Tactics Ogre

Quest - 1995 - SNES/Sega Saturn/PS1/PSP

One of the coolest SNES games you've probably never heard of, Tactics Ogre was first released on the SNES in Japan in 1995. Actually, it was never officially released in the U.S. until it was ported to the PSP a few years ago. But your best bet to play this game is probably a SNES emulator with one of the fan-translated ROMs, because no one I know actually owns a PSP.

Tactics Ogre was made by largely the exact same team of people that worked on Final Fantasy Tactics. Same director, same story writer, same composer and (some of) the same artists. This game will feel very familiar if you've ever played FF Tactics. I realize now that some of the battle scenarios and story scenarios for FF Tactics were lifted straight out of this game. If you've never played FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre is a turn based strategy game kind of like XCOM: Enemy Unknown. One of the cool differences in this game is that there are decision-based branching story points. I’m not sure why they went away from that for FF Tactics.

I really want to like Tactics Ogre more, but there are a few gameplay issues present in this game that weren't fixed until FF Tactics that make this game pretty annoying. Firstly, this game is hard. Like stupid hard. Like evil hard. Which isn't bad, but when you combine that with a permadeath mechanic where your units instantly die, it feels unfair. In FF Tactics when a unit’s HP hits zero, it begins a 3 turn timer where that unit is bleeding out and can be revived. They only will die when the timer hits 0. In Tactics Ogre when a unit’s HP hits zero, they’re dead instantly. So many ragequits. So many battles restarted. You’ll eventually get a class that can bring back units who have died in a battle, but it’s not until way late in the game.

This game is also way more grindy than FF Tactics. There were a few battles where I realized I wasn't even close to winning and had to level up my units for a bit before retrying. And like most RPGs, grinding in Tactics Ogre is not that much fun.

Summary:
If you want to try an obscure tactical RPG with some old school difficulty, you could do worse than Tactics Ogre.