Looking to ask for people’s favorite tactical RPGs because I have played a bunch but never really gotten into any. XCOM, Fire Emblem, Disgaea, Advance Wars, Fallout, etc.
Looking to see what other people love so I can convince myself to try something new or try something again.
Out of what I’ve played, Into the Breach was my favorite. Very dense, and the positioning is really important. The only one I actually finished.
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Not my fav by any means, but I’ve really been enjoying the Kriegsfront Tactics demo this week.
My favorite series is disgaea, but I wouldn’t recommend it to most people, it’s over the top game breaking silliness.
Chroma-squad is often overlooked, but captures a lot of what name 90s trpg’s great and improves on the formula quite a bit.
The absolute best trpg imo is “bionic dues”, I feel like it you enjoyed into the breach you should definitely give bionic dues a shot, it’s such a different style of game,
Tuned Heart - PC-9801
Koudelka - PS1
Jean D’Arc - PSP
XCOM 2 - Steam
Tactical RPG’s are my favorite genre of games, and Tactics Ogre (not Ogre Battle) in any of it’s many iterations is my favorite. No game is perfect but it does so many things so, so well. Matsuno’s magnum opus. The latest version, Tactics Ogre Reborn added high quality voice acting which I really love.
I’ve had my eye on Tactics Ogre Reborn for a while now, but haven’t bought yet since it seemingly won’t go below 50% off, and the reviews say some of the later missions are pretty stacked against you, forcing you to play a certain way. Thoughts on this?
There are a few specific missions that are indeed stacked against you, but they are important story missions that are like boss fights. You don’t have to play them a specific way to beat them at all, people just get too caught up in playing these games in cookie cutter ways sometimes and now you get site created by AI slop that just regurgitate it.
There’s a hilariously drawn out postgame/endgame challenge dungeon type thing that’s like 100+ straight battles.
But the main game is solidly worth the full price, quite honestly. Any sale you find is just helping your budget.
The game gives you all the tools you need and more to complete every map, and it’s up to you how to use them. Character builds are very flexible and adjustable before each map to fit the situation, so if you’re getting stuck somewhere it might be time to rethink your strategy.
A concrete example from my first playthrough: I was facing a large group of beasts and kept losing and losing. Up until then I had just been bringing my favorite characters in terms of personality, but when I instead brought a heavy phalanx frontline to keep my guys in the back safe, that encounter became a breeze since the enemy was too slow to even touch my backline.
The game isn’t particularly difficult, but there’s lots of this in the game. Facing undead? Bring someone who can do exorcism. The enemy has a lot of archers? Equip weapons/skills that let you deflect arrows. I am simplifying, and there’s always more than one solution to each problem, but you’re going to need to plan for each map before you go in.
And what do you know… it just went on sale. Thanks for the info, I just picked it up.
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Just can’t beat The Shining Force games. Can’t.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, above all else.
That being said, Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor 1 and 2 are awesome. They combine SRPGs with the usual SMT combat - I don’t think I’ve found something similar yet.
You move around like you would in any other SRPG, then you can attack enemies in range to enter normal turn based combat - however, at most, you can only play out 2 full turns before combat ends. Afterwards the next unit moves. Each unit represents a squad of up to three characters you will be batteling with, usually a human and two demons. Depending on your squad, you may have different movement, range and abilities.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, above all else.
Yes. The day is full of moments. (Relevant Penny Arcade)
I lamy FF Tactics a little bit. And it was okay (I was pretty young) but when advanced ears came out. Hooooo my god k was hooked. I was always on my Gameboy every chance I could get.
Syndicate from 1993. Don’t know if that fulfills the “RPG” part of Tactical RPG but it’s definitely worth a play.
I feel like it had RPG elements with the soldier upgrades and equipment. There was progression in what your characters could do. This game was amazing, I’d love a remake of this with some small graphical and quality of life improvements.
Yes! I loved playing this game on our old 486.
Laser Squad, playing couch hot-seat is what sent me down this path.
I really liked Jagged Alliance 2, Afterlight and especially X-COM: Apocalypse. Apocalypse had such radical departures from the first two Ufo titles, which did not make it very well liked among enthusiasts, in particular the real-time battle mode. But the game had such fun mechanics and steep difficulty curve, I really enjoyed the challenge of it, as opposed to getting another Enemy Unknown clone that was TFTD.
Not my all-time fav, but I like it a lot and it’s kinda slept-on: Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars for the 3DS. It’s got a lot in common with X-COM – heck, Julian Gollop was even the producer on it.
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Commandos to me is the start of a different lineage of real-time tactical stealth games, which goes on to include Desperados, Shadow Tactics, and Shadow Gambit (yes, most of those were made by the same team).
Outside of the OGRE-alikes (FO Tactics, FF Tactics, Disgea, and so on) some other options for tactical games that are a little different:
- Nexus: The Jupiter Incident - sort of a 4X game mixed with tactics, or like Homeworld with a lot fewer units
- Myth: The Fallen Lords (and sequels) - classic pre-Halo Bungie titles that mix RPG and strategy. Somewhat defining for the RTS genre too.
- UFO: Aftershock and sequels - a series that tried to revive XCom before Firaxis rebooted it. Not as good, but pretty interesting and fun, a little easier than old school xcom but not as polished as the newer ones.
- Cannon Fodder - a UK classic, very arcadey but very fun and lighter than all these other “serious” games
Cannon Fodder - a UK classic, very arcadey but very fun and lighter than all these other “serious” games
It has that iconic theme music:
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My favorites are probably the Disgaea series and related games (Makai Kingdom, Phantom Brave) and Tactics Ogre. I also like Tactics Ogres more popular little brother, Final Fantasy Tactics.
Disgaea was a bit too edgy and weird for me. And Too. Much. Uninteresting. Dialogue ! Fire emblem games have the same issue.
Tactics ogre looks cool ! (Does it suffer from the issue stated above ?)
Disgaea and like are intentionally non-serious and funny. If the humor doesn’t do it for you in the slightest then it’s not for you sadly. I do have to say that once you get hooked on the series, all the other games feel like their mechanics are overly simplistic though.
And no, Tactics Ogre is all serious and very very good.
Yey, thanks !
I rather enjoyed Gears Tactics a few years ago.
I really enjoyed it as an XCOM combat-ish game that felt like there was work done to make it feel like it belongs in the Gears Of War universe. It’s not infinitely replayable because the campaign has mandatory side-missions that are generated from a limited template and begin to feel stale once you’ve seen all the templates, and by the endgame you have so many special abilities unlocked in your squad that it kind of drifts away from any semblance of feeling like combat tactics and into a puzzle game about min-maxing abilities to combo chain them together (this opinion might read a little oddly but if you’ve played enough turnbased tactical games you notice many game riding this line, with some going extreme one way or the other). It is worth a sale price though if you need a turn based combat fix.
Wasteland 3 is really good, baldurs gate 3 kinda, darkest dungeon, Valkyrie chronicles 1 & 4
I enjoyed Wasteland 3 a great deal too.
Oooh, I got you OP. If you liked the dense micro-maps of Into the Breach, check out Bad North. Defend small islands from waves of invaders with limited troops. Not an overly long game, but very satisfying for what it is.
