I hate Tactic games (cause I suck at them lol) but my brother loves them. He really enjoyed the Saiyuki game I got for the PS1. I didn’t read the back and thought it was an rpg based on the Chinese legend. Boy was I wrong. Tactical RPG and boooy did I suck at it. But my brother really enjoyed it. So I guess that’s a suggestions XD
Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth. A nifty lil’ game which was overlooked by many and released for the PS in '01 by Atlus Co.
It’s very similar to Final Fantasy Tactics and was something of a sleeper hit. But, as with the majority of the games Atlus has published stateside, only a relatively small amount of copies were produced. So, you’re going to have a hard time tracking down a copy, unless you just order one online.
Now, that’s really the only game I can think of that fits the bill. In fact, it’s a little suprising that we got to 22 replies before it was mentioned. Scandalous.
Oh! And while it’s quite dissimilar to aforementioned FFT, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure is another tactical RPG for the PS which was, coincidentally, released by Atlus Co. in '00. It’s quite a short romp and may not appeal to many gamers (especially males), but it’s worth checking out, IMO.
The PS2 and the GBA are where most of the tactical RPGs are.
Most of Nippon Ichi’s games are huge timesinks, but some get turned off by the pure grindiness of them (hey, Laharl isn’t gonna reach level 9999 by himself, right?).
Gladius was a hidden gem. The mixture of Norse / Roman / Egyptian themes was an alternative to “generic fantasy realm #8.” Unfortunately, it loses something in the endgame when the computer decides that the only way to be a challenge is to equip all the enemies with 1-hit Death swords.
FFTA, as already mentioned, is decent. A lot of people found issue with the law system, but I didn’t have much of a problem with it.
The Super Robot Wars (Taisen in the US) series is a huge hit in Japan. It’s a giant slash fiction of all the big 'ol anime mechs you could possibly want. Two of them, SRT: Original Generation and its sequel, are US-bound for the GBA, and they’re very good strategy games. Although they don’t feature the name-brand mechs (licensing issues), there’s more than enough metal ass-kicking to go around.
Rebelstar Tactical Command for the GBA is essentially X-Com. In fact, it’s done by the same people.
For very different tactical games on PS2 you can try Romance of the Three Kingdoms (7 or 10) they both involve city management as well as tactical war gaming. Version 7 and 10 seem to be the versions that allow you to play anyone within the ancient Chinese Kingdoms (8 and 9 seem to require you to try and become Emperor to have a decent game) though I’ve only personaly played 7 and 8. Though their are increases in complexity for each version of the game, I think 7 may well be the classic version. In later versions you can control multiple characters (who each are hero-generals controling armies) but that distracts from the building up of any particular character.
The game is not impressive graphically nor particularly fast pased, but has some very decent war games elements are large scale tactical forces distribution elements.
Another echo for the Nippon Ichi games, but they do eat a tremendous amount of free time. (I now have 500+ hours sunk into Disgaea, and Laharl is still a paltry 2600-something level character. But that’s also because I’ve tried to keep a party of other characters somewhat apace of him, too, and I’ve also captured a whole zoo’s worth of monsters.)
Suikoden Tactics is alright. Pretty straightforward if you already know how to play Tactical style games. Some of the specialty classes end up rather useless, IMO.
Tactics Ogre (for the Playstation - hard as hell to find) and Tactics Ogre Advance (for the GBA) are recommended, even if they do cause insanity sometimes. (There are so many things you can miss in those games and never get back without a full walkthrough. :mad: ) And the plot for both games are very similar to FFT, probably because they all use European history as inspiration. (Although I kept screaming at Tactics Ogre Advance because of the similarities in character design.)
There’s a PC game called “Farland Saga” (I think) by Technical Group Laboratories, but I don’t know if it has come out in a language other than Chinese or Japanese.