June, 2020, Together Retro - Strategy RPGs!

[alienjesus]

As well as Fire Emblem 4, which I'm posting about in the Summer Games Challenge thread, today I started up Crystal Warriors for the Game Gear. It's a very simple SRPG - the plot is super basic and the game mechanics are also simple. You have a party of up to 9 heroes, and each chapter you must rout the enemies on the battlefield or seize their castle to win. You definitely want to rout enemies though because exp and money is limited and you'll want lots of it.

The game has permadeath, so you'll take things carefully, but it's not as speedy as something like Fire Emblem - it normally takes several rounds of pummeling enemies to kill them and so it's more of a brawl.

The game has an elemental system - fire units beat wind, wind beats water and water beats fire. Earth units are neutral to everything. Your main character plus all healers and mages are earth type, so it's just melee fighters who worry about elements really.

You can fight monsters on the map and catch them, and they can be used to sub in during battle. This is useful for switching in a better element monster if you're attacked by your weakness, or allowing an expendable monster to take a hit for you if you're close to dying.

Between levels you go to a town where you can buy weapons or magic, and sometimes recruit characters - but they're quite pricy, so actually you have to be quite thoughtful with your money as you can't afford everything.

It's decent enough so far, if a little low budget feeling.

[SpaceBooger]

I second that the mechanics of Blazing Heroes/Legend of Mysteria (the version I have) plays great but is ugly. I played through it almost to the end when it came out and tried to play it again a couple of months ago and it didn't age well and I only played it for one sitting. After beating Shining Force when it came out I have been craving for more. I tried many games but they weren't SF so I gave up on them, possibly prematurely, until SF2 came out.

Ok, I guess I'll play, but I need help picking what to play:
1. Finish my Shining Force CD save that I have been playing slowly over the years. (Beat SF 1 and 2 multiple times)
2. Langrisser (Warsong) for the Genesis (never tried)
3. Dark Wizzard for the SCD (tried and gave up because it wasn't SF back in the day)
4. Langrisser IV (never played it or any in the series... but heard great things about it)
5. Albert Odyssey (pick one - I have the collection for the PS1)
6. Tactics Orge (I have the PS1 version and the N64 on virtual console)

I know that there are a lot of options to choose from... and that is why I haven't started yet. I love SRPG, but crave the simplicity of Shining Force and get lost in the more confusing ones. So, please help me out with choosing from this list or suggest something else that is not on this list these are just the games I have accessible right now.

[marurun]

I think Tactics Ogre would be a great pick to dive into.

[SpaceBooger]

I think Tactics Ogre would be a great pick to dive into.

Ok, which one would be a good start: SNES, PS1 or N64?

[marurun]

The PS1 version is the second-best version of the original Tactics Ogre. I don't know anything about Ogre Battle 64, unfortunately.

[MrPopo]

Ogre Battle 64 plays as a less obtuse Ogre Battle (easier to manipulate alignment, don't need to have alignments that don't cap at the extremes). It plays very different from Tactics Ogre.

[SpaceBooger]

Ogre Battle 64 plays as a less obtuse Ogre Battle (easier to manipulate alignment, don't need to have alignments that don't cap at the extremes). It plays very different from Tactics Ogre.

Is that good or bad?
I'm leaning toward trying the PS1 version tonight.

[MrPopo]

Saying whether Tactics Ogre is better or worse than Ogre Battle is like comparing SotN to Mario World. They're both platformers, but otherwise the sheer number of differences means that a better or worse judgement comes down more to your particular tastes in games.

[alienjesus]

More crystal warriors today.

I played through the next 2 chapters, and have started seeing higher level opponents, which are much more threatening - I came close to dying for the first time. Luckily, I have purchased a heal spell for the main character, and recruited a second healer to boot, so for now keeping people alive isn't too bad. The recruitable monsters are proving their effectiveness too - when attacked, enemies normally get 2 attacks on you, but if you react to the first one by summoning a monster, they'll attack that the second time instead, reducing your damage.

Levelling up your party is a bit of a balancing act - only gaining KOs gets experience, so healers normally need to be fed kills a bit due to their very low damage output. They also need to spend a turn attacking instead of healing, so it's a bit of a liability. Other units just have to make sure they get the final kill - I've been trying to level up the team fairly evenly so far.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Finished chapter 17 of Book 1 of FE: Mystery of the Emblem last night. I should be done with Book 1 over the next day or two. I'm still really enjoying it, even if there are some utterly baffling design decisions that really speak to just what an early entry this is. My two biggest complaints are the UI (which is a real pain in the ass that you have to do your own calculations for how much damage you'll do to an enemy and such, what the actual attack range of an enemy is, etc) and the fact that not all unit types can promote. I used Barts (the blue-haired member of the axe trio you get near the start) through the whole damn game and was just waiting to get his upgrade item until I got so fed up with waiting that I looked up where one was. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it's simply that no such item exists! What the heckin' heck