Good riddance. I sure am glad that’s over with. I watched the last scene where your chosen girl confesses to you (Yuu-nee in my case), the credits rolled and I turned the DS off. In a previous life I would have quit without finishing Tactics Layer
What changed in the few days between now and when I wrote the last, fairly positive post? Well, back then the charm of the dress-up system was already wearing off, but I could have held out if that was the only problem. What really ruined Tactics Layer was the degeneration of the story, when you find out what’s really up with Litinagard and why they need your help. Basically (spoilers ahead!), they polluted their own world with a machine. Then they found out that the pollutant, prama, could displace mana. So they opened up a gateway to another world (Plutoragard) and pumped the prama in while taking the mana out. The inhabitants of that world first sickened and died, but then eventually they adapted and mutated and turned into the monsters we’re fighting now. 100 years ago, they found a way to get into Litinagard and wrecked the place and that’s what we’re dealing with now.
Well? Doesn’t it sound like Litinagard got exactly what they deserved? When you add the fact that their queen is a cold, manipulative -#-#- on top of that and the only people in that world we care about (Yurika, Risa, Illumina) are all living productive lives in our world, it rapidly made me wish they would just cut off all ties to Litinagard for good and end the story there. Litinagard is almost entirely depopulated anyway, so its viability is in question. In fact, if the bad guy Ouma hadn’t come over to our world and cut off the MC’s best friend’s arm, I might have even voted for taking my friends out and leaving Litinagard to rot.
Ah yes, Ouma. a.k.a. Ouka. Have you ever read or watched a mystery where it’s so obvious who the bad guy is that you start thinking it’s not him? You know, like how “The butler did it” is such a cliche that you’re surprised when the butler actually did do it? Ouka did and said so many suspicious things. Her name was only one character off from the mystery bad guy’s name. It’s like she had a big “I am EVIL and can’t be trusted” sign painted on her forehead. In fact the other characters outright said she was suspicious! It was so obvious that I convinced myself it couldn’t possibly be her and that the game had some cool swerve in mind. Maybe the queen was up to something. Or maybe Yurika was secretly evil. But no, Ouka turned out to be Ouma. How dull. And his/her whole reason for getting revenge? “The queen’s family was mean to my family so I’m going to destroy Litinagard.” *yawn* Don’t mix me up in your silly family affairs. It’s not like Litinagard isn’t 99% destroyed anyway.
Speaking of family affairs, Risa pulled out some bullshit on me near the end. In fact the whole latter half story of the game was just one smelly cowpat after another. Guess what, Risa’s actually a clone of the queen and thus the next queen of Litinagard. To that end, once Ouma captures the queen, Risa has Shizuka wipe out the whole party’s memories so she can go back and play queen. Whoopee, I’m so happy for you. Bye! Don’t let the door hit you on your way out! …Ah, if only. No, the final chapter of the game is spent playing a “Disappearance of Kamine Risa” type thing and getting everyone to remember her so we can go save her, the queen and Litinagard. But I don’t wanna save that queen! And I don’t wanna save Litinagard! And I don’t wanna save Risa! Can’t we just pretend this all never happened?
Luckily enough Tactics Layer ended very happily, as far as I was concerned. The final boss was only level 30 with about 800HP so he was a piece of cake 
for my level 29-31 characters. My most powerful mage Yurika got taken out in the first attack, but after that I blasted him to death with assorted magical and physical attacks. In the ending sequence the Plutoragard people decided to forgive the Litinagard people and focus on themselves. Cool. Risa decided to stay behind in Litinagard for good. Sweet. Yurika pulled out one final piece of bullshit and said all the constant traveling was bringing Litinagard close to destruction, so she was going to seal the gate for good. Awesome. And Yuu confessed to me on the rooftop. Fantastic. I can’t wait to, uhh, go on pure wholesome dates with her where I will never attempt anything untoward. Yeah, that’s it. And we all lived happily ever after, the end.
Normally this is the point where I would say “it wasn’t that bad” or “I enjoyed it”, but I can’t bring myself to lie this time. It was pretty bad, and while I enjoyed some parts of it, I hated other parts. Especially the story in the latter half, which killed any enthusiasm I’d built up stone dead. The characters I’d started to take a liking to all took a backseat to Risa’s drama and the queen BS and that sort of thing. The supply of dresses dried up. The physical characters rapidly became useless in comparison to the magic ones. Magic hits hard, is 100% accurate, hits lots of people at once (that Water Balloon one is outright cheating) and can hit from a great distance. It’s just too bad that my favorite characters (Yuu, Kiriko (on the battlefield, not off), Nana, Eriko) were all physical types.
Oh yeah, before I forget! I finally won the “Yamato Nadesico” and “Otoko no Roman” contests! The trick with Yamato is to use Yuka with the china dress instead of the idol outfit. They’re both highly cute, but the idol outfit is too skewed in terms of cuteness. The Japanese FAQs report winning easily as idols, but I won easily in china dress so I’m sticking to my recommendation. For the Otoko no Roman contest, level up Mio a bit (she’s got great magic growth) and put her in the outfit she came in. They’ll love it!
And that was it for Tactics (cosp)Layer. If you understand a bit of Japanese and you play it because you want to strip girls to their underwear and dress them in cute outfits, I’m sure you’ll love it. However if you play it for stuff like plot or graphics or music or gameplay…you might as well not bother.
