The latest in the Ogre Battle Saga was released yesterday, and PlanetGameCube is the first Nintendo site to get their grubby hands on this sweet simulation/RPG title.Tactics Ogre Gaiden is an "Anecdote of Ogre Battle Saga", or rather a sidestory that isn't an official chapter of the 8 chapter series (3 of the chapters have been released to date in the form of Densetsu no Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, and Ogre Battle 64, with an Ogre Battle Gaiden game released last year for Neo Geo Pocket Color). Just like how Ogre Battle Gaiden used an identical (but slightly scaled down) version of the original Ogre Battle's system, Tactics Ogre Gaiden uses the exact same gameplay system of Tactics Ogre, except there are numerous changes and an overall revamp of the interface, all for the better in our opinion.
The game starts off very dramatic, with main character Alphonse, a knight serving Lodis, and his friend and comrade, Lector, accompanying as they head off to the island of Ovis to spread the teachings of Lodis. While there, they are attacked by pirates, and after the initial battle, a pirate pops out of nowhere, aiming his bow at Lector, but Alphonse jumps in the way, taking the arrow, and getting thrown into a nearby river where he loses consiousness, and drifts to a house near a shore. Alphonse loses his memory and here where the game begins.
To those new to the series, Tactics Ogre Gaiden plays like this: You have an army composed of various units, each of whom have their own class. Scenarios are classic war simulation-type, hex-based, turn-based fighting. It's like chess, only with fighting and plenty of stats. Your characters can attack with their regular weapon, or use magic and other skills.
There are several changes that a veteran Tactics Ogre fan will be quick to notice. For one, there is no longer a distinction between male and female classes. In all previous Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre games, males had unique classes and females had unique classes. In Tactics Ogre Gaiden, there is no such distinction, so you can have a male or female cleric or a male or female soldier. This distinction is noticed quickly when characters such as a female soldier, male archer, female ninja, female knight, and male cleric show up early on, where these classes were usually the other way around, gender-wise.
Also, as far as we could tell, the character report (signified as the Warren Report or Hugo Report in previous games) is gone. This is a HUGE disappointment and there was absolutely no reason to leave this out. Instead, we're left with Kabocha's Memo, which is nothing but a hints section. In a best case scenario, a character report will open up later on, but since there was no info on this in the manual, it seems very unlikely.
Another significant change is that movement is no longer agility-based. Now like Fire Emblem, you will move your units first, then the enemy moves his units. Then it's your turn again. In the previous game, the order in which units moved was based on agility, so if you had 3 units with the highest agility, you moved them, then if the enemy had the next highest agility unit, he would move his next. And so on.
If anything, these changes seem to have actually improved Tactics Ogre Gaiden over Tactics Ogre. Although they might have made the game slightly easier. We'll see after more play.
I was unable to test the Quest Mode since it requires of course, a 2nd copy of the game.