YMMV / Ogre Battle 64

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Are netherworlders Always Chaotic Evil, or are they capable of good? On one hand, their goal is to bring about The End of the World as We Know It and they corrupt humans by their mere presence. On the other hand, they spend most of the game getting commanded by humans and Danika states humans and Ogres are only distinguished by where they live. Frohm the Idealist complicates matters, depending on if you see his actions as Affably Evil or Pragmatic Villainy. While he encouraged humans to satisfy their darkest desires and pleasures, he also actively tried to understand and protect them, making the land of Tybell peaceful enough that refugees willingly traveled there for safety from the war. Additionally, the player can recruit Goblins, Ogres, Gorgons and Saturoses into their army, though whether this is evidence of netherworlders getting a change of heart and becoming Noble Demons or simply Gameplay and Story Segregation is up for debate.
  • When Ankiseth asks if Magnus' mother ever resented him for his decisions, Magnus tells him she loved Ankiseth to the end. The very first scene of the game shows a young Magnus telling Yumil he doesn't know where his mother is, though, and she's confirmed dead in Magnus' Hugo Report entry early on. Did Magnus find her later, or otherwise heard she still loved Ankiseth? Or, since Ankiseth only asks Magnus this question as he lays dying from Baldwin's stab, is Magnus lying?
• Anticlimax Boss: Many bosses due to the game's difficulty, but the standout would be Yumil. For all the hype surrounding the "ultimate power" and how big a deal it is when he attains it, he's actually no stronger than the supposedly weaker Procus, if you fight him and goes down without much of a fight.
• Awesome Music: Many tracks in the game are recycled from March of the Black Queen or Let Us Cling Together, but Person of Lordly Caliber still has its share of great original themes:
  • "Diana," generally associated with Destin, which plays whenever something awesome is happening.
  • On the other side of the coin, there's "Homage" for the Knights Templar.
  • "Loki," the theme of particularly important bosses.
  • "The World For The People" during the siege levels.
  • "The Bloody World," which only plays once on Celesis if the player doesn't recruit Europea.
  • The surprisingly serene "Over the World" track, played exclusively at Audvera.
• Best Level Ever:
  • "The Mercenaries" in Chapter Three, partly because of its difficulty and for feeling like The War Sequence.
  • The siege missions, due to Unexpected Gameplay Change and their awesome music.
• Camera Screw: Whenever you destroy a gate during siege missions, the camera changes to a much-harder-to-follow low angle, forcing you to change it back.
• Continuity Lockout: If you got the bad ending and you haven't played the first game, good luck understanding who the crap that demon baby is supposed to be.
• Difficulty Spike: Danika is much tougher than any other opponent the player faces.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Biske and Carth, the two low Chaos Frame-exclusive characters, are well-loved for being edgier than the other possible recruits and very, very cool.
  • Among the villains, Jeal and Frohm get a surprising amount of attention from the fanbase for characters with such limited screentime.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • The knights of Lodis in general, but especially Richard.
  • Some netherworlders, like Ogres and Saturos, which is why many players are happy they become recruitable in Chapter Four.
• Fanfic Fuel: Who is the mother of Aeneas, Magnus's son in the high Chaos Frame ending?^note Katreda and Liedel already get Ship Tease with other characters, Aisha likely returns to Zenobia at the end of the game, and with where Leia is standing relative to Magnus in the high CF ending's final scene (the same as Dio), it seems unlikely to be her. Remaining options are Europea or Meredia, or perhaps a new person entirely.
• Faux Symbolism: Figures that a woman named Mari would give birth to The Antichrist.
• Fridge Horror: Depending on how one interprets Ariosh's description of where Godeslas' Ogres came from, it's possible they are Godeslas' wife and daughters transformed, with Ariosh's level 20 Ogre sometimes considered his wife. That's right—you weren't just killing Ogres, you were killing children.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Item Duplication Glitch. It's a method that allows you to create up to 99 of any usable item. To which you can duplicate stat upgrade items, alignment upgrade items, even Champion Statuettes!
  • Stat-increase-on-level-up items can turn all those Level 3's you've saved from the beginning into gods.
• Goddamned Bats: Several:
  • Grapplers, as they hit hard no matter where in the formation they are, and always come in groups of 3 or 4. Thankfully you only face them in a few levels and you can get one.
  • Faeries and Gremlins, as they're Fragile Speedster incarnate and will dodge your attacks half the time. (Particularly Gremlins, who can put units to sleep with Abyss.) They only get real bad when paired with a healer at least.
  • "Harassment Specialist" units tend to be this way: squads containing lots of status and debuff-casters like the above-mentioned gremlins, fairies and also witches. They're typically not dangerous in terms of damage but since they can put your soldiers to sleep, paralyze them or just decrease their attack power, they can often hold off superior forces (and when you consider that 'losing' a battle, even on technicality causes your unit to retreat back a ways, it can cause a lot of issues).
  • Cockatrices can petrify you and the cure for that is not cheap. Also, on your side it robs you of experience as petrified enemies don't give any. At least you can upgrade your Golems into Stone Golems thanks to them.
• Goddamned Boss: Mylmurre the Gorgon, boss of Barpheth. She's not necessarily hard...but unless you're still lugging around those Paladins and Cataphracts late into Chapter Four, or for some reason visited a certain town on the stage and received a hint of what was coming, Mylmurre will petrify most or all of your group in one shot with her Gaze of Terror, costing 500 Goth per person to restore. Even if you attack her from behind, her bow shots can still turn your units to stone.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The previously mentioned Item Duplication Glitch.
  • While the special character Meredia is intended to join at level 17, a glitch enables players to get her as low as level 3, allowing them to abuse stat-increase-upon-level-up items to shoot her INT up to ridiculous heights. If Meredia's trained this way, she can OHKO entire enemy groups by herself, possibly making her the most powerful unit in the game (at least when it comes to most damage done with a single attack) without using the Item Duplication Glitch.
  • The Fairy's Blow Kiss ability can be used to evolve beasts and dragons a few levels earlier than they would be able to normally.
• Heartwarming Moments: A "Giant" class was apparently planned at some point, but was ultimately Dummied Out due to memory constraints. By using a cheating device, one can hack a giant into their army and read its class description, which is a message to the giant from its programmer: "I'm sorry. I'll never forget you."
• Ho Yay: Any scene featuring Yumil and Magnus is full of this. Like Yumil asking Magnus to "become his knight".
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Many fans of the game love the amount of depth that can go into character customization and army management, and also like the battle system, music, and story. However, the enemy group design is very poor and never improves, so as the player gets access to better classes and weapons, the game becomes less and less challenging. It can be a bit of a letdown that your well-trained death army never truly gets a Worthy Opponent.
• It Was His Sled: There is a secret Bad Ending Bonus Level where you kill all the Zenobians. It's easy for a newcomer to have this spoiled if they look up the game online.
• Love to Hate: Rhade is so ridiculously over-the-top evil that he's more fun to watch than some later, more serious villains.
• Memetic Loser: Kerikov. His portrait certainly doesn't help.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • The Zenobians rescuing Qad in the prologue.
  • Richard barging in on Procus' scheming at the start of Chapter Three and taking control of Palatinus.
  • Destin and Gilbert fighting Richard and Baldwin at the Temple of Berthe.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The boom when an enemy group is eliminated, especially if accompanied by an Item Get! jingle.
  • The electrical "zzzzt" made by Plasma Storm, the Fire/Wind magic+ combination spell, especially since it usually means the enemy group just got demolished.
• Narm: When Pruflas tries opening the seal at the Temple of Berthe without Yumil, he holds his sword in the air and awkwardly jiggles it up and down a few times. The scene is played completely serious with spooky music in the background, but since Pruflas looks utterly ridiculous, it comes off funny instead, especially when he's surprised it doesn't work.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Ariosh's description of where the Ogres came from.
  • The unsettling "Deathagony" music track which plays during the story's creepiest moments—most notably, the debut of the Ogres.
  • The final level, where all hell literally breaks lose, complete with some startling new music.
• One-Scene Wonder: Grozz Nuy, the Duel Boss climax of the Dragoon sidequest. He's not especially tough, but he makes quite the impression.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Chaos Frame and alignment, two linked traits. While CF is supposed to demonstrate the difference between responsible and vicious tactics, it's so obscure that virtually all players fail to realize the difference between "capturing" a town and "liberating" it is anything more than flavor text. Alignment, while actual visible to the player is absurdly difficult to control in any meaningful as well.
  • How to get Angel Knights (without using Love and Peace.) You have to kill a female character in order to get a chance for her to become an Angel Knight...and you'll likely just get a zombie instead and have to replay the entire level. Mastaba's Barrier can help with this but most first-time players don't know about birthday gifts.
• Signature Scene:
  • The Zenobians' Big Damn Heroes moment in the prologue.
  • The first battle against Ogres at Dardunnelles. Nightmare Fuel + Difficulty Spike + That One Boss, combined with being the first ever on-screen appearance of Ogres in a series named after them, makes it one of the most memorable scenes in the game.
• Spoiled by the Format:
  • The fact Wentinus is suspiciously cut off from player access at the end of Chapter Two makes it obvious something has to happen there later, spoiling how defeating Yumil and liberating Winnea, the conflict built up to the entire game, is not the climax.
  • Unlike the Progenitor and Saldian, who are represented in the Hugo Report by their countries' emblems, Danika gets an actual portrait, spoiling how you will meet her in person at some point.
• Strawman Has a Point: A number of characters, even Rhade despite his Jerkass personality, bring up that rebelling against the puppet government in Palatinus will only bring about war with Lodis, which they argue is hopeless. Much as the player would hate to admit it, since this is also brought up by someone from the rebellion that sides with characters using demons, they have a point and no matter what ending you get, there's mention that will be a war with Lodis.
• Tear Jerker: Unlike Let Us Cling Together, Person of Lordly Caliber's Story Branching generally doesn't punish the player for "good" decisions. This can make a "bad" playthrough all the more heartbreaking by knowing many sad events could have been prevented.
  • If you choose to follow orders at the end of Chapter Two, there's the Player Punch that is Ankiseth's death.
  • The battle at the gates of Fort Romulus, if you lost Dio back in Chapter One.
  • Yumil's death in Chapter Four.
  • The secret level "Caliber" forces you to kill all the Zenobians in what's basically a mission-long What the Hell, Hero?. Destin's death is especially heartbreaking, and it's even worse if you've already beaten March of the Black Queen. If that's not sad enough, the last words of each are all tear jerkers on their own, though Aisha's might be the worse:
  "Mother, the time has come for me to see you again."
  • Magnus' fate in a low Chaos Frame ending. His own troops turn on him and he's cast out of the kingdom as possessed. He still helps fight against the following barbarian invasion, but Palatinus is completely destroyed anyway.
• That One Boss:
  • Ariosh, mostly because of the infamous level 20 Ogre he's got with him. He's also the first boss not immediately open to melee attacks at a time when you still probably don't have much in the way of back-row firepower, and one of the few to not be in the middle column, meaning it's harder to concentrate attacks on him.
  • Amrius, for using a Pedra of Bane twice in the second round with him. He's quite beatable, but odds are he'll kill at least one of your units before going down, meaning there's a chance you win, an important character becomes a zombie, and you restart the level. To make matters worse, there are no witch dens in a siege level, so you'd better hope you brought some Altars of Resurrection with you.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Jeal gets his own Hugo Report entry and appears prominently in the prologue, where he's the Blue Oni to Rhade's Red and set up as a potential Central Division character that's neither a Jerkass, a Dirty Coward, or completely sympathetic. Despite this he's never seen or mentioned again before he dies in Chapter Three.
  • Xevec shows not everyone in the Revolutionary Army is a squeaky-clean idealist like Frederick and brings up how revolutions sometimes need to make hard decisions. Yet since he gets little development and no Pet the Dog moments, and the revolution can still succeed just fine without listening to him—and, to top it off, he betrays Magnus later on—he ends up a Straw Character.
  • Unlike Let Us Cling Together, besides Baldwin this game's Temple Commands get hardly any characterization, scenes, or even lines before they're fought and killed. The worst is Vapula, who's revealed to be a soldier of Zeteginea and a former comrade of Debonair's, but only in an easily-missable pre-battle cutscene right before his death.
  • Frohm the Idealist, a One-Scene Wonder Affably Evil demon who wants to live with humans. He's the series' first and only example of a possibly benevolent demon, and his existence brings up ways to explore Danika's Aesop that Humans Are the Real Monsters. Yet unlike Galf or Saia, there's no option to recruit him, or even spare his life.
  • Had Godeslas' wife and daughters been seen, even briefly, before getting sacrificed to make Ogres, it could've made a chilling Player Punch. Instead, they are not in any way hinted to even exist at all before being Killed Offscreen.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The story brings up the moral issue of fighting Bolmaukan slaves and involving them in the revolution. Whether you liberate them or not has no long-term effect on the story, and you can kill as many as you want in battle without any consequences at all.
  • Yumil and his older brother Amrius are never seen interacting at any point, and definitely not after both have taken several levels in badass.
  • Chapter Three ends with three main enemy factions in play: the Central Division, the Lodis remnants, and the netherworlders. The Revolutionary Army proposes a truce with the Central Division so they can team up against the latter two. However, Chapter Four quickly presents a Conflict Killer in the form of the Infernal Aura, which consolidates all three enemy factions into one for the rest of the game, effectively eliminating any nuance the story had. It could have been interesting to watch the four factions maneuvering, scheming, and politicking to control Palatinus, perhaps invoking Grey-and-Black Morality at points.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Combination spell-triggered evolutions. Skeletons and Stone Golems can only be evolved into Ghosts and Baldr Golems if they're hit with a Wind/Fire combination. There are only a handful of enemy formations in the game with even the possibility to cast combination magic, let alone the right combination, so the odds of having the right spell hit your Skeleton or Stone Golem are next to nothing.
  • Grozz Nuy switches attack types during combat, making him the only character in the game (including other boss-type enemies) to not be locked into using one skill per row. This is even more unusual when compared with the original game, which featured multiple bosses who used different abilities while fighting.
• The Woobie: Mari. A common girl chosen to be the servant to Prince Yumil and falls in love with him... then loses Yumil, gets mind controlled, realizes her love for Yumil was artificially given to her by outside sources, accidentally releases a potential world-destroying goddess, and finally gets unceremoniously killed by Baldwin. Just when it seems like her existence couldn't be any worse, the low Chaos Frame ending shows that her child from Yumil is actually the reincarnation of Rashidi, meaning she's partly responsible for giving the Antichrist godlike power.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Much of the combat magic. Atmosphere, the Water/Wind Magic+ combination spell, is often brought up as especially impressive and satisfying to use.