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.
Another good one that’s more recent is Triangle Strategy. Positioning is important. Great story. Very similar to FFT but FFT is better overall. Still a great game and more modern.
I’m playing Last Spell right now, isometric base defense game. Lots of viable ways to play, but later missions become a slog if you don’t plan out hero builds. A run takes 5-10 hours, but rounds take 20 minutes. Emphasis on crowd control and positioning.
Darkest Dungeon is nice if you want a break from isometric stuff, dungeon crawler, emphasis on team combat and resource management.
Creeper World III if you want to try RTS style, lots of community maps.
Tactical Breach Wizards, Come in through a window, throw everyone else out the window. Silly, but fun.
Advance Wars, of course.
I haven’t seen any mention of “Steamworld: Heist”, yet. It’s a very different sort of game engine, but scratches the same itch.
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.
Fallout Tactics remains my favorite Fallout.
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.
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 love Tactical Breach Wizards, which is somewhere between Into the Breach and Invisible Inc (also amazing).
Thanks for this rec, it looks delightful!
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.
Front Mission was pretty fun, and it looks like there’s a remaster available that shines it up a bit. I don’t remember much about the plot, but you build and outfit a squad of mechs, and you can specialize them for guns, or melee, or rockets or what have you.
Ooh, thank you. It looks cool.
Just for the story, FFTactics. That story twists so much it makes Cables envious.
Job system is fun too, just unfortunate the later Heroes stomp over created characters
And the music is incredible
That’s fine. Created characters are strong enough to beat the game with. I only played through it 2 times, but my second run I used as few named chars as possible. I created my team based on Seiken Densetsu 3 characters.
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.
For some reason I read Tactical Breach Wizards and thought of Sexy Battle Wizards, and I just thought, that’s a cool recommendation but why here?
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,
Baldur’s gate 3
Shining Force 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.
