Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen

**joz** · 02-07-2011, 12:29 PM

Genre/s: Strategy RPG
Player/s: One
Rating/s: E (everyone)
System/s: SNES - Sega Saturn - Playstation - Virtual Console

Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen

Intro:

The Sage Rashidi, perhaps driven by madness, assassinated his former friend King Zenobia and joined with Empress Endora, leader of the Northern Higlands, to wage war on the four kingdoms...

The overpowering military of the Highland legions took but a year to subdue the whole continent and The Holy Zeteginean Empire was born.

The rule of the empire was a pure region of terror. Merciless persecution was directed at the loyal survivors of the old kingdoms and those who would escape tyranny. The hearts of the people were troubled by secrets and betrayals and much blood was spilt upon the land.

Gameplay:

This is a strategy type game mixed with leveling up stats with battle experience and buying items from stores. The world map shows you available cities and destinations to go to. New battles will appear on the map as two swords crossed, while the completed battles are represented by a white flag. The cursor is a big sword.

Once you select a city, you'll go into the field map view, giving you an overview of the terrain of that area. To move your character, you simple select the unit and pick a destination. They will stop moving once they reach their destination only stopping if you chose to do so or they are defeated in battle.

Tarots:

Tarot cards give you a summon like ability where you can either use for attack, healing, or status upgrades for your allies or negative status affect for enemy units. Also, some cards bring down your fame and will lead you to the dark side.

Battle:

At first the battle system took a little getting used to. You really don't have any control as to what the individual characters can actually do during battle. You can change the tactics that the whole unit will follow to a certain extent. You really have to get used to the classes and what their attacks or healing abilities do. Speed and order is also helpful to remember.

The winner of a battle is decided by a point spread based on how much damage each unit caused. This is not including the damage you may cause using a Tarot card.

Music:

The soundtrack is fitting to the style of game and really sets the mood for the scenarios. I did get a bit bored after a while and opted to mute the sound as I played something else in Pandora.

Here are a few songs from the game if you're interested.

( Click to show/hide )

The Black Queen herself! Pretty hot huh? I know I would.

Final Thoughts:

I think the game is great! If you liked Final Fantasy Tactics and Command & Conquer, then you'll like this one too. I highly recommend you to play this over and over again.

Play it here!
Ogre Battle The March Of The Black Queen » Super Nintendo

**Dudebro** · 03-26-2011, 02:23 AM

Not sure how I missed this before.

+1 for choosing such a good game to review. I gave it all 5s but a 4 for graphics because they are kinda static and dull after a while. I still think it's one of the best games I've ever played though. Dated graphics ain't got nothing on the rest of the game.

One thing I'd like to add is the part about not leveling your main character up too much. I know this isn't a walkthrough but to me that's a pretty important tip. If your hero gets too strong your reputation plummets and you have a much harder time doing pretty much everything. Tarot cards reward the hero with any exp from kills so damage ones should be used carefully.

Now I wanna play this again and master it. Was trying to master Taloons but that game is just killing me.

Also this game is part of the series but it's gameplay is tactics. It's story picks up after the first Ogre Battle but isn't directly related.
Retro Uprising - Arcade - Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
It's only in fullmode though so it can't be mastered. Not sure if that will change at any point.

**Demon-Mask** · 03-26-2011, 09:41 AM

This is one of my personal favorite games, I am playing the Playstation version at the moment. I still don't fully understand everything about it, but it is still a lot of fun.

**Dudebro** · 03-26-2011, 12:40 PM

If you got any questions you need answered lay them on me.

**alohaex** · 03-26-2011, 02:44 PM

I have this game as well have not gotten very far in though

**Demon-Mask** · 03-26-2011, 05:05 PM

Nothing that needs answered, except I don't understand the way time works within the game. I don't fully grasp the significance of it or the rate at which it passes.

**Dudebro** · 03-26-2011, 05:12 PM

This is as good a place as any to discuss it imo. What specifically about the passage of time is confusing you?

I know time passes constantly unless you pause, are in battle or are in menus. It's significant because if you stay on a map too long you start to lose reputation(2 days should be more than enough time to beat a map). People want to be liberated but they don't want to be occupied. If you're playing evil it won't matter though, and you can make tons of money from waiting around before fighting the boss. Did that help or was it something else?

**Demon-Mask** · 03-26-2011, 05:16 PM

That does help, I've had problems trying not to play evil and ending up losing reputation.
My main concern was the rate of time flow, what is one day in the game to our time?

**Dudebro** · 03-26-2011, 06:34 PM

That's hard to say really. If you don't pause it for any reason at all(kinda impossible) it's probably like 10-20 mins or so. I usually take longer because I like to pause and micromanage as much as possible.

To avoid being evil-
1. Don't level your hero at all. You never need to fight with him, it should be a last resort but even then you probably screwed up if they make it to your castle.

2. Finish the map asap. You get a good amount of bonus money for doing it fast and it keeps your levels lower which helps your reputation. Kill enemies higher level than you= rep up and ali up. Lower level than you=rep down and ali plummets.

3. Avoid killing enemy units completely unless your unit is evil(like mages, ghosts, ect). If good units wipe out lots of enemies and level up too fast their alignment drops sharply and it ruins advancement chances. Early mage classes have to be careful of overdoing it though, need like 10 ali to advance to the next class. Trying to raise ali from 0 is an exercise in futility.

4. Choose good options when asked. Like with townspeople, npcs, ect. Like one dialogue tells you, the people are watching you.

5. Don't forgive Deneb the witch. If you forgive her you can recruit her but she sucks and you take a huge hit to reputation. Also if you forgive her it makes it easy to get an advanced pumpkinhead but I didn't care for them anyways.

There's probably more but that's all I can think of atm. With those five tips you should have tons of reputation and well developed characters.

**joz** · 03-26-2011, 07:36 PM

I got the evil ending. I fought with the main character, but I used my other units more. Especially the mages and wizards. I don't think I took too long to beat the levels, but I probably took longer than if I would have just gone straight to the boss instead of spreading out my units to cover all the ground and looking for hidden treasure. It's a really fun game and I will probably play it again and go for the good ending.

---------- Post added at 08:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:34 PM ----------

Also, I found out that the title of the game was inspired by the band Queen. That's why I posted the album cover on the top right.

**Dudebro** · 03-26-2011, 08:44 PM

Yeah the guy in charge loves Queen.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-SMOsXCc0c]YouTube - Queen - Ogre Battle (studio version)[/ame]
I like Queen but not big on that song really.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckRX0k9owAY]YouTube - Queen-The march of the black queen[/ame]
This one either but it's the other half of the games title which is cool. I think most of the series is the same Queen theme except the N64 version.

I really gotta try the evil path. I've played good and neutral but I never bothered with evil because it seems so limiting. No offense to the evil classes but the good ones are just better, with the exception of mages. Mages are the best class in the game though, way above any other normal unit so they don't really count.

**alohaex** · 03-26-2011, 09:23 PM

I just enjoyed the game and didn't care what side I was just enjoyed leveling up my guys and watching them fight and the tarot card system I loved

**Demon-Mask** · 03-27-2011, 06:07 PM

Since the titles are all inspired by Queen songs, I think there should be an "Ogre Battle: Princes of the Universe" or "Ogre Battle: A Kind of Magic" {actually, that may just be the album title}.

Also, I don't blame the creator for loving Queen, how can you hate such a good band?

**Dudebro** · 03-27-2011, 07:16 PM

Because you don't like that type of music or because Freddy Mercury was gay and died of aids? That's not me but it's reasons some people have for not liking Queen.