Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

And, while I in no way regret buying a dying system to play one game, Andrew, I'm looking for some credit for doing so.

Haha! Well done. How far in are you? I expect furious posts once you start having to rescue suicidal friendly AI characters.

[Kupek]

I had one of those battles, probably the first one. After losing a battle four times because some girl didn't have the sense to flee from the attackers and get in range of my cleric, my strategy went from "cautiously pick off the enemy" to "blitz everyone forward until someone is in range to throw a fucking leaf at her."

As for how far in I am, I just had the sit-down with Lanselot, the one who killed Denam and sister's parents. Now my Duke has sent me west. One thing I don't like is how fast they throw out people, place and nationality names. I remember thinking something similar with FFT my first play-through.

[Eric]

After losing a battle four times because some girl didn't have the sense to flee from the attackers and get in range of my cleric, my strategy went from "cautiously pick off the enemy" to "blitz everyone forward until someone is in range to throw a fucking leaf at her."

I laughed entirely too hard at this.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

I had one of those battles, probably the first one. After losing a battle four times because some girl didn't have the sense to flee from the attackers and get in range of my cleric, my strategy went from "cautiously pick off the enemy" to "blitz everyone forward until someone is in range to throw a fucking leaf at her."

Yep. Pro tip: for suicidal AI missions, unequip all of Canopus' armour. Enemies will give preference to attacking him and he can take it, plus without armour his turns will come around a lot sooner.

As for how far in I am, I just had the sit-down with Lanselot, the one who killed Denam and sister's parents. Now my Duke has sent me west. One thing I don't like is how fast they throw out people, place and nationality names. I remember thinking something similar with FFT my first play-through.

Next time you start the game, leave the title screen sitting for a moment and it will play a really informative video that outlines some of the political history of the game's world. I can't believe they don't force you to watch it when you first start. There are so many goddamn factions that you'll be three quarters through the game before you get them all straight.

You're approaching one of the big decision points of the game. Without trying to spoil anything I will tell you that the morally questionable choice will eventually net you the best characters. That said, that you don't need to agonise overmuch about any of the choices in the game, because once you beat it you'll be able to revisit all of them.

[Flip]

That gives a lot away. FAIL!

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

I apologise for spoiling the fact that you might at some point make a choice in a game that is about making choices.

[Shrinweck]

There may be some battles that occur in outer space in Star Wars and there may be some interstellar travel in Star Trek, as well.

Also there may or may not be some metallic bands involved in the Lord of the Rings series.

[Kupek]

Without trying to spoil anything I will tell you that the morally questionable choice will eventually net you the best characters.

Morally questionable? Ha! That's an understatement. I can't help but play a good guy in games, that was a real easy choice to make. But it will be fun when I beat the game to see what the outcome would have been otherwise.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

While all of Denam's possible primary narrative arcs are awesome, I think Law path Denam's was my favourite. There's no evil Denam, so Law path Denam's arc deals a lot with regret.

[Kupek]

I assume "Law Path" means he follows orders?

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Yep. You're on the Chaos path and Neutral opens up later.

[Kupek]

Hmm. When I sat down with Lanselot - the one with the eye patch - I brought up my parents. That's probably Chaos, too.

Edit: Forgot to add that when I play a game, read a book or watch a movie, I tend to identify strongly with the protagonist. So, in games, if I'm given the choice of doing something good or bad, I'm going to choose good because, well, that's what I would do. It's really difficult for me to choose against that inclination even if the story may be better. But! Tactics Ogre seems ideal for this, since I can explore alternate outcomes.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Yeah, I have the same inclination. Always the good guy.

(Note: I am still playing this! Remarkable! I'm three quarters through a no-incapacitions/no-CHARIOT run. No-incaps is less frustrating than I thought it would be. No CHARIOT, on the other hand, is awful. No more abusing the random number generator for item drops!)

[Kupek]

Do you mean no-incapacitions in that you never let a character's HP reach zero, or do you mean you never let them lose a heart? (That is, they lost all HP, then their counter went to 0, and they retired from battle. Which, but the way, is a nice compromise between death just meaning a character is lost in a battle, and death meaning the character is gone for good.)

Also, how can you use the Chartiot system to abuse item drops? Everything I read told me that the same action will always have the same consequence. Did they neglect to keep that true for item drops?

(Implementation aside: they probably keep track of the sequence of pseudo-random numbers they've generated. Which, now that I think about it, I understand that whenever you branch your actions, they maintain both actions and you can switch back-and-forth. But kept unrestrained, that could consume too much memory. I wonder if the extra memory in keeping track of all of that is too small to matter, or if there is a ceiling. I know you can only go back 50 actions, but I don't recall hearing a limit on how much you can branch. I'd actually love to read about how they maintained the ability to not just go back and forth in one timeline, but how they allowed multiple branches. I can conceive of how I would design it, of course, but it's always interesting to read about how it was actually done.)

Also, you were completely right about that beginning movie. That should play when you start a new game. It grounded me in a way that reading little snippets in the Warren report did not.

Also also, I was looking through the Wikipedia page, and apparently the story is inspired by the wars that broke out among the Serbs, Croatians and Albanians during the breakup on the former Yugoslavia.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Do you mean no-incapacitions in that you never let a character's HP reach zero, or do you mean you never let them lose a heart? (That is, they lost all HP, then their counter went to 0, and they retired from battle. Which, but the way, is a nice compromise between death just meaning a character is lost in a battle, and death meaning the character is gone for good.)

The former. No more sending Ninja Denam on suicide runs, sadly. On the other hand I'm no longer spending all my money on Blessing Stones.

Also, how can you use the Chartiot system to abuse item drops? Everything I read told me that the same action will always have the same consequence. Did they neglect to keep that true for item drops?

The same action does always have the same consequence! You can, however, abuse Chariot by changing your actions to get the result you want. Say you know Knight A has a chance to drop a recipe book you're after. You kill him with your archer and he drops a freakin' Tarot card. Well, what you do then is Chariot back to the start of the turn, move the archer one step, and kill him again. Do that for every valid attack point within the archer's movement range. If the dude still won't drop the book, don't kill him with your archer and repeat the process with someone else.

Not being able to do this now is mind-bogglingly frustrating. Certain items drop only from certain enemies, and the drop rates for a lot of these items is low. When the certain enemy you need to kill is eight-maps deep into one of the game's dungeons and you can't abuse Chariot, you either:

* Run the dungeon over and over again until you get the drop, or
* Restart the map when the enemy you're after doesn't drop what you're after (or, if the enemy does drop what you're after, and an enemy gets to his loot bag before you do).

(Implementation aside: they probably keep track of the sequence of pseudo-random numbers they've generated. Which, now that I think about it, I understand that whenever you branch your actions, they maintain both actions and you can switch back-and-forth. But kept unrestrained, that could consume too much memory. I wonder if the extra memory in keeping track of all of that is too small to matter, or if there is a ceiling. I know you can only go back 50 actions, but I don't recall hearing a limit on how much you can branch. I'd actually love to read about how they maintained the ability to not just go back and forth in one timeline, but how they allowed multiple branches. I can conceive of how I would design it, of course, but it's always interesting to read about how it was actually done.)

Definitely interesting. I never managed to hit the branch cap during my first run, and I branched like crazy.

Also also, I was looking through the Wikipedia page, and apparently the story is inspired by the wars that broke out among the Serbs, Croatians and Albanians during the breakup on the former Yugoslavia.

Yeah. Heavy stuff.

[Kupek]

Say you know Knight A has a chance to drop a recipe book you're after. You kill him with your archer and he drops a freakin' Tarot card. Well, what you do then is Chariot back to the start of the turn, move the archer one step, and kill him again. Do that for every valid attack point within the archer's movement range. If the dude still won't drop the book, don't kill him with your archer and repeat the process with someone else.

Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I don't think I have the patience for things like that anymore. I'll just have to do without awesome items.

[Kupek]

I hate undead enemy units.

Hate.

I'm also miffed at Arycelle. Archers should stay in the rear, what a concept. But I can excuse the AI being poor. What I have more difficulty excusing is the leveling system. I know it's better than the original since all class levels is a party-wide thing, but starting classes out at 1 is cumbersome. I just switched Denam to a Ninja, and he was less than useless in his first battle: I had to spend a lot of effort keeping him alive. He's merely not-too-useful in his second battle, but really, it's going to take a few more before I can rely on him.

That I'm willing to put up with that is probably an indication of how good the game is otherwise.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

I had trouble getting my head around undead units the first time around. "Surely the game isn't going to resurrect every undead enemy once their turn counter reaches zero? It couldn't possibly be that cruel." Yes. It could be that cruel, and is.

Arcyelle makes up for her suicidal tendencies when controlled by the AI later in the game. She's a monster.