10 Awesome SNES RPG Series You Must Play Before You Die

9. Ogre Battle

OgreBattle It€™s a strategy RPG named after a song from a Queen album €“ what€™s not to love? Only 25,000 copies of the game were released in North America, making it quite difficult to pick up €“ but it€™s well worth it, and fortunately nowadays can be downloaded from the Virtual Console. The game€™s theme of bloodshed and war was inspired by director Yasumi Matsuno€™s perspective of the Yugoslav wars, and while that might seem a somewhat depressing topic for a SNES RPG, there€™s nothing depressing about the quality of gameplay in this title. Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen impresses across the board, with its unique real-time tactical gameplay, beautiful artwork and deep character class system (and really, who doesn€™t want to play as a pumpkin?). The game is also notable for its alignment system, something which is still used as a selling point for contemporary games. Your actions and choices have real consequences, affecting gameplay and the overarching storyline of the game. €œGood€ characters are stronger during the day, €œEvil€ characters at night, and different strategies become viable depending on your alignment, as your troops will respond to your reputation. Considering the fact that the class system also affects combat dramatically €“ each class moves and attacks differently €“ the depth of gameplay in Ogre Battle is nothing short of extraordinary. There are also 13 alternate endings to the main game, a feat Mass Effect 3 was unable to replicate some 19 years later.
 
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Laurence Gardner was born in Canterbury, England. After moving around various cities during his childhood, and spending some time travelling in Europe and America, he studied English Literature at Oxford University. Since then, he’s been living abroad, teaching English, learning a range of languages, and writing in his free time. He can currently be found in Heidelberg, working as an English Tutor and Translator and studying at the University. If you liked this article, follow him on Twitter to get automatic updates on his work.