What Game/s are You Playing? Daily / Whenever Check :) (GAMEPLAY)

[Aussie2B]

I cleared a second sky island stage in Ogre Battle on PlayStation, which was also fun, and now it's back to the slog of the overly large stages. I'm currently very slowly chipping away at the City of Malano map. I'm losing Goth with every day that passes, as the expenses for my troops are greater than what I'm bringing in with tributes, but every time I try to press forward to liberate more towns, more enemies pop up out of the middle of nowhere. Then I scrap my plans to take more cities, as that would spread my troops thinner and leave me with more locations to defend. That's another thing about this game that drives me nuts, that enemies can seemingly appear anywhere with no rhyme or reason. You have no idea what the group will comprise of either. For the first time since I started playing, I very nearly lost my base (which I always leave the Opinion Leader on), as high-flying groups would suddenly appear in the mountains below the base and zip over in an instant with little I can do because my units can only match that speed at best (as high-flying groups are the fastest.) It's kinda hard to properly strategize if you can't even see what's coming. There's just way too much that comes down to chance, and it seems like the way to victory is to learn all the nitty-gritty details of these various opaque mechanics (probably from outside resources because the game itself sure as heck doesn't explain it clearly) and then see what you can exploit yourself. Anyway, it looks like my reputation meter is 50% full again, or very close to it, so hooray for getting back to where I started the game at, haha.

[Aussie2B]

I finished off the Malano map in Ogre Battle on PlayStation, recruiting Prince Tristan in the process. It's been quite a while since I last was able to recruit a special character. I've read that he's the protagonist in the Neo Geo Pocket Ogre Battle, which is a side story to this one and I believe takes place concurrently? He's a powerful character, but his party was pretty lame. Who needs two clerics in a unit and a wizard in the front row? I rebuild all my units after each stage, but his especially needed it. Malano ended up being a bit of a wash with reputation. My reputation meter looked over 50% full when I beat the stage's boss, but then my return trip to the stage chipped away at my gains. Between it being a huge map and having loads of buried treasure, I ended up spending so much time that my reputation started dropping from too many days passing, and I also lost some from how I answered an NPC's question. There are seriously so many pitfalls for reputation. So I started up the Antalia stage with what looked like less than 50% of the meter filled, but either way, the point is I'm hovering around half, give or take. Whether that's enough to recruit Yushis in this stage, I don't know. But I'm liking this map. Not too excessively large, and the towns aren't laid out like someone dumped a bag of Skittles. Instead, they're clustered near my base and along the western edge of the map, with a big empty expanse surrounding the enemy's base. I was able to quickly liberate several cities without that posing a problem for me, and even after only the first day passed, I was already getting more in tributes than what I was spending on my troops. Though, lately, my approach has been to clear a map fully of enemies besides the boss, returning most of my units to my base, and then letting high noon come again with that limited military presence to get a good haul from tributes, while praying it's not gonna hurt my reputation, haha. I'm sure it lessens my bonus Goth after clearing the stage, but that's an insignificant difference compared to what I can pull in with tributes after every town is liberated.

[Aussie2B]

I cleared Antalia in Ogre Battle on PlayStation, and as far as this game goes, it was a pretty breezy stage. Quite a few battles with undead troops, and it's always satisfying having a healer take them all out in one shot. To no great surprise, Yushis wanted nothing to do with me. Though my reputation is steadily climbing, so are the requirements for recruiting special characters. So I won't be able to have her interact with Mizal in Tundra, the stage I'm working on now. It's another big one, with cities scattered everywhere, making it slow going to press forward. A lot of angel enemies so far, who have the annoyingly slow Banish attack, and I assume they're not going to do any favors for the alignment of my troops. If alignment was just a matter of your levels compared to the levels of the enemies, that'd be one thing, but it's annoying that it's also affected by the character class versus the class of the enemy characters. Some classes are innately regarded as "good" and others as "evil", and killing "evil" enemies is generally good for your alignment and "good" ones bad for your alignment. It's especially bad for "evil" classes to kill "good" classes. So some classes, like healers, are inclined to have their alignment go up and up until maxed at 100, unless you reeeeeally overuse them and have their levels get way higher than the enemies, and other classes, like wizards, are inclined to have their alignment drop and drop. And enemy units tend to be a mix of both "good" and "evil" classes, so there's only so much you can do to control who kills what. Add on to that that many classes have to be within a certain alignment range to upgrade to a higher class. Cities have their own alignment too, and whether it hurts or helps reputation is dependent on if the liberating unit has an average alignment below or above the city's. At the very least, I believe the cities tend to have lower alignment the closer I get to where the Empire is based, so even if many of my troops end up with low alignment, it won't take quite as much to get a positive effect out of liberating.

[Aussie2B]

I cleared the Tundra stage in Ogre Battle on PlayStation and moved on to Antanjyl. I think that was the name at least. Most of the names of cities in this game look like a cat walked across a keyboard. This is another stage where most of the cities are hidden, but since I'm referring to the strategy guide I've got, it's no problem to find them all. Well, besides the fact that the guide is kind of ass in terms of the accuracy of the spots circled on the map, so sometimes I have to wander a bit in a small area to find something hidden. I believe liberating hidden towns doesn't affect reputation, same with temples. Though, you'll lose reputation if the enemy takes them. Of course. My reputation meter is well over 50% full now, probably still under two thirds. I'm in an awkward spot now where it's still too low for "good" special characters but way too high to recruit Galf from this stage if I had wanted him. But to get him, I would have to give up the Brunhild sword too, which I believe would lock me out of at least one future stage. I think it also locks the player into a particular ending? Or that there's an ending that requires Galf, at least, I think. It's a little hard to say many things for sure because, in addition to being a newbie to the game, I've noticed there's an abundance of misinformation out there on the game. Not just in the official strategy guide but also all over the internet. And not just from people who seem clueless but people who seem like they do know a lot about the game. It's just another thing that illustrates how opaque the game is. With so many different endings and so many things affected by reputation, alignment, etc., it's probably easy for someone to make an assumption that things will go one particular way becomes they've never seen otherwise. For example, there are so many people who talk as if you're guaranteed to get the opportunity to recruit Gilbert if you've already recruited Canopus, but I know for a fact from my playthrough that you can get Canopus and then not be given an opportunity to recruit Gilbert.