I love tactical RPGs, particularly the grid-based ones. But I feel like I need a good story to keep me going on these because these games do not tend to have a lot of variety.

My favorite series are:

FF Tactics - the game that got me into it. I wonder if I played it again now would I find the slowness annoying. I'm guessing nope.

Fire Emblem - I actually liked the 3DS games more than Three Houses. Three Houses tried to put too much in it and I really don't like that it makes you play the game 3-4 times to get the full story. I guess the 3DS games did some of that too, but there was more differentiation in the sides. FE does tend to get repetitive, though, as the same tactics are viable in essentially all of them.

Valkyria Chronicles - I appreciate VC trying to mix up the formula while still being a tactical game. Like all tactical games, there are clear ways to do it right and once you figure that out, the battles mostly play out the same way. Some of the later stage maps do take a little more time to figure out. I thought VC3 was the best, as it evolved the gameplay from the more basic VC1 and the story was better than the mess of VC2, though I had to download a patched version in English. I'm playing VC4 currently.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together - The PSP remake of this game was fantastic. They threw in a branching storyline element with nodes you can travel back to in addition to being basically the precursor to FFT. The political storyline was great as well was seeing how all the branches played out (without having to start the game from scratch, I'm looking at you FE series!).

I also liked the Tactics Advance series though the more lighthearted storyline was a letdown from the very series and well written original FFT. I also played Front Mission 3 and it was very fun even if the story didn't always make sense to me. I could not get into Disgaea as it did not really hook me right way. I never tried XCOM but came close once!