Niahak's Place

I was a bit uncertain going into the game (clearly)… but I’ve figured out that Ogre Battle 64 is actually a good (if not top-notch) game.  It’s just a little too complicated for my tastes.

I just reached the final chapter.  I like the plot, I like the characters, and the system isn’t bad.  Managing all the individual characters is pretty tough, though, particularly with respect to alignment.  The plot is similar at first to Final Fantasy Tactics (which was made later by the same team, if rumors are correct).  It changes from there to something comparable in style, and the different paths through the game presumably would make the game more immersive.  I probably would’ve noticed that more if I weren’t already aiming for a set path.  So far all of the “hidden” characters (the Zenobians specifically) have been easy to recruit – I have them all – I would only have missed Europea (maybe) and Debonair (if FAQs are correct and you can’t visit the town with a non-Magnus unit first) had I not been looking at walkthroughs.  This game makes me want to retry the SNES Ogre Battle sometime…  Some of the plot turns are really nice, and this game has one element that was really neat in Final Fantasy Legend 2 (namely, your character’s father can join your party), though unfortunately it hasn’t yet changed the plot at all.

Also been playing a good deal of Warcraft 3 TFT online, lots of custom maps.  So far my favorite is still “Tides of Blood”, a more balanced and slower-paced DOTA.  Playing that with friends is an unparalleled WC3 experience.  “Maul” games (Wintermaul) are fun but they are generally way too easy (I can’t believe people still need to “hook” [glitch] or use Crystal!), much like other Tower Defense games.

Oh yeah, big news in the past couple days.  Final Fantasy IV is being remade in the style of FF3 DS.  Cecil looks more or less like an emo goth knight from what I’ve seen, but I’m going to hold off on final judgements until I see more of the game.  The more interesting pieces of news from Square Enix were the new original game and the announcement that they’re remaking Star Ocean 1&2 for PSP (SO1 was never brought over).  Star Ocean 1 is evidently getting SO2’s engine.  If that pack gets translated, that’d be cool, but still not a reason to get a PSP.  Other interesting news: a new Rygar (!) is coming out for the Wii.  Rygar NES was an excellent, if confusing, game.  Rygar PS2 was good for an adventure-puzzle, but the voice acting was abominable and the difficulty too varied.  However… using diskarmor on the Wii could be a lot of fun if they allow good variance of movement.

Other than Ogre Battling, I’ve been doing lots of homework and stuff.  I had two presentations and a test today.  One presentation was in Game Development and involved a project which I plan to reveal on this site in due time, with the permission of my group members.  In another week, I think this project could be pretty cool.  As it is, it’s nothing more than a conceptual version of what it could become.