XCOM by far. Played a lot of FFT, OldCom, JA2, Fire Emblem, Shining Force: None add up to nearly 1000 hours with NuCOM.

>>316815523
yes i agree xcom is the best

>>316815015
XCOM, particularly long war, is very hard, and has a lot of replay value.

That being said they have some nice vignettes in Valkyria, that require some thought to get through efficiently.

Some units are also laughably bad in comparison to others, so there is that. (There are always one or two members of each class you get that can be relied upon to consistently shit the bed at some point during a mission.)

Opinion on some characters also varies, with the Japanese apparently really liking Edy because she's cute shit, and westerners hating her because she's annoying and basically has baby hissy fit panic attacks WHEN RUNNING INTO INTERCEPTION FIRE.

This is terrible because she is an Assault, and their entire job is being resilient to interception fire and having abilities that actively make them tank/not give any fucks about it. Her ability is like the opposite of that.

Some otherwise mobile or sneaky classes have characters that actually become less effective and even leech health. IN GRASS. A big part of strategy with classes like that is crawling around in grass.

HOMM II

tie between final fantasy tactics and front mission 3, haven't played front mission 5 but I've been told it's the best

>>316815015
FF Tactics isn't just the best SRPG, it's one of the best games of all time.

JA2

>>316815015

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 bitch.

Though the focus of that game is macro economic stuff rather than the nitty-gritty comvat stuff.

>>316816321
I love the mechanic that you can't see the opponent and the overwatch system in xcom
so addictive

>>316815015
so far its wasteland 2

Silent Storm

>>316815015
men of war, if you consider it a tactics game or rts idk

>>316817320
This nigga knows what's up. Silent Storm is criminally underrated.

>>316815015
Those three games aren't really comparable, even though they all have grid-based battlefields

All 3 play completely differently, and the appeal of FFT (story, character building) is completely different to the appeal of XCOM/Fire Emblem (multiple playthroughs, "emergent" character stories)

That said, I don't know what the best tactics game is
All I know is that it's not Disgaea

>>316816570
5's a nice mix of basically everything good about the series. it's not particularly hard though.

>>316817554
>not the remake

>>316817515
some people like disgaea
also by best i mean favorite

>>316818275
the remake is so laughably easy compared to the first game i can't really force myself to go through it.

>>316815015
For me it's Advance Wars DoR, with XCOM as the runner up.