Tactics Ogre: as the world turns

Tactics Ogre features a very powerful and unique system called World, which lets you travel back in time to previously experienced events, giving you the chance to do them all over again.

Did you get to a battle early on where a unit was being attacked by brigands and you didn’t have the skill or tactical savvy to save it, so you let it die and moved on? Use World to travel back to that map later and try again! This time he or she just might join you…

After the jump, ripping the fabric of space, time, and saved games

World unlocks only after you complete the game the first time, and it removes a lot of the pressure if you’re the kind of completionist who wants to get 100% of the available goodies in the game. Several side quests are based on whether certain happened. If you missed that window, being able to travel back to that point is a great boon, indeed.

You can also use World to go back and make new choices in the story, which can let you see entirely new characters, maps, side quests, and unlockables! This can lead to some paradoxes. Once you complete the game and start using World to traverse the storyline, you never lose anything. You keep your army, inventory, and everything you’ve earned. You keep so you could conceivably take a turn in the story you didn’t take the first time, which results in the death of a unit you’ve actually got in your army. This doesn’t hurt anything, and can be pretty humorous when it happens.

In theory, you could beat the game and use World to go back to the very beginning and start all over again, albeit at a much higher level with a dozen or more of your best units geared up and ready to go. The nice thing about Tactics Ogre is that in the post-game, the enemies scale their own gear, levels, and skills right along with you, so you’ll always have a challenge once you start using World.

I find myself using World a lot. I found several side quests that I’d missed, so using World I travelled back to an anchor point in the timeline. It works like a charm, and I look forward to working my through these dark temples in an effort to secure even more powerful loot for my troops.

Up next: okay, let’s talk actual battles
(Click here for the previous Tactics Ogre game diary.)

BleedTheFreak (aka Scott Lufkin) currently lives in Iowa with his wife, two children, and a beloved PC.