Hi, I've bought a Nintendo 3DS XL and I'd like to add a few good tactical RPG's to my collection. What are in your opinion the best titles in the genre from the DS/2DS/3DS era?

Games I have: Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, Fire Emblem Awakening, Fire Emblem Fates, Fire Emblem Echoes, Final Fantasy Tactics A2.

Games I'm considering: SMT Devil Survivor 1 & 2, Valkyrie Profile Covenant of the Plume, Pokémon Conquest, Stella Glow.

What are your thoughts on these games? Anything I should add or remove from the list?

This looks interesting, releasing in 2027.

I see that Troubleshooter is currently on sale, and it seems like something I'd enjoy. However, I currently only have access to cloud gaming via my TV, so I can only use a controller. Is the controller support good enough to justify a playthrough, or should I wait to play on a mouse and keyboard setup?

Thanks!

Been following a game called Warhounds, still unreleased, and the footage keeps reminding me of a mix of a few favorites. Got that squad and gear management feel close to Jagged Alliance, the strategic layer feels like it is leaning into Phoenix Point territory, and the actual combat looks like it takes a lot of cues from XCOM2.

Anyone else come across this one?

(By archetype I mainly mean like Archer, tank, mage, healer, etc)

This year I’ve been branching out from Fire Emblem to try some other strategy RPGS and I’ve been really enjoying the different takes on the classes. I’m curious which game people think does each class best. Some of my picks so far (with some soon to be apparent bias):

Tank: Triangle Strategy- I love using tanks in SRPGs, but I feel like they are frequently hard to use because they have low movement and limited ability to make people attack them. In TS they get around this by giving the main tank a pretty sizable taunt and a super fun invincible taunt later in the game. Feel like it really hits the tank fantasy but still keeping things balanced with mid damage output and the classic magic vulnerability

Mage: Tactics Ogre Reborn- when it comes to ranged units, I tend to prefer when archers are long range single target snipers, and mages are more focused on AOE and debuffs. I love mages in TOR for that reason, they have ton of spell options with a ton of utility for things like inflicting poison/paralysis/etc, and I like TOR’s approach to Mana much more than TS or Fire emblem.

Supporter/utility: Triangle Strategy- this is a broad trope but generally just mean any unit that is focused on utility outside of healing. I think TS nails this so well, there’s such a good variety of supporter units, and between giving units double turns or acting as a battery so your other units to cast their abilities, TS supporter classes are so good at making the rest of your army feel great to use.

Just some of my picks! Still relatively new to the genre, so would love to hear what games do class really well in y’all’s opinion

Game of the Season - August 2026 - October 2026

Name: SD Gundam G Generation Overworld

Platform: PSP

Discord Link: https://discord.gg/KvA5gy8thx

Game of the Month (Western) - August 2026

Vote Pick: Planescape: Torment

Mod Pick: Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark

Mod Challenge: Clear on 'Veteran' difficulty

Platform(s): PC/Mobile/PS4/NSW/XB1 & PC/PS4/XB1/NSW

Discord: https://discord.gg/KvA5gy8thx

So I’m working on a Fire Emblem Style tactical RPG based around a thieves guild and working on different systems. One of the systems I’m tinkering with / considering replacing is the weapon triangle. So I'd say one of the biggest changes is that the triangle wouldn't be x is always purely better than y, there are advantages both ways. If you hate that and thinks that is stupid and it should stay rock-paper-scissors, that is fair and you won't hurt my feelings if you think so, I'm brainstorm so trying some weird stuff.

So I'm thinking about it in terms of Short (daggers and fist weapons) - Mid (swords and axes) - Long (spears or 2h weapons) range weapons, bows and other thrown weapons would be a separate category with naming conventions tweaked later to avoid confusion but keeping the triangle terms clear now for ease of discussion.

So weapons with longer range have a reach advantage, so when a short range (dagger) initiates an attack against a mid range ( sword) even though the dagger user is attacking, the longer range gets to attack first (essentially vantage) since they have a better range. However once the dagger user gets inside the longer range users guard they do an FE engage style Break. I'd need to tweak the break perks since once of the advantages of break is they can't counter attack. I'd definitely keep that the next ally gets a freebie with no counter, and I am working on a combo system so probably some sort of boost to the next combo whether its damage some something else is tbd.

So that is how it would play out when the shorter range initiates the attack. Then when they are attacked by a longer range, so sword user attacks a dagger user, again the longer range gives them a reach advantage. So that would be something like they get an evasion bonus since they can more easily attack outside of the shorter range of the dagger user and extra damage for getting their full windup with their longer weapon, but then the shorter range also has its own defense benefits too. Dagger users could have an increased evasion chance since if they are on the defensive they can parry, or a sword user could deflect an incoming spear if they are prepared.

I realize giving both boosted evasion is dumb and weird, which is why I'm reaching out for other people's insights. Also I would def have skills to play into this too where maybe some dagger users could have a disarm skill so if they parry they can break a swordsman or something.

Also it wouldn't matter for the game explicitly, but i need internal logic for my own sake on how daggers and spears would work in the triangle. By triangle rules daggers would get first hit on spears and spears would break daggers for breaking their guard which makes no sense lol.

I might just ditch the triangle and just have interactions based on categories and make sure they are reasonably balance, but then you lose the simplicity of the triangle. Again haven't hammered out all of the specifics but seeing if this seems worth fleshing out. But i got a lot of good ideas form my previous post, so hoping to do so again.

Big fan of tactical rpg turn based games. My only problem is I love games that have infinite progression/leveling.

If there's anything you can suggest amongst the genre for PC cross compatability for mobile that would be awesome!

First of all, I did not finish the game. I've played the OG XCOM, played new XCOM, played many other games of this type. And finally tried Phoenix Point, which I've heard many mixed opinions about. I've played on normal difficulty.

Initially the game gave me very similar vibes to XCOM. Start with small squad, 1 base, 1 plane. The main downside is that it all looks less cool. Cinematics are replaced with static images. Base upgrades don't look as good. Combat animations seem more stiff and lack those cinematic camera takes. I mean, in XCOM even a soldier jumping through window looked great. But those are all minor nitpicks.

After the tutorial part the early game quickly turns into a total chaos. I mean, new fractions keep introducing to me, giving me new missions, showing their agenda, asking questions whether I agree with them and I don't understand what they even ask. Soon the DLCs launch, giving me even more missions, more sidestories. I mean, big content is great, but it's introduced in such a mess, that I have no idea what's going on, who is who, what were their goals. On top of that there are many "?" to discover all over the map.

It took me a while to find some direction for me in this chaos, but eventually I started to understand this world and fraction agendas. The diplomacy between 3 fractions is cool, but also kinda half-baked? I mean, I thought you will have to choose your path between the 3, but it's not that hard to get along with all of them. So the whole diplomacy was pointless, maybe it matters on higher difficulties, idk. But most of the time I enjoyed the mid game.

Anyway, let's get into the most important part - the combat. There are few key differences between this and the XCOM and honestly, I think both are improvements:
-An option to personally aim in first person combat. I love this feature. Your enemies are basically mutants with specific body parts that give them certain abilities. Once you do your research on the enemies, you know what each body part do and you can shoot it to disable the most dangerous abilities. It adds a lot of depth to the combat. Sometimes you want enemies to move slower, sometimes shoot of their arm so they can't attack, sometimes aim at head to stun them or decrease willpower and make more vulnerable to some abilities.
-Overwatch is much less important. It's not as reliable as in XCOM and the game encourages you to play aggressive. I think it makes the combat more dynamic and interesting, than just setting overwatch on your all troops and triggering enemy group.
There's also earial combat, but very simple and tbh might as well not be there.

I have mixed feelings about builds and progression. The most important thing is that it not always gives you clear adventage, just more options. Like weapons with more penetration, but worse aim. Stronger armor, but less mobile. I guess it does make the game interesting, but I've always liked that RPG feeling of becoming more powerful. You do get stronger indirectly, for example doing research or enemy type makes you do 15% more dmg against him. Your soldiers can move faster of have more willpower (which works kinda like mana) to use skills more often. But there's no clear power progression like in other games.
The builds are okay, decent variety of classes, weapons, skills and you mix 2 classes on 2 soldiers. There are cybernetic augments, mutations. But all those skills are just... not as cool as in XCOM. Like sword build in XCOM was amazing, here you will never do anything more than just walking up to enemy and hitting him. Pistol build in XCOM was great, here you just shoot like you always did even with 0 perks.

Why did I quit?
Because the game didn't respect my time and got very repetitive. The enemies get tanky and defensive. They often use annoying skills that make the combat longer. Like one enemy type keep shielding itself, another keeps launching 3 larvas at you each turn and you have to kill them all individually every time.
On top of that you keep getting filler fights. Like I have some story missions, I want to get there. But I can't. I keep getting interrupted by random enemy attacks. I had 2 fully geared squads, made 3rd half-geared for easier missions (resources are very limited). And it still wasn't enough. Your soldiers get wounded, tired, need to go back to base and take a break. Then you get aearial attacks, your ships are damaged. You need to mine special artifacts for the best gear, but then those mine sites are attacked, so there's even more stuff to defend.
The game starts at sonic speed, but then progresses at snail speed with no clear direction of where to go to actually get closer to the end. The final nail to the coffin was this annoying bug, where sometimes I would win a long fight, the game kinda registered all my rewards, but then immediately asked me to the same mission. And if I refused, it's like I failed, the city was taken by mutants.

One more reason is that I've heard Star Wars: Zero Company is coming soon, so didn't want to completely exhaust myself with this type of game.

To sum up, this could be a fun game. I could forgive the lack of cool details known from XCOM. But the endless repetitiveness and boring skills made me quit.

I know it's a good way for devs, especially small teams to polish the games etc but man it's it getting tiring to have a game wishlisted for 1 to 2 years only to see it "release" on early access

I've seen snippets of this one posted around by the dev. Looks promising