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.
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.