Submitted 7 hours ago by isyasad@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0d8f536f-4c4f-474e-9933-7c84f25a2078.png
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.
What’s the one in the picture? Also, how do I read alt text on Summit?
Picture is of “Front Mission” (1995). I’ve never played or heard of it, tbh it is just taken from the Wikipedia page for tactical RPG.
Ooh, thank you. It looks cool.
If you enjoyed Into the Breach, take a look at Tactical Breach Wizards. Not much of an RPG, but the combat is similar to ITB. Not as difficult though.
I love Tactical Breach Wizards, which is somewhere between Into the Breach and Invisible Inc (also amazing).
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.
Shining For e is a classic. Basically Seva’s answer to Fire Emblem.
Wargroove is pretty good too. Kind of like Advance Wars, but in a more medieval fantasy setting. From an indie dev with pixel art. My only real complaint is one I have with all modern “retro pixel art” style games: the “pixels” can move by much smaller increments than themselves. I wish games that used that style would align everything, including animation, to the fake pixels. It looks kind of busy and messy imo. It doesn’t bother me enough to ruin Wargroove though.
Banner Saga was pretty good. It’s a combination of tactical RPG with mostly text-based choose-your-own-adventure style elements between battles. Still haven’t played the 3rd one, but I enjoyed the first 2.
Loved Shining Force since I watched my brother and his friend play all night after renting it from Blockbuster in the early 90s! I’ve played 1 and 2 a few times over the years and always had fun.
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,
I’m a weirdo, so Massive Chalice.
It has a strange high-concept premise where you are an immortal ruler defending against a monstrous army that only attacks every decade or so. Any surviving individual squad member will only be able to go on a handful of missions before aging out, so you are also managing familial bloodlines to birth new soldiers, while controlling for genetic and social traits that get passed down. I love the uniqueness and big ideas. It’s far from perfect, but you asked for favorite not the best.
Baldur’s gate 3
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.
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?
My favorite is the original Final Fantasy Tactics, hands down. I also liked XCOM 1, Advance Wars, Ogre Battle 64, Unicorn Overlord, Fire Emblem 3 Houses, and probably a few others I can’t think of right now.
Wasteland 3 is really good, baldurs gate 3 kinda, darkest dungeon, Valkyrie chronicles 1 & 4
Jagged Alliance 2 (especially with the 1.13 mod) is the most ludicrously detailed tactical RPG you’ll ever find. It can be a nightmare to actually play until you spend many, many hours learning all its systems, but nothing else comes close immersion-wise. You can customize every mercenary’s loadout down to individual weapon attachments, capturing different parts of the map gives bonuses that actually make sense (like being able to ship in weapons once you’ve taken the airport), you can train militias to hold onto captured sectors for you, and you can even use the in-game internet to send flowers to the main villain.
Yeah, I really liked JA2. The UI is pretty elderly today, though.
I haven’t been very impressed with some of the subsequent attempts to revive the series, though I still haven’t gotten around to playing Jagged Alliance 3 yet, and that has much better scores than some of the intervening releases, like Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. If you haven’t tried JA3 yet either, you might consider taking a look.
X-Com - UFO Defense and TFTD are definitely my favorite. Fallout 1&2 are a close second and I’ve been meaning to play through them again. Ogre Battle is a distant third, with Front Mission right behind it.
There’s a reason why oldschool X-Com players kept coming back to the games despite technical issues like the Groundhog Day bug. (Thank all applicable deities for OpenXcom solving those issues, though.)
Absolutely loved both of them! I think UFO Defense was the first pc game I played on our first 486. It was one of the first games I ever successfully hacked.
Not sure how many people know, but there’s another game from Gollop, Rebelstar Tactical Command for Gameboy Advance. It’s part of the Rebelstar series dating back to the ZX Spectrum. It plays pretty much the same as the original XCom games.
I was a big final fantasy tactics guy back in the day. I it was my first into to tactical. RPGs, and I was already in love with final fantasy III and VII by then, so it made sense. My buddy also had Vandal Hearts and that was awesome too! Can’t say I played much more beyond that.
Wildermyth was very enjoyable, it’s not as deep and well written as some of the others mentioned but still held my attention long enough to finish it.
I second that opinion. It seemed shallow and easy at the beginning, but turned out to be a really entertaining and challenging game. I also love how the characters age, develop, and eventually retire.
I also love how the characters age, develop, and eventually retire.
They can also turn up again in later campaigns. This lends well to both the story and team-building aspects of the game, and is one of the things that sets Wildermyth apart from superficially similar games.
FFTactics like others was my favorite.
I quite enjoyed into the breach.
I bought a couple of tactics like games on steam and they all dont seem to mith with me. I guess I like to grind a bit on fair but punishing tactics titles.
Most people don’t see it as a tactical rpg but: Baldur’s Gate 3
I like the disgaea series not only because of the deep systems involved, but also just because gameplay is so snappy. So many SRPGs are slow as molasses in terms of interface. I also really enjoyed Unicorn Overlord recently.
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 ?)
Just can’t beat The Shining Force games. Can’t.
Commandos was super cool. But I suppose it is too difficult by modern standards. Not a RPG though…
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:
Cannon Fodder - a UK classic, very arcadey but very fun and lighter than all these other “serious” games
It has that iconic theme music:
Yeah, I remember Cannon Fodder. It was rather difficult as I remember. Nice game… Do we have a remake?
Wargroove is very good.
Vandal Hearts on PS1. I think its probably not as good as I remember, but I was a small child and it said the word “Bastard” and that was the most adult media I’d been (unknowingly) allowed to consume. I played that game hard.
The only game that I’ve ever played like this is SNES’ game Ball Bullet Gun, it was like 12 yeas ago. It doesn’t have an story. You make your team, and against another player. Playing it alone is kinda boring.
sundray@lemmus.org 1 hour ago
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.