Forgotten Gems: The Legendary Ogre Battle

ign.com:

Forgotten Gems is a regular column about notable games that have moved out of the public eye and may not be easily accessible anymore. To see all the other games I've covered so far, be sure to check out the 11 previous issues of Forgotten Gems in our Columns section.

I can’t look at the box art for Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen without “hearing” Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen. From its iconic main theme to the cheers and jeers sounds when liberating towns, and the muffled “fight it out” and “thank you!” voice samples – it all comes right back. I haven’t played this – now sadly obscure – SNES strategy RPG in three decades, but booting up the dusty Japanese cartridge on my Super Nt instantly reminds me why I skipped pesky, non-essential things like sleep when I first brought it home.

Like so many things, my love affair with the Ogre Battle series started in 1993 during my college years in Japan. I had devoured Final Fantasy IV and V, and with the next installment in my favorite RPG series still a year off, I was looking for anything to fill the void. Ogre Battle’s cover art immediately called to me. No surprise, really – it’s the early work of a future master of character design: Akihiko Yoshida. You may not know his name, but you probably know Vaan and Ashe from Final Fantasy XII and have no doubt seen Yoshida’s art style in everything from Vagrant Story and Bravely Default, to Nier Automata.

Developed and published by Tokyo-based Quest, with support from Nintendo, Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen faced some tough odds: namely, a vibrant and crowded RPG scene dominated by Square and Enix (still two separate companies at the time). Yet somehow, this virtually unknown studio landed a critical and financial hit that instantly turned heads – and eventually led to Enix itself bringing the game to the US.

If I had written this column a few months ago, as planned, I would’ve told you that Ogre Battle was both the start and the end of a