

But it also makes thorough and careful revisions to that one, tweaking essential design elements, adding features, overhauling the interface, and restoring the artwork.

Reborn is, nominally, an updated port of 2010’s PlayStation Portable remake (this time for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch). In Tactics Ogre: Reborn, this 1995 game - which often ranks highly in polls of the best games of all time in Japan - receives its second major overhaul.

It’s also the cornerstone of a remarkable, yet sadly not fully realized, career: that of its writer-director, Yasumi Matsuno, who went on to make cult classics Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story before flaming out midway through the tortured development of Final Fantasy 12, a personal and professional setback he seems never to have fully recovered from. It’s a keystone game - perhaps the keystone game - in a particular and demanding genre, the tactical role-playing game. There’s no doubting the historical importance of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.
