Very happy that we have a new Theatrhythm on modern platforms, especially since All-Star Carnival was only in Japanese arcades. I logged it as mastered due to getting the platinum trophy on PlayStation, but I have not FC'd every song on Ultimate or even beat every song available on Supreme, so there's still more for me to work towards in the game. I only have one complaint, which is that the EMS charts can be disorienting, splitting the player's attention between the cinematic in the background and the notes falling from above. It may have also been my mind playing tricks with me, but it did frequently appear the the notes weren't falling as smoothly, meaning possibly that it runs on a lower or inconsistent framerate when playing on EMS charts. Those are only a small fraction of the tracks, however, and they are still enjoyable as is, so I let it pass. The tracklist is enormous, meeting close to 400 tracks in the base version and around 440 at launch if you invested in the Premium Digital Deluxe Edition, which will reach 500 tracks when the first three season passes are finished. The gameplay is very simple, but can still manage to be a challenging experience at it's highest difficulties, enticing both rhythm game veterans or people that just like Final Fantasy/Square Enix titles.

Despite the title simply being called Theatrhythm instead of being inserted with a series name like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, the title completely consists of Final Fantasy music if you opt to not purchase any of the DLC. The DLC may not cover all your bases either, even within the Final Fantasy series. As it stands, there are no Dragon Quest tracks currently announced to be in the game, nor does it seem like there will be. Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory was released recently, so it's doubtful that you'll see any songs from the series in the game. In addition, developer interviews have confirmed that there are currently no plans to add Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker or Final Fantasy XVI tracks, so those are in the air, dependent on how long SE wants to support the game. That being said, it's still a new game with a lot of possibilities to be explored, especially if they intend on treating this game like All-Star Carnival and continue supporting it long term.

Overall, it's definitely worth the purchase. I think the game probably lends itself better to the Switch than it would for the PlayStation, considering the portability and the fact that you spend the majority of the gameplay looking at the right or bottom of the screen is likely preferable on a smaller screen. That being said, I can personally confirm that the PlayStation version works perfectly well, so either purchase should work out well for you.

Tactics Ogre more like Tactics Thankfully It's Over.

I'm clearly missing something big about this game because my takeaways seem to be a tremendous contrast from almost everybody I know and the majority of reviews I've read, but Tactics: Ogre Reborn felt more like a slog of mishandled opportunities than an engaging tactical experience. Maybe it's because I've been spoiled on the advancements tactics games have made in the recent years, with my first formal Tactics game being Valkyria Chronicles 4.

I have a big problem with games that tutorialize and demonstrate information to the player poorly, and this is the biggest gripe I had with TO:R. I felt like almost none of the games deeper systems were explained to the player, with what they do explain being the basics of tactics/grid based gameplay and that was about it. I struggle, generally speaking with how information is presented to me, and games that hide this through self search or menus not directly shown to the player are legitimately tough for me to grasp. I felt like there were some cool mechanics I could attempt with Ogre, but I had no clue about optimal party makeup and the differences between classes, absolutely no idea on the benefits of slotting skills/magic, and was left ignorant of what the elemental signs do that are attached to every character. Now, I don't need a game to sit there and explain how to do everything the best way to me, but some basic explanation of these things could be nice. I could (almost) excuse that if this were still the older version of the title but it's not. This is a symptom of a lot of older Japanese RPG titles (and still some today,) that make said genre(s) generally unapproachable for me. I hope this doesn't come off as whining about the game not over-explaining, but rather a complaint to the lack of helpful text to make TO:R an engaging and fun experience. Things like elevation and weather affecting accuracy/movement are easier to parse through and understand but, are they really fun?

Outside of the unexplained deeper systems of the game, I had a major issue with pacing. Tactics games last notoriously long, with my runthrough of the recent Triangle Strategy lasting ~fifty hours, but it felt like a quick and chipper fifty hours. Tactics Ogre's battles feel reallllllly slow, and there's a LOT of them for what seemed like the sake of just having more battles. The upfront mechanics of this game weren't interesting enough to me to make this feel warranted either. Most inexcusable was there being no way to quick restart a fight, even where the Chariot Tarot wouldn't help. I don't care what year it is, if it's a tactics game, it should have a way to restart the battle if you want. Games that don't have this or save-anywhere mechanics (Souls games nonwithstanding) are not acceptable in the current gamesphere. There was a moment I got maybe thirty minutes into a fight, realized I was losing due to poor tactical decision making (or lack thereof heh) and discovered I couldn't go back to the start of the fight. I put my controller down, stood up from my seat, let out an audible "bro" and then sat down and let the AI take over until my party was wiped. This pacing issue struggled all the way to the end battle gauntlet of the game, it felt like it was never going to end.

I also took issue with the map design in this game, and after reading another reviewer on this site, I'm glad I am not alone. The large issue is that the maps are either too big or the units don't move far enough. It often takes 2-4 turns of movement around the map before the parties can engage, and that's all just wasted space. These maps are pretty poorly designed too, often lacking any concept of "realistic" combat. Now, that's not to imply you're coming to a game called "Tactics Ogre" for its realism, but rather to imply that there should be some sense for a world you are fighting in rather than squares mounted on other squares. The fortresses and castles in some of the fights in TO:R were just awkward, having your party start way at the bottom of a water-falled castle and having to climb up. It doesn't make sense in terms of combat, there's no logic or flow to the design of the map, rather just the need for "elevation." If you want a better look at Tactics games employing elevation on a grid based system in a medieval setting, look at Triangle Strategy this year. You often fight in courtyards and castles in that game, and the cities/towns feel a little more approachable to both game design and basic architectural logic.

Outside of the above issues with the game, I found the Sprites to be as dated as they can be, and the music to be largely repetitive. Again, maybe I'm spoiled by Fire Emblem Three Houses and Valkyria Chronicles 4 in regards to musically backing my longer tactical engagements, but I had to mute the TO:R OST after a while and play my own music over it because it was becoming rather cumbersome to my ears.

I can see why others enjoy this game but I cannot recommend Tactics Ogre: Reborn based off my experiences with it, and having played titles I find much more enjoyable in the same genre.

This game is some absolutely wild shit dude. I cannot imagine playing this shit on the Super Famicom back in the day and watching your little dude go through all that bullshit and grow up! Honestly there was a point where I expected the focus would switch from the protagonist’s point of view to the kids but nah baby it sticks to that guy like glue which leads to some absolutely wild sequences, like the second timeskip. Good god, the second timeskip! What the hell!! There’s a part of me that made me wish we got to see the kids' adventures with Sancho but I appreciate the narrative throughline of sticking to the protagonist the whole time.

There are so many great little moments in this game. I really love how when you’re playing as an Actual Child you look at books and don’t know shit or fuck because you’re five and you don’t read too good yet. The party chat is also really charming, though it’s kind of a shame only the human party members get anything substantial.

Speaking of, I’m kind of torn on the monster recruitment mechanics. On the one hand, the RNG is a little bit frustrating, but on the other hand, this is a game where there’s a major three way choice to determine your party composition, so I can see monster RNG adding an extra bit of spice to your replays.

Speaking of the three way choice, wow, they sure hammer home that there is a Correct Choice, huh? I’m told it was even worse on the Super Famicom but it feels like kind of a bummer that you don’t get little adventures with Nera and Debora to see what they can do and get more of a feel for their personalities and what kind of party chat you’ll be getting. It’s a shame because Nera’s got the best hair color and Debora is funny as fuck… I did make two extra saves at The Choice for shits and giggles, so I do kind of want to replay again.

Maybe after I’ve recovered from that slog of an endgame. I looked at the prospect of going for the bonus boss after the actual final boss and went “hm. Nah.” Especially since the final boss wasn’t nearly as fun as Ladja, the recurring boss whose timing is HILARIOUSLY impeccable. Love to hate that guy. Honestly I felt kind of reluctant to sell old equipment just because it felt better to keep them around than leave my new monster recruits naked, and of course I don’t want to NEGLECT those little guys… maybe the real grind was the friends I made along the way.

Still, great game, and I absolutely understand why it’s a beloved classic. On the Sugiyama front it continues to be aggressively Alright. I don’t know maybe I had to grow up with it instead of learning about his horrific political opinions before even getting into the games proper to understand….

Not really sure of too many other games of this style to feel as if each unlock you get after a point outright worsens the experience but I genuinely feel like after a certain point, the fun of this game just entirely dries out due to having too many ways to essentially be able to "solve" what RNG is present here. The first few hours here are honestly pretty neat, having a lot of different elements of discovery all wrapped up with a game that's fun in a "numbers go up" sort of way, with a selection of upgrades that you need to vaguely strategise about which ones you take to balance between offence and defence while practically constantly unlocking new stuff to mess about with as well.

While basically none of these individual elements really call for you to majorly change how you approach the game, there's still some appeal in both mowing down thousands of enemies while also constantly upgrading in some attempt to last that bit longer, sometimes having to compromise your ideal loadout for what would be convenient at the time. Unfortunately, it really doesn't take long to unlock the vast majority of the weapons and upgrades in the game and once you do you end up realising that there are very few of them to the point where getting your "perfect run" once you've picked up a few permanent upgrades is basically a given, which is made even worse with the way that basically all of the weapons you get in this, especially later on, are things that require minimal player input to actually utilise, turning a lot of lategame scenarios into standing around for 15 minutes watching colours and numbers flashing across the screen while doing literally nothing other than very occasionally walking a few steps so a boss enemy doesn't kill you.

The first couple of times this happens it's pretty cool, since there's a lot of appeal in completely breaking these games wide open, but the magic is lost in this case when basically EVERY run ends up becoming like it as long as you evolve a couple of weapons, which is basically bound to happen. It's made even easier with the amount of different ways you can control the RNG the game has, and while boosting your odds through these sorts of methods can be pretty interesting usually, the amount of these avenues provided to you ends up entirely trivialising one of the main dynamics of the game that was engaging in itself, as now it's very simple to just entirely what you control on any given run without any real thought or skill involved in the process. If provided a loadout you needed to follow to the T, it's something that any average player could do basically every time without fail once you've gotten a few rerolls, banishes and skips, and once this point has been hit, all sense of variety becomes deeply artificial since it ends up wholly relying on the player to engage with it in any sort of way, which doesn't really work when so many weapons don't require the player themselves to do anything particularly different with how they approach it.

In a game that so strongly encourages optimisation of your build to be able to dish out increasingly ridiculous, screen clearing attacks, making said optimisation so simple and effective always feels like a bit of an odd decision, especially since that seems to just further discourage actually using different things once you've found something that seems to just obliterate everything. For a game that tries so hard to make for an experience that just bombards the player nonstop with increasingly flashy effects and the like, actually hitting the stage where this occurs feels exponentially less rewarding with each new tool in your arsenal when it ends up feeling like a totally solved game that's so easy to work out how to solve it, until it really just becomes an exercise in standing 100% still for extended periods of time to unlock the final batch of upgrades that feel entirely meaningless at that point since you've already got everything that lets you win without a reason to ever use anything else. Despite all of this I don't think the game is entirely worthless or anything like that either, as the first part of the game where you're building up to the first couple of fully broken runs is a fun time that kept me fully engaged, it's just that anything past that point starts getting really repetitive and hollow to me, despite the fact that there's still a bunch of content the game wants you to get through at the point this happens.