My favourite remakes tend to be a little disrespectful towards the games they’re remaking, engaging in mildly subversive dialogue with the old creative choices, rather than just trying to ‘improve’ them in accordance with the expectations of the day. As such, my pick of Tactics Ogre: Reborn’s new features is a rebellious flourish – the buff card system, a cousin of the returning Tarot cards from the original 1995 launch on SNES.
It works like this: power-up cards for critical chance, physical or magic stats and the odds of triggering each unit’s passive abilities spawn semi-randomly across each isometric map, as you take turns to move your troops. Each of your units can gather up to four cards, keeping the effects till the battle is over (Tarot cards, dropped infrequently by dying enemies, confer permanent boosts). It’s tempting to ignore these buffs when they materialise off the beaten path, appearing on squares that don’t fit into your strategy, but they can be decisive in letting you temporarily override level gaps or class disadvantages.
Tactics Ogre: Reborn reviewDeveloper: Square EnixPublisher: Square EnixPlatform: Played on SwitchAvailability: Out November 11 on PC, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch
Take ninjas. They’ve got some sexy kit – blowpipes with which to mute or petrify troublesome Wizards, the ability to strike twice with a weapon in each hand – but they also struggle to make a dent on tougher Warriors and Knights. So why not have your Ninja tour the perimeter while said Warriors and Knights duke it out, harvesting attack buffs before pouncing on the enemy rearguard. Better yet, try it with a beefier flying unit such as a Gryphon: they can swoop right over the frontline to chase down cards before your enemies bag them.
The appeal of the buff card system is that it doesn’t merely expand, but tugs provocatively against the age-old tactical RPG rhythms of striking from the side or rear, pairing off combatants by class or element, and monitoring the character turn order to anticipate and thwart the AI. The buff cards not only give you smaller, pop-up objectives to weave into your manoeuvres, but inspire you to take jarring risks. You might charge a fragile Cleric into the moshpit to steal a buff from the other side’s Swordmaster, or have your Berserker pick up an auto-ability card rather than punching out an exposed Archer – with any luck, the greater frequency of Berserk rampages later will be worth the greater frequency of arrows to the face.
Breakaway mechanics like this are the cherries atop a chunky confection of new and revised RPG systems, presented in higher definition with new orchestral audio and voice-acting. There have certainly been stranger variations on the concept of RPG chess, but Tactics Ogre remains one of the finest for all its years, and Reborn – which mixes ideas from the 1995 game and its comprehensive PSP adaptation – puts a distinct stamp on things.