Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis
SRPG - Game Boy Advance
Backup Memory - 3 save slots / 1 quicksave
1 Player
When I played this entry in the series, I hadn't tried out the original Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together. This GBA offering is set in the same universe as LUCT, and is called "Gaiden" or sidestory in Japan. Unfortunately, several members of Quest, the creators of the Ogre games, have joined Square, leaving this franchise with newcomers and a handful of the old staff. Let's see if they can duplicate the efforts of the old Quest.
Graphics:
In SRPG tradition, you get a 3D'ish isometric view of maps and the units. Although it's generally pretty good looking, there are definitely some locales that are missing any semblence of personality and color. But I really enjoyed the sprite-based characters and their animations. Cut scenes are shown in real-time with dialog boxes, so there's a consistent look throughout the game.
Sound:
The music is fairly typical of the genre and accompanies the battles well. The only problem is that there's so little of it that you'll be hearing the same BGMs over and over for hours on end. So it'd be nice if there were more variety to it. Otherwise it matches the mood the game is trying to convey.
Gameplay:
Absolutely boring. I remember being excited for this title, having never played a TO game. Unanimous praise from all people and publications fueled my interest. But when I actually started playing it, I just got bored quickly. TO:KoL is easily the worst SRPG I've played.
You know the drill. You pick units and place them on a grid. Every turn, you move each individual unit, attacking or healing if necessary, with the goal of terminating the enemy units one by one. So you use your melee units to take them straight on, and use spellcasters and ranged units to clean them up from afar.
But where KoL fails is that it's nothing more than that. Shining Force 3 has a friendship system where each character gets bonuses based on vicinity and assistance. Super Robot Wars and various others have defense settings where you could defend, counterattack or dodge. Black/Matrix has you consider the effect of dead corpses on the ground. TO:KoL just strips the SRPG down to its basic nature of moving and attacking. The only strategy to employ is surrounding an enemy unit and hitting them til they're dead. But in games like Langrisser and Advance Wars, there are consequences to sticking a particular unit next to an enemy so it's actually a risk. Here, it's pretty negligible whether you stick a wizard or a knight to block an enemy's path.
Herein lies another of TO's faults. It's easy. The AI is dumb as a brick. Sometimes they could be in range to kill one of your party members on their turn, but instead do something absolutely illogical. Sure that means less frustration for you, but if you wanted a game to hold your hand, why do you play games in the first place? Even later levels are not much harder. I've come across one level where I actually had to plan out what I'd do. One level out of the 40 odd scenarios they throw at you.
And worst of all, the pacing is extremely slow. You can't choose to skip animations, nor can you do anything to speed up the slow walk speeds of the characters. Due to lack of GBA buttons, there's no shortcut buttons for anything, so you must navigate through menus to do every little thing. Everything moves so sluggishly that it's no wonder I'm so bored.
The main draw of the Ogre series is how you can change classes. There's about 12 or so classes in the game. Some are pretty similar (Cleric vs Priest for instance), and some are completely different. In order to become a specific class, you have to fulfill a set of invisible requirements. In general, one of these requirements are medals. That's what's new in this outing. Depending on what you do, you are rewarded with medals that either help your stats or can allow a class change. But unfortunately, obtaining these medals also end up being fulfilling a list of invisible requirements. Invisible meaning without GameFAQs.com, you wouldn't know how to get many of the medals, and thus many of the classes. How's that for game design?
Even more ridiculous is the last battle of the game. It's so ridiculous that I'm just going to say it. The game forces you to fight 5 fights in a row with no ability to save, aside from the 1 quicksave. In the very last battle, if you just happened to not have a specific item equipped, you cannot damage the last boss at all. They don't tell you this until you try to attack the last boss and by then you can't switch chars/equip anymore. So the game "story" continues and has the last boss annihilate your party, and you get the bad ending with credits and all. That means if I want a chance at the good ending, I've got to fight 5 more 1-hr long battles from the last point they let me save. Brilliant game design.
Replay Value:
At some point, you can open up a Quest mode where you can play isolated fight scenarios. There are also multiple endings in TO:KoL so you can replay again and make different decisions to see if you can get a different ending. Of course, this in no way excuses that the game sucks, so you wouldn't even want to waste more of your life playing it.
Overall:
Another "gem" deemed by the masses that is just junk. A strategy game without difficulty is no strategy game at all. Add in painfully slow animations, a stripped-down-to-minimum SRPG engine, and some truly terrible decisions in game design and you've got Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis. I honestly can not see any redeeming factors to this game. It took me over a year to finish and I only got there because I forced myself to, in hopes that I would find something others were seeing in it. But alas, my frustrations just grew as the months went by. If there's any plus to it, the storyline is quite elaborate. A little too elaborate for me, as I lost track of it way early in the game, but people familiar with the Ogre universe will probably get it. It's not that it is terribly terribly bad... but all the flaws contribute to one heckuva boring game. Recommended only if you like the Ogre saga story. Otherwise, don't bother.
