Ogre Battle/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Better Than Canon: Quite a few people prefer the good ending of The Knight of Lodis, where Alphonse and his girlfriend live happily ever after to the canon ending, where Alphonse loses everything he ever cared for and becomes the bitter, nihilistic warlord Lans Tartare.
  • Complete Monster: Death Master Nybbas Obderhode is a completely fucked up person. When his son Debordes was executed by Barbatos for rebelling, Nybbas made his corpse a guinea pig for his necromancy research, turning him into a walking corpse. While he serves Barbatos, he couldn't care less on who wins just so long he can continue his research about necromancy, with no regards of souls of the dead or living. No wonder his priestly daughter Orias hate him so much... And if you think he's not THAT bad... then his Moral Event Horizon would be him zombifying of Guildus in Neutral route. And if you go to the other route, he zombifies Leonard and Zaebos. The Chaotic route of the PSP remake ramps this Up to Eleven with his treatment to his daughter Cressida. Of most Tactics Ogre villains... Nybbas tops in the 'evil' department.
    • Cardinal Barbatos orders the ethnic cleansing of Walsta/Walister and institutes concentration camps such as Baramus/forced slave labor camps such as Balmamusa. If that wasn't really the cinch of it, Jenounes' backstory also cements him as one. He ordered the massacre of Oxyones' village on Jenounes' squadron on the claim that they were cultists, but in truth, they just stored anti-Barbatos movement and overall innocent. And then there's the fact that he executed Debordes just because he's part of anti-Barbatos movement, enabling Nybbas to do his way with him. And he's still lightweight compared to Nybbas...
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Deneb Rhode, the Cute Witch Mad Scientist, the only characters to appear in every game in the series.Person of Lordly Caliber features werewolf Biske La Varet, while the PSP remake of Let Us Cling Together has Ravness Loxaerion. Both versions of the latter also feature Aloser.
  • Evil Is Sexy: In Let Us Cling Together, Shelly is one of the sisters who started out on the evil side... and is the only one who's got that Absolute Cleavage displayed. Though she can turn good later.
    • Deneb, Endora.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Princess+Lich. The Princess gets two White hit-all attacks, the Lich gets four hit-all spells that can be anything except White. Add a cleric class for a medic and a High Sky monster to carry the unit, and watch it tear anything and everything that opposes it to shreds. Just remember to watch your Karma Meter.
      • Alternatively, you can ditch the cleric for another lich/sorcerer/muse/doll master and put some undead in front of the unit to tank instead of the high flying monster. Undead are completely invulnerable to anything that isn't white magic or healing (although that kills them incredibly quickly), so the unit has a lot of survivability even without a healer. You do lose some maneuverability, though, but your increased damage output would be worth it if there was anything that could survive the Princess+Lich combination in the first place.
      • Alternatively, since most bosses towards the later half of the game are low alignment and thus more vulnerable to white magic, Princess + 2 Seraphim with your choice of unit to do the tanking (Platinium Dragon anyone?) means a veritable hailstorm of white magic hit-all attacks.
    • Haborym in Tactics Ogre may count as well. He's a good Swordmaster, but due to his initially high Dexterity (and high growth too), all his status magic has high chance of hitting. So give him a Petrify (even if he has Fire affinity), and watch your enemies turn to stone with nobody to cure it.
    • Tactics Ogre... where to begin? Archers are almost game breaking from the beginning, what with extended range on high ground and no counter attacks. But more likely offenders are pretty much every single thing found in Hell Gate. Dragon magic hits every enemy on the map, or creates grossly overpowered swords, or lets you infinitely reset a character to lvl 1 without losing stats (yes, you can repeat this for unlimited stats), etc. If you even get partly into Hell Gate, the end battles will be easier than the first battle in the game as a result of all the game breaking booty you acquire. Canopus in Let Us Cling Together, moreso in the PSP version since Archers got toned down. Canopus flies, is an extreme crack shot and has an overall powerful stats, including good dodging rate. He's been called a mini-Orlandu this way.
  • Ho Yay: Magnus and Yumil in Ogre Battle 64.
  • I Liked It Better When It Sucked: Granted, Alocer would have fit a bit better (and have been more faithful to the source material) but fans weren't glad that her name was changed to Arycelle.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Baldwin Glendale. Dude like defines this trope.
    • Also Rashidi from the same game. If the player's Chaos Frame is low enough, they receive a special ending which implies the entire game was just one massive ploy on his part so he could be resurrected.
  • Player Punch: For the Tactics Ogre PSP remake, if you choose the Chaos route... Vyce will kill the new girl Ravness right off bat. Which is basically: Pick who's gonna die, Ravness (and Ozma later) or Sisteena and Selye.
    • In Tactics Ogre, some of the bosses may make you think "My God, What Have I Done?" Not only do you wind up accidentally fighting your own countrymen if you screw up, but a couple death quotes may be sad. For example, one boss dies and mentions that he can't get medicine for his sick daughter now. You find someone wants revenge for killing her husband awhile ago... and starts off by stating that she's pregnant, so you're killing her and her baby. Oh, and the wife's an optional battle, but avoid that, and in Chapter 4, you'll be notified that Sisteena (the girl who briefly appeared in Chapter 1) was Olivia's sister and that wife was holding her captive, sold her to someone and she got killed.
    • A lot of the time, a single line will be enough to turn a victory into one of these. One boss says "If I'd had that 30,000 Goth... I could have saved my daughter's life" before kicking it.
  • The Scrappy: A lot of Tactics Ogre player really dislike Kachua for her rather excessive amount of Wangst. Players only look at her better when she eventually matures up and becomes a Game Breaker.
  • Take That, Scrappy!: Since Kachua is... not-quite-well liked during that phase, Selye replying her with "Shut up, you whiny bitch!" is kinda well liked...
  • That One Boss: Naris in Knight of Lodis, due to his ability to randomly One-Hit Kill with Hell's Gate.
    • There's also the canon ending for Tactics Ogre: The Knight Of Lodis. See the Downer Ending in the main section.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Nostalgic fans are already complaining about the name changes in the PSP remake of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Some name changes make sense, such as "Zenobia" to "Xenobia"; however, some others (e.g. "gun" to the much more specific "fusil") were straight out of left field.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Dark Knight Volac Winzalf. His race is indistinct, and due to his surname, there are rumors that he hailed from Zenobia's Highlands, and may have links between Hikash, Rauny or Guildus. He's also one of Lans Tartare's most trusted aides. He spends his time just on Tartare's side, never participating in any battles, and unlike Balzepho, has no bonus scenes and still fewer canon scenes, thus we never really know who he really is.
    • Also, Andoras mentions a lot of stuff such as how he is a member of the Nirdam royal family but it's not elaborated too much in the game (heck, these details are introduced in the final dungeon, and only if you have certain party members in the battle!).
  • Too Cool to Live: In Let Us Cling Together, Neutral Leonar actually becomes a sensible leader, loyal knight who cares about the land after Ronwey's death. Many fans have been clamoring that he should've been recruitable in that route, but alas, he's destined to be killed by Catiua with a stab of knife.
  • What an Idiot!: Duke Ronway underestimates Denim, Kachua, Vice and Leonard. Seriously, if you know that someone is willing to either massacre a whole town or go it alone and survive, you do not piss him off.
  • The Woobie: Chaotic route in Let Us Cling Together. Just when Ravness could've followed things right with her heart, Leonard reveals her half-Gargastan route... then Vice kills her on spot. You'll probably feel sorry for her at that point.
    • It’s hard not to feel sorry for Cressida in the Chaotic route. Not only does she lose her sister, mother and possible brother-in-law from war, her father doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about it. While Nybbas' two other children have each other, Cressida is all alone with no one but herself.