Sidequest #11 - A Troubling Breadth of Content - Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

Even though the Sony PSP was absolutely unable to compete with the Nintendo DS, it was the undisputed king of SRPGs (and thus my preferred handheld). Consequently, many of the games I’ll be going over on Tactical Tuesday are going to come from last gen’s underrated handheld, including this one - Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (no, not THAT one). This game was technically released for the Super Famicom back in 1995, buuuut there are significant enough changes to the gameplay mechanics that it’s worth examining as a wholly unique title, regardless.

This is an obscenely large game that takes around 200 hours to see all of its content and has dozens of tiny mechanical and narrative intricacies that made it one of the best critically received tactical RPGs ever released. So for brevity’s sake, rather than running through the game’s lengthy feature list, I’m just going to focus on the game’s not-really-optional dungeon Palace of the Dead. Why? Because Palace of the Dead is actually a microcosm for everything right and wrong with this game.

Welcome to the Jungle Hell

Even when you are greeted with a cutscene, they are often
cryptic and always brief.

For those unfamiliar with this game, PoTD (formerly known as “Hell Gate” for reasons which will become apparent shortly) is a 100-floor dungeon quartered into 4 tiers that each contain their own floor layouts, rare items, and very occasional story events. In order to complete the dungeon, the player must descend to the 100^th floor by wading through an increasingly powerful army of undead and super-powered versions of standard enemies. Most of the floors are small but with inconsistent extreme elevations, facilitating short battles for prepared players and long battles for unprepared ones. This stylistic tendency also holds true of the normal maps in the game and highlights its first major strength. 

Every Map Contains Tactical Depth

Whether it stems from the terrain or enemy placement every map requires some sort of strategic planning and spur of the moment tactical adjustments to overcome. The game eases new players into formulating these plans by gradually introducing and emphasizing the effects of different types of geographical obstacles - first with impeding terrain, then with elevation, and lastly with obstacles - so that they can understand how different enemy types function in isolation before considering how terrain can help or hinder them. This teaching method also assists players in recognizing how to circumvent specific obstacles by utilizing the AI controlled enemies to present some solutions to common tactical problems without creating too significant of a challenge.

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Unfortunately, Heavenly Judge II is not one such ability,
despite being the most powerful undead slayer in the game.

Unfortunately, it is borderline impossible for players to adequately prepare for PotD before entering, as there are very few reusable means of circumventing its extreme elevation changes and geographical obstacles available during the main game. However, these tools are available within PotD’s first tier, and characters can actually use them as soon as they become available, bringing us to the second excellent quality of TO: LUCT.

Characters are Deeply Customizable

There are around 20 different equipment types, 100 abilities, over 100 spells, and several hundred individual pieces of equipment in this game - i.e. A LOT of ways to outfit characters. PotD is home to a lot of special armaments and spells (which is to say it has approximately 2 metric crap-tons of loot), but even still it only holds about a quarter of all there is to gain.

Naturally, there’s no way that a single character can use all of these at one time. Each unit can equip two weapons (provided that they’re both 1-handed), two pieces of armor, and one accessory, each containing their own affinities, resistances, and (in rare cases) abilities. Additionally, every character in this game can equip up to ten skills which either grant them battle abilities. These skills can range from simple damage boosters like Strengthen and Spellcraft, to special commands like Phalanx which reduces incoming damage by 90% for one turn.

The combination of skills and equipment determines a character’s role in battle as well as how they should be used. Which armaments and skills a character can equip, however, are determined by their class – a designation that augments a character’s parameters while limiting their capabilities to a specific list of traits. For example, Warriors cannot cast spells, but can use swords and some melee combat skills like Mighty Strike. Wizards can cast spells, but cannot wield swords. And Rune Fencers can use swords & missile spells, but not special melee combat skills or status changing spells. The advantage to this system of unit customization– aside from the detailed control it bestows players over their character – is that it instills a detailed understanding of how each class functions by breaking them down to their individual capabilities. This way the game doesn’t have to tutorialize much of anything, since the learning process inherently coincides with the acquisition of items and abilities.

The protagonist has a special class that can use most skills, but can't
learn anything on its own. By the time you unlock it however, you
should have both the experience and creativity to make the most of
the freedom it grants you, like the "magic archer" I made above.

As with every other class-based SRPG in existence, TO:LUCT also uses unique sprites to display which class the unit is using. This allows players to figure out how to deal with a unit by simply looking at it, as opposed to examining their individual skill sets. So, even though PoTD introduces dozens of new classes not found in the normal game, because their sprites are identical to similar classes aside from a color shift, players immediately have a strong idea of how to combat them.

In some cases, particularly with the game’s unique characters and their special hybrid classes, the sprites are wholly unique so one has to look at their abilities to know what they are capable of. But, because of the universal skill and equipment system, all players learn how to do this and why they should, saving them from having to strategize around unknown threats. In short, this is a game that is designed to ensure that players learn how to play it properly and – as exemplified by Palace of the Dead’s 100 floor length - contains enough depth to allow them to do so for a very long time.

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With that said, many players probably never even saw all of the game’s post-game content precisely because of PotD. Completing the dungeon as quickly as possible takes a little longer than beating the entire main storyline (30+ hours). But, that’s not what most players actually do for reasons which vary with their knowledge of the dungeon. If players don’t know what they are getting into when they enter – which is probably true for most, since the game does not inform players of the dungeon’s length or the secrets it holds – then they will probably just quit around the 15^th or 25^th floor (assuming they even figure out how to get past the 3^rd floor) as maps do not grant an appreciable amount of experience or skill points, so units don’t grow. But if they are familiar with the dungeon, then they will likely spend more like than 50+ hours scouring every floor and farming enemies for drops, nicely leading us to the largest problem in this game.

Item Acquisition is Archaic and Wastes Players' Time

A significant portion of a units’ strength is determined by their equipment, and all equipment possesses a minimum level requirement. Up until level thirty, enemies will always be outfitted with level-appropriate equipment, so in order to keep up with the in-game enemies players have to constantly re-equip their units. This is easily done throughout the campaign by purchasing equipment from shops or killing enemies and picking up any equipment they drop. But, at level twenty-five shops no longer stock new gear, and at level thirty, enemy equipment stops improving. So from this level on, the only way to get better gear is to defeat very specific enemies spread throughout the game – most of which reside in PotD – and pray that they drop their rare gear. This normally wouldn’t be a problem since all units would have parity with only occasional exceptions. But, the level cap in TO:LUCT is fifty, and as was already stated, in PotD (and all of TO:LUCT’s post-game for that matter) players face new enemy classes, which just happen to be statistically superior to theirs. So, it is absolutely in one’s best interest to get as much new gear as possible.

Even Blackmoor, the final boss of PotD, does not carry advanced equipment

Now fortunately, the designers were mad geniuses who figured out that if a player beat the game, cleared every story route*, and then returned to Palace of the Dead in part 4 – i.e. the ideal time to complete it – they would likely have several classes at around, if not exactly level 30. But, the system governing the acquisition of stronger items is random (much like another problematic series), essentially eliminating the likelihood that players will actually acquire the stronger equipment when they need them.

*FYI, after beating the game, you unlock the ability to skip around the story and make alternate decisions, whilst retaining your party and possessions. Enemy levels auto-adjust to that of the highest level character you field, so that they (theoretically) always remain challenging.

When an enemy dies, they either drop an item or a card. If they drop an item, then, as was previously mentioned, there is a chance that the enemy will drop some or (in exceedingly rare cases) all of their equipment. However, if they drop a card, then you get essentially nothing. This isn’t as frustrating in this game as it is in Monster Hunter since the player has something equivalent to an “undo” button. But even still, knowing which specific enemy drops the new piece of equipment requires a walkthrough, making the enemy spawn in the first place usually requires resetting the map a few times, and getting them to drop that particular gear can take upwards of 20 minutes with the undo button. Collectively, acquiring a single rare drop and clearing a floor takes around 15-30 minutes. If a player is interested in gaining all of the equipment in the dungeon (which they should be), they will have to perform this in-game save scumming on over different 100 enemies. But wait – it gets worse.

If a player would like to gain equipment beyond level 40, then they need to farm 6 specific floors for at least 12 copies of two items and 24 copies of another item (48 floors worth, in total) in order to craft 12 Heaven’s Forks. [FYI, crafting, has a percent rate of success, which in the case of Heavens Forks is usually around 30% - if you fail, then you lose the ingredients]. These Forks are then used to summon 12 mini-bosses scattered in the farthest reaches of the games’ optional dungeons (including PotD) who each have a chance of dropping unique weapons and spells. And if a player wants to get multiple copies of these weapons or spells, then they will need even more Forks which requires even more farming and crafting. All of this must be done before completing Palace of the Dead, unless the player wants to fight through 50+ floors again. Oh, and you need to pick up 30 Glass Pumpkins as well, which are also subjected to the same item drop mechanics and are also only available in PotD, in order to recruit another powerful character later on.

GLHF?

THIS. IS. TOO. MUCH. WORK.

While separating the drops on a floor by floor basis theoretically creates an effective feedback loop that grants consistent rewards over short periods of time, by making the drops random and gating much of TO:LUCT’s post-game content behind this long and frustrating dungeon, savvy players are less inclined to actually see the story resting beyond it. And yet, though normally, I’d call that the worst thing to grace a story-based game, it’s actually not a deal breaker.

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Character creation and turn-based tactical gameplay are the game’s greatest strengths and two of the defining characteristics of the SRPG genre, so the fact that this game does both exceptionally well, makes for a very solid gameplay experience. However, it also has a complex and engaging story that explores some philosophical questions about obedience and nationalism, in addition to an exceptional soundtrack, high quality artwork, a solid 60fps framerate, and lightning-fast load times; it’s a very well put together game with at least 50 hours of high quality content. All of this easily justifies a full purchase, and earned the game its sterling review scores. However, PotD’s importance cannot be understated – over half of the game’s maps are in optional post-game material like PotD, and PotD is the gatekeeper to experiencing the final two chapters of post-game.

Despite spending over 200 hours on this last playthrough, I still resorted
to cheating to minimize some of the grinding.

I’ve played through this game, experiencing every storyline and clearing most of the optional content four times now (once in the JP version, twice in the EU version, and once a few days ago in the US version). And, every time PotD killed my motivation for finishing post-game. I used cheat codes to see the rest of the game’s items and fool around with some of the more esoteric gameplay mechanics, but it was only now that I needed to write this article that I buckled down and finished the dungeon in its entirety. I am a guy who enjoys min-maxing and tactical turn-based gameplay – I AM the target audience for this game and I didn’t want to finish this dungeon. That is troubling.

Initially, this dungeon led me to think of TO:LUCT as one of the rare examples of a game with too much content, but (aside from recognizing that’s a reductive way of looking at game design) I later realized that it was actually just an instance of the game failing at something it was otherwise exceptional at – accessibility.

One of the most common questions gamers ask about prospective purchases is “how long is the game?” Pretty much anyone will tell you that’s a silly question to ask about any media, but at its core the question is trying to determine, “how much content is in the game?” With console games being a bit expensive and game publishers being as untrustworthy as ever, this is a very pressing concern for a lot of budget conscious players. However, as recent games like Destiny and Monster Hunter 4 illustrate, the amount of content in a game is less important than the way in which that content is accessed.

TO:LUCT does an excellent job of allowing players to access damn near every part of the game - The story advances as quickly as the player chooses; battles can be paused at any point in time; up to 50 actions in battle can be undone or redone at the press of a button; all music, story scenes, and plot information can be viewed/heard at will from the in-game records any time outside of battle; after clearing the game, the player can return to key moments in the story and play them again without losing any of their progress; items for the entirety of the main game are easily acquirable; battles rarely take more than 20 minutes to get through; should players decide to revisit a completed dungeon or series of battles, they are almost always given an optional shortcut to the end; most skills level up at brisk pace from simply being used; and the list goes on. All of which makes for a game that is welcoming to both newcomers and seasoned players alike.

Too little too late Quest.

Consequently, PotD comes across as an anomaly, because it marks the point in the game where all of the extreme care given to accessibility that radiates from every other pore of the game is thrown out in favor of several layers of RNG bullshit. Sure, PotD is infinitely more approachable than the Hell Gate in that players can actually save and quit at any point during their descent, don’t have to clear all 100 floors, and after reaching floor 100 can skip to whichever tier they like. But, none of these changes address the fact that progressing through the dungeon and wholly completing each floor- which is to say collecting all of the loot hidden on each floor- is a matter of luck and patience, not skill.

Why PotD lacks these is baffling considering that every
other series of battles gets one on subsequent playthroughs

If the developer had instead designed the dungeon so that 30 floors stood between 1 and 100 instead of the 63 they settled on, story battles occurred every 6 floors instead of 20, and special enemies and their loot drops were guaranteed to appear, the dungeon would feel far less tedious for those who simply wanted to finish it and access the story content, and become more penetrable for players looking for specific drops without having to trudge through 60+ floors of content they have already played before…But they didn’t do this, and other developers and players should learn from their mistake!

There is no narrative catharsis to Destiny like TO:LUCT

Destiny is structurally identical to this game – it has a main story line in which the character progression is point based/occurs naturally, and then a post-game which contains the majority of the game’s content, but follows a random loot-based character progression. But, whereas TO:LUCT has a fantastic soundtrack, replayable story, and deep character customization to offset the issues with its post-game, Destiny doesn’t have anything. It needed to learn from this game, and because it didn’t we’re stuck with half of a mediocre ARPG that does not respect our time, efforts, or wallets. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together exists. And though it commits several sins that restrain it from achieving perfection, it still set the bar in technical and technological excellence for other hybrid RPGs to strive towards, and ultimately surpass. Destiny and dozens of other loot-based games failed to learn from its mistakes, but we as players must not reward them for doing so.