Square Enix has dug deep into its archives and finally released something for tactical RPG fans. No, not Final Fantasy Tactics. Tactics Ooga, another beloved isometric game with "Tactics" in the title, has finally been rescued from PSP oblivion: the game that TRPG hipsters say is "the best TRPG ever made" was ported to Sony's portable console in 2010 It certainly received a gorgeous upgrade when it was ported to Sony's handheld consoles in 2010.

If you don't know the original game, you may be familiar with this game, which was released on the SNES in 1995. Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, and my favorite, Vandal Hearts, would not exist without this mix of down-to-earth fantasy politics and Q*BERT-style battle maps. The game also solidified Yasumi Matsuno's house style, and the director/writer/designer went on to work on Final Fantasy Tactics and FF12. [Game of Thrones]-like fantasy tussles and thick battle maps that turn the flat battlefields of the same era into gorgeous 3D dioramas. There is an intrinsic joy in moving units and shooting arrows across the battlefield, and it's alive and well in Tactics Ooga: Reborn, with improved enemy AI that makes for a fair yet challenging fight. In every battle, instead of just mindlessly moving through the map, every action engages tactical thinking and keeps you on your toes.

In other words, there is more to consider than simply destroying the enemy. One of the early challenges is the battle with the necromancer in the towering keep. That necromancer can bring back to life the skeletons you defeat, and if you dawdle, he will summon even more vicious ones. Your mission, however, is not to defeat them all, but rather to make your way to the necromancer while dodging spells that will greatly reduce your unit's strength.

Navigating the narrow battlefield was a puzzle in itself, and I had to take advantage of all the different abilities of my units. Canopus, a winged angelic man, quickly ascended the flank of the keep and took pot shots before retreating to recover. Denham, a knight equipped with Ribbon's new Rampart Aura skill, used it to trap the enemy in place, allowing my Rune Fencer to slip through the exposed gap. Donalto, a cleric whose exorcism spell is indispensable, double-killed the skeletons, while Claudia could continue to heal her weakened body.

It was a solid plan, and it worked in the end, if not hampered by the seemingly random stat cards that dropped as the battle progressed. These cards lured you to certain tiles with the promise of a temporary (or, very occasionally, permanent) stat boost. That is, however, if you can get there before an enemy who consumes a similarly large amount of stats. Can you afford to spend a turn collecting melee attack cards? Or can you somehow push the enemy into debuff cards?" these boosts make a noticeable difference, but sometimes you have to be willing and focused.

There are more complex tactical RPGs these days, and if you want to stack systems on top of pliny, just look at the "Disgaea" series, but as for the essence of isometric, turn-based combat: "Tactics Ouga": But isometric, turn-based combat With respect to the essence of "Tactics Ooga: Reborn," Tactics Ooga: Reborn is rigorously fine-tuned and tactically diverse. A master is still a master after all these years.

Of course, on top of the original combat system, most of the additions were made during the 2010 release of the PSP version. Most notable is the Chariot Tarot system, which is essentially a nice-looking undo button that allows you to rewind and attempt another action. It is a generous system that saves the last dozen or so turns and allows you to seamlessly return to any turn from a pop-up menu. You can try out different plans without having to save and reload endlessly.

There is also a system called World Tarot, which basically does the same thing in the story. The game has a lot of story branching, and even minor choices can affect the availability of a character.

A less spectacular but more useful feature is the ability to change the camera angle to a top-down view. It also allows you to zoom out, so you can see more of the map, or even all of it at once, although you will have to squint. You can't rotate the scene, as I don't think it is fully 3D, but this combination of camera options works well enough.

You'll notice in the screenshots that the PSP game's crunchy pixel art looks like it's been smoothed out with a rusty trowel because Square Enix has enlarged it to a modern screen. Characters look oddly rounded, and background textures have lost a lot of their crispness and detail. Whenever you play, especially when zoomed in or looking at cutscenes, "Reborn" can be a surprisingly ugly game.

Smoothing effects cannot be turned off. I checked the menu several times in disbelief; I don't know how good the unfiltered, low-resolution pixel art of PSP games is in this context, but Reborn's Vaseline-soaked compromise is disappointing. The newly blurred and smoothed pixel art clashes with the high-resolution character art and in-game menus, ultimately making the game an aesthetic mess.

Thankfully, many of the other changes made in Reborn are for the better. The new "Rampart Aura" skill ability mentioned above is part of a major revamp of Tactics Ooga's skill and level-up system, which now levels individual characters rather than classes, allowing soldiers to differentiate themselves. In addition, the spell and skill intricacies of the previous version have been streamlined, and all abilities now require a common resource, MP.

The game is no longer overly challenging, thanks to the elimination of random encounters on the world map (with an optional training battle) and the introduction of a level cap, which allows players to steadily level up by completing story missions. I haven't played the PSP version, so I don't know if these changes are definitively for the better, but the result is a fair yet challenging game where you have to tweak your character to overcome combat and the game makes it easy most of the time.

There are a few changes I like that would make tactical RPGs better. You can now scout the map before a battle. Optionally, you can get a glimpse of the upcoming battlefield and the enemy's layout so you can adjust your army formation accordingly. In addition, multiple party formations can be saved in quick slots that can be easily swapped out, eliminating the need to move units in and out of each battle.

For the first few turns of combat, you have no choice but to advance your units and wait for the enemy to do the same. You can sip your tea and wait with crossed fingers for the computer to fight for you. [I had a bit of a dabble with this AI system and had no way to tell my units to trample each other and pick up dropped treasures and status bonus cards, but it seems competent enough, and leaving even one or two of your soldiers to their own devices will speed up combat significantly! .

The same goes for the new fast-forward setting, which allows you to double the speed of combat with the click of a button. I turned this on after the first few battles and turned it off just to compare for the sake of this review. It is now required in all tactical RPGs. It just speeds up the movement and animation, not to the point where it looks comical, but it reduces a lot of the sluggishness that many tactical RPGs tend to have, where you just spend a lot of time looking at animations.

The best additions were saved for last. A new orchestral soundtrack puts the dirty pixel art to shame with an exquisite rendering of the original score from Tactics Ooga. The music does a pretty strong job of selling the story of the friends' struggle to reclaim their homeland, as well as highlighting the excitement and tension of combat; the excellent English localization, carried over from the PSP version, matches it perfectly, and the talented voice actors Alexander O. Smith and Joseph Reeder bring to life the typically brilliant script by Alexander O. Smith and Joseph Reeder.

It is unfortunate that the ugly pixel art remains middling, but not enough to distract from the more successful and subtle changes in "Reborn." Of course, hardcore tactical RPG fans will have already played the game, but what about those interested in Japanese tactical games and "Tactics Ooga"? Of course, hardcore tactical RPG fans will have already played it. Tactics Ooga is the grandfather of the genre, and now it's back to show its prowess to the genre's pretenders.