Insane Difficulty: Tactics Ogre Remake Challenges - Insane Difficulty

So for the longest time, I was hoping for a Tactics Ogre remake I could play on the go (Before I found the stuff I could really do with the PSP, of course), having grown up with the one for the GBA, but only hearing amazing things about the original. That being said, the remake was a really odd mix of systems, but had a lot of excellent aspects as far as strategy games go. Also unfortunate was how utterly over-powered You could get with little to no effort. ....

That being said, though, this game becomes a lot like FFT once You forbid the use of weapon proficiency skills. With this No-Skill run I've been trying, my archers have felt a lot more humble, and the 100% accuracy skills seem like they would be genuinely useful, and in place. Truth be told, it almost feels like the weapon proficiency skills are the afterthought that broke a lot of other good ideas. Bows become garbage in bad weather, daggers become a lot less reliable, though still really good, really the only weapon it doesn't seem to balance to it's old role would be cudgels, but it would take a miracle to raise them from the depths of their dumpster.

Now...I've seen a few challenges on here, and a couple other places, but the problem is that they were absurdly complicated to follow. (Bans of specific skills, books, crafts, weapons, races, tiles, huge lists)
So, I tried a few others, either mixes of ones I'd seen, or just curious ideas for gits and shiggles. I thought maybe someone could get some fun out of these.

1- So first off, just a general balanced/underpowered challenge, for a similar to a basic playthrough, or good for a no Knockout/dead run, similar to a lot out there as kind of a standard)
- No two-handed bows or crossbows (fixes some power/range issues)
- No books
- 3+ classes
- Crafting is fine, seems like it's self-balanced by being dull as hell
- Restart on knockdown (If You feel like having a non-cheesy run for that sort of challenge. Completed this, it's very do-able, and feels satisfying as hell to pull off)
- No resurrection or wake-up items.

2- Basic ironman run
- No books
- Delete save on loss
- Retreat is fine, maybe necessary with how crazy some randoms get
- 3+ classes
- No resurrection or wake-up items.

3- My personal favorite so far, the No Skill run
- No Skills from the menu whatsoever
- Crafting is fine, because some of the secondary effect items make this run viable
- Books are fine, balanced generally by being expensive
- 3 random battles per game, a retreat still counts as a fight. (This is mostly to allow the DLC areas to be semi-viable, depending on preference)
- No resurrection or wake-up items.
- I'm still testing some stuff, like if the late-game +2 weapon skill items actually unlock killmoves or not.
- No reloads of any kind.
- This one's a fun challenge at messing with mechanics and budgeting out what You can use.
- It's odd to not ban 2h bows and cbows, but their accuracy penalty is very noticeable without bow skills, down to 25-33% in the rain or snow.

I've been recording this run as it's been going, currently this is as far as the shenanigans have gotten, if anyone's interested.: https://www.youtube....cAXRFi3qpQTtrQo

(So far it's gone from straightforward to outright chaos to what can be best described as time manipulation nonsense by part 30. I'm trying to do at least one run of each of the big optional things for the run, but may scrap that if it gets annoying under this ruleset.)

4- XCOM Challenge (Probably the most specific of the bunch)
- 4 classes
- Snipers are Archers with 2h Crossbows, but no proficiency skill
- Heavies are Dragoons with 2h Crossbows
- Assaults are Rogues with 1h Crossbows and a dagger, but no skill for the dagger (Meant for backstabs)
- Supports are Knights with a 1h Crossbow and Lobber, just items and Field Alchemy
- Units are no longer useable upon losing a life.
- Unfortunately this run is somewhat hindered by not having Your classes limited until chapter 2, in most cases.
- Item drops and crafted gear only, no store bought weapons. Recovery items and consumables are fine.
- No Passive Skills aside from Trajectory, Field Alchemy 2 (For supports), bow/crossbow proficiency (For all but the sniper), active skills, recruit skills, and special moves are ok
- Grinding would be necessary, but kinda risky, seems to balance itself
- Recruits can be used for salvage, but not added to the roster unless they are Wallister (May change that last part).

5- Nudist Run
-Simple rules, no equipment on anyone. Naked and free on everyone.

6- Relative Pacifist Run
- Fairly straightforward, everyone needs a recruit move, and enemies can only be killed if there is absolutely no chance to recruit them. Actually, due to the nature of the game, odds are You'll need to cripple or knock out any recruits just to make sure that they don't break the rule.
- Obviously a total pacifist run is impossible, especially once You start invading the north, but there are still recruit-able characters at that point. This run doesn't include necessary recruiting for optional characters, just avoiding as much fighting as is possible.
- This one's untested, but seems very possible I'd say an exception for undead can be made simply because A: they're already dead, and B: necromancers are a really late-game find.

I've tried some other runs, such as one person per class, no specific skills or crafting, etc, but just generally ran into walls. Thought about trying some CW stuff at some point, but don't really even know where to start with all that.

I've been curious about trying a run with just items and cudgels, but haven't been able to try it just yet.

Also, as many people have figured out, a single class challenge in this game results in utterly stomping everything until level 30, and then hitting a brick wall courtesy of equipment. This is easily surmountable with items, considering how high You can get their skills by then, but ultimately results in maybe 2-3 interesting battles before getting back to just walking all over everyone.

So if anyone else has some interesting ideas, I'd like to try them. As much as I like this game, I've yet to find a run that will make it as engrossing as the original under ideal circumstances, or the GBA game. Frankly, if there was a way to cheat the GBA game's mechanics into this one, it'd be incredible.

You should restrict daggers. They have a stupid algorithm that makes them one of the best, if not the best weapon in the game.

I would say you could do a Monster Challenge. Monsters scale like trash in this game. They start out really good and then get really bad by the time chapter 3 starts to end.

Either that, or beat the game with nothing but Clerics. Spamming lobs doesn't seem very fun though. Idk, Tactics Ogre is just kinda a mess in aspects-- like more so than FFT in some regards and has some really nasty scaling on its formulas that makes things pitiful at various points and insanely overpowered in others.

Like... Even FFT doesn't have this much of a problem.

Yeah, pretty much, it's kind of bizarre how all over the place it is. I just really want to make some challenges work for this game, it flows so well normally that there has to be some fun to be had there. I was actually considering a nudist run too, see how that would turn out. Actually tried the monster thing a while ago, and that winds up really fun if You pile the skills right. Namely if You just spam rocks with them, You basically have a squad of plain artillery, it gets hilarious. A lot of times I was just rock chucking stuff off of cliffs, or using the buffs to get extra damage off of them, just kind of letting them work like portable trebuchets. I should do the full run, though, this was a partial of the one-class-one-person attempt, which involved a lot of mysteriously weakening color-switching dragons that made little to no sense. This game's in-universe mechanics are mind-boggling.

Agreed. Oh, I have a challenge? How about just "non-human" units? That'd be fun. At the very least, you'd have a varied team. Plus, I don't see many people using lizardmen.

Augestein, on 16 January 2017 - 12:34 PM, said:

Hmm....would Pantsman be an archer because they can't be human...?

caffinator, on 16 January 2017 - 12:41 PM, said:

I'd honestly leave him any of the basic classes that Hawkmen can be.

Augestein, on 16 January 2017 - 02:42 PM, said:

Probably a cleric for maximum suck potential. I always wondered why they took out scaling in this game, figured maybe they just wanted more attrition..or to nerf fencers. Just seems like an odd choice to have the main healer fall on their face so hard halfway into the game.

I'll watch this simply because I'm intrigued by an ID member playing and recording LUCT. I'm currently on my very first playthrough and I love some of the tactical aspects of the game, so... Yeah, let's check this all out.

I love a lot of the details of the design, for sure. Especially when it comes to the scale when mixed with the weather and terrain effects. It's just kind of a shame that weapon proficiency almost erases the effects of those around mid game. It's really a fantastic game under the right circumstances, but God help You if You feel like tying a new party configuration halfway through, haha.

Hart-Hunt, on 19 January 2017 - 08:14 AM, said:

Actually, by around part 20ish, it's all devolved into utter shenanigans, stuff like turning several bunched archers into a insta-turning turret for hitting things to Bind them, using 5 guys to turn random units against each other, ans, of all things, a racist mage that turned out to be a fairly useless unit. An AoE Quick book with a fixed 66% hit chance of hitting everyone has to be one of the most abuseable things in any game. Charm darts also make for some fun chaos. I've got a few runs planned that seemed like a interesting play on the mechanics and classes, mostly doing it for fun, but if someone finds it interesting, figured I'd pop it up there.

So I've experimented a bit with Paradaigm Shift in previous runs, but had generally considered it too random or broken to really incorporate. Well, with the limits of Charm Darts and Siege Bows being seemingly not quite far enough for some of the weird bonus areas, I decided to try to go full-bore into nonsense, and bought 99 of these things.

Turns out it's basically a very expensive potential win button under dire circumstances.

Tried the Hell Dungeon, but kinda forgot how crazy fast skeletons can be to get back up, and didn't really have the shutdown potential to keep them down, or the knockbackback odds to push any off of cliffs, so with Denam 1 turn away from bleeding out....the archers just kinda went ahead and took some 50ish turns in a row.

https://youtu.be/2FOXhkWBaEk?t=37m36s

Seemingly the only balancing factors to this are just how expensive it gets, and the fact that You can only carry 99 (You can take 5-6 uses to roll the right people).

This fight is generally a lot easier with baldur items, but this worked too. (Apparently I completely spaced out and forgot about them)

So it's kind of a funny thing, but it seems like if You can make a save in which You basically invested nothing by the end of the game, You can actually get a lot more mileage out of NG+ Runs. Namely the weird level stops just go away, and the entire game suddenly scales to Your party, instead of just randoms, which seems to make a lot of unexpected difference. This is especially true with Single Class challenges, which suddenly become viable in this mode. Now...Fusiliers can only be gotten at a minimum of 3, and it turns out there actually is an easy battle to farm their marks, so I'm giving that a shot on two separate saves now. Also posting findings and a sort of guide on that, but yeah, scaled battles are WAY more fun, it actually doesn't feel like cheating to make use of healing items now. I think I'll try a Dark Knight run after this.

https://www.youtube....h?v=QBrfppxJ2_0