Plain and simple. Ogre Battle wants to be the Star Wars of video games. Lets see what they got in common.
You've got two opposing sides, a ragtag bunch of rebels and an imposing giant empire. You've got people imbued with magical powers, making a difference on both ends. And a story about a dark and evil type in a robe who is planning on using something BIG to destroy civilizations. Sound familiar?

As a concept, Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen is a bold turn based strategy that lets you be a good guy/girl or a mostly bad guy/girl. The game has an alignment meter for you, and each of your units. You start a map and start liberating towns. Sometimes they give you stuff, the towns start making you money. You can buy things in merchant towns (but not all towns), and find hidden items and secret cities. You also have many, many many job classes for your units to evolve into, and some are alignment specific. Some jobs even work with the passage of time in the game, such as the vampire or werewolf fighting better at night! This game has a lot of ideas, and it throws all of them at you.
As a strategy game, its got more in common with GBA/DS Advance Wars than say, Command and Conquer. The fights are not real time. Each battle stops time while the two armies at the moment try to kill each other. Each gets an attacking round, and at the end, you win, lose, or go back to the map and the other advancing armies start. So is this game just a series of dozens of roleplaying fights? Yes and no. Yes as the fights are critical to leveling up and advancing your armies to upgade their jobs. But the game also has a long story that its always engrossed in telling, and the battles get bigger and longer each time, making it feel very grandiose, but still important.
Its a game full of characters, heroes and villains. Its about waging war on one map at a time, some massive and and most having multiple flanks to defend. So how does the game stack up overall?

Its more hits than misses. its not perfect, and misses the mark to being a truly wonderful, can't miss game. If you can get past its few but critical hangups, you can have a good time with this medieval fantasy war simulator.


Graphics: 8
The graphics are pretty nice, when it uses them in its best way. You see, there are 4 main kind of graphics, and the game gets two done very well, one OK, and one well kinda lame. The great efforts are in the cut scenes between the generals. The characters all look quite different and have a unique art style to them. The art is very slick!
The battles also look great, with detailed and different backdrops, tons of troop variations and some limited animation from the armies when they attack and get hit. The title crawl and the main war map where you pick your operations is good also.
But while you spend a lot of time in rich battle sequences, you also have to contend with the murky graphics of the overworld you engage the enemy on. Don't get me wrong, its not awful, they look fine, but the view is distant, but there is no richness or life to any of it. You might as well just be moving them on some board game, and while tolerable - it lacks pizzazz or makes you get invested in the many different maps. So when your not battling, you're waiting out orders on a blurry map.
When youre not fighting, checking out generals taunting each other or watching the overland, you're probably in the unit management screen. And this is probably the least impressive of all. Rather than show your forces as drawn in battle, you just contend with small gold statues of them. From here you have assign items; move units to or from different squads, or if requirements met, turn into a whole new class of character. Its a pretty important area to go to, and it lacks a lot of punch. It might as well slightly gussied NES graphics.

GRAPHICS OVERALL: The graphics are great in the most dramatic sections, fighting and story, but lackluster in the background (yet important) elements- stage levels and menus.


Sound: 7
There is a great use of drum and orchestral arrangement in this game. The building melody in the opening title. The rousing horns of the battle map, while you move your pawns and players into action. The brassy fanfare if your troops win a battle, or the low din of drums if they are forced to defeat or rout. Its great. That being said, I have to take note, the games name.. "Ogre Battle".. and "March of the Black Queen".. these all reference Queen songs from the QUEEN II album. So it was a little odd, I was expecting some kind of blend of piano with guitar, but there is none of that here.
The songs are mostly good, but there is not a lot of them. And there is some use of voice, but not much, which is disappointing. You will hear "FIGHT IT OUT" so much it grows old, and I found myself muting some of the stages just to give myself a break.

SOUND OVERALL: A solid effort and it fits the fantasy setting, but all lacking any real noteworthy, hummable tune to keep it memorable

Addictiveness: 8
Now this grade I feel is the most controversial. The problem with the base game is you could only save a game inbetween stages. But some battles could go on for an hour and half if you A) want to level up B) are outclassed by the enemies level C) are trying to fulfill some of the weird requirements to get special characters. There was no way to save in the middle of your current campaign stage. But thankfully, due to emulation, you can do that now. Seriously, I used to debate playing another stage because of how long it takes. So I'm bumping up the score quite a bit for that.
What I like about this game is all the secrets. The items, the people, even the campaign overall, they keep you going. Its daunting because stages can take so long (and while some are optional, there are about 28 or so total). Its a great game, but this is NOT a game to play if you don't have the time to invest to remember details. You'll forget to put an eagle in your best unit to move fast, or which wizard was on the way to being a necromancer and accidentally start turning him good, and you just have a rough time.

ADDICTIVE OVERALL: This game is a mix of Final Fantasy Tactics played out maneuvering units as a whole strategically along the map. You will need liberating units, defenders, fast moving units to do find secrets, etc. If this doesn't get you excited, you should probably check out Final Fantasy Tactics too. But be warned, this game is kind of like a MMORPG, you gotta put in the time if you're interested in seeing all it has to offer.

Story: 9
Let me just drop this first, and I'll explain later. 13 ENDINGS Y'ALL. All based on whom you picked up along the way, and your alignment and items and other things. Wow. Take that, Chrono Trigger (which is super awesome great).
Anyway, I commend this game for having a rather simple story, and told before, one of oppressed people and a wicked ruler who must be overthrown, and filling in the world with all kinds of small details. You run into Gilbert and Canopus, and in the middle of your war, discover that the bad guy governor is not really a bad guy. This can completely change the course of the battle, making it a rescue instead of a fight to the death. There are over twelve special characters tucked away, some completely optional. The game never forgets your quest, but it has so many other elements for you to find or ignore, depending on the ending you want.
That being said, one big part holds this from a 10. Your main character. You start out as the focal point of the first stage. And you seem like a fairly good fighter, based on whatever you choose when making your general, that is. But later in the game, your main guy takes a big backseat to most of the story. You are the leader of the army, but have no main twists of your own for the most part. Its part of dealing with having so many supporting characters, some will outshine you.

STORY OVERALL: This game has a slew of unique enemy leaders for you to vanquish, and a large team of heroes for you to find and add their own spice to the tale. Unfortunately, your created general is fairly vanilla.

Depth: 10
A lot going on in this game. You have the items first; some bought, some earned, others are randomly found, and can do things from showing you hidden cities, to offering you health or ways to teleport, and the rarest are fantastic weapons and armor, or even items that change your character to a whole new class. There is also the matter of the Tarot cards, think of them as your general's Area of Effect ace up their sleeve. You use the Tarot face cards (which can effect your stats or reputation if you draw one) to gain the advantage in a battle or the map. Some are very powerful. Faced with a werewolf army coming towards your wounded troop? Use a sun card and instantly turn night into day, and weaken the enemy force. Have a governor who is dug in so well with his troop of guards, you can't beat him? Use a Fool card and make his protectors run away, forcing him to fight solo!
Probably the most fun is with optimizing your army, a host of monsters and humans to level up. Giants, Octopi, Pumpkinhead guys, Knights, Witches, Amazons, Creepy Doll Wizards, Angels, Birdmen straight out of the Flash Gordon movie - there is a ton of army types that this for you to play around with! Recruit or kick out at your whim.
And the hidden characters and secret towns or objects. To endings involving certain characters, and tie in to your overall popularity. There are good and bad endings! This is perhaps the best rewarding, which requires finding the hidden characters and taking them along, but also a bit of an issue. Once you beat a stage, you are free to go back to it afterwards and finish exploring it for secrets or go buy items at a town. Its also useful to recruit a person you may have not had time for. But beware -Some of the hidden people, you don't get a second chance to get. Your first sally into battle, with all the enemies harassing you, you have to work in the effort to get the person then. This is more vexing on the home console, and you can see why a single stage could take a hour easily.

DEPTH OVERALL: Attacks stages mostly in the order you want, customize your troops however you want, seek out secrets and have 13 different endings. I can't think of anything this game could have crammed in. But remember its a long game so you're going to be here awhile.

Difficulty: 8
Now the game can be hard, the enemy has many more squads they deploy than you. You are stuck at 10 I think. But not all wars have to take hours of time. In fact, in most cases if you want, you can rush a fast-flying unit of your best warriors and once the enemy disperses a bit from the camp, attack the boss outright. Beat him/her and you've cleared the stage, despite the enemy forces left. But this doesn't level up your other soldiers, only their participation in fighting gains them experience. So you will be left with a couple really strong units, and you better pray you can mow through the other stages, or level up in the next battle. You see, while you get to go back to defeated stages, there are few enemies to fight and level up. It also costs you money if you stay for a whole day, so prolonging a visit to boss-liberated areas is just costing you money.
The lack of being able to level up with lucking into some random items can also cost you. Such as having all these nice evil sorcerers ready to advance to the final class, but no item to turn them into lich. That sucks! And speaking of leveling up.. a gaffe is your hero. You do not change your generals class at all. What you start with attack wise, you'll still have by the end of the game. While you start out stronger than most your foes, your main hero is not as effective with the enemy forces later on, as you will likely have wizards and such who can use stronger spells and more often than your hero.
But this is still a game of numbers. Your army levels up, gets stronger, and beat down your enemy. It doesn't feel really cheap at times, since you get all kinds of advantages, tarot cards powers, being able to come in with whatever types of troops you want - they enemy doesn't enjoy that.

DIFFICULTY OVERALL: Its tough, but mainly because of all the slogging through fights to keep your team on par with enemy levels. The Tarot cards can really turn the tide in battles and you get a random card for each town you liberate, allowing you to build a stable of super cards. That negates some of the grinding too.

FINAL SCORE: 8.8
This is a great game, and Enix really shot for the stars on this. I wish some of the issues like leveling up didn't feel so random, and that your hero was a more prominent factor in the endgame. I recommend any fan of war strategy games with some time on their hands to check this out, especially if you like FF Tactics or medieval settings.

endings : I really like this review and want to feature it for this game March of the Black Queen. Your review is very organized and detailed-nice job! I am wondering though if you can get the stray ? out of it before I feature it.  I know exactly how that happened to your review-you edited it and for some reason it throws those in.  Here's how to fix it (to the best of my knowledge): highlight all your review in this thread and copy it, then click edit and delete your review that is there and paste the one you just copied.  Now you should have the review with a few ? and just delete those instead of trying to click edit
(which will actually throw many more random ? and spaces everywhere).  I am not sure why this happens, but it happens to me as well!  Message me or respond to this post when you have it fixed up so I can feature your awesome work

The '?' after editing usually get me. I've cleaned it up. Thanks for the feature!