I believe The Battle for Wesnoth falls under this category (although I haven't played it in forever)
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I believe The Battle for Wesnoth falls under this category (although I haven't played it in forever)
While many might not class it as an RPG, it certainly had the same general feel for me... XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Great game.
Gameplay is definitely in the right vein in XCOM, but the lack of actual characters sort of hurts it. It's a tactics game, but not a tactical RPG.
Now, add in Fire Emblem style characters and conversations, and you would have an utterly brilliant Sci-Fi tactical RPG.
Valkyria Chronicles isn't grid-based but it's a spiritually similar game. There's a big pile of various FFT games, of course, if you haven't played all of them.
Yeah VC is this type of game without the defined grid basically. I've also played all the FFT games.
Some good suggestions here, many I've never heard of. Since I have the PSP lying around collecting dust, I think I'll start with Jeanne D'Arc and the VC sequel.
There are some for the PC if you are interested in taking that route, although some are less RPG-ish than others. King's Bounty (great game) and Heroes of Might & Magic games have a lot in common with these and are kind of the 'western' equivalent.
Not technically a Grid, but go Play Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen on the SNES.
Easily one of the best SRPG's ever made, though I do suggest checking how the Ali/cha/Rep numbers work online, there are quite a few things that affect it the game doesn't tell you ever. :p
The DS version of Disgaea was absolute trout. It's the only version of the game I have yet to beat. Purchase one of the newer versions for the PSVita or something. Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom are great, but they are gridless. The Growlanser series is tactical and gridless, but those games are fantastic. The only issue is that very few of them get ported. If you still have a PS2, you should pick up Growlanser Generations.
tldr;
Forget about Disgaea DS and try one of the other ports. The PSP version is the best out of the 3.
Also, if you're into getting Japanese games with Fan Translations, Bahamut Lagoon is wonderful, and is an old Square title!
I don't know what it is, but over the years I have kind of fallen out of love with this genre. I used to be all over it back in the PS1/early PS2 days but I don't know, I just can't really get into them anymore. Probably why even a year later, I'm still trying to finish Suikoden Tactics even though its not a bad game at all. I still have the PSP remake of Tactics Ogre sitting on a shelf staring at me, and while I would love to see what all the fuss is about, I just can't bring myself to start playing it.
Probably because they're always so time-consuming!
I think that is part of it, I also feel like they are a genre that tends to suffer from superfluous customization.