Ogre Battle 64: Particular person of Lordly Caliber (オウガバトル６４), launched 1999年7月14日, developed by QUEST, printed by Nintendo
That is the primary Ogre sport I performed — my brother had an N64 and received this sport. He had performed the unique OB however for some motive I by no means did. I actually appreciated this sport, and probably primarily based on that I actually may by no means get into the unique sport. However it looks like lots of followers had the other response: they appreciated OB however discovered that OB64 was less complicated and fewer strategic in some ways.
Matsuno Yasumi, the creator of the unique Ogre Battle and Techniques Ogre, was not concerned on this sport, which can account for a number of the fan disappointment as effectively.
The story is significantly richer than the unique sport, which didn’t actually have a lot of a narrative. Right here there are story sequences earlier than and after every map, making it extra of a Techniques Ogre model sport in that respect. The sport is marked as “Episode 6”, thus placing it between the unique Ogre Battle, and Techniques Ogre. However my impression is that there are usually not robust story connections between the video games.
The gameplay is broadly much like the primary sport. The dimensions of the squads is elevated from 3×2 to three×3. The maps on the entire are smaller, which means that the main target has shifted away from making an attempt to guard cities. Most likely the most important change offers with my largest annoyance in OB: Within the first sport, if you happen to beat a squad’s chief, they rocket again to the house base at high velocity, and the moment they contact the bottom they’re instantly revived to full energy. OB64 in all probability goes too far in the other way; right here once you beat a squad’s chief they turn out to be frozen or flee randomly away, which means that defeating the chief is successfully defeating the squad typically. I feel that they may have discovered a cheerful stability between these two extremes.
There are different adjustments — they launched this “centurion” system which is almost ineffective because of the limitations placed on it and the low energy of the squads. Squads have “tiredness” values and so they must camp from time to time to get well. Different small adjustments develop the system from the primary sport.
The battles work the identical manner as the primary sport — every character carries out a predetermined set of strikes, after which whoever did extra harm “wins” the battle, with the loser getting pushed again. What strikes characters will use is determined by the place you set them within the formation.
I made a decision to not replay this complete sport as a result of it’s reasonably lengthy and there are different video games I need to get to in 1999. Additionally I discovered it arduous to map the N64 controls to my Dualshock 4 in a manner that felt pure.
Please share your opinions within the feedback if you happen to performed this or OB, however my impression from studying each Japanese and English websites is that individuals who had been massive followers of the unique sport discovered this sport a bit disappointing as a result of the gameplay adjustments on the entire made the battles simpler and fewer strategic (though the start of the sport is a bit tougher). I had the other response as a result of I performed OB64 first and actually appreciated it.
That is the efficient finish of the “predominant” OB sequence video games. There are two extra aspect video games: Prince of Zenobia, and Knight of Lodis. After KoL in 2001, the one different exercise has been two totally different remakes of Techniques Ogre. I’m unsure what the standing of the sequence is or why they by no means made a brand new predominant sport after 1999. By this time Matsuno had already gone to Sq. and labored on Last Fantasy Techniques, and after that did work on FF12 and FF14. Matsuno did be a part of the event workforce for the 2010 remake, however maybe he’s now not enthusiastic about extending the sequence (or there’s no extra viewers for it).
Sorry for one more quick entry of a sport I’m not likely taking part in — subsequent week can also be going to be like that (Haja no Fuin for the Famicom), however then there might be a full publish on Actual Robotic Sensen. Doing this provides me a little bit of a buffer so I don’t want to write down a month of posts on one sport like I did for Vandal Hearts II.
