Hey, Jon, just now getting around to listening to the podcast (I burn mp3 CDs full of podcasts for car listening, so I’m usually a month or so behind). I liked the first episode and look forward to hearing more.
I did want to quickly point out, in relation to your distaste for tactical RPGs, that if you are thinking of the genre as all being like FFT and Disgaea (the two exemplars you mentioned), then you’re Doing It Wrong™. Games in that lineage are pretty grindy and focused to a much greater degree on mastering the character building systems rather than actually challenging in-battle tactics and unit positioning. If you want to try something that does a better job melding the good parts of your (and my) favorite genres, here are a couple options. Obviously, don’t know if you’ve already tried these, so if so, just ignore me.
Gladius (PS2/GC/Xbox): My go-to choice as the all-time best TRPG. The feature that got the most attention was the golf-game-style swing meters to determine the effectiveness of attacks, and that does indeed do a great job of making every turn tense and unpredictable rather than running on autopilot, but there was a lot of other good stuff going on too in regards to interesting mechanics and well-designed battles.
Fire Emblem (GBA): Strictly limited grinding, and the tactics mostly focus on careful positioning, using terrain, and using combined arms to get the best matchup for each unit type, rather than relying on special abilities.
Fantasy Wars / Elven Legacy (PC): Spiritual successors to Fantasy General, with again a high emphasis on terrain, and persistent units that level up, gain skills, and new equipment over the course of the campaign.
And of course, there’s also the whole lineage of PC squad tactics games where you are levelling up your soldiers over the course of the game, like X-Com, Jagged Alliance, Fallout Tactics, Silent Storm, Freedom Force, and so on, which aren’t generally called TRPGs, but that’s essentially what they are.
