Gameplay, Story and Value:
Ogre Battle is branded as a tactical RPG, but honestly I have a hard time labeling it as such. Any RPG elements are extremely light, if even existent, and the tactical portion of the game feels extremely passive.
When you first start playing you're asked to answer a series of questions meant to define what kind of leader you are. Over the course of this questionnaire you'll acquire various Tarot Cards which can later be used in combat for different effects. After that you'll start your first mission.
During this "tutorial" mission you'll learn that the world is under the control of an evil empire and only you can stop him because reasons. The story itself is incredibly vague and generic, barely existent really. Over the course of the light tutorial you'll learn how to move and deploy units, liberate towns and temples and finally engage in a single round of combat against an old man.
Before each mission you're able to customize your squads, of which you are given nine. Squads consist of up to five small units, three small units and one large unit, or two large units and one small unit. Depending on what units are in a squad, that squad will gain movement and combat advantages on certain types of terrain.
The problem is that any information that isn't obvious is completely cryptic. The meaning behind many stats, how units interact with each other within a squad, how leadership and alliance works, effects from items, effects from Tarot Cards, which units get priority in determining a squad's movement bonus... All of these mechanics are left thoroughly unexplained.
Squads are formed and you're ready jump into the "battle" portion of Ogre Battle, right? Well not so fast. Ogre Battle doesn't quite play like a traditional tactics game in that there are no tiles, movement ranges or turns. It runs in real time, but isn't quite a real time strategy game either. The closest genre I think I could apply to Ogre Battle on the SNES is "Weird Tower Defense Game". Think GrimGrimoire only less good.
Squads are deployed and sent to a targeted destination. If this destination is a town or temple, they'll liberate it which earns you a tarot card along with other perks like being able to shop or recruit new units. Recruiting units is awkward in the sense that you can only recruit a unit is your squad has room for it, but you'd be hurting yourself by not having a full squad which means I generally was unable to recruit units...
Once your squad comes in contact with an enemy squad you'll do battle. Normally, in a game like this, combat would play out in one of two ways: Either both squads attack each other until one dies, or each squad gets one attack and all surviving units wait for their next chance to act. Instead, combat will simply end after either a certain amount of time has passed or, more likely, a certain amount of damage has been dealt, after that a winner will be decided. This means a few things. First, battles end seemingly randomly. Your only real ability to interact in battles comes in the form of activating Tarot Cards for various effects, and if you don't actually know when a battle is going to end, it's impossible to decided whether a card should actually be used.
The next issue is when it comes to actually determining who has won a battle. Even if your entire squad is left alive and you've taken out the opposing squad leader, you can still LOSE the battle in the event the enemy got more damage off on you over the course of the skirmish!
Presentation, Music and Sound:
Despite the frequent information overload, the menus in the game are all neat, clean and pleasant to look at. It's easy to quickly find any information you may be looking for which helps things run fairly smoothly. The combat graphics are very nice, which all the sprites looking great and having some solid animation. Where I feel things suffer visually is when you're actually on the world map.
Units and squads are represented by silver and gold tokens, almost like something out of a board game. These tokens aren't particularly informative, and I really just don't like the way they look in the field. Even the field itself uses this weird light Mode-7 effect which just makes everything look all the more out of place.
Music is fine and suits the atmosphere well enough, though nothing really stands out about it. Sound is good as well with a few digitized samples thrown in for various events.
Afterthoughts:
I first started getting into JRPG's in the mid-late 90's with Final Fantasy II and III, then Breath of Fire, and for a while that was basically it. That would eventually change when my friends and I really started dabbling in emulators, opening up a whole world of otherwise inaccessible games. Of course this meant there was research to be done if we were to know which games to start hunting for, and Ogre Battle was always one of those games that would come up in conversation. "Oh, you haven't played Ogre Battle?", we'd say, "Well you should, it's a classic!", we'd say... having never actually played it of course.
It's always bothered me that I've never really played any of the games in this series up until now, and my expectations make my actual experience all the more disappointing. I can see how, for its time, this would have madethe perfect kind of game for a certain type of person, but for me it just fell flat.
Review:
Gameplay:
