My Favorite Game: Tactics Ogre: The Knight Of Lodis

While every single one of these reviews and thoughts are biased in my own way, I try to see both the good and the bad in a game and remain as neutral as an optimistic and easily pleased gamer can be, but this will be nothing more than 100% biased. Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis for the Gameboy Advance is by far my favorite game I have ever played. It really doesn’t do anything new to the turn based strategy genre, but it does every TBS/RPG convention right. This game has everything Ogre Battle fans are used to: chaotic and lawful alignments, elements, some old weapons make a comeback, and even Deneb is around. Also, Tactics Ogre included a new medal earning system, where some actions that the specific character partakes in earns him/her a medal, which may have a positive, negative or neutral affect. Some of these medals are needed to change class, which I found to be very refreshing as that character had to prove itself before it could change jobs. The sprites, though small, were great at expressing emotion and the environments were surprisingly detailed. Battles take place on the prerequisite isometric grid, where the players fight the enemies on a turn by turn basis. Battles are always nuanced, with damage changing on direction of attack, type of weapon, elements involved, height and so forth (and this isn’t even including abilities and spells). Battles are also interesting thanks to the weather system, where the rain may flood the stage and movement is hampered per terrain, so when the map floods only a few people can move normally (usually thanks to an item). The main reason this game is the best game I have ever played is the story. I loved this story, for some reason it grabbed my attention and never let go, and remains fluid no matter which branch you take in the story line. As an added bonus, there are different endings base on who lives, who dies, what main characters you manage to get on your party and which paths you take. If you are by chance a fan of Final Fantasy Tactics or any other similar game, I highly recommend playing this game; though don’t go as far as selling your soul to do so, though I would ask you to give the idea careful consideration.

+ Everything

Judgment: 10 ‘I Hope You Saw This Coming’s out of 10