This game looks pretty awful, is nostalgia the only appeal?

[toughnails]

I doubt the gameplay holds up either, heard it was more about the grind than any actual tactics.

[Alilatias]

The primary appeal is the story, which was insanely ambitious for its time and still holds up today from what I hear. I've never had the chance to play it myself, but I've heard people saying that Japanese gamers basically consider this game to be on the same level as how cRPG enthusiasts see Planescape: Torment.

[FireShark]

cool story, keep us updated.

[darkholyPL]

This is one of the best games ever made in the 'tactics' sub-genre and overall, to me, one of the best games period.
It's not for everyone, I can understand that, but if you are into sRPG's at all, then this game is pretty much royalty.
And it's not just simply nostalgia, I've replayed the PSP remake multiple times and had a blast everytime I did (the grinind of classes, that has been changed here btw, notwithstanding...).

[Pacoroto]

Originally posted by darkholyPL:

This is one of the best games ever made in the 'tactics' sub-genre and overall, to me, one of the best games period.
It's not for everyone, I can understand that, but if you are into sRPG's at all, then this game is pretty much royalty.
And it's not just simply nostalgia, I've replayed the PSP remake multiple times and had a blast everytime I did (the grinind of classes, that has been changed here btw, notwithstanding...).

FACTS, 100% agree.
I myself think this is the best SRPG ever created.

[.Blade.]

Originally posted by darkholyPL:

This is one of the best games ever made in the 'tactics' sub-genre and overall, to me, one of the best games period.
It's not for everyone, I can understand that, but if you are into sRPG's at all, then this game is pretty much royalty.
And it's not just simply nostalgia, I've replayed the PSP remake multiple times and had a blast everytime I did (the grinind of classes, that has been changed here btw, notwithstanding...).

Is it though..? I mean I've never personally ran into people actively dogging on things like Disgaea for being worse than Tactics Ogre and generally if someone played something far superior in the past due to nostalgia they'll never shut up about it which makes me think Disgaea is still considered even by those people as the better game or maybe it's just that the story is really the only thing that makes it more desirable but people too ashamed they liked a game for the story over the mechanics.

[darkholyPL]

Originally posted by .Blade.:

Is it though..? I mean I've never personally ran into people actively dogging on things like Disgaea for being worse than Tactics Ogre and generally if someone played something far superior in the past due to nostalgia they'll never shut up about it which makes me think Disgaea is still considered even by those people as the better game or maybe it's just that the story is really the only thing that makes it more desirable but people too ashamed they liked a game for the story over the mechanics.

It is.
First of all, I like Disgaea, I own and have played all of them (sans 6) and enjoyed it.
But Disgaea is a grinder. That's the core feature: you grind. Levels, stats item world ect ect.
It's not any way near the same thing as TO or FFT for that matter. The only 'tactic' in Disgaea is 'my stats are better than yours'
And sure you don't have to play it like that, but that's how it was designed. It's 'tactics' lite.

[Smurf]

Originally posted by darkholyPL:

Originally posted by .Blade.:

Is it though..? I mean I've never personally ran into people actively dogging on things like Disgaea for being worse than Tactics Ogre and generally if someone played something far superior in the past due to nostalgia they'll never shut up about it which makes me think Disgaea is still considered even by those people as the better game or maybe it's just that the story is really the only thing that makes it more desirable but people too ashamed they liked a game for the story over the mechanics.

It is.
First of all, I like Disgaea, I own and have played all of them (sans 6) and enjoyed it.
But Disgaea is a grinder. That's the core feature: you grind. Levels, stats item world ect ect.
It's not any way near the same thing as TO or FFT for that matter. The only 'tactic' in Disgaea is 'my stats are better than yours'
And sure you don't have to play it like that, but that's how it was designed. It's 'tactics' lite.

Pretty much this.

Disgaea tries to accomplish something different. Also you're not missing out on much for 6 except the auto battle functionality and usual humor. Of course a person can always try to challenge themselves in Disgaea, but even the core game mechanics direct people to grinding characters and items and then re-grinding them so it becomes that stat-fest. The Dark Assembly proves that fact. I remember in 5 they added a class that hits all enemies with its skills. Literally grinding that unit up enough trivializes most gameplay.

I own every Disgaea as well and I happen to enjoy the item world, geo panel, evilities being introduced later in the series, and magichange (when present in a game) features. 5 Also introduced meter to power up characters during battle which is cool. But it makes you use your head for tactical ways of improving your units more than ways to fight in battles. But it'll never surpass Tactics Ogre in my book personally. Or anything Ogre Battle related. There's probably fans who like Disgaea more as my own brother proves this. He literally does everything in every Disgaea I buy him. He and I at least agree -the original- FFT is the top for JRPG Tactcs genre.

[Silfie]

I see a lot of hate for FFT in the discussions here. I gave this game a fair try back on the PSP days but I found it pretty dull and slow.
It looks pretty imo, but Is story the only major appeal?

I love games with a good class system, but from what I recall, tactics ogre suffers from the age old "martial classes have passive skills and normal attacks, and magic users get to have fun". Never had this problem in any of the FFT games.

Am I wrong with this? Does it get more exciting later? I remember putting quite a few hours into it.
I tend to dislike games that do that, seems to be prevalent lesson to learn in terrible class gameplay design.

[kalanyr]

At least on the PSP version it is *extremely* hard to grind in this game for levels or skills until very late in the game. There's a post-game level equalizing mechanic that kicks in if you level too much, and certain items can become unobtainable if you overlevel Denam.

You can certainly do some equipment shenanigans via grinding but it's still pretty limited (the way crafting unlocks mostly limits you to stuff around your tier until very late game).

I guess you could grind Tarot cards but I farmed enough of the missable items for every character + unlocked Deneb with her secret class as early as possible and got minimal stat advantages from the Tarot. Or Auction monsters for stat boosting items, but capturing monsters is extremely unrelable so you'll be Charioting a lot.

Though with a few exceptions (the Dark Knights have hilariously inflated stats and there's a handful of maps that put you in an incredible bad position (rescue/escort missions in particular are terrible because the AI is not good)) this is not a particularly hard game as far as tactics games goes during the story. The post game is much much harder though.

Also to some extent it shows its age in hiding critical information from the player (there's various drops that you'd never find without a guide or systematically doing unintuitive things like killing off a story character you'd have to have recruited to reach certain areas) without any clues at all.

[kalanyr]

Originally posted by Silfie:

I see a lot of hate for FFT in the discussions here. I gave this game a fair try back on the PSP days but I found it pretty dull and slow.
It looks pretty imo, but Is story the only major appeal?

I love games with a good class system, but from what I recall, tactics ogre suffers from the age old "martial classes have passive skills and normal attacks, and magic users get to have fun". Never had this problem in any of the FFT games.

Am I wrong with this? Does it get more exciting later? I remember putting quite a few hours into it.
I tend to dislike games that do that, seems to be prevalent lesson to learn in terrible class gameplay design.

This game is not well designed balance wise. (To be clear I'm talking about the PSP version here, this remaster may be better)

Weapons have special skills but they are harder to learn and use than magic but are generally more powerful. Some physical classes get interesting active skills. But for most of the story the best physical attack is having a bow/crossbow and shooting your enemy in the face from extreme elevation.

The best end game builds are all about Elemental Weapons and maxing out the skill that increases damage for that Element and Utility Magic.

Magic varies wildly in power throughout the game depending on how long it is since you got a magic upgrade that your classes can use.

Hybrid classes generally do not work, though some of them can still function as dedicated classes.
The Valkyrie/Rune Knight is a good early game class (maybe a little too good) but it's growth is terrible and it struggles to do damage at all by mid-late story. The Ninja is an extremely deadly physical attacker and Utility based Ninjutsu is often extremely good but Ninjutsu based on Magic is useless for a Ninja unless you boost their stats yourself. The Terror Knight is kind of useless too.

[Silfie]

Originally posted by kalanyr:

Originally posted by Silfie:

-.

This game is not well designed balance wise.

Weapons have special skills but they are harder to learn and use than magic but are generally more powerful. Some physical classes get interesting active skills. But for most of the story the best physical attack is having a bow/crossbow and shooting your enemy in the face from extreme elevation.

The best end game builds are all about Elemental Weapons and maxing out the skill that increases damage for that Element and Utility Magic.

Magic varies wildly in power throughout the game depending on how long it is since you got a magic upgrade that your classes can use.

Hybrid classes generally do not work, though some of them can still function as dedicated classes.
The Valkyrie/Rune Knight is a good early game close (maybe a little too good) but it's growth is terrible and it struggles to do damage at all by mid-late story. The Ninja is an extremely deadly physical attacker and Utility based Ninjutsu is often extremely good but Ninjutsu based on Magic is useless for a Ninja unless you boost their stats yourself. The Terror Knight is kind of useless too.

I'm usually a big fan of hybrid classes since they tend to be the most fun aspects of 2 distinct playstyles put together when done well, stuff like Samurai in FFT or Red Mage in general are some of my favorite classes. It's a shame to hear that it's not done well here.

I don't mind not being optimal in loadouts as long as stuff is good enough/can be made to work for the story. I rarely delve into optional endgame challenges.

[toughnails]

Given all the Disgaea comparisons in this thread, I guess there's a lot of grinding to be done. Very disapppointing.

I much prefer games where you use your brain instead of just overleveling your dudes and steamrolling through missions "for the story" (which I could care less about in a video game).

[kalanyr]

(This is all from the PSP game so some mechanics may change in this remake).

It's way more like FFT than Disgaea. Though that's still not a perfect match (characters learn skills from classes but classes have a list of skills they are permitted to equip, that's a superset of the skills they can learn, so eg a Knight can't use Dark Magic even if the character in the Knight class knows it). You also can't change class freely because they require class tokens for each change, common classes can be bought at stores, some rare classes can be bought at particular stores, but a few classes require you to grind their tokens from special battles, though those are usually limited to specific characters. And some of the secret classes are extremely hard to access.

And again there's not really any call for grinding during the main story (apart from recruiting Deneb with her Wicce class and that's item grinding not level grinding), the game isn't particularly hard for the most part, though there's a few maps that are weirdly difficult.

You will probably need to grind to begin the 2nd part of the post game content and again for the very finale of the post game content to get the Bragging Rights Reward. And to do the Palace of the Dead.

[sorethroat]

Originally posted by toughnails:

Given all the Disgaea comparisons in this thread, I guess there's a lot of grinding to be done. Very disapppointing.

I much prefer games where you use your brain instead of just overleveling your dudes and steamrolling through missions "for the story" (which I could care less about in a video game).

You don't have to kill things to gain XP, unlike Disgaea

[kalanyr]

Originally posted by sorekara:

Originally posted by toughnails:

Given all the Disgaea comparisons in this thread, I guess there's a lot of grinding to be done. Very disapppointing.

I much prefer games where you use your brain instead of just overleveling your dudes and steamrolling through missions "for the story" (which I could care less about in a video game).

You don't have to kill things to gain XP, unlike Disgaea

Disgaea has given XP for healing, buffing and item use for quite a while now.