Yep. It's in the same series as Tactics Ogre if you've ever come across any of those.
I first played it when I was quite young. I tried a number of JRPGs (including early FF games and Breath of Fire games too), but Ogre Battle was the one I really took to. It was so hard... but I loved it. xD It's still so hard.
It was also one of (if not the) first game I played that let me choose to be a female character, which had its own magic, and I loved the setting and tarot motif.
In Ogre Battle, you don't directly control your combatants. You set up your party how you want it to be and pick a strategy for your AI and then they fight, though decide if/when to deploy tarot cards.
but like, for that same caster girl we had a set of commands dictating which spell she would use to attack, or whether she would just save mana and use her mediocre melee attacks
In Ogre Battle, there's an overworld map that your units explore while liberating cities. When you liberate cities, you get to draw a random tarot card, which has an affect on your stats (like it could increase or decrease your Luck, for example), and then you get the card to use in battle too.
in Advance Wars it was closer, you still had units going over a lot of ground protecting and capturing cities, but it was still technically seperate maps too
and you had units with 10 of the same thing in it
you didn't group people together, they came out of the factory as ten of the same tank and such
the Strategy in Fire Emblem was (a more complicated version but here is the basic thing you start with) making sure your swordsmen/women fought axe men, your axe men fought lance carriers, and your lance carriers fought swordspeople
also making sure, since they are all basically named people not some expendable troops, that when they are too low on health they don't fight anyone until you heal them somehow
you also kinda had to make sure the same guy wasn't hogging more exp than he could use
you could use people to carry, but once they hit level 20 on their first or second class, you had to try to make sure they weren't wrecking all the bad guys by themselves so other people could level up
cause at level 20 exp is useless
you gotta wait for an emblem that works for that character to switch to the second class so they can level up more
I think Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (and possibly other games in the series) also went with named units instead of generic, but I'm not sure if it had permadeath.
in Advance wars the main deal was just which commander you were using, and countering certain tanks or wtv units with the right counter units
(but I personally loved using artillery to kill everything before it even got a chance to fight back properly XD)
@Pixie all the Fire Emblem games I played gave you a chance on the very first stage
if a character lost all hp there they would just say they had a broken arm or something and come back at some later fight
it still wasn't good, but they didn't die on that one
but all other stages you gotta be more careful
like, one of my favorite ones, I think it was the first I played, a pegasis knight I kinda liked (honestly I kinda liked all the characters I used) broke her arm on the first level,... and I was stunned that this game would do that
later I learned they do much worse things to your heroes if you mess up IE they ded T.T
it made it more tense though
I liked that honestly
lol
I love how they just sorta almost nonchalantly shout "Fight it out!" when you get into a battle
also, in all the ones I played, there are named enemies in some fights who you can convert if you get the right person in your party to talk to them,... in the middle of a fight
so in those cases you struggle to kill all his or her erstwhile unnamed "buddies" (quotations because said named person is usually relatively reluctant to fight you but does have a reason) and get the right person over to them so you aren't forced to kill this person
sometimes they recognize something about the person you need to talk to them, sometimes they straight up know each other, and in one case they are married
in that same one, one of the 3 main characters, the fast girl with the sword is recognized not as an individual per se at first, but as a member of a certain Steppe community by one horse archer, and if she talks to him,.. I can't remember specifically why, but he leaves the fight and joins your party later
sometimes it seems like a slightly weird reason for switching sides, other times the people literally know each other and it makes a certain amount of sense
I ended up trying to convert every boss and named person because you can always talk to them
sometimes they just aren't a person who is gonna join you, but I made extra sure
though especially with bosses with huge health-bars, you already know that badass isn't going to join up cause then you can just rampage through the rest of the levels with them XD
a lot of the time, if it is just a boss, only one of your big main characters can talk to them
like in that one there is a guy with a thin rapier sword, a guy in huge armor with an axe, and the fast sword girl,.. with horrendously high crit ( she just randomly one shots people sometimes)
many times only one of those three, in that one version at least, can talk to most people
but just about everyone has at least one person they can chat up in the middle of a fight XD and your characters have freindships with each other, so certain ones will talk to others and get some kind of bonus for being better freinds,... better teamwork I guess XD
my brothe played one of the newer ones, and he mentioned to me that he could like,... set just about anyone up with each other
maybe not like EVERYONE with everyone but still
like, a lot less restricted
and then they would have kids who would have some combo of their stats,... like breeding Pokemon or something XD
it sounds a little odd
not that that would automatically make them bad games now
he said he still likes them
in fact, I didn't get the sense he was put out too much, he probably thought it was a little weird but didn't let it stop him from actually enjoying the game
which is fine
anyway, it isn't a complete opposite direction from the older games
it seems like it is an evolution in the same general direction of some kind
It would generally be annoying to potentially lose out on game efficacy if you make your choices based on who you actually think fits together vs. most harmonious stat combinations. The former is the actual fun part.
I think that is one of the only shows I have shipped anyone in, and it was usually the pairing that was already like, sorta happening in an obvious way (for the audience anyway, sometimes the characters themselves were at least slightly oblivious)
it isn't so much that I don't like seeing two characters in a relationship, but if it isn't made super obvious I don't tend to jump to certain conclusions about characters romantic feelings
so I don't always agree with two even commonly shipped characters because,.. the basis of some of those ships are kinda sparse sometimes
I need to see some real investment from the characters themselves before I myself get invested
still, I can certainly understand having a feeling that these two people just have to get together because it would just be perfect
I don't even consider it a huge spoiler,... but I myself would still personally prefer even minor ones like that not be spoiled for me unless I asked for it
@eimyr -- so, one problem I run into when developing RPs is I tend to develop them "back to front" -- starting with a goal, and then looking for a feasible means to get to that goal, and that leads to things that are rather closed-ended as far as their solution space goes
I'm working in the context of online freeform here, where there is no DM, and you're much more hampered in the ability to do a straightforward adjudication-based system because you can't distance yourself from a character's reference point
@eimyr when I'm in full sandbox mode? other than having to deal with dynamic content generation, no.
@eimyr I'm working in an existing world, but I do care about what players do and do not do.
(part of that is my sim-sense kicking in, part of that is having to deal with a poorly developed social contract, and part of that is me being a goal-driven person)
E.g. my last game was the one I've already spoken (bragged) about.
It was the Courtly Intrigue thing.
I build an entire country, its capital, 5 major duchies, internal strife, neighbours, dukes, cultures, government and official with one thing in mind: the PCs will murder, spy, cheat, swindle, implicate and defame everyone for their own gain.
I was ready for (normally gamebreaking) plots of killing the king, setting dukes against each other, famishing the capital and assassinating key characters
