I started playing Disgaea 1 for my Discord server’s game of the month. I bounced off of this game all the way back at release. Now, I’ve given it a fair shake and it’s already feeling like another one of those I would actually have liked back in the day. My experience with this genre is still pretty limited; I’ve played Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre: LUCT along with a couple of the newer Fire Emblem games.
What do you think are the must-play strategy JRPGs?
I’ve just discovered Unicorn Overlord, a spiritual successor to the classic Ogre Battle games, where you form teams of units to send around the map. Story’s a bit bland but I like the gameplay and the complexity curve that gradually introduces more unit types and bigger formations, making it very approachable, and I’m not aware of another game in that style since Ogre Battle 64.
Ofc there’s a lot of Fire Emblem games, and many of the older ones hold up just fine. Awakening (3DS), Path of Radiance (Gamecube), and Blazing Blade (GBA) are solid all around. Radiant Dawn (Wii) is ambitious and jumps between groups which tells a fairly complex story and keeps the game fresh, but some groups (the starting one in particular) have much weaker units that you probably won’t want to use later on. The SNES ones (Genealogy and Thracia 776) are good, both are very distinctive (Genealogy was strangely my introduction to the series, and remains a personal fav), but use a guide. The other GBA ones (Binding Blade and Sacred Stones) are fine but personally I didn’t get hooked; Fates seemed like it had amazing gameplay but I couldn’t stomach the level of incest/anime tropes; the early games and their remakes are a bit bland imo (though Shadow Dragon gives you a lot of flexibility in reclassing characters which was neat).
The Front Mission series has a similar format to the tactics games you mentioned, but instead of fantasy it’s mechs. The original SNES game got a remake (Front Mission 1st) and I’ve only played the original but it’s really good, you get a lot of different customization on how to put together your team of mechs.
Kinda deviating from the premise but the Shadowrun games are good. Dragonfall is my favorite, but Hong Kong and Shadowrun Returns are good too. Lots of character depth and challenging tactical gameplay.
Honorable mentions: Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark is ok, it’s heavily inspired by FFT and it does a pretty good job imitating it while introducing some new stuff but it’s hard not to compare the two and it doesn’t quite live up to it. Wildermyth is worth mentioning, the sidestories are very artsy and it kinda works in what it sets out to do which is giving your random characters distinctive feels and stories, but tbh it’d probably be better if the characters just weren’t random. Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (GBA) is pretty good imo but I haven’t played LUCT so idk how it compares. I haven’t played Triangle Strategy but it’s on my list, ditto for Tactics Ogre: Reborn.