Let's play Ogre Battle: This is the dawning of the age of Zeteginea

Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen is one heck of a game. There's really nothing else like it, save perhaps for Ogre Battle 64, which I haven't played. Truth be told, though, I haven't actually played most of Ogre Battle, either.

See, this game is an obsessive's nightmare. Simply winning isn't so hard -- provided you have any sort of idea what you're doing -- but Ogre Battle has 13 endings, and getting "the good ending" requires not only some very arcane procedures (revisiting maps, choosing the right dialog options, finding lots of hidden secrets) but also some intentional crippling of your army. (More on that at a later time.)

But forget that. I just want to actually complete the game. This isn't going to be a 100% completion LP, but it should at least be a complete-the-game LP.

I own the Playstation version of Ogre Battle. Please don't play the Playstation version. It does offer some fancier visual effects on some spells, but, as is often the case with SNES games on Playstation, the load times are killer, and Ogre Battle is not exactly a speedy game at the best of times.



Dawdling on the title screen gets you a text crawl describing the game's backstory.

The sage Rashidi, perhaps driven by madness, assassinated his former friend King Gran Zenobia and joined with Empress Endora, leader of the northern highlands, to wage war on four kingdoms.

The overpowering military of the Highland legions took but a year to subdue the whole continent and the Zeteginean Empire was born.

The rule of the empire was a pure regime of terror. Merciless persecution was directed against survivors of the old kingdoms and those who would escape the tyranny. The heart of the people were trouble by secrets and betrayals and much blood was spilt over the land.

Imperial Year 24

Here on the frontiers of Sharom the last survivors of the Knights of Zenobia were planning a final challenge...

If you then continue to dawdle on the title screen for another eternity, the game goes through most of the units and shows their stats and moves.

Displayed above is the hero, AKA the Lord (even if it's a lady), AKA the opinion leader. This is ostensibly the main character, but he or she will mostly be calling the shots from the comfort of the home base. Nevertheless, if the hero dies, you lose the game, so let's avoid that.



Speaking of, let's decide who our opinion leader will be.



Give our hero a name and gender. Mechanically, gender is irrelevant, but it does have some influence over a few interactions in the game.

Also, the rebel army is recruiting. If you would like to lead a squad, please give your callsign (max is probably 8 characters) and desired class (male: Knight, Wizard, Beast Tamer, Doll Mage, Samurai; female: Cleric, Valkyrie, Witch). For those of you who are familiar with the game, yes, there are other classes, but this list is the first-stage promotions that can be leaders. Feel free to sign up as any class on this list if you don't mind potentially waiting half the game.

I want to be a Doll Mage leading a golem named Falselogic.

Bert the Beast Tamer and his beloved pet, Olli.

I played this a few years ago but was hopelessly confused and wound up dropping it. I’m looking forward to seeing it through in a less confusing format.

I think I played with a male leader, so my vote is for a female leader. No ideas for names.

I think when I played this I had a male OL with the Thunder ability. So I would like to see a female OL that does not. I have no choice for her name (just not Pants).

(Are you playing this on emulator? One of the unfortunate things about this game is that it can take a really long time to finish a map and you can only save between maps. Of course, that might only be an issue if you are trying to 100% the game.)

I'd like to join.

Callsign: Kahran
Class: Wizard

By the way, if you don't mind a bit of backseat LP'ing, I know a few interesting things that were lost in translation, so I might bring them up if and when they become relevant, if Mogri doesn't mind.

Well, I'm certainly not playing on PlayStation.

That'd be great. Anyone who wants to chime in about OB64 is welcome as well; I know a bunch of characters show up there as well, including the opinion leader (canonically male, named "Destin").

Make me a witch (named Ada Bee)! I want to lead a squad of pumpkinheads.

Call me nosimpleway, dropping whatever needs to be dropped to fit in.

I'll take Knight, gunning for Paladin. Gimme a gryphon once they become available and I'll be a happy guy

(This makes me high-ALI and high sky, so send my dudes out to liberate cities I guess)

Edit: hold on gryphons are low-ali, fill my team with Eagle Men and/or Angels as you see fit

If it is a female leader I vote the name be B. LYNCH

In order to keep the Queen references intact, let's call the leader Bijou.

Destil, Male Wizard, reporting.

I will happily wait half the game to be Lucas the Wildman.

I'll be a knight (Gerad). Someone's got to do the boring grunt work.

(Unless Samurai have Draw Out, in which case yes please)

Samurai get Iainuki as I vaguely recall.

Imagine Draw Out, but it's single target, physical (which isn't bad per say; physical is an element in this, mages are weak to physical for example) and hurts you instead of having a chance of shattering a Katana.

If you get a Lich I want him named DEDMET. But if you're not evil enough to get a lich (You have to be evil to get one, I presume?) I would be willing to settle for a Dragoner named METMNMAS.

As for our protagonist, I suggest that she be named OVELIA. Poor girl got screwed over by everyone in Final Fantasy Tactics, so she deserves far better. Even if it's just her name being used in a different Yiazmat game.

That's a lot less exciting! Knight it is.

The wizard himself has to be evil, which affects nothing much in the grand scheme. You can have an army of undead casters, skeletons, imps, and so on but as long as you have a high-ALI leader still get treated as a liberator rather than a tyrant.

(Just keep someone high-ALI around to be the guy who goes into towns on your behalf. You can have skeletons and imps, but better that the rabble see the couple of angels on your team. Good PR.)

I wanna be a Princess!

If that's not feasible, I'll accept Octopus.

I'd like to be a cleric, please!

Callsign: Turtle
Class: Valkyrie

as for our hero...

Lady, but no particular name preference

I like this suggestion.

Female named Aria for the leader.

That's what TT picked when I wanted to LP this, and that's as far as that thread made it.

Certain classes (including Princess, Dragoner, and Lich) require a special item for promotion. The game's loot system is completely random, as far as I know, so I could get a CROWN on the first map or never, and if there's a way to manipulate it, I don't know about it. Most or all of the promotion items are guaranteed to be available at some point in the game, fortunately.

The rebel army's recruitment drive has been unexpectedly fruitful, and I'm grateful to everyone who's signed up. In all likelihood, I will have to consolidate -- there's just no way I can field that many squads -- but I'll rotate it around so that everyone gets some time in the spotlight. If you see yourself serving under someone else, don't fret; your time will come.

Of course, the rebel army is always recruiting, so if you haven't yet signed up, you haven't missed your chance.


1. Birth of a Hero



Compared to our conscription, our opinion leader was relatively neglected. There was consensus on making our Lord a lady, but as for the name, I picked the one I liked best, and Ovelia got a second vote while I was assembling this, so I'm feeling vindicated.



Warren then gives us one of those personality quizzes that were all the rage on the Internet ten years ago.



The answers you give here determine your opinion leader's starting stats and the abilities she'll have for the entire game.



I had considered putting this up to a vote, but I decided not to for two reasons. First, there's a question for each of the Major Arcana (22 in total), and we're only asked six of them, chosen at random. So I'd have to ask 22 questions and only use six of the answers, which would have been kind of a pain.



Second, Torzelbaum asked us to avoid the Thunder Lord, which -- anecdotally -- seems like the easiest one to land on if you're taking the personality test seriously. Or maybe that speaks more to my personality than to the quiz.



There are four flavors of Lord, each with a distinct moveset. They're ranked by alignment, but interestingly, the answers aren't themselves "good" or "evil" -- for example, the Fool asks you to give an order to your soldiers, and "Obey the law" is the answer corresponding to both the highest and lowest alignment Lords.



I'm giving the answers that will give us the most pious Lord. The second Lord gets the Samurai's Iainuki, which is really strong, but self-damage isn't great on the one unit you really need to survive. The third Lord is Thunder Lord, which Torzelbaum vetoed, and the evil Lord is not bad but is evil, and I'd rather start with a higher alignment.



Well, that's inauspicious. The Tower is the Arcana representing misfortune. Mechanically, it makes almost no difference right now, but it's one heck of an omen.



Please say hello to our Lord.

Let's take a good look at this character sheet. To the left of her name, you can see the unit icon for the Lord above a letter "S." That means this is a Small unit, as is every human. Some monsters are Large; they occupy two slots in a squad, so you can have up to five Small units, or you can have two Large units and one Small unit, or whatever. You don't have to fill a squad to capacity, but there's rarely a reason not to.

Ovelia is level 1 with 78 HP. I... I hope this is self-explanatory.

Below that, there are stats:

• Str governs physical damage and defense.
• Agi determines turn order, accuracy, and dodge rate. Most important stat.
• Int determines magic damage.
• Luk is probably critical hit rate, but who knows??
• Cha and Ali are used to determine promotion paths. All characters want high Cha, but evil characters need low Ali to promote.

Beneath that, we see that Ovelia costs 0 Goth to field. That's convenient; even a bankrupt army will at least be able to put their Lord into play. (But you've already lost at that point.)

It takes 100 EXP to level up. This is true regardless of the character's level; higher-level units get less EXP.

After that is our Lord's moveset. Which attacks a unit uses is dependent on the unit's position within the squad formation. In the front row, our Lord would use Banish twice. She's in the back row right now, so she'll use Icecloud once. Icecloud hits all enemies, and the back row is safer anyway, so this is a good deal.

Like most humans, Ovelia's movement type is Plains. That means this squad has the Plains movement type, allowing them to move most quickly on flat land and especially roads.

The Item entry is blank -- Ovelia has nothing equipped.

Finally, LEADER: OK shows that Ovelia is able to be a squad leader -- indeed, as the opinion leader, she must be the leader of her squad.


We currently only have a single squad. Ovelia is joined by three Soldiers -- the most basic form of the male unit -- and a single Cleric. Clerics are also potential leaders, so we could split this squad into two. But there's little reason to do that.

If we had answered a little differently, we could have had a different squad:

• Icecloud Lord is our current Lord, with 2x Banish in the front row and a Cleric. Frail, though -- Ovelia has the lowest HP out of our squad.
• Iainuki Lord has 3x Slash in the front row and gets a Valkyrie companion. This is the best combatant Lord, but you won't really use your Lord for combat too often.
• Thunder Lord has 2x Slash in the front row and gets a Beastman companion. This is a pretty lackluster, although Thunder Lord notably has the best HP and Agi of the four.
• Phantom Lord has 2x Poison in the front row and gets a Wizard companion. Just as frail as Icecloud Lord, but trades some Str for Int.

Ultimately, it's not worth worrying about which of the four you get, but our high Ali will save us some hassle in the future. More on that another time.

Next time, we'll take Ovelia into battle. Please look forward to it!


BONUS



I'm super pleased to announce that this is now a collaborative LP. While I'll continue to cover the main story and mechanical nitty-gritty, Eddie will be popping in to show us the route to the best ending and offer his tactical insights as someone who has actually completed the game. I'm giving Ovelia better-than-even odds of being assassinated in the epilogue, so I'm delighted to have Eddie helping to bring you the story of a Lord who brings peace to a united Zenobia.

Woo! Ovelia!

By the way, seeing that Lich is a promotion class that requires an item, I'd be fine with wizard DEDMET for now.

I want to join the Rebel Alliance!

I would happy to be a knight called Zeebs. Or really just wherever I could be useful.

This is a game that I fell in love with the idea of way back when I read about it in Nintendo Power. I saved up in order to buy it on the Playstation from a Babbages at the mall. Then I bought the strategy guide to help navigate the incredibly obscure course you have to chart if you want to get the good ending. And then I wound up buying the game again on Super Nintendo, partly just because I knew it was rare, partly because the Playstation version has really terrible load times. I'm sure I put dozens of hour into this game during the 90's but I doubt I got any further than about halfway through the game since I was trying to jump through all the hoops to get the good ending. Ultimately, Final Fantasy Tactics was the game that fulfilled my desire for an intricate tactical role-playing game. Still, I'm excited to see an LP of Ogre Battle! It might even encourage me to dust off the SNES and give the game another whirl (actually, an emulator with save states and fast forward is the only way I would want to play this game nowadays).

Thanks Mogri!

Before I begin, the best resource for this game on the internet is by far the website "March On, Black Queen!!" I am heavily stealing from this website, so please use it too if you want to expertly CRUSH Ogre Battle.



Photobucket, my old friend. I've taken the time to double the resolution of all my screenshots so you never mistake if you're reading my game or Mogri's.

BTW, Mogri is correct in that you should *not* play this game on the Playstation. This will mean however that both my LP and his will be exploring some of the more... interesting... translations of items/attacks.

As Mogri said, I will be playing for the "best" ending. As people who have played the game know (and perhaps,those who haven't), Ogre Battle has a number of endings. Thirteen to be exact. Twelve technically as one of those endings is not achievable through the main game, and then if you want to be pedantic, nine as three of the endings differ mainly based on if your Opinion Leader is Male of Female.

We're going for the World Ending, which is the most difficult ending to achieve. It's the "canon" ending that leads into the Nintendo 64 sequel, "Ogre Battle: Person of Lordly Caliber." It's requirements are many:

• You have to recruit almost every special character in the game, with three exceptions, which I'll note in the LP. You can recruit all of these characters technically, but one of them requires you to give up a special item that is itself required for the World Ending, so you can't get him unless you cheat.
• You need to acquire 12 Zodiac stones, which are hidden treasures that are really there to make you backtrack, and to make me think back to my first LP.
• You need three mystic treasures, being the sword BRUNHILD, the ARMBAND and the GRAIL.
• Finally, your reputation meter must be almost full by the time you kill the last boss.

None of these are particularly hard to do, save for that recruiting some characters and getting some items require doing stages in particular ways, and if you don't know that you are supposed to be doing things in particular ways, you'll easily miss them. There are tons of things that are missable for no reasons other than you visit one town before another. I will let Mogri focus on any he wishes to point out. Myself, I will only speak to the ones that are required to get the World ending.





On behalf of Mogri bringing me out of LP retirement (???) I have named my Opinion Leader after him! I've also chosen the male leader just to differentiate it from Mogri's run.

As Mogri said, the tarot choices at the start of the game essentially determine your statistics and what kind of Opinion Leader you get. It also determine one of your starting units. To go into a bit of detail, there are four outcomes:

1) "Evil" Opinion Leader - starts with 2x Poison attack / 1x Phantom attack, and is joined by a Wizard. Their attacks are innately Black/"evil" based. This has unwritten repercussions (discussed below).

2) "Neutral Evil" Opinion Leader - starts with 2x Slash attack / 1x Thunder Flare attack, and is joined by either a Beast Man or Wizard.

3) "Neutral Good" Opinion Leader - starts with 3x Slash attack / 1x Iainuki attack, and is joined by either a Valkyrie or Beastman. As stated in the thread, the Iainuki attack deals hefty damage, but it also damages the unit that uses it.

4) "Good" Opinion Leader - starts with 2x Banish attack / 1x Ice Cloud attack, and is joined by a Cleric. Their attacks are innately White/"Good". What Mogri took for OVELIA.

There is no "right" choice, in the sense that every ending is possible with every leader, gender notwithstanding. However, this choice is important as your Opinion Leader <i>will not change classes ever in the game.</i> This means the attacks they begin the game with are set from Scenario 1 until the end of the game.

The Opinion Leader starts out "overpowered" at the start of the game because for most OLs, their back row attack hits all enemies once. As winning battles relies on your units dealing more damage to the enemy than you do to them, this is very helpful. As classes evolve however in the mid to late game, a single attack that hits all enemy units is not going to pass the muster. So you can enjoy their power in the early game, but their effectiveness really drops off later.

The one exception is the Neutral Good Opinion Leader. While their attack from the back row is the weakest of the four opinion leaders, having three front row attacks provides the best damage potential in the late game, especially if equipped with a powerful weapon.

From a late-game perspective, manipulating Charisma and Alignment is important. The "Good" OL starts with the highest Cha and Ali, while the Evil starts with the lowest. The easiest way to gain Cha and Ali is through killing undead. The "Good" OL can do that naturally via Banish. The "Evil" OL cannot harm them at all. The two "Neutral" OLs can kill undead from the front row, if equipped with a White aligned weapon.

Thus, my "ranking" of the four Opinion Leaders goes roughly like this:

1st: Neutral Good
2nd: Good
3rd: Neutral Evil
4th: Evil

As we're trying to crush this game, we're picking "Neutral Good" for MOGRI to get him those sweet three-front-row-attacks. You can read which cards to pick to manipulate this choice at March On, Black Queen!!



Success! We've started with both a high strength, triple attack Opinion Leader, as well as a Valkyrie (which is pretty ok and probably better than starting with a Cleric). We'll want to move him into the front row once we get something to replace one of the front row Fighters.

If you compare MOGRI here to OVELIA, my leader has the edge on STR, while his has the edge on INT, CHA and ALI. This is fine as we will both be playing to our strengths (me just more literally).



Tune in next time for Scene 1: The Beginning, OR, "WAR! REN! (HUH!) WHAT IS HE GOOD FOR?"

Ogre Battle has a great soundtrack, and I've already messed up by omitting the OST links. Let me go over the tracks we've skipped:

• Overture (title theme)
• Beginning of the Tale (attract mode 1)
• Entrance Parade (attract mode 2)
• Old Man's Prayer (Warren's personality quiz)

I had forgotten how good it was. I picked a song from it for the heroic music thunderdome. (I had no idea that anyone was going to start LPing the game at the same time.

I agree - especially if there was a hack to let you use a mouse.)

Cool but I hope that doesn't require more than about 200 posts from him.