I made a half-hour lore video on the Palace of the Dead

[Cleretic]

https://youtu.be/pNEcCu65Jic

It turns out that the Palace of the Dead goes in so many weird places I probably could've gone on for even longer than half an hour (I'm impressed that I managed to talk for ten minutes about Tactics Ogre's story without going into Politics Chat)! Come learn about Gelmorra, about seminal SRPGs you can't buy anymore, and about how some random enemies you steamrolled over while powerleveling are actually super interesting and important!

[dreamfisher]

Oh, I'm excited for this one.
I've been dying for more Tactics Ogre / PotD lore ever since I read a very enthusiastic post from WhiteArchmage about it.
Kiiind of hoping this pushes me over the edge and convinces me to just play the games.

[ItMe]

As someone who has been delving into Deep Dungeons during the delay, I dig this delightful video!

[Cleretic]

Oh, I'm excited for this one.
I've been dying for more Tactics Ogre / PotD lore ever since I read a very enthusiastic post from WhiteArchmage about it.
Kiiind of hoping this pushes me over the edge and convinces me to just play the games.

I'm hoping that the out-of-nowhere mention of LUCT in a survey I mentioned right at the end there does mean there's a re-release brewing, because it seems very much up may alley.

...and that said re-release doesn't end up just being on mobile platforms like the FFT one was. Everything about that FFT re-release is wonderful, except that straight-up converting that into a touchscreen makes it very difficult on a phone. Very small menu hitboxes surrounded by a lot of other very small hitboxes makes for trouble on a phone screen!

[WhiteArchmage]

A little nit-pick when talking about the Pomander of Resolution: There is a very obtuse way to turn your generic characters into Angel Knights in Tactics Ogre (there's also a Recruitable named Angel character in Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen, both your Alignment and Reputation, and probably Charisma, need to be very high up to recruit her). Priests can use the Exorcism spell but Angel Knights also get an innate Exorcism skill in Knight of Lodis (LUCT I believe it just hurts them), which is why Heavenly Judge is used to Banish the Undead in the Nybbeth fight.

While they're not COMMON in the Ogre Saga, they're part of the underlying Lore and they've appeared in every game, they're just... ricidulously hard to get, ESPECIALLY in the LUCT remake, where you need to turn them into a zombie, then a skeleton knight (IN ONE SPECIFIC FLOOR OF POTD), then into Angel Knight (KoL needs a character to die, get resurrected, have ridiculously high and well-rounded stats, die AGAIN, then finally resurrect AGAIN for a chance to be transmigrated into an Angel... or recruit Lobeia when you stumble into her). As to why specifically an angelic Duskwight woman...? I wouldn't know. Maybe as a reference that Angel Knights are usually transmigrated units and most of the time women-exclusive? Lorewise I would agree with the Gelmorran angle, this is mostly out-of-universe.

Oh, I'm excited for this one.
I've been dying for more Tactics Ogre / PotD lore ever since I read a very enthusiastic post from WhiteArchmage about it.
Kiiind of hoping this pushes me over the edge and convinces me to just play the games.

I'll take it as a compliment, thank you!

[Cleretic]

A little nit-pick when talking about the Pomander of Resolution: There is a very obtuse way to turn your generic characters into Angel Knights in Tactics Ogre (there's also a Recruitable named Angel character in Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen, both your Alignment and Reputation, and probably Charisma, need to be very high up to recruit her). Priests can use the Exorcism spell but Angel Knights also get an innate Exorcism skill in Knight of Lodis (LUCT I believe it just hurts them), which is why Heavenly Judge is used to Banish the Undead in the Nybbeth fight.

While they're not COMMON in the Ogre Saga, they're part of the underlying Lore and they've appeared in every game, they're just... ricidulously hard to get, ESPECIALLY in the LUCT remake, where you need to turn them into a zombie, then a skeleton knight (IN ONE SPECIFIC FLOOR OF POTD), then into Angel Knight (KoL needs a character to die, get resurrected, have ridiculously high and well-rounded stats, die AGAIN, then finally resurrect AGAIN for a chance to be transmigrated into an Angel... or recruit Lobeia when you stumble into her). As to why specifically an angelic Duskwight woman...? I wouldn't know. Maybe as a reference that Angel Knights are usually transmigrated units and most of the time women-exclusive? Lorewise I would agree with the Gelmorran angle, this is mostly out-of-universe.

Ahh, thank you for the confirmation on that one! The best I could find for fact-checking this one was a friend who'd played the game way back on the Playstation (and very much not getting to POTD in it), and my own experience and research material was a Let's Play and the wiki, so there were some gaps for both of us. We knew about the existence of angels, but we couldn't really piece together actual connections beyond 'they exist in both, I guess'.

In reviewing things again with some proper search terms, though, I do still think the Gelmorran angle makes more sense. For a simple reason of actual writing logic: they deliberately named it Kuribu, a term from elsewhere in FFXIV (a very nearby 'elsewhere', too), despite the Ogre series providing immediately understandable and inconspicuous names; we wouldn't bat an eye at them calling it 'Angel Knight' or something. Rooting it in a very specific part of FFXIV was a conscious choice.

EDIT: I will say, the fact we're specifically talking about the angels does give me some reassurance I got everything else about Tactics Ogre mostly right; you seem to be the Tactics Ogre Knower around these parts, so I feel like if I tripped up anywhere else you'd have said!

[WhiteArchmage]

In reviewing things again with some proper search terms, though, I do still think the Gelmorran angle makes more sense. For a simple reason of actual writing logic: they deliberately named it Kuribu, a term from elsewhere in FFXIV (a very nearby 'elsewhere', too), despite the Ogre series providing immediately understandable and inconspicuous names; we wouldn't bat an eye at them calling it 'Angel Knight' or something. Rooting it in a very specific part of FFXIV was a conscious choice.

EDIT: I will say, the fact we're specifically talking about the angels does give me some reassurance I got everything else about Tactics Ogre mostly right; you seem to be the Tactics Ogre Knower around these parts, so I feel like if I tripped up anywhere else you'd have said!

Yes, naming the "creature" Kuribu but using another model (one the player could replicate, too!) is like a deliberate choice. A mixture or gameplay and story reasons at worst (the Kuribu model is too large for PotD's smaller rooms, and the model chosen is very Lore-accurate for the area), and an intriguing plot point at best (especially the point you raise about Gelmorrans keeping and evolving the Kuribu imagery from Amdapor), we really DO need more Gelmorran Lore.

About the edit I was going to mention something about Nybeth's story details being slightly different depending on which route you're in but realized that had nothing to do with his story revolving the PotD itself. Basically only changing which of his very many children he ends up sacrificing, which, you know, not really relevant...

[Cleretic]

About the edit I was going to mention something about Nybeth's story details being slightly different depending on which route you're in but realized that had nothing to do with his story revolving the PotD itself. Basically only changing which of his very many children he ends up sacrificing, which, you know, not really relevant...

Yeah, there were some bits like that I omitted for 'pointless complexity' reasons.

One thing I did cut out because I couldn't find a satisfying way to bring it up: when Nybeth talks about who he wants to meet in the Echo flashback, he uses feminine pronouns. While exactly which of his kids rebels changes depending on route, the only guarantees are that his wife and one of his daughters dies, so he's probably talking about one of those two.