Tactics Ogre: Reborn

Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a careful remake of a legendary tactical game that originally came out in the mid-1990s and whose later PlayStation Portable version is still considered one of the genre's high points. The story takes place on the archipelago of Valeria, torn apart by ethnic civil war, and follows young Denam Pavel, who joins the fighting after a massacre in his hometown. The game is famous for placing genuinely hard decisions in front of the player — as early as the first third, you face a choice of whether to obey an order to slaughter a civilian town, and depending on your answer, the campaign splits into completely different branches with different allies and a different ending.

Battles play out on an isometric grid with pronounced height differences, where attack direction, bow range, weather and who stands higher all matter. Units have classes, equipment and skills, and death isn't instant — a fallen member has a few turns to be revived, otherwise they're gone for good. The Reborn version reworked character growth so that experience is calculated per unit instead of per whole class, added the ability to rewind several turns, rewrote the translation into more archaic and richer English, recorded a new orchestral rendition of the music, and added fully voiced scenes.

On Switch it's a technically undemanding title that runs without issue, and being playable one battle at a time in handheld mode suits it for short sessions, even though a single battle can easily take half an hour. Visually it combines the original pixel art with smoothing and a new interface; purists may have reservations, but readability has improved. Reception was very good, even though part of the longtime fanbase debated the changes to the progression system. Today it's one of the deepest tactical games you can get on a console, and a mandatory stop for anyone who likes Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics. Its dark, political story feels more adult than most newer genre entries even three decades on.