Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

As a precursor in terms of gameplay to Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance, Tactics Ogre is a good strategy rpg for the game boy advance. I kind of forgot the story(like almost all games) but you follow the path of a young man on his adventures, just like most RPGs.

Just like almost every strategy-rpg, there's a decent amount of classes to choose from, you know, your average warrior, ninja, white mage, black mage assortment and are allowed to take up to 8 characters on the field of battle with you. You can recruit allies(and even creatures) to do battle with your opponents, who you can also persuade mid-battle if they are at low enough health. Each class has its own abilities, some cost MP or other action points, and of course the classes are all leaned towards a certain stat(s). You can change classes once you meet certain stat requirements, and it's sort of cool because if you see an enemy that is of a class you haven't obtained yet, you can check his status which lets you see the requirements for that class.

The battle fields are all pretty large, partly because you can take 8 whole characters onto the field. So the movement stat becomes that much more important, and when you're trudging across dozens of panels while being bombarded by arrows, you might want to reconsider bringing that 4-panel mover dragon, despite it's high attack.

The game is actually fairly hard, but nothing a few random battles on the world map couldn't overcome. The graphics are only decent at best, and the sound is pretty average too. The game will last you probably 20-30 hours, and there are a few sidequests you can do.

The games main fault is that it becomes kind of boring after awhile. If you've ever played Final Fantasy Tactics advance, it does better in almost everything that this game has going for it, including sound, graphics, class types, abilities, and, most importantly, a strong theme. The monsters are all standard fairytale type, you'll see dragons, zombies, ghosts, knights, but no interesting creatures like flans, or bombs, or even bosses that aren't humans.

Although you should remember that this game came out several years before FFT:A, and it did lay the bases for that amazing game, I am judging it by today's videogame standards. If you're looking for a good strategy-rpg GBA game, this game is at least worth checking out.