The third game in the Ogre Battle series – and also the final one in the main series (there were some handheld spin-offs), this was the first one to not be multiplatform. The games are a bit like real time strategy games, but focus heavily on preparing your tactics before battle. This consists of unit training, levelling up, and picking formations. Person of Lordly Caliber (the first subtitle in the series to not be a reference to a Queen song) is a great example of how the N64 can do great 2D graphics.

The story is quite fascinating: you play as a promising recruit that chooses a job far away from the capital of the country. You fight rebels who try to kidnap the prince. However, things aren’t black and white: the rebels have good reason, although Magnus thinks that their attacks and killing are too far. The prince is also sympathetic to the cause, much to the dismay of his bodyguard (who is trying to train his sympathy out of him, due to orders from his family). Magnus is conflicted with his orders, and does offer to spare the lives of the rebels.

During the story, you’ll take charge for many battles. The battles take a top down view, with you ordering your leaders into positions. Health will recover if they’re in towns, so you’ll often fight for control of them, with your main goal usually being the enemy stronghold. It took me a while to get used to the interface (it took me far to long to figure out how to get more troops into the battlefield).

Once you encounter an enemy squad, a battle will take place. These are all automatic, with you only having control of select special abilities. The placement of your squad, and how their powers compliment each other, is very important. One thing I did find odd is that many fights would end prematurely. This made sense for enemies fleeing, but when I was fighting an enemy in a stronghold, I’d be winning, be pushed back, and have to attack again.

Between battles is where you will do a lot of organising: training up units, placing new troops into groups, reorganising those groups, and so much more. There’s a lot of depth to the system, and I found myself interested by the kind of troops, along with the overall world and story. Unfortunately, I’m really quite terrible at games like this and it wasn’t long until I couldn’t get past battles. I attempted to use cheats so I could see more of the story, but those caused glitches that prevented progression. It’s a shame as the world and characters were fascinating.

Fun

It’s an excellent game which took Japanese developers Quest an eternity to put together, and all of that effort shows. The expense of the hefty 320Mbit cart it fills and the fact that publisher Atlus’ wonderful Snowboard Kids 2 never made it to Europe suggest that we’re not going to see a PAL version of Ogre Battle 64, but it’s definitely worth getting hold of on import. There’s nothing else like it on N64, and it’s more than big enough to keep you playing for most of the two years it’ll take to write the sequel.

Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #50. Review Score: 87%

Remake or remaster?

A remake/remaster collection of the Ogre Battle series would be great for fans of the genre.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber, not even on Nintendo Swich Online, despite the game releasing on the Virtual Console.

Re-releases

2010: Wii Virtual Console (also the first release in PAL regions)

2017: Wii U Virtual Console