The Warring States of NPF - Let's Play: Ogre Battle 64!

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Let's Play: Ogre Battle 64!

It's been far too long since we've had a proper Let's Play going on here if I do say so myself, so what better than an RPG that most people haven't played!

Here, have some music.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4223625/Game...te_1/Intro.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4223625/Game...e%20Screen.jpg

Ogre Battle 64 is a real-time strategy RPG. What that means in a nutshell is that rather than controlling the minutiae of one party of characters, we control many different groups but fighting itself is mostly AI controlled. This means that your formation is key. Here's a sample group from my own runthrough:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4223625/Game...onstration.jpg

In the upper right you can see my group's formation, in the lower left is the enemy's. Each character has its attacks determined by its class and its position in the formation. Fighter classes have their best attacks in the front row, support classes have their best attacks in the back row, etc. You can be flanked, and attacked from the rear depending on various shenanigans the enemy might pull so even a strong formation can be caught at a disadvantage since your characters would have to use their weaker attacks. So, the key is to have your units in the right place at the right time on the area map (below).

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4223625/Game...onstration.jpg

Strategy. :D

I can get into the nitty gritty combat mechanics later as it becomes relevant, but that should be enough to get us started.

This will be a screenshot LP. Participation will have a few different forms. First, since we can have upwards of 50 different characters, most of whom can be renamed, I'll be taking requests for draftees to participate directly in the playthrough. I'll let you pick which classes and progressions you want to follow, and I'll cheat a bit to help if I can. That has limits though, If you want to be a paladin and your character's alignment isn't correct, I'll change it for you. If you've been a warrior your entire career and you want me to change you into an archmage, I'll probably tell you to get bent. As a corollory to this, if your character ends up in charge of a unit I'll let you decide the formation if you like. Or, I can just do it for you, whichever.

Second, if you don't want to bother getting drafted, I'll be taking votes in the thread regarding story decisions (though I may omit some of the smaller ones).

Speaking of decisions, here's the first set of 'em!

First, we need a name. The default name is Magnus, but that can change. The surname is Gallant and it's not changeable.

Next, a few personality type questions. These will determine which units we start with so they're not just superficial.

Swapped for space.

As I was preparing this post, I found out that apparantly this has recently been re-released on the wii's virtual console so you can check it out yourself if this piques your interest. Now, LET'S PLAY!

Magnus
Passion
Order
Triumph
Embrace
Strife
Change
Water

Nergil
Hatred
Hope
Might
Lust
Strife
Law
Fire

Hey, is the default character we're deciding on here always a dude? 'Cos I remember the SNES iteration of this game let you choose the sex of your main character. (And General Romana kicked so much ass, even though Isay so myself. So. Much. Ass.) Aaaanyway!

Cosimo
passion
greed
trust
freedom
reform
rule
Wind

I was going to do the SNES one in my LP series (games I loved as a kid, but never beat, fwiw), but i'll skip that now

Magnus
Control
Triumph
freedom
reform
ideal
Wind

TLDR: The Lodis Empire're a bunch of dicks.

'S okay. I figured it'd be something like that. Still sounds pretty cool. (Still hope for a character, too. This army can't be a total sausage-fest :P .)

Okay, totally overestimated the amount of time I'd have to work on this this week between my finals. My last test is on Wednesday, so update Wednesday night! The deadline for votes will be 3:00pm PST on Wednesday, and the update will be some time that night!

EDIT: Well, I got about halfway through writing the update, but I've gotta get ready to catch a bus to go home for the holidays. Unfortunately, that means this likely won't kick off 'till after the new year.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Satan's Onion (Post 1174805)

'S okay. I figured it'd be something like that. Still sounds pretty cool. (Still hope for a character, too. This army can't be a total sausage-fest :P .)

One of Magnus' top generals is a woman. There are various other female characters, too.

Also this game has a bit of a twist on the original Ogre Battle's protagonist: both the male and female version are present as separate recruitable characters with distinct personalities, from neighboring Zenobia, if you're good enough at the game, although even if you don't get them in your party they play a decently large part in the plot regardless. Basically the plot of March of the Black Queen was retconned slightly in that both Destin and Europea played a major role in saving Zenobia, although Destin is where the plotline from the end of that game picks up, with Europea showing up later as having a more "mysterious" past of what it was she did in the rebellion. The two characters' full names form a bit of a pun--Destin Faroda's first name and Europea Rheda's last name combine to form "Destin Rheda", or, Destined Leader. This was a bit lost on people since Europea's last name was probably supposed to be spelled "Leada" but hey, still one of the best translations in the history of Japanese RPGs.

Ogre Battle 64 is one of my favorite games. Too bad they forgot to put the Chaos Frame on the screen, but hopefully we can take it into account as we all make our decisions, since it affects whether you get most of the extra characters.

Do you have any idea what type of Chaos Frame you'll aim for on this playthrough?