Riddle me this, folks: Can you still call a game ‘bad’ after finishing it three times in a row? I mean, not even Luminous Arc 3 got three full playthroughs, and that was 10 times the game Tactical Guild is. The last game I played thrice in quick succession was Atelier Lina and I wouldn’t dream of even suggesting that Tactical Guild anywhere near it in terms of quality. Yet be that as it may, the truth is I just finished my third TG run. Not only that, but I actually enjoyed it! What is this world coming to?

I’ve always said that a game can’t be that bad if I at least manage to finish it. Well in this case, I’ve done it three times, so this practically qualifies Tactical Guild for Game of the Year! I’m still in shock, so I think it would be therapeutic for me to try and figure out why. Because there’s no denying it is a poor game, that fact is not up for negotiation. If I had to go back a few weeks ago and make the call again, I’d probably tell myself, “Don’t play that game. And don’t eat that potato salad!”

So, reasons, reasons… First of all, I think it’s a testament to my love of tactical/strategy RPGs. There’s a relative scarcity of them on the DS, so I’ve played just about every one I can get my hands on (except Disgaea, more on that someday), so unless TG was flat-out awful it was almost certain to get a chance.

Secondly, as I’ve said before, the three-part story got me interested and kept me interested. Natsu’s story made sense because I had played Rosetta’s story before it, but even without that it was better than Lia’s story. Having played all three parts I still have some questions, especially about Shiki and the Reti-Arts, but getting this much story from a game like this is commendable enough. Oh, and I figured out how to get the “good” and “normal” endings (I think). I accidentally got Guin killed during the final battle, so Natsu used a skill to kill the final boss that also ‘reset’ her memories. So she ends the game as an amnesiac, but takes a liking to Guin anyway and they end up together. Easy girl is easy. The “good” ending had me killing the final boss normally (a different one from the previous 2 routes), and then Natsu and Guin are all over each other with confessions of love and “I’ll protect you forever,” the usual crap. Guin is such a playboy. So any girl at all will do, huh? That’s why you can fall in love with them so easily, huh? Don’t get cocky because you’re a little good-looking.

Aaaaanyway, the third reason I was able to play it so much is because most of the frustrations of the gameplay lessened considerably after the first playthrough. For one thing,  by the time I was halfway through my second run I had made almost all my characters alchemists. This meant I could move and attack at the same time, with devastating effects for my enemies. I also came across the occasional enemy class that was immune to long-distance attacks, which meant my Search and destroy strategy didn’t work all the time. It was nice to have to use my brain for a change. On top of that, I was able to fast-forward early cutscenes and any quest dialogue that I had already seen, so in total my three playthroughs took only 29:43 hours, an average of 10 hours per run. In terms of length, it’s like I played just one regular RPG, which is bearable. And of course I had done all my shopping and equipping by the end of game two, so I didn’t have to deal with the infuriating shopping system. I got some awesome swag from the quests this time round, but they were almost all geared towards non-mages, so I didn’t bother equipping them. Shame, really.

I should also make a correction from my last post. I mentioned that you don’t get to see your characters in their equipment on the field. On the field, this is true. But you do get to see what they’re wearing if you turn battle animations on. It will look something like the screenshot on the right. (Btw, Roy is going to be moving like concrete with all that gear on so don’t dress him like that) Personally I turned animations off ASAP because I just couldn’t stand them. I watch every single animation in Fire Emblem, even on replays, but when it came to TG it was just too annoying. Not only did the monsters have the most dreadful and annoying screams (obviously done by some skinny kid with a cheap microphone) but watching your characters miss attack after attack was hair-rippingly frustrating. Did I tell you about the time I missed four (4!!!) 85% chance hits in a row? What are the odds of that? Plus I almost always used only one attack (Search), so I didn’t need to watch that over and over again. Still the option is available if you really want to see your characters dressed up. The enemies are pretty snazzy dressers as well.

Yet another reason I enjoyed my third playthrough was the scalable difficulty. I mentioned playing my first game on Easy, which was moderately easy. I should have played my second one on Normal, that would have been more fun. But I did play the last one on Hard, and it was great because they scaled all the enemies to my level right from the very first battle. Thanks to that, I got into some genuinely sticky situations from time to time. There was this one quest battle where 5 new enemies spawned every single turn, and they were all three to five levels higher than my party. If the boss hadn’t been kind enough to make his way down so I could kill him, I’d still be fighting them all right now. A bit of challenge is great, even in a game like this. Of course if I had lost the battle, the game would still have gone on as normal, but I tried not to think about that too much.

One more thing I thought was good: the different ways to win a battle. It wasn’t always about killing every enemy on the screen. Sometimes you had to make it to a certain point. Sometimes you had to keep the enemy from making it to that point. Sometimes you had to finish in a set number of turns. Other times you just had to survive that number of turns. There were a few times you had to destroy a certain item. There were battles where you had to kill a certain enemy, or one of three enemies, choose your choice. I remember when I played Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon one of my disappointments was how repetitive your goals were: kill boss, take castle, kill boss, take castle. Variety is the spice of life, and in this particular respect TG had it in spades.

In conclusion, I found plenty to like about Tactical Guild once I’d played a little longer. The fact remains, though, that most people won’t and shouldn’t play it as much as I did. For those people, every negative thing I said about the gameplay will be true: no magic if you move, horrible hit rates, etc. Unless they play Rosetta’s route, the story will make little sense. The characters will be hit-and-miss. The equipment system will be disappointing. The pain will never end. And I don’t have the confidence to tell anyone “Yes, it’s a terrible game, but if you play this terrible game again, maybe you’ll like it!” Even I am not that sadistic. So, so long Tactical Guild! You had some good idea and I got some good hours out of you. Now on to some proper, quality games.