Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PlayStation)

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
Developer: Kuusoukagaku Publishers: Artdink (JP), Atlus (US) Platform: PlayStation Released in JP: September 25, 1997 Released in US: May 1, 1998 This game has unused playable characters. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused abilities. This game has unused music. This game has debugging material.

Tactics Ogre is a strategy RPG developed by Quest and published by Atlus, which could be considered the "father" of Final Fantasy Tactics, given that the games were designed by the same teams, play very similarly, and even have several similar plot threads. It was released on the Super Famicom in Japan only, and later ported to the PlayStation, which was the only one that saw an English release. This page covers that version in particular, although much of this unused content was also present (and still unused) in the SNES version.

Character Oddities

Via hacking, it's possible to put nearly any character in the team, including enemies and even a few characters who don't even fight. Most of these characters, while working perfectly fine in battle (albeit some non-combatants have missing animations for obvious reasons), don't show up properly on the menu, using the default sprite (a Soldier) instead. This makes perfect sense: why bother with extra coding if something is never supposed to be seen in-game? However, there are a few notable exceptions to this rule:

• Templar Knights: The all-purpose Dark Knight generic class, seen through much of chapters 3 and 4. Not only do these guys work completely fine if hacked into your team, but their palettes even auto-adjust correctly. However unlike the Saturn version, the player can not obtain a templar knight via using the Ogre Blade to have a player unit switch bodies with one. They have three spell slots, and although not that great as mages, they can use anything. (This is actually a common theme; all enemy-only classes with magic capabilities can equip and use every spell in the game, although most don't abuse this benefit.)

• Dark Priest Kachua: Seen only in a single battle midway through chapter 4, as an enemy, this alternate variation of Kachua works perfectly and displays properly on the menu. Functionally, her Dark Priest class is identical to the Princess class she gets when she actually joins, but looks different.

• Mysterious Old Man: This is Gilbert/Gilbard, seen only in the Perfect ending. He's a Beast Tamer, and has a face portrait not used anywhere else in the game. Clearly unfinished, he's rather glitchy in battle, and even his menu sprite is incorrect.

Unused Skills

There are several unused skills in the game, as well, that can be obtained through hacking.

• RiotBurn: This is Dark Knight Volac's special skill, but as he never appears in battle, it goes unused. Like all the other personal skills used by the Dark Knights, RiotBurn is a light-elemental attack that has a range of two panels, and it also instantly kills undead. Its animation is a bit broken, however.

• Reaper: This is the personal skill of Dark Knight Balzepho, who likewise never appears in battle. Its description states that it's fire-elemental, has a range of two panels, and reduces the effectiveness of equipped weapons (same as the Melt spell), and indeed, this is what it's supposed to do... but it doesn't. What it does is far more spectacular: It reduces the HP of all enemies to 1. Furthermore, it never misses; it even works on the final boss! Its animation is unfinished, however, just being a simple red flash of light. This was probably used by the developers, knowing it wouldn't actually appear in the game proper, as a debug skill.

• Radius/Umbra: These are actually separate skills, but they're so closely related that they may as well be listed together. The final boss has the special property of changing his inherent element whenever he's hit with magic, and can then use a special "hit-all" skill of that same element. Four of those (Fire/Water/Wind/Earth) are used, but these two, being Light and Dark element respectively, are not, as these are not valid "character elements".

• Ex Dio: An enigmatic skill with no effect whatsoever. It's listed with the final boss' other attacks, meaning it likely would have been used by him had it been implemented.

• Double: Identical in effect to the Dark magic, Paradigm (which reduces the target's WT to 0, giving him/her an immediate turn), except with a much smaller range (the target has to be right next to the user). This is located in the same place as item effects, so it was obviously intended to be attached to an item. This could have been extremely cheap, which is probably why it ended up going unused.

Unused Music

There are two unused songs present in the game. It's not known if the first one is present in the SNES version, but the second one certainly isn't:

Unused Fanfare

A short fanfare which is present several times in the sound data. Each one appears to be slightly different, suggesting they may have been used to test stereo sound.

Ogre Battle Ending Remix

This one is interesting. Two songs in Tactics Ogre are stored as standard Redbook audio tracks, which can be listened to with any CD player. The first is the title theme, which is used in-game, while the second is an excellent-but-unused orchestral remix of the ending theme from Ogre Battle. It's possible this was just an Easter egg intended to be discovered by curious individuals, much like the bonus track in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Unused Graphics

There are a few unused graphics stored in the item data.

• A bag similar to this one is used at the end of battles to show any war spoils, but this smaller variant is never seen.

• There are cards to raise eight of the game's nine primary stats, but this red-colored card never appears. Most likely, it would have served as the missing Agility Card.

• The Japanese text on this odd icon translates to "suka", a Japanese onomatopoeia for, essentially, swinging at something and missing. As there isn't really anywhere this would fit, it's likely it was either intended for some concept that was scrapped, or it's simply a filler/placeholder graphic.

• Undoubtedly, this is just a placeholder graphic, used before some items were given actual graphics.

Debug Text

The tty debug console displays very little chatter, most likely left in by accident. This is not visible to the user.

...
...
...
i = 0
2: track overflow
sound 3a
sound 32
...
...
...