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What are your favorite Tactical RPGs?

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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  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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 a story. You make your team, and play against another player. Playing it alone is kinda boring.

  • Currently playing Tactical Breach Wizards. It's not really "hardcore" the way XCOM is, which suits my lifestyle right now.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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