Likely my second favorite game, hovering somewhere between Deus Ex and Warcraft II, FF Tactics, GTA V, or Shadowrun (Sega).
First time I saw Tactics Ogre, I was rather enamoured by it. GameFan in... late 1994 or early 1995. Super Mario 64 and I think still at that point the 'Ultra 64' were on the cover. GameFan used to preview Japanese games, and that issue was Tactics Ogre. I hadn't played Ogre Battle yet at that point and never knew much about it other than seeing it a few times in EGM, GamePro, etc. But the first time I saw that preview, I was drawn to it. Namely, the Dungeons & Dragons + 'war and politics' element. It talked of creating or recruiting characters, an Alignment system and difficult political story choices that changed the story. The sprites felt like the small sketches you'd see in a Dungeons & Dragon manual: shops with bottles, swords, bags scattered around with a dragon head on the wall.
Approaching Tactics Ogre, or FF Tactics for that matter, like a sort of Dungeons & Dragons tactical RPG is always been the appeal of it for me. I'll create a personalized and flavoured 'theme' of sorts: zealous holy knights, war mages and sages, a squad of lizardmen hired by a rich priest, swordsmen from the far east, mixed ethnicity mercenaries or nationalist band of Walsta soldiers.
The new upgraded version of Tactics Ogre compliments this approach IMO. While I do miss a few of the original elements such as alignment no longer being required for certain classes and also the elemental affinity. But I think the changes make personalization and adding 'role play flavour' more capable. The new leveling system is a bit odd at first, but I like it now. I reconcile why a 'powerful story character' would be 'Lv1' like this. Class levels are basically your army outfitting, like a supply chain or barracks support system. At what level can your army support Knights, for example, or Archers. Then, your Skill system is really the 'personal' ability or what character levels represent in a classic sense -- how skilled a character is. So, even if a character is highly skilled, they may be only a Level 7 Knight because your army only has that ability to support Knights with that level of gear, training, maintenance, etc. That sort of POV helps me reconcile the obvious why is this powerful character now suddenly a Lv1 White Knight or Lv1 Ranger... They still have the skills but your army has just no infrastructure to support Lv30 Rangers. So, that support system needs experience.... it needs to 'level up.'
That new skill system, and also item twinking, are also a big reason why the leveling system works, and also why I like the new systems. Class Levels really determine only about half your power. The rest is based on Skills, such as weapon proficiency (give you very important special attacks), status resistance, monster-attack strengths (e.g. bonus against dragons), and general bonuses to counter, parry, health, etc. The game has new itemization where items have new bonuses (thrust, slash, crush that are strong against certain monster types, or direct bonuses against monster types) that are not completely new to the game but have changed a bit because of the new skill system. Further, there's a great if not incredibly slow, boring, and cheesy crafting system that, when combined with the Skill and Item descriptions above, make 'twinking' a large part of Tactics Ogre. It's on par with something like Diablo 2 twinking.
A highly twinked Lv10 with higher quality crafted items, the best skills, and the best item choices for an area will be probably 2-3x stronger than a generic Lv10 character that just reached Lv10 for the first time and is wearing just what seem to be the highest damage/armor items.One reason is because the skill system is very important and has a large effect on your overall effectiveness. The second reason is often lower level items are the best option for any given area because usually +thrusting or +lizardmen make a much larger difference just 2 or 3 more damage or armor. So, a character twinked with full +1 higher quality items that are specifically chosen based on utility for a map (e.g. all humanoid gear and thrusting, or all lizardmen gear and crushing), with skills chosen based on those opponents will be significantly stronger. So, this results in a big opportunity to go back and 'twink' your classes because you need to level every class individually.
The characteristics of battle locations on the map also help this. Every location has a few pre-set battles but with pre-set 'Skills'. The levels of the enemies scale based on your level, as do their item levels, but their skills do not. So, early map locations have very low-skill enemies and less enemy type variety. So, just humanoids and lizardman with no real weapon proficiency in areas on the map close to the starting area. But the farther west of north you go, enemies have stronger skills, and also more enemy variety -- making enemy type skills less valuable because instead of just facing lizardmen (easy enough to give everyone just +Lizardmen and +lizardmen weapon types, e.g. crushing), you'll get a larger variety of demons, ghost, beasts, dragons, and golems, forcing you to be smart of which +dragon, +ghost, etc skills you use, what +vs dragons, vs ghost armor you wear, and your balance of crushing, thrusting, slashing.
Basically, all this combines to better give a 'theme' to your army. Even the leveling +stat system sort of rewards synced battle group themes. It rewards a group of lizardmen hunters all equipped with certain leather caps and battle hammers, and lizardmen hunting and perhaps defensive attributes. But, then when you're heading into the forest, it rewards to switching to thrusting weapons, dragon hunting skills, breath resistant armor, and short bows to avoid counters; focusing less on heavy defense and perhaps mobile light-equipped swordsmen with ranged for beasts, and so forth. It gives you more tools to make every map and battle a sort of 'themed story' with a plan, and reward 'theme' to your item sets, skill sets, and chosen classes.
There's often no such thing as a 'best build': it rewards you for tailoring the utility of all your strengths and weaknesses, weapon types and resistances, skills and gear, for every vastly different map or enemy type. And this gives you a chance to add roleplaying flavour and theme to every battle.
In general, I felt all these new characteristics to leveling have made it easier to add flavour or personality to your army and its theme, and in general make leveling more interesting, rewarding, and enjoyable. Even though I think Tactics Ogre (SFC) is an overall better game for its time than FF Tactics, I had replayed FFT more often because it just gives you more tools to customize your army and general stronger replay value. But now, PSV version of Tactics Ogre has the best toolset for general role playing IMO. Deus Ex is rather secure as my favorite game, but that runner-up position is usually well fortified against those other aforementioned titles by Tactics Ogre.
