Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (2010)

Just beat my first playthrough. Some thoughts:

+I really enjoyed the story and characters. They seemed to have clearly defined motivations.

+Class levels are a neat idea. You don’t have to worry about new characters being underleveled if you assign them to a class you’ve already leveled up.

+Choices actually matter. Not only do they matter, it isn’t immediately obvious what decision you should make like it is in other games. The different routes add replayability.

+A ton of classes to choose from. Offers freedom with how to create your party.

+Weather system seems neat. Different times of the year will have different weather, which will affect the map layouts.

-I hate the camera. You got 2 variations of top-down and 1 isometric view. I would’ve preferred being able to rotate the stage like in FFT.

-Game is super grindy. Levels determine what items you can equip and what skills you can use. Not only do you have to level up your classes, you also have to get SP to unlock skills. And even when you get a skill, you might have to level up the skills themselves. It’s like a worse version of FF2’s progression system because you have to unlock the skill and equip it before proficiency with it increases. This problem is exacerbated by how long it actually takes to level up skills.

-Game seems less customizable than FFT. I was hoping to unlock a skill from one class to be able to use it as another class, but that doesn’t seem to be possible for the most part.

-Class marks add inconvenience to changing classes. I would’ve preferred free changing like in FFT.

-Story battles are pretty brutal at times. It’s common to see the enemy outnumber you and have insane terrain advantage. A lot of the game is getting bombarded by archers as you slowly try to make your way to them. A pretty decent strategy is to stay at where you spawned and have the enemies slowly approach you so you can handle a few enemies at once.

-Some of the side quests are a bit too well hidden. Some of the requirements to start or continue a quest are obscure, which is particularly annoying when there is a tight window for participating in the quest.

-Guest character AI is absolutely horrendous. They will do everything in their power to prevent you from saving them.

-A bit confusing what classes can and can’t do. For example, even if a class can use divine magic, that doesn’t mean that they will be able to use all of the divine magic spells. The same goes for equips, which just adds more confusion.

-Movement seems worse across the board in comparison to FFT. Classes have less movement in general, there’s no equips that improve movement, there are enemy auras that impede movement, and the level design makes it harder to get around.

I enjoyed my playthrough of the game, but I still enjoy FFT more. Im still debating whether I want to do the post-game or if I want to stop since I saw the credits. I’m still enjoying myself, but it’s a long game.