“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
― G.K. Chesterton
Have you ever played a new game that reminds you so much of a retro game that you’ve played before? It’s pretty special, especially when the new game is from outside the original game’s brand or franchise. I’ve recently finished playing Unicorn Overlord, a real-time tactical RPG that is extremely reminiscent of the game we’ll be reviewing here, Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen.
Originally developed on the Super Nintendo/Super Famicom by Quest Corporation and published by Enix in 1993, it’s been ported to a number of different platforms including PlayStation, Sega Saturn, iOS, Android, and Virtual Consoles. It was directed by Yasumi Matsuno and Akihiko Yoshida, both working at Quest at the time. If any of those names sound familiar, Matsuno is the creative behind Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Final Fantasy XII. Yoshida is also a part of the creative direction behind the same titles.
So let’s dive in and take a look at this powerhouse of a game for an 8-bit review. For the purposes of this review, I’ll be using the PlayStation version of this game, because this is the one I have. How does this game stack up in 2024?
The 8-bit Review
Visuals: 7/10
Visuals in this game are a mixed bag for me. There are three distinct areas where the game takes place: Battle, Scenario, World.
For visuals, you can see where development time was spent in the battle screen, since this is where all the action is and where the player will see their planning come to fruition. I really enjoyed watching my units get into the thick of it. Attacks are crisp, spells have a nice shine on them, and the battles move pretty quick. There is no waiting around while in the battle. They happen and boom, off we go to the next.
For the overworld, it’s a bit of a different story. Dialogue between characters is done with text boxes where you can see avatars for the characters that are speaking, but you don’t really zoom in on characters all too often. The overworld map itself is very much a 90’s RPG overworld, a 2D flat surface that the units move across based on the speed of the units. Unit sprites, though, are completely stationary in the overworld with no animations to them. They glide over map terrain at different speeds depending on the terrain, and the unit colors are bland. They stick out like a sore thumb, more or less. This also can cause issues with knowing which unit is which as well. This happens less often but it can happen.
This was probably the most difficult section to grade for the whole game because I love the battle section visuals. However, the overworld map loses me a bit with its bland unit sprites and lack of animation that I would expect from a game like this.
The final screen is the World map. Here things are a bit more of a mixed bag. You have your scenario select and can make changes to your existing units or create new ones. Selecting your scenario or mission isn’t really a problem, but organizing your units can be difficult to navigate. Many units look similar and it can be difficult to differentiate between them. If a new player was playing this for the first time, I don’t think they would enjoy this particular part of the experience.
Audio: 7/10
If you enjoyed any of the fantasy stylized music from any fantasy game in the 90’s, then you won’t be disappointed by this. A very gothic chiming musical number plays in the overworld, with a more upbeat battle music, it hits all the right notes for retro RPG enthusiasts. It’s pretty generic though, no particular songs that really stand out. Despite that, the music does a perfectly fine job at making this feel like a fantasy experience. Spell and attack sounds are crisp – along with the great visuals, this makes for a great experience.
Gameplay: 6/10
I really enjoy this game. I also really enjoy real-time strategy games, despite not being very good at them (StarCraft 2 Actions per minute = 45). But RTS takes a back seat in this, where the core of the gameplay is centered around the organization of your units. How can I get the most out of these 3-5 characters organized into a cohesive unit to capture my objective? Do my units have the right tool set to deal with the units being thrown at me? If not, then it’s back to the drawing board of organizing to ensure victory. This is more or less the gameplay loop of Ogre Battle.
Despite all of this, I have to knock the gameplay down a point, because it really depends on what you play this on. I own this game on Playstation, so this is where I played this game for review. If you are on SNES or iOS, I imagine that it’s different. Load times get really old, really fast. The load times are terrible, but there are so many of them. For instance, you’re attempting to take a town, and start your first attack with one unit and you have two others behind ready to back you up. Each time your unit armies attack that town, you are stuck in a 10-15 second load time, for a battle that lasts 20 seconds, and you need all of your unit armies to attack to take this town. You’ll be spending at least one full minute on load times for this one simple event. It just doesn’t feel good, and as a player you lose the feeling of momentum in the game pretty easily.
Replayability: 8/10
Thanks to the Tarot system, there are multiple endings that you can achieve. For those that like hunting for those, you have at least 13 different endings you can chase after. A game with that many endings on console in 1993! That’s a pretty amazing feat.
For me though, after beating the game once, I felt that was enough. Tactics from the enemies don’t seem to change too much through each playthrough. However, for folks that are looking to get the most out of the game, there are 25 main missions with 5 hidden missions in the game. It took me about 20 hours to finish my playthrough. Not a very long time by today’s standards, but for a retro game, it’s a pretty good length. And taking into account the different endings that you could go for, you’re looking at almost a 200 hour game!
Accessibility: 4/10
The idea behind this game I think is definitely ahead of its time. Unicorn Overlord was able to thoroughly crush it, and I think a lot of that has to do with a thorough explanation of systems during your playthrough. But for Ogre Battle? I don’t have a manual for this game and the tutorials in the game are very basic. Thanks to the advent of the Internet, I could look up a lot of the questions that I had for the game. For instance, how do I change the class of a character? You can walk yourself down through the menus to figure that out, but how do I get the advanced classes? I had to look this up to figure this out.
Challenge: 8/10
I expect most tactical games to have a certain degree of difficulty. As these games progress, different types of challenges are thrown at you. Either new classes that you need to figure out how to mitigate or how to capture all of your objectives as quickly as you can. This game does a pretty good job of keeping the difficulty curve in check. The difficulty spikes are pretty minimal.
Uniqueness: 9/10
For its time, I would argue that this was one of the most unique games on the market. There are other games that are very similar to it now and have been absolutely influenced by this game: the Fire Emblem series, Advance Wars, Unicorn Overlord. At the time though, combining real time strategy and RPG was pretty unheard of. I’m sure someone could correct me on this, but I can’t think of any games at the time, or many now, that have taken the design and development risk of combining the two. Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen stands alone in that regard.
Personal: 8/10
Despite some of the shortcomings in the game, it’s still one of my favorites. I don’t mind having to look things up. The load times can become really annoying. Honestly though, when I first played this game at my best friend’s house when I was 13 (I’m now 39), I wasn’t really into strategy games. He was very much into all kinds of RPGs and when he showed me this, and I was skeptical at first. There didn’t seem like there was much going on. But after about ten minutes of him talking me through the first level, I was hooked. It was hitting that part of my brain where this stream of consciousness of this is what I have to do and now I get to watch it play out on the screen.
It was my first time playing a game like this. After which, it was kind of history. Final Fantasy Tactics, Warcraft 2, StarCraft, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, and Command & Conquer were all games that are among the best games that I enjoyed as a kid that still hold up today because of the hook that was laid out by Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. If you’re able to pick this up, I would highly recommend it. If you’re able to play on SNES, I think this would be the optimal experience for any avid gamer.
Aggregated Score: 7.1/10
Jason Schad. First time writer. Gamer since 1988. You can follow me on Twitter www.twitter.com/BaBibbz
