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Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis first impressions & yapping

Cannot sleep to save myself so-

WHAT'S UP EVERYBODY, Wii U gang here again bridget-vibe I put some mGBA on my Wii U so I could try Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis on it. If you haven't read my Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together post, go make a meal and spend a few hours, y'know just for context. Lmao.

Easily the single biggest disappointment with the game is the Disappearance of Wait Turn. WT is easily one of the coolest things about Ogre Tactics and the rolling turn order is super fucking awesome, hardcore as shit, it's punches you gotta roll with but you can also influence it. Knight of Lodis just kinda gives up... it has Fire Emblem style PLAYERPHASE/ENEMYPHASE alternating turns where you can move any unit in whatever order. This is lame but not a dealbreaker.

The UI and interactions/controls have also been necessarily crunched in the move from Super Famicom to GBA. Some of it is beneficial, like just A/B is easier than the original game's mix of A to select and B/X to cancel... but also movement is a little clunky now, and you cannot attack then move, only move then attack.

Surprisingly enough though basically everything else has been retained. It's still the same type of turn-based tactical, unit-positioning-critical, height-advantage-heavy, physics-inflected battles from Let Us Cling Together, with none of the ugly messy changes the remakes made. The four "freely customisable" equip slots are still there, so you can load down a unit with whatever, hawkmen are still beloved, you can still do automated Training to assuage any grinding, there are "emblems" in place of the later Classmarks, but not all classes require them so there is still some degree of free switching. There is an entirely new set of magic but it works more like LUCT than the remakes' magic. It is cast in a very similar mold to LUCT.

The game is gorgeous; it reuses some assets from (the village houses) and has similar looking sprites to the Super Famicom game, (comically the main guy's overworld/combat sprite looks like Dark Knight Lans) but the 240×160 resolution hasn't caused any damage to Quest's superb sense of visual design. All the art is beautiful, the character sprites still have exactly as much animation and expression complexity as in Let Us Cling Together, and the cutscenes are pretty much on par. It's technically very close to LUCT.

That also (I guess) means it kinda runs like shit; I think Quest Corp was not very good at coding (or bug testing? optimisation?) because it seems like most of their games have bugs or technical problems. Knight of Lodis mostly has obnoxiously long 'CPU IS THINKING...' wait hangs before enemy movement, and animations that refresh at inconsistent speeds. Not very performant.

The story also isn't up to much: it's kinda like the Korean War if Worst Korea hated the US. You play as a USMC recruit (Knight of Lodis) sent to the island of Ovis, long an imperial Lodis "protectorate", to "peace-keep" in a brewing conflict where the northern half of the island (sovereign, indepentent, ostensibly bad) seems to be agitating and skirmishing. Allegedly. I wonder how long it will take the protagonist to merc his commanding officer. The writing is a bit more obvious than LUCT but oh well honestly.

I was really incredibly buttmad at almost every gameplay change they made to Wheel of Fortune and Reborn, but that's mostly because they were mucking around with an objectively perfect and completely flawless game. When it comes to a different game though, I think it's fine to play with the mechanice somewhat. While the omission of Wait Turn sucks, I'm honestly pretty pleased with how much of LUCT is retained within The Knight of Lodis. Given the limitations of the GBA, it's a pretty darn good rendition. Kinda cute. Playing Ogre makes me happy as fuck, I was getting my ass beat by the enemy's archers and having to fight my way uphill and levelling my lil dudes up a bunch, oh man I just fuckin love Tactics Ogre so much. How wonderful of Yasumi Matsuno and the game to make two of them!!! Literal Tactics Ogre 2: The Pre-Squeakwuel!!!!!

Sorry Thracia 776, you got mogged by Ogre Tactics' little bro. Next time, promise.

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  • Great game. I liked LUCT better tho.

    Also, you're not allowed to post about it until you finish it mari-smug

    • madeline-angry How dare u fucken say this to me!! I had to holler my excitement, I hated FF Tactics a lot so this is a positive development!!

      Also u played both? waow-based

      • Why did you hate FFT? I adore that game

        • Get four hours into the game and it demands, requires that you grind. Of course they removed training battles so you have to go take forever getting your shit kicked in by the forest creatures, genius game.

          That's literally it, I mean I take issue with the class system, how healing works, miniscule squad size and battlefields, absurd high-damage "kamikaze" magic, and a couple other things, but frankly making a game with such long tedious battles a grindfest is a major Go Fuck Yourself move nia-peace fwiw I am the only known human who thinks this.

          • Hm, yeah, I can see that, but I feel like I spent more time in training battles in LUCT than random battles in FFT.

            The thing about FFT is that some of the classes / exploits are way too strong, so I feel like the grinding stops once you hit a certain level. The problem, then, is that the battles become trivial

            • I can automate training battles though, like training is an awkward cludge, but I'm at least happy to let Ogre play itself for an hour to even everyone's levels. Having to do real battles where characters can die in FFT is excruciating and takes forever. Plus the only serious grindy chokepoint in LUCT imo is Fiduc castle...

              Waow so it's intolerably annoying and frustrating until some point where it becomes needless to even think about it? That's a fuckin Big Brain Play by Matsuno and the gang. How did the same team make both games???

              • Waow so it's intolerably annoying and frustrating

                Hah, sorry, I just don't see it. Fwiw I like LUCT better than FFT, but I think the class system in FFT is super fun to engage with and it's way more fun to customize a class with the variety of skills you unlock than in LUCT where classes are fairly static. There's way more things to do than just hit the enemy. I also find ogre more frustrating because it's so much fucking more difficult (although, that actually why I like it more, too!)

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