Author’s Note (added 3/27/19): I wrote this when I was a freshman in college. As such, this essay was written relatively early in what can be called my “career” and will probably have a few semantic mistakes, as well as outdated or incorrect ideas about game design, so take this essay with a grain of salt. Despite the mistakes, though, I’ll still leave this up as a reminder of where I started out.
Tactical role-playing games are a genre of video game that utilize aspects of traditional role-playing games and combines them with that of tactical games to implements them in battles that take place on a grid or hexagonal-based field. The tactical RPG genre originated in Japan in the mid-to-late 1980s and became popularized in the country with the release of games such as Fire Emblem in 1990, Langrisser in 1991, and Shining Force in 1992. However, the genre goes by a slightly different name in the country, being more commonly known as “SRPGs”, with the “S” standing for “simulation” or “strategy”.
Before the mid-1990s, all SRPGs were presented in either a top-down or angled top-down perspective. In a top-down perspective, the player is looking at what’s happening in the game from an angle placed directly or almost directly above the action. But during that decade, the genre underwent a shift. More and more games were being presented from an isometric perspective instead. An isometric perspective is used to present 3D objects and landscapes over a 2D space. Today, almost all games in the genre use this perspective. This was due to several factors, primarily a slew of successful and influential games that were released during this time, as well as hardware shifts in the industry that prefered 3D-capable consoles over 2D.
The first game of note isn’t an RPG per se, but definitely was pivotal in changing the landscape of the tactical genre. UFO: Enemy Defense, more commonly known as X-COM: UFO Defense was released in 1994 for the Microsoft DOS operating system. The player takes control of an international military organization to defend the Earth from invading aliens. It was the first tactical game to go isometric. It was a smash hit, especially in Europe and North America [4] Even though it didn’t get a Japanese release, X-COM undoubtedly had a lot of influence at the time due to its success, and thus it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that it inspired many other games at the time. It could’ve even influenced the next key game, Front Mission.
Released in 1995 for the Super Famicom and developed by G-Craft, Front Mission was the first SRPG to utilize the isometric perspective [1]. The game was set in a futuristic setting and battles took place between giant mechs. It was a massive success in Japan, selling 500,000 copies in its first week [5]. Although it never got a western release, the game’s popularity in the birthplace of the SRPG meant the beginning of the solidification of the isometric trend in the genre.
Another game, Tactics Ogre, developed by Quest for the Super Famicom, would be released later that year, and it would prove that isometric truly was the next big thing. Tactics Ogre was the first isometric SRPG to take place in what could be considered a typical JRPG setting. As such, it was the first time an isometric SRPG attempted to tap into the core RPG audience. Both it and its later PlayStation port accomplished this pretty well, gaining praise from critics and the general audience alike. Today, it’s considered a cult classic in the genre. But really, Tactics Ogre was just testing the waters for its spiritual successor, Final Fantasy Tactics.
Developed by Squaresoft and released in 1997 for the PlayStation, Final Fantasy Tactics was an instant success. It received favorable reviews from critics and sold almost a million copies in its first few months of release [2][6]. Yasumi Matsuno, the director of both Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, has mentioned that he often played western Amiga and PC games [8]. With that in mind, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say he was at least partially influenced by X-COM, which was released shortly before the development of Tactics Ogre began. With this influence, combined with the fact this was the first time a popular, established franchise was embracing the genre, it’s understandable how the isometric perspective completely snowballed the top-down perspective.
This was only further exacerbated by the fact that next generation consoles, such as the PlayStation, were able to render 3D models, [9] which allowed for isometric battlefields and characters to be rotatable in-game, which would be much harder to achieve on consoles such as the Super Famicom, which used sprites instead of polygons [7]. Developers would want to make use of more advanced technology to create more in-depth and detailed games.
To put in perspective how drastic this change was: before the release of Front Mission and Tactics Ogre in 1995, there were no isometric SRPGs. In the year following, six were released, and this number only increased after Final Fantasy Tactics came out [1].
Today, virtually all releases in the genre are isometric, save for entries in the Fire Emblem series, which has miraculously survived. Its former contemporaries such as Langrisser and Shining Force have all but died out.
This shift in perspectives was more than just a face value change. It affected how games in the genre were designed by developers and consumed by players. The isometric viewpoint enabled both positive and negative impacts on the gameplay depending if the developer took into consideration what the viewpoint allowed and how the player was to see and react to its presentation.
In many cases, utilizing an isometric viewpoint in a tactical RPG is bad user experience design. This is especially the case if the developer fails to take into account what platform they are developing the game for. In the case of games made for the SNES, which uses a traditional directional pad (d-pad). The d-pad’s shape presents to the user the simple controls of “up, down, left, and right”. The brain is able to readily understand what the d-pad means and sets expectations for what it should do in-game. But an isometric grid doesn’t use “up, down, left, and right” for navigation, rather, it uses “northwest, northeast, southeast, and southwest”. Therefore, the controls that are available for the player on the SNES controller don’t translate directly to the controls needed to accurately play the game. This means that the developer must now bind buttons for usage that go against their basic design purposes. This could mean, especially for new players, the possibility of confusion when playing the game because their expectations of what the controls should do don’t match with what actually happens.
On the other hand, the developer can take full advantage of the platform they are developing for. Platforms such as the PlayStation that have a joystick or control stick are perfect for isometric tactical RPGs because they are able to precisely move in directions that d-pads can’t. The player is able to move the control stick in the necessary directions of “northwest, northeast, southeast, and southwest” in real life, and those movements directly correspond to the same movements that happen in-game. There is no discrepancy between what the player expects to happen and what actually happens. Most SRPGs made for platforms with a control stick are good examples of this, and this tends to be the prevailing design today.
The isometric perspective also allows for a lot more breadth in terms of diversity of map and level design that can’t be done in top-down maps. This is because the player is looking at the isometric grid from an angle, so it adds a third dimension to the game. Maps are now able to show players the physical difference between the highest levels of altitude and lowest levels of altitude that occur on the map. This enables map design that utilizes significant height differences in gameplay. In addition, the isometric perspective pretty much requires more in-depth artwork and assets. Maps now necessitate the ability to be rotated so the player is able to see all angles of the battlefield to have complete information. Therefore, games now need assets that can be viewed from four different angles, rather than only one. Meticulous care must be take to create artwork and assets for the game that fit the design aesthetic and appear pleasing to the player no matter how they’re looking at it.
Innovation and a want for better and improved games was happening faster than consoles could catch up with in the 1990s, and SRPGs at the time were byproducts of that. The SNES was arguably never intended to play games like Tactics Ogre that could be considered too intensive for the system. Yet, the game was a perfect fit for the PlayStation, which it was eventually ported to. Looking at how society and technology affects video games can help developers make games that players want to play with what they have at their disposal.
While it’s important to understand not only what causes change in the video game industry and what drives it, but also how that change affects the games themselves. How they are played and designed is just as important as analyzing release dates and market trends. This snapshot in the history of the SRPG genre is just an example of this, as it shows a crossroads between the new and the old and how that manifests in the games themselves. By being aware of all of these factors, no matter which genre they are aiming for, developers can enable themselves and make their best game possible.
References
[1] Chronology of tactical role-playing video games: 1995 to 1999. (n.d.). Retrieved May 6, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_tactical_role-playing_video_games:_1995_to_1999
[2] Final Fantasy Tactics on Metacritic. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation/final-fantasy-tactics
[3] Lowdermilk, T. (2013). User-Centered Design. OReilly Media.
[4] The Making Of: X-COM: Enemy Unknown. (2009, May 15). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from https://web.archive.org/web/20111027232422/http://www.next-gen.biz:80/features/making-x-com-enemy-unknown?page=2
[5] Nicholson, Z. (1995, May). Front Mission Goes Live! Superplay, (31), 34., from https://ia801808.us.archive.org/29/items/Superplay_Issue_31_1995-05_Future_Publishing_GB/Superplay_Issue_31_1995-05_Future_Publishing_GB.pdf
[6] Sales of Games in Japan And the US from 1/1/97 to 6/29/97. (1998, December 5). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://edstorm.tripod.com/sales.html
[7] Super NES Technical Specifications. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2018, from https://snescentral.com/article.php?id=0088
[8] TaiTai (2011, April 28). “Tactics Ogre” is a work of late youth — game designer Yasumi Matsuno talks about his roots as a creator. Retrieved April 22, 2018, from http://www.4gamer.net/games/116/G011621/20110426090/
[9] Tyson, J. (2000, October 17). How PlayStation Works. Retrieved April 22, 2018, from https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/playstation2.htm
Ludography
G-Craft. (1995). Front Mission (Initial release). [video game][cartridge][Super Famicom], Squaresoft.
Intelligent Systems. (1990). Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Ken (Initial release). [video game][cartridge][Super Famicom], Nintendo.
Masaya Games. (1991). Langrisser (Initial release). [video game][cartridge][Mega Drive], Nippon Computer Systems.
Mythos Games. (1994). UFO: Enemy Unknown (Initial EU release). [video game][floppy disk][MS-DOS], MicroProse.
Quest. (1995). Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (Initial Japanese release). [video game][cartridge][Super Famicom], Quest.
Sonic! Software Planning. (1992). Shining Force: Kamigami no Isan (Initial release). [video game][cartridge][Mega Drive], Sega.
Squaresoft. (1998)[1997]. Final Fantasy Tactics (Initial NA release). [video game][CD-ROM][PlayStation], Sony Computer Entertainment.
