Tactics Ogre: Reborn

Tactics Ogre Reborn is a superb revamp of an all-time strategy game masterpiece--though this revival is not without some small issues.

An exhaustive reworking of a foundational dark fantasy epic, with some quietly radical new ideas.

Though slightly tarnished, Tactics Ogre: Reborn is still a tactical RPG jewel.

There’s genius and sincerity at work here. Get deep enough into Tactics Ogre and the entreaty of its subtitle, Let Us Cling Together, starts to sound a lot less goofy and a lot more urgent and sad. How deep you will get into the game depends on your appetite for micromanagement and your patience with gameplay systems that, 27 years later, are starting to creak, despite all the judicious tinkering that’s been done to them. Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a welcome, polished, and thoughtful update to a game that defined a genre — a genre that has now left it behind.

Not much of a glow-up from Tactics Ogre's PSP remake in 2010, but this is still an engrossing turn-based tactics RPG that will keep you battling for hours and hours and hours and hours...

In a world where we've seen Square Enix fall down with remasters (examples include the lacklustre Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters and the egregious Kingdom Hearts on Switch), Tactics Ogre: Reborn highlights something special – a change of the guard, so to speak, that bodes remarkably well for the rest of the publisher's classic RPG oeuvre.

The strategy RPG genre owes a lot to the Tactics Ogre franchise, which is filled with lesser titles trying to recreate even a fraction of its winning formula. The experience that lies at the heart of Tactics Ogre: Reborn has stood the test of time admirably and, thanks to the swathe of intelligent tweaks and quality-of-life improvements introduced, will likely remain at the head of the pack for years to come.

Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a seminal and still-enjoyable SRPG that manages to respectfully hold its own against the many descendants it now exists alongside. Though some elements of its design feel a little archaic, its deeply political and branching narrative, orchestrated soundtrack, and solidly built strategic combat all come together to make for a worthwhile experience. Visually, this version is disappointing, and we wouldn't say Reborn is one to rush out and buy immediately, but if you're a sucker for strategy and want to experience an influential classic with some mod cons thrown in, we'd suggest you keep this on your watchlist.

While Reborn is largely an excellent re-release of Tactics Ogre (again), many of its gameplay alterations give it new flaws that will have me making caveats in recommending it (again).

The Tactics Ogre series has been dormant for a long time, but if this remaster is anything to go by, Square Enix still has total confidence in their IP. I cannot hesitate to recommend this game to fans of SRPGs, and it's accessible enough for newcomers to dive right in.