Tactics Ogre is a must-own for PSP owners looking for that elusive great title on their system.
Let Us Cling Together opens up with Denam and Catiua Pavel, along with their friend Vyce, planning a revolt against the clans of Bakram and Galgastan and their Dark Knight allies. The main characters have been grieving following the deaths of their families at the hands of the Dark Knights Loslorien, and they happen upon some unexpected allies, including members of the Holy Knights of New Xenobia, and the battles begin. As I've said, this Tactics Ogre contains the fascinating political intrigue reminiscent of the greatest games of the genre, and some of the most interesting characters a video game has provided in years. Constant revelations and plot twists will keep you on your heels, and interesting side quests make the experience all the better. The ability to make choices, which range from choosing to save a character to slaughtering many people for the good of the rebellion, results in a large amount of replay value, as you can come back and play through the different scenarios (and make different choices no matter the scenario), Law, Chaos, and Neutral. There are only two real endings, though exactly which cut-scenes you get at the end depend upon the choices you make. The replay value, choice and consequence, and intriguing scenarios truly stand out; Let Us Cling Together has one of the best storylines of any game this generation.
Once you get into a battle, you'll find a lot to love here. Tactics Ogre is a seamless stitching together of Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem gameplay. It's not quite as strategy-heavy as Fire Emblem, but there's plenty room for it here, and while you won't control as many characters at one time (you get a maximum of twelve), you definitely get a lot more than you do in FFT. But Tactics Ogre also provides the RPG elements that FFT is heavy on. Equipment, spells, and items are all immensely important and will be the difference between life and death. Some of these, particularly the buffs and debuffs, aren't explained very well in either the game manual or the game itself, so there can be some problems as far as figuring out which spells to get, though this doesn't hurt the game in the long run. But regardless of the heavy use of RPG elements, Tactics Ogre is nowhere near as slowly paced as its FFT brother, and nearly matches the swiftness of Fire Emblem gameplay. Each battle will have you taking advantage of the terrain and finding different strategies each time, and most of the battles will keep you highly entertained. Oftentimes, all you'll need to do is take out the enemy's leader, and so your strategy should be clear based on each map. But no matter your approach, there's almost never a dull moment in Tactics Ogre.
Always daunting to new players of the genre, SRPGs are well-known for their punishing difficulty. And while this one is not as tough as its original, newcomers be warned: the first few chapters especially can range from hard to infuriating. While it wasn't too much trouble for me as a veteran of the genre, even I must say that an early level that sees you attempting to scale a castle against infinitely respawning undead is a terribly intimidating task. There are other levels that might press you to your limits as well, and since your characters level up by class (if one warrior gains a level, all warriors do, and so on) and the random battles scale up to your highest-level character, level-grinding can be a major annoyance. However, the beginning isn't as ferocious as it was on the PlayStation, though you could actually call the PSP version more balanced. Some of the battles near the end are actually a bit tougher than before, including the final one. However, your characters must die three times before they're permanently gone, and the Chariot Tarot allows you to go back in time to change previous moves, though your permanent statistics will reflect it if you abuse this system. The ability to level grind, recruit enemies and strip their equipment, and craft new items, weapons, and armor also work to make the game much easier for gamers who are able to figure out how to use these systems effectively. Learning different skills and when to apply them will help as well, and these last few things aren't terribly difficult to figure out, so this game is certainly beatable no matter who you are.
As for the Chariot Tarot, it's one of a few new additions from the original game, the other most prominent one being the semi-related World Tarot. The World Tarot allows you to go back (once you've finished the game, which will take you a good sixty, and perhaps up to eighty, hours) and replay levels at any point in the game to make new decisions and see different story results (or even recruit characters you previously missed). Of course, this will also help the post-game side quests becomes easier, especially if you go back and complete every other side quest you can on top of hoarding all the great items you missed earlier. And this game is loaded with side quests, both during the main storyline and afterwards. Through the Warren Report, in which you can see statistics and read various information, you can even find writings that will open up new areas and new places to battle within. Dozens of hours can be burned on these quests, and if you decide to battle through them all, you're definitely looking at well over a hundred hours total, possibly near one hundred and fifty. And if you want to learn all you can about this interesting cast of characters, you'll do just that.
However, Tactics Ogre won't earn many accolades based off its visual and audio aspects. Indeed, it doesn't look any better than the PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, which barely looked better than Final Fantasy Tactics on the Nintendo DS. But as a SRPG, the visuals don't really matter, and what Tactics Ogre provides gets the job done perfectly. It would be nice if the battlefields still didn't end with empty colored space on the outside, but that's the only noticeable issue. The characters models look fine with good attack and cut-scene animations, the battlefields themselves are fairly detailed which sometimes includes trees, buildings, and castle walls, and there are some very nice effects for the more powerful attacks. The game is also equally light in the sound department, but the music is good enough to get the job done, and the sound effects are typical of a SRPG, plus good atmospheric sounds. But what really matters technically in a SRPG is how good the AI is, and in this case, I can say you won't confuse it with Fire Emblem because it's pretty stupid, though it sure loves to steal your item/card drops for the sole sake of irritating you and often plays to make you start over (by doing stuff like kill a character you're trying to recruit) rather than actually win the battle. However, with no other true technical issues (I haven't come across a noticeable bug or stuttering frame-rate problem), it's hard to knock Tactics Ogre in this regard.
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together has everything that makes a SRPG great. A deep, politically-charged plot with engaging dialogue and characters you can empathize with, dozens of hours of epic battles, and a difficulty that is perfectly moderate for experienced strategy RPG enthusiasts and brutal for newcomers. There are loads of side quests to enjoy and the game can easily provide over a hundred hours on a first play-through (and even more if you want to play through the different routes). The problems in this game are so trivial as to be almost not worth mentioning; this is, without a doubt, one of the greatest PSP games ever released. It's not as strategy-heavy as Fire Emblem, but has a similar fast pace. It doesn't load up on RPG elements like Disgaea, but it certainly earns the RPG portion of the SRPG genre with a good leveling up system that includes new finishing moves, skills, spells, weapons, armor, etc. And since it blends strategy and traditional RPG elements so well, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is as easy to recommend as any SRPG ever released. The biggest problem might indeed be the clunky title, which effectively summarizes how I view this excellent game.