#29: Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen

Released In: 1994
Developer: Quest
Publisher: Enix

      Lead the rebel army to victory and reclaim your lands from Empress Endora, Prince Gares, and the evil mage Rashidi in this legendary turn-based RPG. With twenty-five main levels, four hidden levels, one super secret level, and a great storyline, Ogre Battle is sure to provide you with hours upon hours of fun and excitement.

Syd Lexia: In Lucasian fashion, this game is presented as the fifth episode of the Ogre Battle saga, though the first four episodes don't actually exist... at least not yet. It doesn't matter though, this game is awesome. Good luck finding an original copy though; despite a warm reception from both critics and gamers, only 25,000 SNES cartridges were ever produced.

Valdronius: I rented this game more than any other game when I was younger. This was because it was a really long game, it was impossible to find for sale, and it was the best game I had ever played. It is my belief that this is one of the best games for the SNES, and is far and away the best Real-Time Strategy game of its generation. Fundamently, you arrange your army of humans and monsters into groups and try to overtake the enemy fort while the opposing army does the same to you. Anyone can get through the first few levels, but there are so many smaller things going on underneath that you need to account for in order to win. For example, Amazons, by nature, don't like to be grouped with males, and if they are in a group where the leader is male, their Charisma scores will plummet. Also, the game progresses in real time, day to night. Evil characters will fight better at night, holy creatures will fight better during the day. Grouping evil and holy creatures together will affect their stats. Letting a character get too powerful too fast will cause them to become evil and unliked.

The game takes hours and hours to beat, and even then there are over a half-dozen different endings to achieve. Add on a huge cast of recruitable heroes & villians, dozens of hidden towns, and hundreds of buried treasures, and you've got a game that could easily take over your entire summer.

Knyte: This is the game that got me hooked on tactics games. I am very proud to say that I am one of the lucky 25,000 North Americans who bought the original SNES cartridge!

Now, here's some trivia for you... The game's creator, Yasumi Matsuno, is a big fan of the rock band Queen. As a result, the game's name is a combination of two song titles from the band's second album, Queen II. Similarly, there's an in-game location called the Rhyan Sea which is named after another song from that album, "Seven Seas of Rhye".

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