==Observing a new Sole==
Written by: {{User|Chester Alan Arthur}}

Hello all! It's me Shoey here with a brand new section; ''Observing a new Sole'' (name provided by Meta Knight), yayyyyyyyyy! In this section, I will be looking at changes made between original games and their direct sequels. I’m going to have 3 categories for this section -- [b]What's In[/b], where we look at new features in sequels; [b]What's Out[/b], where we look at what has been removed; and [b]Changes[/b], where we look at what features have changed between games. Since I got this idea from thinking about ''Ogre Battle'' while I was driving a forklift at work, I think it's only fitting that the first section be about my two favorite tactical RPGs, ''Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen'' for the SNES, and it's sequel ''Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber''. Before I start, I'll go ahead and give a little description of ''Ogre Battle'', since I'm sure many people have never played one. ''Ogre Battle'' is a series of tactical RPGs with real-time elements. You create units of up to 5 characters (with large characters such as dragons counting as 2 characters), and have them traverse maps of varying terrain to engage enemy units throughout the map. Each battle is mostly automated, with the player's role being to determine the strategy that unit will take. The choices are auto, attack strongest, attack weakest, attack best, and attack leader. The cool thing is during battle you can constantly change tactics between each character's attacks. There’s a lot more to these games, such as character classes and special moves, and just a bunch more stuff that I don’t have time to describe in this section. But in all honesty, 10/10 both of them, go play 'em they’re a blast.

'''What’s In:''' Perhaps the biggest addition to ''Ogre Battle 64'' is that every unit now has a stamina meter when they march. See in ''Ogre Battle'' SNES, a unit could basically move forever without having to rest (it was a tougher generation), whereas in 64, units can only move so far before they have to make camp and rest like the little bitches they are. One cool thing about that stamina meter is that it’s actually impacted by the terrain you march through. If you have a regular unit of soldiers march over a mountain, they’ll get tired faster than if they were just marching in a plain. Now the good news is the enemies also have the same stamina meters, so it’s entirely possible to attack the enemy while they are camped out (honor is for the weak). If you attack a camped out unit (or get attacked), the enemy will be sleeping, which means they will miss at least one turn. However, if you simply attack a tired unit, they will instead attack for much lower values and miss a lot more. The other big addition is that you can now combine units together to make legions. The big advantage of legions is that you can immediately shift around units to get optimal match ups, but the downside is that you lose the ability to have those units split up on the field, so you’ll just have one big fuck off unit. This game also has a few chapters with guest units; these units are not controlled by the player, and just kind of do their own thing. Usually in these chapters, you can’t allow the leader of that unit to die or you fail the mission. These missions are ok, but they don’t really add anything and can be annoying to watch the idiot prince run right into the enemy when you just want him to hide. There is also a new training mode; for a nominal fee you can have units do battles with... I guess other allied units, where if they win they will gain exp that will carry over to the main game. That’s really all of the major additions; obviously being an N64 game, it’s got obvious improvements such as being able to articulate the plot outside of boss battle cutscenes, but at it’s core, it’s still ''Ogre Battle''.

'''What’s Out:''' Probably the biggest removal in ''Ogre Battle 64'' is that they took out hidden towns, which in my opinion is a godsend. See, '''Ogre Battle'' SNES had a number of maps with hidden towns that you could only find by traversing every corner of every maps (or be like me and have a guide, because again, honor is for the weak). There were also a number of recruitable characters that only appeared in hidden towns, who could only be recruited on the first visit, causing me to have to redo missions to get them. Thus, in all honesty it’s a good thing they removed them. They also removed towns with barriers, which required either a special item to destroy them or a flying enemy to go over the barrier. Honestly, towns with barriers weren’t really anything special; they rarely came up so them being removed is no big deal. One change that I had completely forgotten about until a friend reminded me was that they removed the unit tax in ''Ogre Battle 64''. See, in ''Ogre Battle'' SNES, you paid a fee for every year a unit is on the field (the fee takes into account all the units you have on the field, and it gets lower or even overtaken from the profits you make from taxing cities you liberate). However, in ''Ogre Battle 64'', you only pay a unit fee when you first deploy your soldiers; after that, the sweet feeling of fighting for freedom is all the payment they need. They’ve also removed all of the seafaring classes that were in ''Ogre Battle'' SNES. In ''Ogre Battle'' SNES there were two seafaring units; Octopus and Mermaid (and their upgrades of course). The main benefit of those units was that they crossed the seas directly, which could make getting to targets quicker. The downside was that they would sometimes go to seas that were completely out of the way and cause them to take longer to achieve a goal. All in all, seafaring classes were of limited use and their removal isn’t exactly super important. Special shoutout to the unjust removal of my boys, the Halloween class. Halloweens were an upgraded version of Pumpkinheads who could attack twice in a battle, draining half the target's current HP. They were amazing, I loved them, goddamn you Atlus for taking them out of ''Ogre Battle 64''!

'''Changes:''' Perhaps the biggest change is what happens to the enemy unit when their leader dies. In ''Ogre Battle'' SNES, if a enemy unit’s leader died, they would immediately run back to their base super fast and replace him (as well as all the guys they lost). However, in ''Ogre Battle 64'', killing the leader of an enemy unit instead causes that unit to run away from your units, but not back to their base. Instead, they’ll just kind of run to the corner of a map, trying to avoid getting killed. This change greatly streamlines the battles and allow you to simply cut the head off a unit rather than destroy it in full. However, this change also means for the most part you’re simply going to attack the leader, since that’s the quickest way to destroy another unit, so it kind of takes away from the strategic aspect. The other notable change is that you can now fight different units from different directions. This is pretty cool because if you get hit from the left, your units will be facing a different direction and won't be in optimal position for its setup. This also means that you’re able to hit an enemy from a different position; you could gain an advantage and wipe them out easier. This adds an extra layer of strategy because you’re always going to be looking for enemy units that you can pierce from whichever side will give you the most advantage. Another notable change is that they replaced the Tarot cards from ''Ogre Battle'' SNES with special artifacts, which trigger a special move if a battle lasts long enough. The thing is that you can only acquire one special artifactm and you get it as the beginning of the game based on your answers to some questions. In contrast, ''Ogre Battle'' SNES had the tarot card system, which was basically at every town you liberated (or conquered if you were a bad person), you had the option to take a random tarot card. Each tarot card had different effects and you could use as many as you wanted in battle. By contrast, the new special moves feel limited; you only get to use them in long battles and they all basically do the same thing, a lot of damage to the enemy unit. Perhaps the saddest change in my opinion is that they nerfed the undead class, making it a shell of it’s former self. See, in ''Ogre Battle'' SNES, undead units could only be defeated with healing magic, so if an enemy didn’t have the ability to heal, your undead are untouchable. But in ''Ogre Battle 64'', the undead instead function as regular units who can be killed by anything. The flipside is that in ''Ogre Battle 64'', the undead respawn after they are defeated (unless they die to a holy item, in which case goodbye spooky spirits), which is pretty cool, but it’s just not the same as the untouchable kill beasts they are in ''Ogre Battle'' SNES. There a few other minor changes, like enemy units will now be stationed in towns rather than just going to them when they are weakened (which can result in like four units being stationed on the same town), and you can now enter the towns you liberate and get a little cutscene talking to someone who lives there.

Well, those are all the major changes between ''Ogre Battle'' SNES and ''Ogre Battle 64''. They’re both excellent games and… I’m honestly not sure how to end this section, so I guess... this has been Shoey and I’ll see you next month when we talk about ''Pikmin'' and ''Pikmin 2'' probably!