Tactics Ogre.

[Havermayer]

I just started a game.  Learning the basics.  Playing the newly translated snes version.  It only works right on snes9x.  

I like how each unit can only bring a few items into battle.  So there's no rez chains like in FFT.  

Any tips?  Its a bit confusing.

[Zypher]

i enjoyed the game myself

There are 3 routes you can take that are made based upon your choices so multiple playthroughs are in order

These affect when you get certain characters or even if you get certain characters at all

[SilvasRuin]

I've not played that one.  I've played (and loved) Tactics Ogre:  The Knight of Lodis on the GBA.  I hear the SNES game has a screwy weight system that has a tendency to punish players from playing the normal way and reward players from cheesing through with something like orbs and small bows.  The Fire Crests and Snapdragon swords from The Knight of Lodis were pretty bad for balance, but supposedly balance was worse in the game you're playing.

Of course I'm going on hearsay.  I'll be interested in your opinion of it.  Maybe I'll be persuaded to try it.  I'll be interested in hearing if dragons, demi-humans, and monsters are any more worth using than in the GBA game.  (Note, it's not the same game.  The GBA is a prequel with a somewhat different system.)

[Lydyn]

I played Tactics Ogre for the PSX myself and it was a great game, really entertaining. There's a lot of training though, which is the only thing I didn't like. Anyways, Raise is a special spell you get later that only a priest (female) can use. Though if you get a lich, you can also use Animate or something of the like - revives characters as skeletons.

[philsov]

Any tips? Its a bit confusing.

- As your squad grows up you're only going to want, at most, 2 or 3 pure melee.  Chaos Knights (think that's their name, the Chaotic knight upgrade with X kills) are pretty good, and swordmasters are a bit underwhelming.  I favor a balanced spread of ranged/melee/healers/casters personally.  Always have at least 2 healers.

- Levels mean a LOT in terms of damage input/output/success.  If you're having a difficult time in a battle go into training mode and have all of your lowbies wail on your highest level person for a while.  

- Because of the Weight system, characters are usually best off with a mini knife and robes (or nothing) for attack and defense.  Everyone can dual-wield to gain maximum funsies (double staff wizard, e.g.)

- Archers are HAX.  Its rather sad when an archer makes a better witch than a witch does.  Valks are good when you first get them but eventually taper off.

[Meow_von_Lazerstein]

Best site about TO http://luct.tacticsogre.com/

[Kaijyuu]

I didn't really like the gameplay of LUCT. I'm the type that won't let any characters die, and with death being instant and permanent, I was constantly hitting reset. No.

[Zozma]

I enjoyed the game much more the second time around when i used codes to get the NPC's lol...
but the first time around i remember that that girl mage really rapes lol... she can also turn into an angel knight as well, not that u want that to happen

[MasterGrand]

I like this game very much and i play it and  you can play more stories .

[Havermayer]

I'm much farther in now.  Stuff that I like more than FFT:

1. Alignments.  Lawful, neutral and Chaotic.  Affects what jobs they can get.  Love it.
2. Much larger stages.  2 or 3 times larger.
3. Max of 30 guys on your team.  10 guys per battle.  
4. Weight system
5. Training mode with 2 player option.  So cool.  Me and my little brother use it all the time.  Why wasn't this in FFT?  
6. Limit to healing items.  No annoying "Rez cycles".  They'll use a potion or two, and that's it.  
7. Very flexible with equipment
8. Mages equip 3-4 spells.  Allows for more customization, and each wizard can be different.  They can't cast all the spells.  
9. Rare random battles.  
10. Dead bodies instantly vanish, so corpses don't crowd the map.
11. Aren't instantly cured between battles.  This forces you to swap out the weaker ones.  
12. No saves between big battles.  
13. Can save in battle.

Criticisms:

1. Imbalanced.  Bows, magic and other long range weapons seem better than melee weapons.  Many classes are just better than other classes.  
2. Levels matter WAY too much.  If a boss character is a few levels more than me, I might end up doing only a few points of damage.  I remember doing playthroughs of FFT where I would beat it at level 30, when everyone else is 50.  
3. Any unit that rushes forward dies.  Most battles have me retreating and hitting them with magic or bows.  
4. Most of the game = grinding
5. For plot, there are so many factions/ethnic groups/people, etc.  I have no idea what's going on.  Game: "Oh no, Bacrum's invading!"  Me: Who?  

The snes patch is not 100% compatable with zsnes, so I'm forces to use snes9x.  But, it allows for speedup.  So it makes the grinding less tedious.  

Now that there's a snes patch, I'd love to balance out Tactics Ogre, like we did with FFT.

[Kaijyuu]

Curious; what bugs out about the patch in ZSNES? ZSNES sucks so it's not impossible for it to be the emulator's fault, but most of the time it allows stuff it shouldn't rather than the other way around.

I have moderate knowledge of SNES ASM and hardware so if you get a project going, I might be willing to help out occasionally with technical stuff.

[Havermayer]

Curious; what bugs out about the patch in ZSNES? ZSNES sucks so it's not impossible for it to be the emulator's fault, but most of the time it allows stuff it shouldn't rather than the other way around.

Several screens go black.  The equip items/magic/etc screen for one.  I did not play for much longer, so there could be more.

In snes9x, you'll occasionally get a garbled avatar on some characters in your formation screen.  This is minor, as switching to another character clears this.  I haven't seen any others yet.  

Also: What are the differences between the snes, saturn, and playstation versions?  I think Saturn had voice acting, and there are a few cosmetic differences.

[Havermayer]

Curious; what bugs out about the patch in ZSNES? ZSNES sucks so it's not impossible for it to be the emulator's fault, but most of the time it allows stuff it shouldn't rather than the other way around.

Several screens go black.  The equip items/magic/etc screen for one.  I did not play for much longer, so there could be more.

In snes9x, you'll occasionally get a garbled avatar on some characters in your formation screen.  This is minor, as switching to another character clears this.  I haven't seen any others yet.  

Also: What are the differences between the snes, saturn, and playstation versions?  I think Saturn had voice acting, and there are a few cosmetic differences.

[Kaijyuu]

Yeah, definitely a problem with the patch itself. Probably (educated guess) something wrong with the VRAM upload for graphics, which they had to have modified to change the font.


(can't comment on differences between versions since I've only ever played the playstation one)

[Zozma]

the playstation one is exactly the same, i suggest playing that one,i tried to play the snes version so i could hack character gfx but it was before i found a translation

[Cheetah]

Since they are remaking this for PSP, I would recommend not sinking too much time into a project for the SNES one. Unless just for ease of hacking. I wonder if at some point FFH should expand the focus to take in games like Vagrant Story and tactics orge. I suppose FFTA & FFTA2 as well.

[Draivyn]

Considering the hatred alot of FFT fans have for the advance series you would probably see alot of hacks involving Marche or Luso getting murdered in the most brutal ways possible(not that I have a problem with this) and if i recall correctly Vagrant Story has trouble running in emulators, so that might be a difficult battle to hack.

[Jon]

Naw man, I think people would use FFTA which actually has like I said really awesome potential and fix those 2 games. If FFTA could be hacked, I would wanna be on the "1.3" team of that, I have tons of ideas how to improve FFTA.

[Dokurider]

Just mentioning a 1.3 Tactics Ogre is already getting me hard.

[SilvasRuin]

Actually I think FFTA2 has the most potential to be awesome with player hacks.  It seems to have the most fleshed out system of them all.  (Well... for the tactical RPGs.  I'm pretty sure Vagrant Story tops it in how huge the system is.)  Its most grievous balance issues are also ones that *should* be easy to resolve, such as how absurd the Parivir abilities are in damage (damn, tone them down to 1.5, PLEASE) and how much Seeq suck (beef up Lanista, PLEASE).

But... I think what I'd most like to see hacked is The Knight of Lodis.  Awesome little game, and I wish the end was actually difficult enough to challenge.  It sucks that it runs out of any potency on the part of the villains just when you start getting a Lich or two and some Angel Knights.  Hell, just finding some way to make their generated equipment smarter would be a huge contribution.  I mean... Leather Armor?  On the last chapter?  Are you kidding me?!  That's lame, especially on the default job it spawned on!  If nothing else, the non-canon adventures could at LEAST scale up to level 50, maybe actually make that last fight interesting.  And make the rewards suck a bit less so it is worth doing instead of the other super fast ones.