Magic users, for instance, generally have to specialize in one or two types of magic, as each element takes up a precious skill slot. There are a multitude of skills to choose from, but the key is that it's extremely difficult to be good at everything. Now Battle Points are distributed following a battle, which can be spent to acquire skills that augment both offensive and defensive capabilities. The skill system has likewise gotten a substantial overhaul.

Nevertheless, it's a unique approach, and one that alleviates that much of the frustration of the original. The process can be difficult and time-consuming, and not everyone will have the patience to level up the Dragoon or Ninja when they finally become available. The flipside, of course, is that new classes typically begin at Level 1, and the only way to gain experience is to put the character in a corner during a battle while everyone else does the dirty work. The remake fixes that by having whole classes level up instead so if a character is struggling to keep up, you can always make them a Knight instead and they'll suddenly jump to Level 14. In the original game for the Super Nintendo, which was never released in North America, enemies scaled with the most powerful characters in the party, making it incredibly difficult to level up the weaker characters. It also does much to expand upon the original source material. Given that even Square Enix's Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions struggled with its share of technical problems, it's refreshing to play a port as tightly coded as this one. That version was plagued by slowdown and long loading times, which are both mercifully absent in this PSP update. This is actually the second time that Tactics Ogre has been ported to another system, the first being a disappointing PlayStation remake that was localized by Atlus. There's that fierce Galgastanian pride flaring up again. It may not look like much has changed at first glance, but dig a little deeper, and it quickly becomes clear just how much thought the team at Square Enix has put into this remake of the 1995 tactical RPG for the Super Famicom.

The PSP has been a haven for ports and remakes of varying quality over the years, but the remastered Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together sets a new standard for remakes on any system.

Tactics ogre characters