Tactics Ogre was developed by
Quest (originally for the
Super Famicom) and
published May 1, 1998 in the US by
Atlus for the
PlayStation. (Cult developer
Artdink helped to port the game from the Super Famicom to the PlayStation. The game is quite
rare and fetches $40-50 in used game stores, and that's at the low end.
Due to the lacking state of PSX emulation when this writeup was written, disk images are practically nonexistant. ROMs of the Super Famicom version are readily available, for those who read Japanese, but there's a lot of very important text in the game, both in story and gameplay. Translated versions of the Japanese
Super Famicom ROM and disk images of the US PSX version are both readily available.
Final Fantasy Tactics was developed in-house by Square, not by Quest, as the above node states. The reason for the similarities (and the lack of a follow-up until years later), was the fact that, in 1997, Yasumi Matsuda, the game designer, Akihiko Yoshida, the lead artist, and Hiroshi Minagawa, the graphics director, left Quest to defect to Squaresoft. The game's similarities are due to the fact that he set out to make much the same game that brought him fame before. A shame, that.
Tactics Ogre's story is the most flexible of any of the games in the Ogre Battle series. While the other games either fork at a key point (Tactics Ogre Gaiden and Ogre Battle 64) or have a fairly linear story with endings determined by a large list of triggers (Ogre Battle and Ogre Battle Gaiden), Tactics Ogre has two key points where the story splits. A major plot point early on (this is a story spoiler, so skip the next paragraph if you don't want to see it) is thus:
Denim Mown, the protagonist of the story, finds himself on the side of a revolution against an oppresive and violent regime. After joining the revolutionaries, he and his followers go to convince the townsfolk of a conquered city to join in the revolution. Sick of war, they refuse. Hearing of this, the ruthless leaders of the revolution order the slaughter of these pacifists, in order to frame the oppressive government. While this sounds like RPG convention (and it is), you actually have a choice which side to choose. You can choose to slaughter the townsfolk in the name of the revolution, and, yes, it will aid the cause immensely.
Based on your choices, you can become a true hero of the people, or you can depose the oppressive government only to replace it with your own oppressive government. Choices that can lead to results like this are what really set Tactics Ogre apart, in the face of successors with more robust combat systems and saner levels of difficulty.
This game is not to be confused with Tactics Ogre: the Knight of Lodis, a GBA side-story in the same series.
Ogre Battle || Ogre Battle Gaiden || Ogre Battle 64 || Tactics Ogre Gaiden: The Knight of Lodis || Tactics Ogre