Been jonesing for a similar style of tactical RPG. Tried out some Disgaea demos, but the anime cringe and the sheer amount of shit on the stats screens turned me off.
I liked the focus on class/character building in those games. Been thinking about XCOM and Fire Emblem games, but I figure I'd fish for recs.
Fire Emblem for sure. The class/character aspects are super important
This person tactics!
Jagged Alliance 2 is still my favorite of turn based tactical games. Be warned, it's ancient, and you'll have to research how to run it on Win10.
Thanks! Shit this just made me remember SBFP did a playthrough of that one. I'd wondered why the name and the look was so familiar.
Weird that you like Valkyria Chronicles but don't like Disgaea. It's just as weeb/anime.
X-com isn't like FFT per se. It's "grid-like" but isn't really turn-based (outside of Chimera Squad). You take all your actions and then the aliens act, repeat.
Fire Emblem is the closet to it.
Tactics Ogre is basically the predecessor of FFT, right down the creators of FFT being on those. Look into those.
Weird that you like Valkyria Chronicles but don’t like Disgaea. It’s just as weeb/anime.
I knew someone was going to call me out on that. Yeah I... I dunno. I can only describe it as Disgaea being too 🤪 for me.
And yeah, I know some of the big differences with XCOM's gameplay but I get the feeling it'll scratch the tactics itch for me in a similar way.
Never heard of Tactics Ogre before today so sweet, I'll take a look
If you like Final Fantasy Tactics, you've got to play Tactics Ogre. The PSP version is easy to emulate.
I just started replaying it yesterday after a few years because I stumbled on a hack that adds new content, but the vanilla game is really good.
There are a ton of different classes to experiment with, and my favorite part is at the end of the first chapter, you make a big decision that changes the entire story for the rest of the game, and there are a few other branching points that make it really fun to replay.
Characters who were just another enemy you stomped on in one path may be your ally on another path, and it's really cool to see the different angles to the story.
Nice yeah, I'll definitely add it to my mental list. Thanks!
XCOM for sure. Into the Breach is also an exceptional tactics game. Not an RPG but a rogue-lite. Wargroove is also really fun, a lot more similar to Advance Wars if you played any of those.
I don't mind the anime cringe but I also couldn't get into disgaea for all the grinding.
I kinda overlooked Into The Breach because of the roguelite aspects and because I never looked at it long enough to see the pilot-upgrade aspect, but I read a little more on it because of this. May take a closer look. Appreciate it!
Into the breach is really good, it has the FTL time drain aspect but with low amounts of randomness and very forseeable attacks, tactics becomes key.
I'd suggest temple of elemental evil or one of the turn based crpgs too, they're pretty fun.
I gotta suggest fire emblem. Every single one that ive played has been great. Its never felt repetitive, and the story can be enthralling.
Oh yeah, been meaning to check those out too. Not sure they're that far off; aren't they tile-based SRPGs too?
If you want to try something a bit shorter I'd suggest Into the Breach.
Phoenix point is decent as well. Battle Brothers also scratches a similar itch.
XCOM 1 with the Long War mod is the greatest strategy/tactics game ever made.
That said, XCOM 2 with the War of the Chosen DLC is also extremely fun and honestly more accessible. I also like it more because I can easily headcannon that they aliens are like the ones in They Live and that I'm overthrowing capitalism in the process.
I've spent over 1500 hours on these single player games so I can attest to how addictive they are with their gameplay.
Shadowrun: Hong Kong is one I recommend all the time. Divinity original sin 2 is great as well but is quite expensive when it isn't on sale.
Haven't played Hong Kong, but Dragonfall is great. A lot of cool worldbuilding and nice combat.
