Best Newish Tacticool Games

[Suicidal]

Other than what was already listed, Fell Seal is pretty fun, although since you hate weeb art style not sure if it's your cup of tea. It's not the same style as Troubleshooter though, Troubleshooter is straight up anime and Fell Seal is Americans trying to make their own anime.

 

[Grunker]

If we're talking pure tactics, Urtuk is probably my favourite pure tactical game from the last decade or so. It's kind of amazing how well-balanced, fun and polished the combat is considering it seems to have been made by a single guy on a TI-82 in the basement of the nursing home he was staying in illegally because he didn't have money for rent. It's also great because it honestly shakes up stock tactical game ideas in a way I have seen few games do. It takes a while to learn this game simply because it does so much "weird stuff" with its mechanics, but once you learn how it all ticks you're like "of course!" Playing it is kind of like traveling to an alternate earth where they just ended up doing all the basic gameplay and progression mechanics of tactical games differently.

My favourite modern tacticools are (in that order):
- Gloomhaven
- Blackguards
- Urtuk, The Desolation
- Transistor
- Battle Brothers
- Dungeon of Naheulbeuk
- Troubleshooter - Abandoned Children (don't be dissuaded by the awful art and even worse story - this one's got game)

And sort of a pity mention to Gears Tactics which I'm playing right now. It's not great but it's not bad either tbh and unlike Phoenix Point which had a lot more promise and ambition but ultimately had too many tedious systems I think I'm actually going to complete this one. Which I guess is the only test that matters.

Also no one has mentioned Invisible Inc. yet, right? I haven't been able to get into it yet but Jaedar swears it's fantastic and these guys made Mark of the Ninja which is fucking incredible so he's probably right.

Then there's Doorkickers which looks cool as hell unfortunately I suck at it.

Games I would not recommend:
- Dead State (very cool baseline and even some great mechanics but unfortunately lack of polish makes it incredibly tedious to actually play)
- Hard West (meh)

Hey this looks cool. What's it like?

 

[Darth Canoli]

is Battle Brothers supposed to be pretty good? I tried a bit out but the battles and movement in them don’t seem like much but maybe I have to invest more time in it.

It's good, grindy and with some annoying mechanism like sending you for a round trip on the other far side of the map to fight orcs.
Mods fix most of the annoyances, there's also a very high lethality, especially when you're not familiar with the combat mechanism or never retreat (or pick some unbeatable legendary contracts with legends like too many white wolves).

I recommend trying again, i didn't like it at first either.
Also, do yourself a favor and if you find it on sale, buy all the DLC and then after you're familiar with the mechanism, play with the Legends mod wich adds legendary monsters, a lot of perks, legendary contracts, multiple origins, new interesting backgrounds for your mercs, a lot of QoL improvements, crafting recipes, runes, ...
If you want mages or just want to play a grown up pokemon, add Magic Origins, either for the mage trio or the Hexe origin.

Bottle Brothers don't simulate armor well, no spells, and they added guns, which cheapens combat. Also they allow only 11 perks per character max + level limits. They don't simulate weapon damage, it's ad hoc numbers... And then there is that problem with scaling danger to your party level.

So nice for few days, but they should spend more effort.

See above, Legends adds veteran level-ups (+1 perk every 5 veteran level but every two for starting main character(s)) + Magic Origins, cool spells for mage backgrounds, permanently charm any unit (some are way harder to get) to add it to your mercs.

AC_mod (Accessoiry Companions) allow you to tame beasts (wolves, bears, snakes, nachos, hyenas, even legendary ones) to use them like regular dogs and they even level up.

For squad-based tactics:
Dungeon Rats (highly recommend, can be played solo or with party)
Xenonauts
Expeditions: Conquistador
Blackguards
Dead State
Colony Ship (early access, can be played solo or with party. great game so far)
OpenXcom mods: XPiratez and the X-com Files

All classics, Dungeon Rats combat is just great, if you like tactical combat, it's amazing and Colony Ships is setting the bar even higher, right on top of the RPG galaxy.

Warbanners -medieval fantasy with sieges.
Vigilantes -crime fighting, modern setting.

Seconded, there's other mods than piratez, which is to my opinion quite autistic.

Warbanners doesn't get enough love, it's a Fantasy General like game with new mechanism like day, night and light affecting accuracy, siege battle on both sides of the catapult, huge battles with allies, some heroes to recruit...

Vigilantes offer good close combat and gunfight, a bit grindy on higher difficulties though so i recommend easy/normal on a first playthrough.


I'll add Voidspire Tactics, weird UI, it's jrpg like but it's good tactical combat where you can freeze water to walk on it and other cool mechanisms.

Also Knights of the Chalice 2 is going to be officially released soon (backers already completed it multiple times) and KotC is older but go and grab it if you didn't already.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Invisible Inc.

Damn is that still in the new bucket

 

[Grunker]

Invisible Inc.

Damn is that still in the new bucket

It's more recent than Blackguards :shrug:

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Invisible Inc.

Damn is that still in the new bucket

It's more recent than Blackguards :shrug:

Well I'll be.

 

[agris]

Yeah OP asked for last ~6 years or so, so new to him.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yeah OP asked for last ~6 years or so, so new to him.

Oh.

 

[agris]

Oh.

Seeing these lists is pretty cool. If you aren't NEET, it crystallizes what a long run of quality games we've had the opportunity to enjoy.

If you're an unemployed Bulgarian, I'm sure it feels paltry. But compared to '00 to '10, we're swimming in quality over the past decade.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Oh.

Seeing these lists is pretty cool. If you aren't NEET, it crystallizes what a long run of quality games we've had the opportunity to enjoy.

If you're an unemployed Bulgarian, I'm sure it feels paltry. But compared to '00 to '10, we're swimming in quality over the past decade.

Man I agree.
I just didn't realize it was 6 years ago.

 

[J1M]

Hey this looks cool. What's it like?

I summarized my thoughts in this post:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...-old-school-arcade-charm.140447/#post-7628075

 

[agris]

I bought Xenonaughts and Door Kickers 2 because those looked cool. Troubleshooter looked a bit too anime for me but I appreciate it.

is Battle Brothers supposed to be pretty good? I tried a bit out but the battles and movement in them don’t seem like much but maybe I have to invest more time in it.

For Xenonauts, check out the community edition. It's actually good. Read that page, it isn't enough to "install" the mod, you have to switch branches in Steam.

Forum thread for the final release of CE.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Valkyria Chronicles 4, Legends of Eisenwald ?

 

[Darth Canoli]

Seeing these lists is pretty cool. If you aren't NEET, it crystallizes what a long run of quality games we've had the opportunity to enjoy.

If you're an unemployed Bulgarian, I'm sure it feels paltry. But compared to '00 to '10, we're swimming in quality over the past decade.

2000 Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer
2001 Wizardry 8
2002 Prelude to Darkness
2003 Temple of Elemental Evil
2009 Knights of the Chalice

Quality wise, it's 2010-2020 which was way below and this is enough to sustain 10 years of gaming if you have a job and/or other hobbies.

 

[dacencora]

Seeing these lists is pretty cool. If you aren't NEET, it crystallizes what a long run of quality games we've had the opportunity to enjoy.

If you're an unemployed Bulgarian, I'm sure it feels paltry. But compared to '00 to '10, we're swimming in quality over the past decade.

2000 Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer
2001 Wizardry 8
2002 Prelude to Darkness
2003 Temple of Elemental Evil
2009 Knights of the Chalice

Quality wise, it's 2010-2020 which was way below and this is enough to sustain 10 years of gaming if you have a job and/or other hobbies.

If you spent 100 hours on each of those and you only played 1 hour a day, that would last you little longer than a year and a third, maybe 2-3 years if you took significant breaks between each game. Certainly not enough for 10 years unless you spend much more than 100 hours on each.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Legends of Eisenwald

Worth a buy, yeah.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Legends of Eisenwald

Worth a buy, yeah.

 

[Darth Canoli]

If you spent 100 hours on each of those and you only played 1 hour a day, that would last you little longer than a year and a third, maybe 2-3 years if you took significant breaks between each game. Certainly not enough for 10 years unless you spend much more than 100 hours on each.

100 hours on Wizardry 8?
You're a fucking casual!

Besides, it's not an exhaustive list and you could add the good tacticools and revisiting the old ones, which is 200 times better than playing most recent garbage, which not only doesn't bring anything new but dumbs down better formulas.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Totally-not-WH40k tacticool/semi-RPG, I liked it.

 

[Serus]

Don't listen to the naysayers, Battle Brothers has fantastic tactical combat system, good variety of enemies that are actually different, good atmosphere... Just play it.

 

[Galdred]

Not much to add, almost everything was already mentionned(Urtuk, Battle Brothers, Warbanners, Invisible Inc, Troubleshooters, Naheulbeuk).
If you liked Nu-XCOM1, I would recommend going with XCOM: Long War mod. It really makes the game better (and you can skip the long war part).
There are also some cool mods for open XCOM (40K, Piratez, but I didn't play the latter).
Field of Glory 2 is at grand tacitcs scale, but it is excellent, and it has a medieval brother. You can even integrate it with Field of Glory Empire for some awkward(because you have to go from one program to another, and export the results) TB Total War.
Trials of Fire combines tactical movement and cards. I really like it (it plays a bit like Cardhunters).

The following suggestions would be below what was mentionned there especially, but I found they all had merits: They usually have solid combat plagued by poor execution in other parts
- Stellar Tactics: The combat is not super tactical (because engagement ranges are usually 4 tiles or so), but you can board space ships, and capture them. It is one of the only games to feature space and ground combat (but space combat is more like space diablo).
- Mechanicus: the balance is all over the place, but the difficulty settings is so flexible you may be able to find a setting that will suit you. The atmosphere is top notch.
- The Storm Guard: Darlness is coming : The system is solid, but all encounters are 4 vs 4 (or 95% of them), and the random COYA parts feel totally disjointed from anything. But some creatures you face are pretty cool...
- Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs: There is too much filler between combat, and the humour is usually cringier than funny, but it has some good combat. It also features minigames... Like it has ever been a good idea...
- Sanctus reach has a solid combat engine too, but it is the anti Mechanicus when it comes to atmosphere, and I didn't really like the campaign structure.

 

[gurugeorge]

Kind of looking for the best tactical games of the maybe the last 5-6 years? I liked the X-com 2012 okay but couldn't quite get into the second one I think because I got burnt out on the style or something. I bought Battle Brothers because I heard it's somewhat codex approved? Any other suggestions for someone out of touch and trying to rekindle that video game spirit?

Troubleshooter, without a doubt. I've never been that fond of anime myself, and I only tried the game out because I was desperate for something new to play at one time. Happy I took the leap. Tactical gameplay is excellent (kind of mostly nuXCOM-ish, but with on-the-fly adjustable queue based on variable "action time" and "speed," which makes a big difference as another layer to be aware of), and the build system, without exaggeration, is one of the deepest and most absorbing buildfag systems in any game ever. Player characters and enemies are evenly matched (no bullet sponges except with a few boss-like characters where it makes sense, like big robots), with both sides being able to do occasionally spectacularly fun OP things to each other, yet the game still feeling nicely balanced. Hard mode is hard without being annoying.

The tactical gameplay is done in a quasi-realistic art style (like nuXCOM), so you really don't have anime on your screen most of the time. The Manhwa (Korean Manga) stuff is kept to the story level, which interleaves the missions with actually quite nicely drawn static pictures and dialogue (it's not as hyper-exaggerated as some anime/manga). The story is also revealed gradually in a non-linear way, which is quite interesting. I suppose you could say it's basically a "licensed superheroes" type of deal in a post-world-war-3 world with a mostly fully rebuilt (but still somewhat gang-infested) civilization, redrawn polities and some post-apocalyptic remnants (like mutated creatures). Tone is a bit uneven - it veers from quite serious and emotional at times, to overtly kiddy stuff at others.

 

[eXalted]

XPiratez

 

[Thac0]

- Mechanicus: the balance is all over the place, but the difficulty settings is so flexible you may be able to find a setting that will suit you. The atmosphere is top notch.

- Sanctus reach has a solid combat engine too, but it is the anti Mechanicus when it comes to atmosphere, and I didn't really like the campaign structure.

These two I had much much more fun with than with Regalia and Storm Guard. Storm Guard I refunded, Regalia I would have refunded if I hand't bought it on switch, in the two Warhammer games I put a substantial amount of hours. May just be the Warhammer bonus as my heart is slowly growing warm to this insane parody universe, but I think they are a cut above the rest of the games you mentioned as almost good.

Also plugging a few more JRPG esque tacticool games:




All of these are good, Fae Tactics is the best of the bunch. It is quite difficult for a JRPG, and on about the same quality level as Fell Seal :Arbiters Mark. Much more innovative tho, where Fell Seal retreads known ground from Final Fantasy Tactics, Fae Tactics reinvents the wheel. Sometimes to great success, sometimes to great frustration.

 

[Galdred]

- Mechanicus: the balance is all over the place, but the difficulty settings is so flexible you may be able to find a setting that will suit you. The atmosphere is top notch.

- Sanctus reach has a solid combat engine too, but it is the anti Mechanicus when it comes to atmosphere, and I didn't really like the campaign structure.

These two I had much much more fun with than with Regalia and Storm Guard. Storm Guard I refunded, Regalia I would have refunded if I hand't bought it on switch, in the two Warhammer games I put a substantial amount of hours. May just be the Warhammer bonus as my heart is slowly growing warm to this insane parody universe, but I think they are a cut above the rest of the games you mentioned as almost good.

Also plugging a few more JRPG esque tacticool games:




All of these are good, Fae Tactics is the best of the bunch. It is quite difficult for a JRPG, and on about the same quality level as Fell Seal :Arbiters Mark. Much more innovative tho, where Fell Seal retreads known ground from Final Fantasy Tactics, Fae Tactics reinvents the wheel. Sometimes to great success, sometimes to great frustration.

Good catch! I forgot to put Himeko Sutori, and I didn't try Fae Tactics yet, but I read a lot of good things about it.

It is true that the 40K games have a much better system than Regalia and Storm Guard, but Mechanicus suffers from requiring you to fiddle with all the difficulty settings if you don't want an effortless, or almost impossible challenge. Sanctus Reach is indeed much better, but I had no attachment to my units with their weird system and lack of roster, and it is pretty important to me.

Storm Guard and Regalia may indeed well be in the "missed opportunity" category. They have quite a few things going for them (I remember liking a good part of the encounters of both), but also major issues that brings the experience down.