This year's offering of RPGs has been pretty crappy so far. With disappointments such as Chrono Cross, Breath of Fire IV, Legend of Dragoon, Torneko, Evolution 2 and the sub par Eternal Eyes, 2000 has been a rough year for this once easily tamed genre. But, in the eyes of the Xeno3998, this year still holds maybe one memorable occasion in the RPG realm. A certain franchise, started on the Super Famicom with two installments, later ported to the PSX and Saturn, has returned for what will probably be the last game in this legendary series. Obviously, I'm referring to the brilliant Ogre Battle franchise, a series of games that easily conquered ANYTHING by Squaresoft on the SuperFami. So, it is with great joy that I present the N64's first decent US published RPG, Ogre Battle 64, with this honest review.

The story of Ogre Battle has never been this fantastic; never before has it captivated me as much with such brilliant writing and magnificent characters. Instead of going on about the plot, I'll just summarize the first ten or so minutes of the Ogre Battle 64 experience.

As Magnus Gallant, a newly appointed Southern Palatinean Division Army recruit, you are driven into the midst of tension between the Holy Lodis Empire and the land of Zeteginia, which Lodis plans to rule. After a few missions, you are driven into the Revolutionary Army because Magnus sees the treatment of Zeteginian citizens, and fears that things may only get worse. So, from here on, Magnus, his militia, and the entire Revolutionary Army become entrenched in a highly political plot with many considerable factors and some truly memorable characters. Will they win or will they become that which they hope to destroy? The fate of the land rests on your shoulders....

From the moment you put OB 64 in, the game seems poised to make you love it. The first thing that drew me into Quest's latest is that the game is 2D!!! Beautifully hand-painted towns and battle areas greet the gamer with open arms, there are no stupid 3D characters with no emotion or depth, this is 2D heaven.

But, despite the fact that this is not a 3D game, it still looks somewhat technologically advanced, at least over the SF games. Characters that require lots of animation, like Black Knights and Dragons, are done better than ever with lots of details and features. The protagonists themselves are also done really well, especially some of the later party recruits such as Europea.

Another thing that strengthened the 96 score was the varied weapon designs and the awesome spell effects (have you seen the pumpkin smash?). If there's one thing that may bother some, but doesn't bother me, it's the frames of movement for each character. When one of your soldiers or one from the opposing party runs up to perform an attack, that soldier will do so with maybe five animations. This does not make the battles look half-assed, but it may be a problem for some.

To further justify the score, the biggest graphical flaw isn't even that big of a problem. When you're pasted on the battle/field map, guiding units and setting offensive and defensive strategies, the map is 3D and is pretty blocky and plain. But this minor problem is still not enough to tamper with the score too much. This SRPG makes me wonder why there aren't that many 2D N64 RPGs out there; this game proves that Nintendo 64 can handle it, and the market for 2D N64 games (not just RPGs) is in such a drought, it'll gobble up even the biggest piece of 2D crap (do I hear a Wild ARMS port?). Overall: 96%

What may pose a problem for mainstream gamers is the semi-interactive battle engine and its unit commands. Now that I think about it, you never really do anything besides set strategies and guide an arrow to set positions for your units. This is where Ogre Battle 64 becomes an almost complete strategy game and has barely any RPG elements, though it is still very much an RPG.

The battle procedure in Ogre Battle 64 starts when your unit encounters an enemy unit on the battle map. After this you are taken to a screen where your party is facing the enemy party (five combatants maximum) each on a 3 x 3 grid. Pressing the "A" button will bring up the attack options window, where you decide what enemies to focus attacks on. While you never directly influence what character does what, you can actually make the characters do almost exactly what you want them to, but it'll take some time to learn the depth of this game's battle strategies.

There are numerous quirks with the BS that have irritated Ogre fans since day one. Some of these are that your entire unit loses the battle when the leader dies. This, unfortunately, makes some boss battles painfully short and easy. And even though the menus have a lot of depth, battles don't. Imagine playing Final Fantasy IX with only three or four battle commands that sometimes don't even occur. This complaint can also be registered to most regular strategy games, but it's a little out of the ordinary for RPGs.

Getting to the menus, where most of the game takes place when you're not battling, Quest has done an admirable job of organizing what would normally have been a big mess. From the organize screen, you can equip items, change unit formations, change legion formations, use items and decide what unit carries the items, change leaders, add characters, and lots more all through a surprisingly simple menu system. The highly menu-driven game that is Ogre Battle 64 is the farthest thing from convoluted, it just requires a few "getting-to-know-you" minutes (or hours).

Overall, the gameplay is rather niche and will certainly repel the mainstream gamers that have clogged the RPG market. However, anyone willing to invest some time with Ogre Battle 64 will find it more than rewarding in the end. Overall: 98%

Another shining area of Ogre Battle 64 that even surpasses Chrono Cross is Music. The composition here is brilliant; providing some of the best battle music I have ever heard and outdoing even the past Ogre Battle games, which were also aural delights. Most of the tracks are spectacular considering the low musical capabilities of the N64, and all have been masterfully allocated into different areas of the game. If there is one hitch it would have to be the repeating music during field map gameplay. This is minor, but I just had to find a flaw, so there it is, however miniscule it may be.

This game controls like a dream! I found the character-guidance-through-arrows setup to be much more practical than actually moving the character with the analog or D-Pad. Sometimes the arrow can get stuck on a town/city and not be able to move a few feet away from the town to target incoming units, but this rarely became a problem.

The story in Ogre Battle 64 is spectacular, but its true shining point is the characters and their development. Right at the 20+ hour mark, when I was becoming entranced with the Ogre Battle saga, right when I was starting to love the battle system more than anything I have ever played, right when I was about to proclaim this ONE of this year's best games, out Quest came with the big guns. At that point Richard the Dragonheart (the coolest video game character since Citan Uzuki) busted onto the scene. Unlike Lynx, the antagonist from Chrono Cross, I actually grew to hate the antics of Richard; OB64 bestowed upon me an emotional attachment to a game I haven't experienced since Xenogears, and this immediately made me an Ogre Battle slave.

From that point on, it was just a matter of how much more this godly Strategy RPG could encompass me. Right when I beat it (took the Xeno 'bout 45 hours, it did), I felt compelled to play it through again, which is something I haven't wanted to do since Xenogears, replay an RPG.

Although I'm sure you've already heard ECM say this, the translation is superb. Barring one or two misspelled words (and an entire window full of Japanese text that was missed in the translation phase ), this is the most solid translation effort I have seen this year, even rivaling Square's Vagrant Story. Although most of this game's emotional attachment comes from the characters and the plot, none of this would have been any good had the dialogue been plain and boring like Legend of Dragoon. Fortunately, while the traces of this being a Japanese game at heart are still here, the dialogue succeeds in being good enough that most of the Japanese original's eloquence isn't lost.

Character development was another great part of the Ogre Battle 64 experience. At the beginning, Magnus seems like a regular, happy-go-grumpy soldier with a big sword, but eventually, his personality is revealed to be a die-hard facist… and that would be saying too much, now wouldn't it? The other characters develop well too, but not all of them. It felt as though Diomedes could have used some more stage time in that he never got to resolve his little feud with Magnus at the beginning.

Other characters' personalities are summarized in the Hugo Report, which is a dossier of Ogre Battle 64 information that becomes VERY helpful when you've lost track of the intertwining plot and characters. While only the characters that have any major influence on the plot really develop, no one can say they expected Quest to make sure that ALL of the characters are given fair treatment, perhaps the GameCube sequel.

Overall the storyline is a text-heavy political masterpiece that harkens back two years to the glory days of Xenogears. This game is an all-around brilliant sequel to a spell-binding SuperFami series that gets better and better with age. I don't think anyone would have imagined this game would turn out so well.

If this review has taught you one thing, it's that YOU MUST BUY THIS GAME RIGHT NOW! Not only because I said it was great, but because this game will be selling for quite the polished nickel in a few years on e-Bay. Already, the original has become an e-Bay fan favorite, so it would only be wise to pick up multiple copies to pawn off in a little while.

If there's one truly memorable videogame moment of this year, it's not the PS2 and it's poor launch, it's not Chrono Cross with its terrible story and characters, it's not even the death of GameFan, it's OB64. With hardly a flaw in sight and the best SRPG gameplay of the year, not to mention the year's best storyline and characters, Ogre Battle 64 rushes Lunar 2, Final Fantasy IX, Persona 2, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and even Dragon Quest VII as the single greatest game of the year. You would be a true fool to miss out on it.