StarDestroyer.Net BBS

The 2 obvious ones are Final Fantasy Tactics and the X-Com series?

Any other really good ones come to mind? This is one of my favorite genres of games, but there are not many of them. Any recommendations?

Jagged Alliance 2. Super-detailed X-Com with a great strategic system. Overthrowing a third world nation never was so fun.

It also has cool stuff, like that awesome personality test for creating your own custom player merc, and stuff like sending the dictator you're trying to overthrow some roses, with the card 'See you soon'?

---

Silent Storm is a newer one that seems cool, but I'm having issues getting into it due to how long turns take (AI is slow?). It's great because it models bullet overpenetration, and has ragdoll physics. Nothing's more fun than surrounding some horse stables where a squad of Nazis are holed up, then riddling it with bullets so bad that the structure colapses.

---

Disgaea is a great console strategy for reasons everyone knows, but I also like the Front Mission series. Wanzers are silly.

The Combat Mission games. Very fun and intense; 60 seconds just seem to go on forever! A big plus if you're a WWII buff, but anyone who likes turn-based tactical games could get into it.

Nephtys wrote:Jagged Alliance 2. Super-detailed X-Com with a great strategic system. Overthrowing a third world nation never was so fun.

It also has cool stuff, like that awesome personality test for creating your own custom player merc, and stuff like sending the dictator you're trying to overthrow some roses, with the card 'See you soon'?

That flowers thing from JA2? I have a friend who goes on and on about that game, but he never mentioned stuff like that, he focuses on all the cool guns you get.

I am a Super Robot Wars / G Generation addict. I first picked them up when I was 6 (SRW3) and have loved them since, no matter what anyone says. I guess we all have those sacred childhood memories that won't ever go away.

I still have a soft spot for Master of Orion 2, although I heard MOO3 sucked.

Darth Wong wrote:I heard MOO3 sucked.

I never was able to get much time in on Moo3 although my brother did. I watched him take a few turns far into the game and the combat is utterly retarded.

Jagged Alliance 2 is really very good. It's resolution of simultaneous actions (through 'interrupts) is deeply broken, but it's much better sim-wise than XCOM.

Silent Storm is good... but bugged. Silent Storm Sentinels is a slightly improved, better engine, but hopelessly unstable with a utterly broken campaign. They're great games to play through, but again have totally broken 'interrupt' systems where you can pull out a machinegun, unload it, pull out another machinegun and fire while a guy runs past a window.

On the PC

1. Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel -- Tactics game in a fallout world. Control up to six in a party and go on missions. It was a violent game for its time, but it was a lot of fun. You can drive vehicles.

2. Combat Mission -- cannot be missed by tactics fans. It is the best tactics war game.

Other favorites would be Talonsoft's Campaign Series which is going to be re-released by Matrixgames.

There's also Age of Wonders, the first and best of its series. The turns can run a little slow on large maps but it's the best tactics fantasy rpg. A close rival to this game would be Heroes of Might and Magic.


On PS2

Mostly Japanese style srpgs. Nippon Ichi (NIS) dominates this genre on this console.

Disgaea 1 and 2: Humor filled storyline, lots of characters and bonus levels to unlock, including random maps called item worlds which are contained in items and boost item levels when you run through them. Maps are grid based. The second one had a different story and more bonus levels.

Phantom Brave: Characters are summoned from items gathered on the battle field and can be fused with items to boost their stats. Fusion was the key to the game and I thought it was something original.

Makai Kingdom: follows phantom brave. Includes being able to summon buildings and vehicles into the battlefield.

La Pucelle Tactics: It was released before Disgaea. The main character is a witch and her brother; story characters are usually recruited as the game progresses. Monsters can be recruited by converting them in the battlefield.


GBA/DS

Advance Wars series: Wargame on the go.

Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (GBA) -- Fantasy Tactics game, deep but runs rather slowly.

Rebelstar Tactical Command (GBA) -- from the creators of x-com.

Fire Emblem series (GBA) -- rock-scissors-paper style tactical rpg that is really good although frustrating: when a character dies, it's permanent.


PSP

Metal Gear Acid -- card based tactics game. The second one is a bit better when it comes to manuverability. It's really fun.

I love the classics.

X-COM UFO Defense
Master of Orion (original)

I'm quite fond of Chess, personally, though Stratego can be fun too.

Hotfoot wrote:

Nephtys wrote:Jagged Alliance 2. Super-detailed X-Com with a great strategic system. Overthrowing a third world nation never was so fun.

It also has cool stuff, like that awesome personality test for creating your own custom player merc, and stuff like sending the dictator you're trying to overthrow some roses, with the card 'See you soon'?

That flowers thing from JA2? I have a friend who goes on and on about that game, but he never mentioned stuff like that, he focuses on all the cool guns you get.

Small details. On the in-game internet, there's apparently a few websites that don't make sense, like a flower place. For 20 bucks, they'll mail flowers internationally. One of my friends discovered by accident what happens if they type in your enemy's fortress address.

Later, there's a cutscene where she GETS the flowers, and is told they're from her enemy, and slaps her aide around some (Elliot, you IDIOT!).

You can also do fun things like deliberately get one of your members surrounded and captured, then bust out to kill the dictator after escaping the basement dungeons.

Vangaurd bandits- Basicly what happens if medival kingdoms excavated mechs. Simple and fun.
Tactics ogre. where you only use daggers and starting equipment. And Snap shot swords which double your characters power.

Frontmission.
Bahumat lagoon
Fire emblems.

Also Final Fantasy Tactics advance sucks, hard. I would avoid it.

Warlords II

Does anyone remember the "Front Mission" games? Giant Robots AND Turn based game all in one. The plot was ok, but the combat kicked ass and making your own robots was a lot of fun.

I remember playing Warp Factor on the Apple II. That was a Star Trek-based turn-based tactical game although they changed the names to protect their asses: Klargon instead of Klingon, for example. Primitive as hell now but that was really cool in its day. Mind you, you'd execute a turn and it would take 5 minutes to process everything; this was not exactly a fast-moving game, but what can you expect on a 1 MHz processor?

Top that for old-time nostalgia.

Shining Force (and Shining Force II) on the Genesis remains, to this day, to be a goddamn triumph.

Darth Wong wrote:I still have a soft spot for Master of Orion 2, although I heard MOO3 sucked.

MOO3 could be played by a trained monkey, and won. They added so much automatisms and took so much away from the player that it mostly came down to hit the "next round" button. Got quite boring after a short time.
It's a very far cry from MOO2....

X-COM is superior to Jagged Alliance 2 in lots of subtle ways, but Jagged Alliance has an edge because of all of it's real world guns and ammo (even if it is quite unrealistic and to a small extent, tongue in cheek).

By X-COM being superior to Jagged Alliance 2, I was thinking of:

- different sprites for every type of gun, wheras in JA2 you can't tell what your men or the enemy is carrying at a glance;

- fully destructible terrain (you can't completely collapse any building in JA2, but you could in every single X-COM game);

- random maps;

- a whole planet to defend, with ltos of different terrain;

- scary;

- great atmosphere.

But yeah, it's still very close between X-COM: UFO Unknown and Jagged Alliance 2. X-COM: Terror From the Deep was way too hard, but I did enjoy X-COM: Apocalypse a lot, no matter how unpopular the changes made were.

The Fire Emblem series, especially some of the earlier SNES games that never got English translations.

Xisiqomelir wrote:Warlords II

I used to adore that when I was younger. I'm surprised anyone still remembers it.
Warlords III seemed to ruin the formula with its hero classes and spells, however.

The Steel Panthers series, including the original WWII-era Steel Panthers, and the later Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles. I bought both when they were relatively new in the mid '90s, and continued playing them for years until I learned about Steel Panthers:MBT and it's companinion Steel Panthers:WWII, which are based on SP2 engine (but feature numerous enhancemants), and are available for free on the Internet.

Jagged Alliance 2 with the urban chaos mod is excellent. JA3 is being developed, and should be good (JA3: 3D was recently canned, though).

Silent Storm was fun, almost everything was destructible, if you knew an enemy was on the other side of a wall for example, and you had a big enough gun, you could blast a hole through the wall and get him that way.

SS had many of those moments where you just pause and say "Heh, that was cool". Like the time a german soldier was shooting at me from behind a concrete pylon, there's not much cover in the game from the biggest guns, and a DP machine-gunner had soon obliterated the pylon and the guy behind it in one burst.

Dahak wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:I still have a soft spot for Master of Orion 2, although I heard MOO3 sucked.

MOO3 could be played by a trained monkey, and won. They added so much automatisms and took so much away from the player that it mostly came down to hit the "next round" button. Got quite boring after a short time.
It's a very far cry from MOO2....

In otherwords, SimEarth meets Ascendancy.

Console-wise, Super Robot Wars has always been a crapload of fun for me - relatively simple compared to some other big-name titles, but the fan service simply can't be beat. As far as the PC, though, X-COM's always going to remain my favorite, though Fallout I and II rank fairly close as well.

Darth Servo wrote:In otherwords, SimEarth meets Ascendancy.

Er? Isn't Ascendancy the anti-automation game?

Consoles:
Front Mission III
Super Robot Wars

PC:
Final Liberation
Silent Storm
and if it count
M.A.X.