Where Does Kartia Fit in the Strategy RPG Boom?

It was the third strategy RPG on its shelf in its own launch season, and the strangest.

The PlayStation strategy RPG had its great pile-up in 1997 and 1998. Tactics Ogre, Quest's 1995 Super Famicom landmark, defined the form; its director Yasumi Matsuno carried the form to Square, and Final Fantasy Tactics appeared in Japan in June 1997 and in North America in January 1998. Atlus USA itself published the PlayStation Tactics Ogre in America in May 1998. Three months later, in August, the same publisher released Kartia. Reviewers did the obvious thing and measured the newcomer against the two Matsuno games on either side of it.

GamePro's verdict is the era in one sentence: “It's not quite as good as Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre, but the two-player mode and unique features make it worth the price of war... or a weekend rental.”

THE CROWDED YEAR

1997 to 1998

Final Fantasy Tactics · January 1998 in America

Square's Ivalice debut reached America in January 1998, three months after Final Fantasy VII, and set the bar every strategy RPG that year was graded against.

Tactics Ogre · May 1998 in America

The PlayStation port of Matsuno's 1995 original reached America in May 1998, published by Atlus USA. Kartia's own publisher handed it its toughest competition.

Kartia · August 1998 in America

Into that shelf came an Atlus original with no franchise name, no jobs system, and a creation mechanic nobody had shipped before.

The award went to Tactics

At the 1998 Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine Editors' Awards, Kartia was nominated for Best Strategy. The award went to Final Fantasy Tactics.

THE DIFFERENT BET

What Kartia did instead

Atlus's first outside Megami Tensei

Kartia was the Atlus R&D1 studio's first strategy RPG that was not a Megami Tensei game: an original world built to prove the studio could do more than demons.

Creation instead of classes

Where tactics games offered job systems, Kartia offered authorship: no shops, no class trees, just texts combined into everything your army wears, casts, and commands.

Two players

Kartia shipped with a two-player versus mode, a rarity in the genre that GamePro singled out in its verdict: armies built across the campaigns could be tested against a friend's.

The Reviews Why Is Kartia Forgotten?

Where Does Kartia Fit in the Strategy RPG Boom?

THE CROWDED YEAR

THE DIFFERENT BET

THE FIRST WORD