Platform: Gameboy Advance

Developer: Quest

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre: Strategy RPG

ETA: TBA

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Tactics Ogre Gaiden: The Knights of Lodis

When it comes to console-based strategy RPGs, it's the Tactics Ogre series that has single-handedly defined the genre. New chapters in the series have popped up 
consistently since it first appeared on the SNES so many years ago, not to mention that it helped to spawn other such titles in the genre such as Final Fantasy Tactics 
and Hoshigami. Now there is another installment in the series on the way, this time for Nintendo's new handheld, the Gameboy Advance, called Tactics Ogre Gaiden: The Knights of Lodis.

The game follows the journey of three Knights of Lodis, holy warriors of the Kingdom of Lodis, a land that is imposing its religious beliefs on the surrounding areas and destroying those who don't comply. These three knights are sent to a series of isles to convince the inhabitants to join with Lodis or face the usual bloodshed, head smashing, and other unpleasantness that comes with disobeying megalomaniacal kingdoms. Unfortunately for these knights they're attacked my a mysterious enemy and the rest of the game involves the three of them romping around trying to figure out who attacked them and just what is going on. Thankfully the game won't be entirely linear, as is too often the case in strategy RPGs. In Knights of Lodis there will be regular points in the game where players get to decide how they want to go about things. This doesn't result in some sort of trivial, almost meaningless change in events in the game, these decisions will actually mean going down a reasonably different path in terms of how the game unfolds and change the ending you see, making for a bit of replay value, something often missing from these sorts of games. The game also leaves some leeway in terms of how you choose to behave in terms of good and evil, something not often seen in console titles. This is limited to ethics in combat, but it still adds a little more range in dynamics in the game.

Combat itself is setup in the traditional manner seen in console strategy RPGs. It is turn-based with players able to take up to eight combatants onto the field. There are a number of factors that will effect the characters' ability to fight on the field including terrain, weather, and how much/how heavy the armaments are that characters are carrying. Players will get to use plenty of magic and a liberal amount of axes, swords, and other such medievally weapons to fight with, as well as some mythical beasts to keep things interesting.

Seeing as the GBA can be interlinked with one another there are some interesting options available to players. Firstly there is the option for two-player  games to make your friends feel dumb after you clobber them, but more interesting is the ability to exchange items and characters. Swapping characters seems a little unlikely just from the nature of RPGs.  Most who invest the time to make a character strong enough to be an enticing warrior that a friend might want would probably be too attached to the said character to want to let him or her go. Exchanging items appears more interesting if only for the speculation. Will this mean that we can get rare and unique items like in Everquest or Diablo II, getting some truly wonderful weapons that few, or no one, have. It's something to hope for, certainly.

Strategy games and RPGs make for a good way to pass the time on a long trip, unless you into that whole "literature" and "reading" thing everyone has been raving about. Advance Wars has done a good job of paving the way for strategy games on the GBA, now hopefully Knights of Lodis won't be far off to provide the follow through.

Previewed by Mr. Nash