Ragnarok Tactics Review, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

When you think about massively multiplayer role-playing games, chances are that the first thing to come to mind is World of Warcraft. Some dedicated players may cite Guild Wars, Aion, The Old Republic, or even Everquest . But with the growing mass of MMOs increasingly cutting pieces of the online pie, many have attempted to branch away from the online market to a smaller, niche demographic.

Ragnarok Tactics is the next attempt to break away from the MMO market. Of course, spin-off games from the popular MMO Ragnarok Online have been attempted before. Ragnarok DS was released back in 2010 to little acclaim, while the recently released Ragnarok Odyssey follows the more traditional RPG path. Ragnarok Tactics, however, takes a more tactical-RPG approach in the vein of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics.

The story thrusts your player character into the conflict surrounding the peninsula of Grantria. Two warring nations, after centuries of war, finally settle for an uneasy truce, a truce that is always on the verge of collapse. As your named hero, you eventually are forced to pick a side in what slowly transforms into a resurgence of old wounds, and an outside power that threatens the existence of the entire land.

Ragnarok Tactics falls neatly into the socio-political machinations seen in virtually every other tactical RPG that comes out of Japan save Disgaea. The story is deep and the tangled web of allegiances you can have grows with each choice you make. Thankfully, the game makes it easy to jump back to branching moments in the campaign so that a full play through is not necessary to enjoy the major storylines in multiple settings. This is actually a major strength in the narrative, the varying points of view of the growing tensions between the two cities, and the number of factions the splinter from this in the process. It is enough of a hook to continue playing the game, at the very least.

That said, I can fault the story of Ragnarok Tactics for being so similar to Tactics Ogre. Political wars and false-flag operations make for good drama, however throwing in the widget of dark powers from beyond is always a little too much spice in the soup. It also take some long time for the story to truly kick off properly, with the entire prologue acting like a Sunday school special on tolerance to get us accustomed to growing realization about the politics and prejudices of the two nations involved.

This is a rather boiler-plate turn-based tactical game that plays much like its predecessors. Your small band of heroes wait for their turn to move and attack on the grid the map creates, as you kill off enemies through a number of ways. Of course, Ragnarok Tactics has to spice up the gameplay a bit to make itself stick out from its brethren, which comes in the form of group attacks and burst moves. Group attacks sound like what they are, where two or more members of your party are able to attack a single foe a once. Your burst attacks allow you to strike multiple times, using abilities as you like on your foes.

This may take a while….

Other than these innovations, and a few little nods to the original MMO, Ragnarok Tactics is rather taciturn in its overall gameplay. In many ways it becomes a chore to trudge through combat at times. Enemies tend to stay in one place unless you come into striking distance, which forces the players to slowly make their way through the large maps your fighting on. It also doesn’t help that the animations take some time to load, as does the counting of hit points gained and lost, which force even smaller-sized skirmishes against ten or so monsters to last over sixty minutes at a time.

I’ll be honest, the slow pace made playing through Ragnarok Tactics a taxing experience. While normally load-times and the general pace of the game only matter from a story perspective, in gameplay terms it makes the fairly vanilla combat in Ragnarok Tactics a chore to wade through, making it one of the few titles I have played where loading times takes me out of the game. It also doesn’t help that this makes the game less tactical in the normal sense, and more of a war of attrition as your optimal strategy.

Ragnarok Tactics also contains a fair amount of customization. Changing everything from hairstyle to the voice-over of the player character and your eventual mercenary team. There is a fair amount of classes in Ragnarok Tactics, including four unlockables depending on the choices made in the storyline, so at least you have options as to which classes you can take into battle. That said, while physical customization is pretty good, level and job progression is slow and linear. Characters gain one new skill every few job levels, and a few skill level ups in between. So by level 20 your characters can have only five or so special abilities at their disposal. So unlike other tactical RPGs, level-ups are neither robust nor malleable for your formed team. The only differences come in the stat distribution through normal level gains, which tend to fall to min-maxing your primary attack or defense stats for optimal effect.

It is a shame that even strategy junkies might struggle to find enjoyment in Ragnarok Tactics. There really is little to latch onto that stands out as being even remotely memorable. The game is not even bad, it’s just boring because of major design flaws. Yet, generic as Ragnarok Tactics is, the story and its branching paths are able to carry through some of these gameplay issues. Still, Ragnarok fans would be better off sticking with Online or Odyssey.

A review code was provided by the publishers for the purposes of this review. The game was played for about 19 hours to completion, and each campaign has an estimated length of 20 hours. Ragnarok Tactics is also available for the PlayStation PSP and the Vita.

Ragnarok Tactics Review

By Robert G.

It is a shame that even strategy junkies might struggle to find enjoyment in Ragnarok Tactics. There really is little to latch onto that stands out as being even remotely memorable.