Release Date : 05/01/1998       Genre: Strategy       Number of Players: 1       Platform: PlayStation GAME SUMMARY: YAfter generations of war between the various ethnic groups, King Dogare brought peace to the land of Valeria. When the king dies Valeria is split into three different groups, each claiming the throne. You take the role of a young boy as he embarks on a quest to save the land from turmoil and assume the throne. You will have to journey throughout the land and recruit members for an army. Once recruited, the members will gain experience through the turn-based battles. Up to 10 party members can participate in any battle. Eventually, the characters can change classes and learn skills that are specific to each class. However, you will have to make sure your party is balanced or you will face certain doom. Will you be able to save the world from chaos in Tactics Ogre? TIPS: General Strategies 1. Creating Your Army When creating your army, pay close attention to character alignment and gender while recruiting your army’s initial troops. Alignment and gender, combined with unit stats (STR, VIT , INT, MEN, AGI, DEX) ultimately determine a character’s class. Collecting a wide range of different character classes would be the best beginning strategy, then once you have become accustomed to all the classes and feel that you know which ones suit your needs the best. Select the ones that you enjoy the most and then modify your army accordingly. Some units are more effective then others, in certain battles. Generally, you would want a nice mixture of fighter support, mainly to deal out damage and to take in the big hits… and some mages to cast damaging spells. Clerics and Priests to heal your damaged units. If you are interesting in adding some monsters or beasts into your group, be sure to raise them correctly. Most importantly, raise the monsters that you want. In the long run adding a lich to your army will greatly increase your army’s skills because of his wide range of spells. Hawk men are highly useful because of their long range lightning attack, which could kill off many units early in the game. Additionally they are flying units that have superior movement over various terrain. Priests do all the healing for you, so they are extremely important to have. Resurrection, a spell that could be obtained later in the game, could determine the difference between winning and loosing a battle. Ninjas have the ability to cast low level mage spells, as well as fight decently so its nice to keep them handy. Finally, Angel Knights are unique units who have a wide range of abilities, including healing your undead party members (if you have any) Most important of all, level up your characters! Use training mode to level up safely. 2. Know Your Goals Know your mission objectives, if you are surrounded by enemy units and are loosing troops, the best way to turn the tide is to satisfy what you need to accomplish. If all you need to do is defeat the enemy leader, then do so and live to fight another day. Defeating all the units would be the most ideal thing to do, allowing you to receive all the treasures and hidden equipment in the game, but before doing so, be sure to make sure that this goal is attainable. If your characters are having difficulty in advancing in the story line, maybe you should load up a previous save and instead of advancing, level up your characters for a while. This way, you will increase your chances in winning battles. Otherwise, if you decide to defeat everything on the map. Be sure to use a technique commonly known in strategy games as a focused attack. If you concentrate your attacks on a single enemy unit and defeat them all one at a time. It will result in one less unit that you will have to worry about on the map. Use your army effectively as a team. The outcome of one-on-one battles is generally determined by the level of the units who are participating. Remember a damaged unit still does as much damage as a fully healed unit, so its better to wipe out the enemy army a unit at a time. 3. Preventing Counterattacks There are three ways to easily prevent the enemy from counterattacking, which is always a good thing if possible. Attack indirectly, even at point-blank range, with a Bow or Crossbow, hit them from two squares away with a Spear or Whip (Assuming that they have only a close-range weapon), or attack from several height units above. Keeping distance between you and the enemy is desirable granted they don’t have the ability to damage you back. This could save you critical hit points, which in turn save your healing units magic points. 4. Dealing Out More Damage Attacking from the side or from behind seriously cuts down on an enemy's chance of blocking your attack. Do so whenever possible to maximize your potential damage. 5. Bows vs Crossbows Bows and crossbows which one to use. Well, since crossbows are lighter and have a higher hit rate, they are a good backup weapon for melee units like a knight. However, they cannot shoot outside their indicated range like a bow and they also cannot occasionally shoot over obstacles like buildings and other tall objects. You should keep archers equipped with bows because of their overall versatility. 6. Avoiding Friendly Fire When using an area effect spell or a long range attack, be sure to take caution in arranging the attack. Sometimes you may accidentally damage your own units, causing un-necessary damage to take place. Typical instances include, area effect spells, characters equipped with long range weapons like bows, crossbows, guns, spears and whips. 7. Shield Attack! Attacking with a shield does seem pointless, but you could use this ability to push or knock enemy units backwards. Since damage is minimal, you might want to reserve this attack for the proper moments. Removing unwanted enemy units from a rooftop, or even getting rid of enemy units who position themselves next to a pit. 8. Selecting the Proper Magic When choosing what kind of magic to use with a certain unit, be sure to keep the caster’s preferred element in mind. Spells of their element will have a higher damage and success rate modifier. Every little detail could help out the victory of your army. 9. Gaining Experience / Gaining Levels Leveling up and gaining experience is the most crucial aspect of this game. It is also the most repetitive and tedious. Defeating enemies below your level gives you 1 EXP something that is a fact of life, nothing could change that it’s a good idea to challenge enemies who are of a higher level. Defeating someone at your level gives you a decent amount. Likewise, defeating units level higher than you gives you even more. Remember defeating anyone higher than that gives you an instant level-up. Keep this in mind while you are training your troops. While you are training your troops, try to have a few units who is stronger than the rest of your army. Then, have your units divided into high level characters on one side and lower level characters on another. Place healing units with the high level team. And since the lower level team is going to be at a disadvantage, award them with additional troops to outnumber the opposing forces. Have the lower level characters attack and damage the higher level characters for more experience bonuses. Then in turn you could have the healers in the higher level party restore the lost damage. Continuing this cycle throughout the game will allow your army to build levels and increase their overall skills. You will encounter the occasional ‘hard to level character’ the ones that is so low in their character levels that they cannot even hit your high level characters from the flank or back. What you can try to do to fix this problem is to have the higher level character remove all equipment and items that give them an increase in defense. Additionally, it would help if this character has a low agility score, allowing them to get hit more easily. You could even try to have one of your support units cast a spell on them to increase your chances of damaging them. Try a sleep spell or maybe a stun one. Petrifaction spells work as well. Healing based characters lack combat abilities, but you could have them situated in a position where they could heal the higher level characters while the lower level ones chisel away. 10. Persuading Enemies Persuading enemies to join your army gives you the chance to receive equipment and get more recruits. Mastering this technique will give you the chance to acquire rare / special classes. The main idea behind persuasion is to greatly reduce the enemy’s hit points. The lower the target’s life, the better your chance of turning them to your side. 11. SnapShot Weapons Snapshot weapons are perhaps the most powerful in the game. They do not come without a catch. In order to make one: make a magic using character cast SnapShot (found on the lower levels of Hell’s Gate) by targeting himself. Both the spell and the character will be lost, however they will leave behind a powerful sword with the elemental capabilities of the caster’s main elemental alignment. They are one handed weapons, and fairly light to wield, both of which are two desirable traits in a weapon. Though it may take some time to perform. Ideally you could hire a soilder, have them level up using the leveling up techniques, then have them learn and cast the spell on themselves. That way you don’t have to give up your top mages. However, this could take sometime. 12. Spell Combinations Once you have both the Necro and Rettisue spells, you have access to a special combination tactic. Allow a character to die, then immediately revive them as an undead unit with the Necro spell. Following this cast Rettisue on the undead unit, they will be returned to a Solider or Amazon with the same statistics that they originally had, with a strange twist… they are level 1 again. Return them to their original level using leveling tactics to create a massive character. Special Information Gunners Gunners are one of the most powerful character classes in the game. Guns have infinite range giving the user no excuses to attack their given target. They are also fairly easy to get. The first thing you need to do is to make sure you get the RimShot gun from one of the Knights in the "Banisha Courtyard" battle. After the battle with Lans Tartare at Banisha Castle in the fourth chapter, read about the shipwreck in the "Miscellaneous" section of the Warren Report. This will allow you to travel to Grimby City, which appears off Banisha. Go there, and you will come upon Martym threatening Rendal, a character of a class you've never seen before. A battle between you an Martym's forces quickly breaks out. If you save Rendal in this battle, he will offer to join your army which will open up the Gunner character class. After this, you can read the Warren Report about the Theif of Grimby (It's near the end) to allow you access to a new area off Grimby, where you will meet Ganb again. If you have not killed any of his "pets" at any point previous in the game and do not kill either of the Gryphons in this battle before killing him, he will join with the Rifle, the most powerful gun available in the game. Deneb Once you rescue Moruba in Chapter 4, look in the Warren Report for the section and read about her. After that, she will randomly show up at shops instead of the usual shopkeeper. She sells the elusive "orb" items- most useful in that they have negative weight- and will also join you. Buy 250 or so of one type of item, and she will offer to join (Try buying something inexpensive that you need or buying something, then turn around and sell again). She is a very useful character since she can use both Charge and almost any attack spell. Stock up on Orbs before you get her. Also, if you obtain around ten Glass Pumpkins and sell them to Deneb before she joins your army, she will be more powerful when she does, beginning with some Fire equipment and better spells, including the Nova spell (which cannot be obtained any other way). Recruiting Oxyones A truly obscure character, Oxyones can only be obtained in the Lawful chapter. Go to Brumor in the fourth chapter and get in to a random battle. Bring Jenounes into the party and you may encounter Oxyones and four Holy Dragons get her HP low enough and she will speak with Jenounes. At the end of the scene, she will join, along with any of her surviving dragons. General Tips: 1. Train, Train, and more Training!! The secret to getting far in the game rather quickly would be to train at the very beginning of the game and Max the game out. Once you do that at the beginning of the game you can save it with high level characters and breeze through the different paths without worrying about dying. 2. Save often!! Save the game before every major decision you have to make because if you don’t like the choice you made you can go back and choose a different path without going back through a large part of the game. You might want to keep these save points so you can go back and see the other endings. 3. Kill certain enemies first! If you want to succeed take out the enemy’s wizards and healers and concentrate on one enemy and finish them off. The battles will be much easier if you approach it with this tactic in mind. 4. Try and always attack from the rear. The damage you give and your hit ratio will increase if you attack the enemy from behind. 5. Collect all the cards that you can on the battlefield because if you finish the stage without collecting them you won’t be able to go back and get them. 6. Check the Warren Report often, you might be able to gain useful information to aid you in your quest. 7. Try to keep the special characters that you get, alive until the end of the game. The ending will change depending on what characters you have and the end of the game. Also, the decisions you make in the game will change the outcome of your game greatly. 8. Try to kill everyone in a battle, you never know what special weapon or spell he/she might be carrying. 9. Remember, you can only have 30 characters at any one time and if you do you will not be able to add anymore characters. The Different routes: 1. The first major decision comes when you have to decide to go along with the Massacre or not. If you choose not to take part in the massacre then you will be on the path of Chaos. If you choose to go along with the plan you will be on the path of Law. Make sure you save right before entering Baramus so that you can go back to it later if you want to go to another path without going through the beginning of the game. 2. If you chose the Chaos Route, the next decision you will be faced with another decision. Leonard will ask you if you want to rejoin Duke Ronway’s cause. If you say “There’s no time” Aloser will leave your party and you will be on the neutral path. If you say, “I can’t go back” Leonard releases you and Kachua. And you will still be on the path of Chaos. Remember, the storyline and ending will differ depending on who you have in your army and what choice you make.