 is primarily about just leveling up to absurd lengths and having fun with the game itself. It’s not about the story, but I loved the story. It steadily builds over the course of the game, makes ample sense, and leaves it for the viewer to fill in some blanks. La Pucelle makes its characters incredible (but lovable) idiots (I suspected the twist about Chapter 7 and knew it long before the game ended. It also didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It was fun, but not that engaging. Plus, the cutscenes were overly long and repetitive.
If anyone still says Adell or Razzy are lame, I will have to bring out my level 800 Nekojin to wipe the floor with your whole party! And *then *I’ll bring out the big guns!
I just couldn’t get into Disgaea 2. I totally failed to care about any of the cast, the humor wasn’t really very funny and the gameplay wasn’t entertaining enough to make up for it. (actually, battles felt like a bit of a grind.). It also suffered, for me, from character-type overload. There didn’t seem to be any real purpose or advantage to not just picking a dozen or so characters and using them all the time. Plus the freakin’ Evil Senate or whatever it was called was a complete pain in the rear. -_-;
The game -was- apparently, about just levelling up like mad, but it just wasn’t enough fun that I would want to. I’ve had games in which the battle system sincerely engaged me and made me want to just -play- it, and those same games usually failed to provide the sort of reasonably increasing challenges to make doing so worthwhile. Disgaea 2 has the opposite problem for me - you can play it almost ad infinitum, but the game seem -so- -burdened- with all its “features” that it wasn’t actually any fun to play.
I don’t remember the combat system being…well, even remotely similar to La Pucelle except that both are played on a grid. It’s been a while though, so I might be forgetting.
Still, there’s lots of stuff like geo tiles that you ignore at your peril. That’s not really what I’d describe as “optional”.
Anyway, either you like it or you don’t. Not much point in going back and forth over it.
I actually just looked it up and there’s also 3 Gaiden games on Game Gear (there’s those handhelds, again), one of which was localized (oddly, it was the second).
Simply because it is so obscure, I want to mention Song Summoner. It is an ipod game made by Square Enix in which you turn your songs into battlers. The more you listen to those songs outside of the game, the more you can summon them in battle. Sounded like a pretty neat concept, except that I recall hearing it was far, far too easy.
Anyone actually play that one?
Of the NIS PS2 games, I enjoyed Phantom Brave. The battlefield was too loose, which made actual strategy hard, but the character building options were pretty neat.
Yes, but that’s the point : the scripted storyline levels are interesting strategic puzzles. The random Item World ones aren’t at all (not to mention, the random elevations are annoying in their own right). I dropped the game when I realized I was mirthlessly, effortlessly and mindlessly grinding through random grids in order to level up an item in order to be able to grind the item world of *another *item. In order for one character to do 5% more damage, even though at that point all of my characters were more than powerful enough to kick the final boss’s ass in one turn. “What the hell am I doing ?!” moment, right there.
But there are over 40 character "types’ that you can create out of various songs, so most of my time is spent turning my musical library into songs to see which characters come up trying to unlock all the diff. types of characters(each that have their own abilities). It feels very easy though (i’ve only played the first 5 levels, and I’ve now just spent my time training my characters and trying to find new ones. I have found one rare character who when leveled up basically has an attack “kill everything on screen” so that’s driven me to try to just keep sitting there and turning songs into characters to find others like her.
But if you’re looking for ACTUAL strategy? Not so much. but it’s a fun 5 bucks to spend especially if you have a gift card and don’t really know what you want.
Then, fine, but you can hardly hodl that against the game. Some poeple jsut love levelling up to obscene proportions and killing all the super-special uber-deayth bosses on the side… side don’t. If you don’t want to do the former… don’t.
I won’t hold it against you, but we’ve a pair here who sound like those saying “I HATE strawberry ice cream! I don’t want any strawberry!” right after scooping themselves a big helping up of, when chocolate and vanilla are sitting there. If you want the chocolate and vanilla, then stop with that. I won’t hold it against you; I’m just mystified by the attitude that the game offering you much more optional content is a bad thing.
Hmm… I see it more like Disgaea throws down a dozen random, unidentified flavors in front of the player that are starting to melt together. The player says, “Is there strawberry in this cause I’m allergic to strawberry” and Disgaea shrugs its shoulders leaving the player to poke at it wondering what to do.
My problem with the various Nippon Ichi games are they’re for power gaming - the fun is for people who enjoy building up characters to ludicrous levels and insane stats and beating the crap out of impossible enemies.
That said, this is my favourite genre of game. The ones I do enjoy have pretty much already been mentioned - the various Fire Emblem, Front Mission, and Super Robot Wars titles. So I can’t add too much, alas.
No only were Tactics Ogre and FFTactics done by the same company, they were done by the same guy, Yasumi Matsuno. Great games, both of 'em.
I actually hated FFTAdvanced, though, it went the childish storybook route and it really just ruined the game for me. Why can’t games have nice, mature storylines? I don’t need blood and nudity, I do need something with a decent story.
Incidentally, Vandal Hearts on the PSOne was a great SRPG, too
While I liked tactics Ogre, it isn’t really a traditional turn based strategy RPG, is it? I remember you could form squads, but you couldn’t control each squad during the battle…
Nippon Ichi games are very much a your mileage varies thing. The plots are incredibly shallow (but they make so much fun of themselves that you still find yourself snickering) and there’s so much stuff that could be done it’d make an obsessive compulsive cry. It also references a lot of Japanese pop culture, so if anime’s not your thing then you’re not going to be interested.
For me, it’s not so much “I liked the game” as “I couldn’t stop playing it”. Seriously. I picked up the controller, and something on the scale of 200 hours later (per game - and by this time, I’d purchased La Pucelle Tactics, Disgaea, Disgaea 2, Phantom Brave, Makai Kingdom, and Soul Nomad and the World Eaters - to save my sanity I sold them all back) I looked up bleary eyed from the television to find that I’d missed the Apocalypse. I’m currently not allowing myself to get either a PS3 or Disgaea 3 because I need to graduate from college.
I’m just glad Nippon Ichi hasn’t decided to make an MMORPG…
· Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
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No, you’re thinking of Ogre Battle. It can be confusing because they are in the same series. Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen for the SNES and Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber fit the description you gave.
Tactics Ogre for the Super NES fits in between those 2 story wise but follows the traditional turn-based strategy RPG formula. It actually introduced a much more intensive class-leveling system that Fire Emblem lacks. There is also a side-story (not one of the main games) released for the GBA called Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis which is quite good. Both are the tactical JRPG you’re looking for.
I actually prefer the Ogre Battle format over tactical RPGs, but only by a thread. If they could find a way to mix the two successfully, I would be in heaven.