This is another piece in the War of the Black Queen saga, in which both Tactics Ogre (for the Playstation) and Ogre Battle (originally released for the Super Nintendo, re-released as a limited edition on Playstation) are pieces as well. They all have no relation, other than taking place in the same continent, and same world, although Tactics Ogre has a few main heroes from Ogre Battle (Canopus is the first one that comes to mind), yet you don't see any of them here in Tactics Ogre : The Knights of Lodis.

The story is along the same lines as all the other Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre style story lines: There is a great evil in the world, and that you, the main hero, must help stop it. However in this one, your hero has been hired by his lordship to go quell a problem in a neighbouring country, ruled by the homeland. As you get over there, your hero experiences problems, and gets dragged into a large problem in this continent. Very well done story, great twists, and choices, once again throughout the Ogre series, are quintessential to how it ends, and influences heroes you get, events that occur, and so on and so forth. What I would have loved to see, however, was them to take a larger chunk of the March of the Black Queen storyline, and make sure there was some of the integral connection to it, and made it a game for the Gamecube. This would have allowed for a longer game (However this game took about 35+ hours to complete, but then I love long games), better graphics, and basically larger everything, but I'll get to that below.

They were fine for a GBA game, but they could have been improved upon, if moved to the Gamecube. They were very well done, however, and seeing an army having 3 characters who had halos and wings did usually toss a bit of fear into you, before you even looked at the army.

The sound, once again, was as good as one could expect for the GBA, but would have been a lot better if used on the Gamecube. Not much else I can say about it, other than very decent music, that really pulled you into the story, and happenings around.

Amazing gameplay. From combat, to manipulation of classes, to secrets, to stores, it was all perfectly done. As in usual Ogre style, there are a few 'set' classes you can become without any prerequisites, such as fighter, archer, ninja, and cleric. These all provide stat increases to HP, MP, Str, Int, Dex, which are all part of prerequisites for other classes. A new interesting addition they added, however, was the implementation of emblems. These are awarded for different things happening in combat, such as hitting 2 people with a spear (Awards one with the Lancer), to Vixen's Whisper (For a female inviting at least one male member to join the army). There are a sizeable amount, that both human sexes can get, yet monsters are limited in some of them. These also were required for class changes, such as to get into Dragoon (Male only class), you need Dragon scale, which requires you to kill at least 5 dragons, along with strength and hp requirements. This made finding all the classes a bit difficult, as classes such as beast tamer require to have killed /less/ than 5 beasts. Combat was fairly smooth, and for a 3-d grid, speed based combat game, it was done well, and there was very little problems. The greatest addition, however, was Quest mode. This allowed a person to earn money, or spend it on side quests, that allowed you to set a goal, ie Kill the Leader in # of turns (# from 1 to 20), or kill everyone in # turns. Based on speed of completion, you got better rewards, such as rarer equipment, and more cash. This is your primary source of cash throughout the game. As well, your primary source of gear, when you can start clearing them fairly quickly.

Not much I haven't said, the emblems and quest mode are the newest additions, which are great, and a nice twist to this game. As well, my favourite hidden character does have a bit of relation to an Ogre Battle character, but Deneb seems to wander throughout these games freely, which makes me want to finish hearing the entire March of the Black Queen story, as she's very intriguing.

This game is amazing, and takes a lot to get into at first, but when you get into it, it's an amazing style of gameplay, story, and technique.

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