8 Great Retro Tactical RPGs You Might Not Have Heard Of

I played Energy Breaker this time last year, one of the coolest games I'd played in a long time. I ended up using a guide for the spells and it made for a much more pleasant experience.

I've actually played most of these, except for Jeanne D'Arc, Kartia, and Energy Breaker.

One that I think people should look into is Stella Glow for 3DS. It seems really basic at first but if you stick with it you'll find a lot of interesting gameplay mechanics. Plus the writing is really good. All of the characters are very charming plus they each have a special ending depending on your actions during the game.

Jeanne D'Arc seemed awesome at first.. but the only way to get some of the really good items (which any self respecting gamer is definitely gonna want to have) is by repeating maps. But you'll also get way over-leveled by doing that. And that kills the fun of it.

YES TYVM FINALLY SOME TRPG LOVE

Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth is another good one

Vanguard Bandits! I remember the day my playstation broke was when i rented this game.... Uhg... i wanted to play it so bad and could never remember the name of it.

Biggest problem with AtL was that I hated both sides. Darc was by far the better protagonist, But as much as I hated Kharg, the monsters were just terrible as a whole. I had to choose between a protag I hated and the race I hated. No subtlety, It is just who do you find more irridemable, Kharg or the monsters.

Nice video! Majin Tensei I and II for the Super Famicom are good additions to the list.

God Wars is newer(ish) but as a total weeb, I love the setting, characters, and classes. I played it on Switch but its on several platforms.

I'd also classify the Goldbox AD&D games for MS-DOS. Order of the Griffon for the Turbo Graphics 16 and Warriors of the Eternal Sun on Genesis are also great D&D games with tactical combat. Though, admittedly they might be hard to get into if you're not intimately familiar with older editions of the Dungeon & Dragons rulesets.

my biggest barrier when it comes to tactical jrpgs is that they are incredibly linear and the battles a loooooooooong!

uuuuuuhh, devil survivor mentioned!! <3 <3

Im happy that i have all of these...except energy breaker. Thats a dope one tho! It was definitely fun to watch this!

I recommend Stella Glow on the 3ds

i'm normally very stingy with my likes but, you get one. even added Soul Nomad & the World Eaters to my wish list.

What? No mention of Tokyo Majin Gakuen: Gehōchō? Bjg dissqpoint 😢

Hello, nice video. I wrote down some new titles for my never ending list of games to play :D

You got a new Sub

Super Robot Wars!

bro so 1milion subcriber

Vandal Hearts

Can anyone point in the direction of that absolutely amazing intro track.

ds & psp are retro now?

didn't know the langrisser team was behind devil survivor. explains it's quality.

That first game... no one gonna know bout that one, I grabbed it on a jrpg compilation of translated roms, I gota give it a shot. Love how your bro does the intro edit, super clean, banging narration too, good stuff Brothers!

May I recommend the best one I ever played in Dragon Force for Sega Saturn and fft ps1 and Ogre Battle 64

Vanguard bandits was my first tactical rpg and I miss playing it

Thank god someone still remember vanguard bandits lmao

im disliking your vid simply because you said dark instead of D'ark lol

PS1 was probably my favourite era for RPGs, generally. Loved Kartia, loved Vanguard Bandits; you should check out the Vandal Hearts games. The first was fun, if straightforward. The second had a really neat mechanic where you would have one of your characters to perform an action and the enemy would have one of their characters perform an action simultaneously. This means if you go to attack a character who's moving that round, you'll hit an empty space. You have to anticipate what the opponent is doing and counter it.

I would put forward the following:
Warsong
Brigandine
Master of Monsters
Dark Wizard
Vandal Hearts
Military Madness

I am Surprised he didn’t mention Spectral Souls or Eternal Eyes

what rpg is that at the very start where the mc battles an otaku?

Try: Mystaria tue realm of lore on Saturn, this made me fall in love with Tact rpg

ai much

Holy shit, someone talked about Vangaurd Bandits!!! What a gem

I want to give strategy/tactical RPGs another go, last time I tried was back in 2003 with LA Pucelle Tactics. I just couldn't get into it back then, but maybe now that I'm older and want to give them another shot, I may just do that. Appreciate this list!

What is that rockin' song from at the end where you're thanking everyone?

Vanguard Bandits is the greaters of all time!

Magic Sun Goku !!

Thank you for making this video as I just got into emulation and been wanting to play Tactical RPGs I missed out on when I was a kid.

The thing about Jeanne D'Arc is that it's a gorgeous game for people who love tactical RPGs but don't want to or care to spend 50 hours lost in the weeds of job classes and min/maxing certain evolutions of specific character classes in order to win the game. For me (who owned FFT and several other tactical games that I never finished) JDA hit an absolute sweet-spot.

Energy breakers and Jean D'Arc, I love those games. Thanks for drawing now attention to them. I don't know why these easy to port games aren't just upscale and brought to modern consoles.

No Vandal heart :( ?

Thank you soooo much for showing me Energy Breaker. I was recently on a crusade to find tactical RPGs with town exploration, it is wild how little there are. This is awesome because I did not find this one on my search!

Huh... Saiyuki looks A LOT like God Wars.

Vanguard Bandits was probably the first RPG I ever played. So many carefree childhood summers spent trying to figure out how to get anything other than the bad ending, lol. Unquestionably peak SOVL.

Dark Wizard on Sega CD is fairly good tactical RPG.

I started playing the SMT series with Devil Survivor on DS. Rented it once and got hooked on the whole series from then on. I preferred Devil Survivor 1 to 2, but they were both good.

This video reminds me I need to buy from the PS3 store while I can.

Vangard bandits is one of my most favorite games ever. The scoring was full of bangers that always fully set the mood to every emotional setting for every scene. And then the joke intro on top of the absolute masterpiece that was the original opener and the third gameplay being a joke branch. It was amazing

I'm also working on a Tactical RPG game, something similar to Super Robot Wars and XCom.