Into the Breach

The closest a game has ever come to being "perfect."
Recommended (10/10)
Into the Breach is what happens when you strip every ounce of "fluff" away from the strategy genre until only the pure, diamond-hard mechanics remain. It’s a game of 8x8 grids and 5-turn battles where every single click feels like a life-or-death decision.
The Genius of the Design:
Perfect Information: Unlike almost every other tactics game, there is zero RNG in the combat. You know exactly where the enemies will move and who they will hit before you take your turn. If you lose, it’s not because of a missed 95% shot—it’s because you were outsmarted.
Collateral Damage: Your real health bar isn't your mechs; it’s the city buildings (the Power Grid). This shifts the goal from "kill all enemies" to "mitigate the disaster." Sometimes, the best move is to physically push an alien into the path of another alien's attack to save a skyscraper.
The "One More Turn" Loop: Rounds are bite-sized (usually 10–15 minutes), making it the ultimate "just one more run" game. With the Advanced Edition content added, the variety of squads and pilots is staggering.
It is a masterclass in economy of design. Every pixel and every rule serves a purpose. If you have even a passing interest in strategy, this is mandatory.

My ideal tactics game, or very near to it.
I have played a lot of XCOM (2012). One of my biggest gripes with that game is my same gripe with Civ games and Total War games: The campaigns are very long. What this means is that you can play for 15 hours, survey your surroundings, and realize you've done everything wrong in a big way, and want to start over from scratch. Worse, even if you've laid your foundation well on a macro-scale, tactical blunders can amount to enormous setbacks (Oh no, my elite squad was wiped out because of some really unlucky dice rolls and now half the council is pulling out!), meaning tiny errors can amount to enormous losses in time. This does not feel great if you have a very busy life. The solution is savescumming, which fixes issues but removes a lot of the tension that makes tactics games interesting.
Most Tactics RPGs, on the other hand, have a similar works-every-time solution to all challenges: Grind. Whether it's for XP or items, all complex tactical puzzles can be solved with grinding. This can close off interesting tactical designs and decisions, since it's never clear how much grinding gives an achievable, challenging game experience until after you've completed the game, and the fact that it ALWAYS works encourages grinding as a solution.
ItB dodges both of these problems with a simple solution: Just be a roguelite! Playing out tactical blunders is way easier to stomach when a game is 3 hours long. Try out different strategies. Get silly with it. And get punished harshly for it! It feels way better to try and lose when trying and losing is the core gameplay loop, and it means you don't have to play safe, or savescum, or grind, and you can just relax, ponder interesting challenges, and have a good time.
You probably already know ItB's central gimmick: Your objective is not to defeat all enemies, but to protect buildings and complete objectives, making battles into puzzles where using your mechs to soak up damage is frequently a good decision. In fact, as a general rule, your first priority should probably be keeping valuable characters alive, and your SECOND prirority should probably be completing all objectives, which is important because perfect islands (where you complete all objectives) carry bonus rewards that will make further islands more survivable. Protecting buildings (and civilians) should be prioritized just below those two, and killing Vek should never be a top concern (although blocking them from emerging almost always pays dividends).
But another feature of this game that gets less attention is Subset's general unlockable design philosophy. Unlike some games where new playstyles are unlocked through victories, or in game currency, Subset's games unlock things using achievements. In ItB, these unlockables are new squads of mechs, each with their own unique starting equipment and playstyles, AND their own unique set of achievements that can only be unlocked with that squad.
The impact of this design decision is to encourage experimentation and trying different playstyles. Each squad starts with unique abilities and synergies, and the achievements guide you towards experimenting with them. There are also general achievements that reward regular progression and improvement at the game, as well as encouraging unique challenge runs. Grinding out achievements can be as interesting and rewarding, or even moreso, as simply trying to score a victory on the next difficulty level.
The final thing I like about ItB (and FTL before it)--there is no pretense of perfect gameplay balance. Some squads are better than others (Frozen Titans are POWERFUL on lower difficulties). Some missions are harder than others. Some enemies will fill your heart with fear, and others will make you sigh in relief. In other games, this would be very annoying, but in a game where losing progresses the game rather than erasing progress and is an integral part of the experience, and the real fun comes from making interesting decisions while you play, taking the focus away from perfect balance allows the devs to experiment and provide interesting and unique squad options which, while maybe not being as powerful as the next squad, are at least new and interesting.
Really, I can't recommend it enough. Like FTL, ItB received a MASSIVE free update adding buckets of new content years after relee, and the game has an enormous amount of content to explore. It's an endlessly replayable puzzler. It doesn't get as much love as FTL, and I can't understand why, because it's far and away my favorite of Subset's two games (and I really love FTL).

One of the best, turn-based deeply analytical games I have played! Awesome. No combat luck involved. Great replayability.

Easy to jump in and out, or binge for 20 hours. Solid game, one of the best.

My playtime speaks for itself (actually, I've played even more than that since I also have a mobile version through Netflix).
Man, I love Subset Games. This is such a gem! One of the best progression and gradual difficulty increases that I have seen: the more mech squads you unlock, the more ways to look at the the game you learn. At first, you focus on just killing the vek (the game's enemies). Then you learn that sometimes moving them can be as effective. Then you learn blocking vek spawns, using environment (mountains, water) to your advantage. Then you learn that vek can block / kill themselves. Then you learn status effects. Then that you can freeze them. And so on...
Before you know it, you are completing four islands on "Unfair" difficulty with the squad that you struggled with on "Normal."
One tip: pay attention to the mech squad achievements even if you do not normally care for them - they are often suggestive of the squad's strengths and how you should approach playing it.

It's fun and has some interesting mechanics. But this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard on normal, like unfair hard. Too many enemies, you barely get any upgrades. "easy" difficult is... well, easy. too easy.
For whatever reasons certain elements like the whole Progression system isn't explained. Its so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ frustrating to learn after a few missions that you could have upgraded your units because it's never explained. Or that apparently killing enemies increases the amount of enemies spawned in the next rounds. How am i supposed to find that out?
Also this game has no story or dialogue. At this point i'll just return to Advance Wars or begin with any Fire Emblem game(which there are plenty of) because visually and gameplaywise they're mostly the same.
But Advance Wars and Fire Emblem has a story. And characters. And dialogue. And interesting missions.
This just doesn't. If youre a rougelike crackhead(which i am not), then go for this game.
If youre looking for something to fill the advance wars void in your heart... maybe you'll get entertained for a few hours.
EDIT: I decided to still give the game a thumbs up, because despite the flaws, it's still a decent game. A majority of my critique is just a me problem comparing this game to advance wars. I don't wanna be that guy to downvote a game because it's not what i would have wanted it to be.

Probably the best tactics game I've played. I keep coming back to see if there's an update or a sequel.