Tactics Ogre is 25 years old!!! This huge cult classic still stands today as the precursor of turn-based Strategy RPGs and a shining beacon of excellence in writing, directed by the legendary Yasumi Matsuno.

Let's dive into the classic that still inspires games like FF14!

Tactics Ogre is one of my favorite game of all time for many reasons, but the main one is that the story is unlike anything I had experienced at the time. Despite originally being a SNES game, its writing was uncharacteristically strong and expressive painting this huge conflict.

Tactics Ogre thrusts you in the receiving end of an ethnic cleansing, with your people constantly getting slaughtered by the Galgastani. You are left with no choice but to realize that it will take more than conventional warfare to end this genocide.

The story progression of Tactics Ogre is non-linear. Several key choices leads you to a different route that has HUGE ramifications to the rest of the story. These choices are made to be immensely impactful and forcing you to take the moment to understand the path you're taking.

The choices in Tactics Ogre are impactful because the writing is there to match it. It is a story about people with clashing ideologies that makes it harder to know the line between good and evil.

Many players will tell you this choice is one of the hardest they had to make.

The story is about the player reconciling the reality of the situation with their own convictions. How much of their humanity should they sacrifice for the sake of their people? Is this humanity worth keeping as their own people are being treated like cattle to be slaughtered?

What really shines most in the story is the dialogue. Every encounter in Tactics Ogre is made to stick in your mind!
All these encounters with people who are fighting for various reasons come clashing against your shield.
You are seeing this war for yourself & the people in it

Just look at these examples of Tactics Ogre's writing in display! Absurdly strong dialogue coming from characters from all walks of life; those who has been crushed by their guilt, those willing to bear an even bigger weight, and those who do not even know what awaits them.

All of this was accompanied with an uncharacteristically dark and impactful soundtrack while still remaining catchy. The handiwork of Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata.

Track: Avilla Hanya (PSP Remake)

Keep in mind this game was made on the Super Nintendo back in 1995.

25 years ago. And the story that was told back then still remain something that many would tell you few games would even come close!

In fact, Tactics Ogre's attention to detail was such that they even gave a backstory to every enemy leader you fight in battle, some of them being devastating to read.

To most other SRPG, this would be a "bandit". In Tactics Ogre, he became someone with a story to tell.

You might also think, "this reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics a lot", and you would be right. Tactics Ogre is the precursor of FF Tactics, made by much of the same people.

The mature story of FF Tactics, its deep mechanics, and its turn-based battle system on a grid all came from Tactics Ogre.

It is the foundation of every SRPG that employs a turn-based system rather than the Fire Emblem phase system where each side takes their turn.

Tactics Ogre is basically the entire blueprint of Square's ability to tell darker, more adult stories in their fantasy games, and it is still present today.

Matsuno kept his style going into FF Tactics, Vagrant Story, and FFXII, but not only that!

Final Fantasy XIV is another huge game without Matsuno's involvement that was heavily inspired by Tactics Ogre.

Banri Oda, lead writer and lore supervisor on FFXIV had said that the story of the game itself would have been different had he not played Tactics Ogre.

Naoki Yoshida, director and producer of FFXIV, and the miracle man that saved the FF brand from the brink of ruin, had said that Tactics Ogre is one of his favorite games.

In fact, it became one of the reasons he joined Square Enix in the first place. Talk about dedication!

I say this for a reason, as FFXIV is constantly touted as delivering some of the best Final Fantasy stories in more than a decade on top of being the highest reviewed FF games ever since FFXII came out.

Tactics Ogre was the starting point that allowed FFXIV's writing to thrive!

So yeah, Yasumi Matsuno, Hiroshi Minagawa, Akihiko Yoshida, Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata are all people who worked on Tactics Ogre and ended up joining Squaresoft to work on Final Fantasy Tactics.

Their style has been huge for Square and can still be felt today:

Yasumi Matsuno, director & writer of Tactics Ogre, ended up directing & writing FF Tactics, Vagrant Story and FFXII at Square.

Hironobu Sakaguchi was such a fan of his work that he personally entrusted him to direct Final Fantasy XII. His praise even started childish rumors.

Akihiko Yoshida, the artist and character designer behind Tactics Ogre, joined Square with Matsuno to work on FF Tactics. Now he is a internationally-known artist for his work on FFXII, Bravely Default, and more recently for being the character designer of 2B in NieR Automata.

Hiroshi Minagawa, the art director of Tactics Ogre, kept his role for FF Tactics, Vagrant Story, and FFXII. He was also part of the task force that salvaged FFXIV from a disaster to a success.

His involvement is said to have saved the FF brand from irreparable damage.

Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata composed for Tactics Ogre and it remained this way for other Matsuno games like FFXII. They founded Basiscape, which is today the largest independent video game music company in the world.

These people made history before they had even joined Squaresoft. Their willingness to push the boundaries of storytelling and the strategy RPG genre ended up changing the landscape of video games forever with Tactics Ogre.

You might have never heard of Tactics Ogre, much less it being touted as one of the best RPGs ever made, but it is not just a bold claim. It consistently ranks high on all-time best lists in Japan, going as high as being ranked 7th in a Famitsu reader poll.

It truly is a classic

Have I even talked about the visual style of the game? On top of delivering gorgeous 2D backgrounds and sprites, the art of Akihiko Yoshida was above and beyond what anybody expected. It was despite it being one of his first fantasy games, having next to no experience with it!

He was helped by Tsubasa Masao for the PSP remake, who redesigned every character and job classes by keeping the spirit intact while still making everyone distinct and colorful. To note, his armor design is especially incredible. Ornate armors with large shoulder pads!

Even non-armored outfits are extremely well designed and full of style despite being a medieval fantasy world!

The Tactics Ogre PSP remake also incorporates many great quality of changes, such as the ability to rewind at any point to experience other routes. On top of that, it introduced a system that allows you to rewind up to 50 turns, 7 whole years before Fire Emblem did the same.

The PSP Remake's Warren Report also included a ton of information with quick access to optional cutscenes, backstory for every character, and even a sound test with comments from the sound team for every track. A pure labor of love.

If you want to play Tactics Ogre, but don't know where to start, I heartily recommend picking up the PSP Remake. It remains faithful to the original while adding a lot of great changes, and it was made by most of the original team too! Matsuno & Minagawa included!

I do not say it lightly when I say that Tactics Ogre PSP is in the runner-up to be one of the best remakes ever made. The entire game has been re-translated lovingly by the same people that did the tremendous Vagrant Story and FFXII translations.

If you have one version to play, it is the PSP remake of Tactics Ogre. It is available for $9.99 only for the PSP, PS Vita and Vita TV, which is a steal for that price!

Unfortunately, this incredible PSP Remake has never been ported anywhere else. The game is so good that it deserves to be played by many more people, so please do bug @SquareEnix and make them realize that Tactics Ogre deserves to have a new life on current platforms!

That's all I have to say for now, but if you want more, I also did a thread on Vagrant Story's 20th anniversary, another excellent game by Matsuno that blends medieval fantasy with Rashomon, and is known as the best looking game of the PS1! https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1226610123000467457