Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13716 in Video Games
• Released on: 2002-05-06
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Game Boy Advance

Amazon.com Product Description
Based on the popular Ogre Battle games, Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis marks the first installment of the series on a portable platform. As Alphonse, a knight of Galicia, you're sent to investigate the intentions of the suspect governing body of the Holy Lodis Empire and solve the mystery of Ovis. Players will encounter many battles to test their wit and strength, and their experiences will determine the true nature of their characters, as well as game's possible endings. The game offers more than 40 hours of gameplay, as well as a head-to-head battle mode via the separately sold Game Boy Advance link cable.

Customer Reviews

A handheld Tactics Ogre worthy of its console predecessors
OK. First off, Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis is a sidestory (the intro calls it an "excerpt") that's only tangentially related to the three games in the larger Ogre Battle Saga. It takes place 22 years before the events chronicled in those three games - Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, and Ogre Battle 64. It's not a GBA remake of the original Tactics Ogre (although that would be nice).

Now that that's out of the way, let's get to the game. Like the original Tactics Ogre, this game is a strategy/RPG much like Final Fantasy Tactics (which boasted many of the same designers, and which has been announced for GBA release). It's completely two-dimensional, and in graphics greatly resembles the original TO, though the colors are much more vivid this time around. What this means is that the graphics are about Super NES quality - not at all bad for a handheld system.

The difficulty has been reduced from the previous games. I consider this a good thing, as its predecessor especially had a tendency to be unbalanced. This doesn't, however, mean it's easy or simple - there's enough in this little cartridge to keep you playing for a couple of months, at least.

The sound is unfortunately tinny coming from the GBA speakers, but with headphones it should be better. The music is also nice, except for the aforementioned tinniness.

In this game, you play Alphonse Loeher, a young knight who has come to the island of Ovis with his commander Rictor. As in the other Ogre Battle games, eventually you fall out with your original group and must forge a new path of your own, determined by your decisions. There are two distinct routes (that I know of), each of which has its own special characters and sidequests. Two words: replay value. Lots of it.

This was the game that prompted me to get a Game Boy Advance, and I haven't regretted it one bit.

Battle strategy game that takes RPGs to a new level
This is a surprisingly entertaining turn based battle strategy / RPG with a strong story. I'm not one for story so I will tell you about the game itself. You are a commander of a band of do-gooders, who set out to save a land from an evil empire and various quests along the way. So why is this surprisingly entertaining? This has to be one of the most realistic role-playing games in existence. With a normal RPG, you wander the countryside looking for a battle, when you find it, you have a choice, fight, use magic or run. With Ogre Tactics, when you battle you see an entire landscape of a battle area, trees you can hide behind, mountains, water and so on. Where you must then control each character of your army (up to eight can be in a battle at a time). Control them to move, fight, use spells, special abilities, items, and use real battle tactics! Maneuver a character behind an enemy and have them stab the enemy in the back! Have your archers take the high ground and bombard the enemy with arrows or you can fight the enemy head on! There are dozens of weapons, spells with dazzling graphics, armor and so on to equip to characters of your army. The reason why I am calling members of your army "characters" is because there are several character classes, such as knights, soldiers, magicians, clerics, archers, ninjas, beast tamers, dragon tamers and yes even monsters like octopuses, lions, fairies, devils, griffins and dragons can be a part of your army. You can either hire the characters in shops, or on the battlefield you can convince enemies to join your army!

It's no FF Tactics, but it's still pretty good.
If you love strategy RPG's, like your games easy, and can tolerate playing on a screen the size of a postage stamp, then you'll find many hours of enjoyment here. With over 40 hours of game-play, and multiple endings you could spend quite a while with this one. For me though, one time through was enough. It's just not on the same level as Final Fantasy Tactics, but then, few games are.

Tactics Ogre looks and plays almost exactly like FF Tactics and most other strategy RPG's. You place your soldiers on a grid and take turns with the computer trying to eliminate each-others units. Each unit will receive experience points for each attack, and will level up when they reach 100. Yada yada yada...if you've played other strategy RPG's, you know the drill. There's not much new stuff here, but that's okay by me, cause I can't seem to get enough of these games.

Really my only major complaint with this game is the complete lack of difficulty. To me, what made FF Tactics so great was the incredible level of difficulty, which forced you to learn all of the games' intricacies in order to survive. Tactics Ogre, on the other hand, is so easy you can pretty much charge haphazardly into any battle, with no thought or plan, and you'll still come through with all your units alive. There are really only two places in the game that present anything even remotely resembling a challenge; and that's just because they force you to split your party into two groups. However, despite this total lack of challenge, I still had quite a bit of fun.

You see, Tactics Ogre has this great little "emblem" system, which really adds a lot of depth to the game. (Though, not nearly as deep as the job system in FFT.) You are rewarded with these emblems for performing various acts during battle. For instance, if you charge in and attack the enemy from the front you will receive a "knights certificate", or if you attack an enemy from a long distance with a bow you will receive a "sniper emblem". These emblems are necessary in order to change a characters class. The characters attributes, alignment, and emblems received, determine which classes the character will be able to change to. (And in some cases amount and/or type of enemies killed are also a factor.) These emblems are what kept me playing the game. I had lots of fun trying out new tactics to see what emblems I could receive next, and then what new classes those emblems would open up.

I found the story in Tactics Ogre to be the usual Japanese RPG tripe. If you play these games for the stories, then I really can't say whether you'll find this one good or not, as I find the story-lines in almost every Japanese RPG to be poorly translated, cliché ridden, rubbish. Fortunately, the story doesn't get in the way too much here. None of the cut-scenes are terribly long, and the focus of the game is clearly on game-play.

Overall, I found Tactics Ogre to be a great little game. It's no FF Tactics, but it's a heck of a lot better than recent strategy RPG's such as Hoshigami and Saiyuki. It could have reached "great" status if they just would have upped the difficulty a bit.

Sound: 9/10
About as good as you can get on the GBA's tinny sounding speaker.

Graphics: 9/10
Looks just like FF Tactics. The only difference being that the map is not rendered, meaning that it can not be rotated.

Controls: 9/10
Not really a factor in a strategy RPG, but I had no difficulty navigating the many menus.

Game-play: 7/10
Too easy. Could have been great if they just would have upped the difficulty a bit.

Final Score: 8/10
Not as good as FF Tactics, but definitely worth playing.