I can't help it.
I love them.
Final Fantasy Tactics didn't start it all for me.
Ogre Battle: 64 did. Then it was Vandal Hearts. Then FFTactics.
From there, Tactics Advanced, Ogre Battle for the GBA, and then Disgaea. Unfortunately Disgaea opened a dark portal for me, and I refuse to play it anymore.
I mean, come on. "Level to 9999, kill the character to start at level 1 and do it all over again. There is no maximum to his stats!", then "Hey item world. You have a nice weapon? It could be nicer. It could be four thousand times nicer."
Two hundred hours later, what did I have? A guy who could one-shot anything forever.
Thanks. No more for me.
Then I found a few hopefuls. I played Advanced Wars for the DS, and a few sequels, as well as Fire Emblem. They were ok, but not my favorite. Stella Deus was cool too. Never finished it, I overleveled and the system they had in place made things too difficult. Those "when you level, they level, except they also get better gear" systems tend to make level grinding a bad thing. It's not that I need to level grind, it's that when I see on the box that I can be a supercool Samurai, I want one. Like, after mission 2. I need one. So I rush/grind until I have one. Sometimes it's a bad thing. Sometimes the item you need to complete the change (COUGH COUGH, Final Fantasy Tactics: Advanced 2) isn't until mission 35 out of 40.
So anyways, onto the point.
Do you like tactics games? What were some awesome ones you would recommend? Are you pre-ordering Ogre Battle: Let Us Cling Together (super gay name, I love it) and getting free Tarot Cards? I AM.
There are a lot of games for the DS and PsP that I skipped. There are some I just won't play. Usually ones that rely on big super ridiculous combos where you can do 40,000 damage on a level 6 boss with only 400 health (I'm looking at you, Valkyrie something-or-other). I like the classic ones. Where you can level up (to a degree) and trivialize some of the game, but nothing so extravagant that you're reincarnating a character 1700 times so you can do all of the missions on Exponentially Ridiculous Mode for absolutely no real gain. I like class systems where you have a goal. Level 4 Ninja and Level 4 Warrior = Level 1 Samurai, who can wear Super Rare Sword 1 you do reasonable hour-long sidequest to obtain. Not level 125,455,999 Galactic Astromancer who casts one spell that does fourteen times the last boss' HP as a map-wide AoE.
That's just silly.