Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner is a lovely homage to the old Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics games that, sadly, holds itself back.
Strategy games are certainly a diverse subgenre of gaming, especially in terms of their presentation, and vary greatly from game to game. While most Western strategy games are all about military machismo and patriotic hoohah, the genre is vastly different in the East. Tactics games are far more fantastical with their themes and character-driven narratives.
This greatly subverses its Western counterpart. Two of the most famous Eastern strategy games are the Fire Emblem game series, which started back in 1990, and the critically acclaimed Tactics Ogre, and Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner tries to combine the best of both with a pretty and nostalgic ribbon.
If you’re a long-time tactical RPG fan, the name Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner should ring a bell or two. Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner, when it was revealed, was hyped up heavily by fans of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, two cult series that have inspired many others in the genre, despite not doing so well, except in Japan.
Nevertheless, fans were ecstatic over the two games’ possible spiritual successor. It would seem that the studio behind Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner, Black March Studios, has delivered, sort of.
Black March Studio Is a relatively new and small studio that’s only notable game is Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner, whose whole development their studio has kindly documented across most of their social media. With Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner being their only and first major release, the studio has definitely taken on a huge task of trying to replicate the feeling and engagement seen in both the Tactics Ogre series and Fire Emblem.
The story of Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner begins with Duke Beorn Rolfe at the gates of Wendalle. He demands to see King Edrich Alwyn. This is rather unusual as the young duke has arrived completely unannounced. Despite how incredibly suspicious this seems, the duke is family to King Edrich Alwyn, so the knights who are standing guard decide to let him in.
This proves to be a horrible and fatal mistake. As soon as they do so, the duke becomes hostile and promptly attacks them. This is also where we learn the basics of combat. That’s right, folks, we start the game playing as a murderer who is usurping his uncle!
Now, you’re probably thinking, “Wow, Duke Beorn Rolfe is a horrible person. Am I playing the villain of the story? Is this a subversive take on the genre that will break the stale tradition of ‘Rising Hero Overcomes Evil’ seen in an overabundance of tactics games?” Sadly, that will be a big NO!
As soon as the tutorial is finished, we are introduced to the true protagonist of the story, whose name and birthday we get to pick out. That’s not to say that our true protagonist is a generic cardboard cutout. We are the ones who choose our characters’ morals and even change major parts of the game’s story. It’s just to say that the switching of the game’s protagonist was a bit of a missed opportunity.
The combat of Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner is grid-based, which means your character can only move a set number of squares at a time. The number of squares you can move changes depending on a multitude of things, terrain, position, character class, mount, or turn points, TP for short.
Turn Points are also what dictate how much energy a character has and therefore,e what abilities they can use. Turn points also build up over turns, so the less a character moves, the more points they earn, but unless your character has a relatively large health pool, it would advise you not to leave them a sitting duck.
As for your character’s class, Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner has taken a note or three from Final Fantasy Tactics’ notebook, as you can switch both your and other characters’ classes once you’ve reached that class’s requirements. As you would expect, classes add a much-needed variety when it comes to combat, and a party that has the right classes and right abilities can easily turn the tide of battle from a frustrating game of cat and mouse to an absolute cakewalk.
As mentioned earlier, your character’s position plays an equally vital role as your abilities because, yes, you have an attack that does heavy damage to three squares, but that means nothing if your enemies are two steps below you, out of your range. If you want to have success in Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner, you need to make sure that you are positioned in such a way that your attacks can hit, but vulnerabilities aren’t exposed, by that I mean, don’t leave your back exposed.
In Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner, where your attacks hit probably matters the most. When in combat, you can attack all four sides of an enemy; where you hit will change the amount of damage you do. Attacking an enemy from the front will deal the least amount of damage, and your enemies will have a higher chance of dodging your attacks. Attacking from the side deals more damage, but you will ideally want to hit from behind as you will deal the most damage that way.
Mounts also play an important part in combat, as they let your unit travel faster, and they also have access to unique moves that are exclusive to whatever mount they are riding. Mounted units also have two health bars, one for the rider and another for the rider’s balance. If the balance bar is fully depleted, then they will be knocked off their mount and will lose all the bonuses that came with it. The unit is not entirely useless, just a lot less cool now, but at least they’re still alive.
Your units will have two sets of skills, abilities, and magic. What abilities and magic they have depends purely on that character’s class and what equipment they currently have on them. However, this may not always be the case, as certain story characters will have certain abilities and magic that won’t change when they change classes.
As mentioned earlier, items have abilities that can easily turn a weak weapon into a lethal instrument of war. This is seen relatively early on with units that use whips; whips don’t deal a lot of damage, but they can be laced with a deadly poison that will slowly chip away at an enemy’s health.
If Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner wants to stand alongside the likes of Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, or even the critically acclaimed Final Fantasy Tactics, then it needs a story that is gripping and filled to the brim with political intrigue, that will make us question who we can call an ally and who can you call an enemy.
Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner does indeed have that… Or an attempt at it. You see if you’ve played any of those aforementioned games, then most of what has been listed for Crimson Tactics seems eerily similar to features that were in those games, and that’s mainly because Crimson Tactics tries to play everything safe, and no better example of this is with its story.
Now, a story in an Eastern strategy game is what keeps you engaged because, without it, you’re just playing an overly complicated game of chess. The story is what gets you to win the battles. It’s what sees you learn the mechanics for the game, and if the story isn’t interesting, neither is everything else, and sadly, that’s the case with Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner. Instead of having a unique world with unique races, lore, and environments like the world of Ivalice in Final Fantasy Tactics.
The world of Crimson Tactics is just a vaguely medieval European-inspired country that’s seen in other dime-a-dozen JRPGs, and there’s no interesting “man Vs god” or “man Vs his homeland”. It’s just the same old “nobody good guy rises and beats big evil bad empire” schtick. The game had ample opportunity to be something unique and try to stand out, but instead, it played it safe, just to land on its face and end up being generic and ultimately forgettable.
Sadly, all the things that make Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner unique are all things seen in the game’s muses, things that those games did better. The backstabbing mechanic and character classes are clearly from Ogre Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics. The mount mechanic is highly reminiscent of Pegasus knights from the Fire Emblem games.
All this aside, the game is genuinely made with love, and the developers have a passion for the tactics games that inspired Crimson Tactics: The Rise of the White Banner, and they wanted to pay homage to them. There is clear nostalgia for the handheld consoles those games were made for, as Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner has a low-poly art style that is meant to emulate the low-end graphics seen in consoles like the Nintendo DS, but with a bit of modern refinement.
Overall, Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner is a lovely attempt at making a spiritual successor to the iconic tactics games of the past, but instead of trying to stand on its own two feet, the game tries to use nostalgia to cover its flaws and ultimately is just another generic JRPG to throw onto the pile of missed potential.
