I’ve only played Tactics Ogre (they’re all tactical RPGs; I don’t know why that game is singled out by name) in the recent Steam rerelease. It’s definitely worthy; it’s very similar to FF Tactics. I don’t remember much about that game, but there’s permadeath in Tactics Ogre and a level cap. You can have practice battles (where character deaths don’t count) but you can only rise to a certain level. As you win battles and go through the game, the level cap inches up so there’s a limit to how much grinding/XP farming you can do.

FF1 is still worth playing. The recent Steam release (the Pixel Remasters) are a ton more enjoyable than on NES because you can turn on autobattle (where each character repeats the last action over and over) and it’s a lot easier to gain levels and gold than in the original, where you’re forced to spend hours just gaining experience. FF2j is worth putting a few hours into to experience what it’s like, but unless you’re really into really old-school RPGs like me, you probably wouldn’t get much out of it past that. Once you try to contend with the character-building/”levelling” system you’ll see why. Aside from that I’d start at 4 (overrated; such a quintessential story-based RPG was revolutionary for its time, probably the first mature/proper JRPG, but it hasn’t aged well unless you were a kid with an SNES in 1991. I played FF6 before I played 4 and I didn’t have a Super Nintendo until 1997 or ‘98) and go onto 5 and 6 (the two best of them).

I’ll always have a soft spot for Dragon Warrior 1, but it had aged like milk even by the time FF2e came out. They’re rereleasing Dragon Quest 1-3 in HD2D or whatever the fake 3D pixel style is called like in Octopath Traveler, and there will be QOL improvements. Honestly this kind of frustrates the point of DW1, which is 80% fighting monsters to build levels and get enough gold to buy new weapons and armor to kill stronger monsters to get more XP/gold. It’s a very grindy game and stripping it to its central quest actually is a good way to do it, but if you play it keep in mind that the original is probably twice as long; you just spend all that time fighting monsters. It was the first RPG many of us played.

DW2 is bigger and more ambitious (you have a party this time) and every bit as grindy as DW1. This is a game that would really benefit from an easier remaster (not easier so much as more forgiving of not spending three hours building levels at each new location) and if you fixed its NES-era problems it would probably be a great game. You know about Dragon Quest 3. It’s the first game in the series I’d recommend to the casual RPG player: they ironed out a lot of the un-fun parts of the first two games and there’s a job system, and actually a pretty good one. But it’s been rereleased before plenty of times so I’m telling you nothing new.

TL;DR the HD-2D remasters of Dragon Quest 1-3 will probably be worth all buying and playing if they have a less insane balance of gaining experience as opposed to moving the game forward, which they certainly will. I would really be interested in remasters (not HD-2D preferably) of the second trilogy. Five and six never came out in the West and was lucky to snag Dragon Warrior IV for $70 in the late ’90s, in late-’90s dollars – this was before eBay so you had to hunt at local shops and flea markets. It has a hell of a lot of potential and it’d’ve been nice to play 4-6 back in the day.

Ever heard of Shining in the Darkness/Shining Force/Shining Force 2 for Genesis? Early tactical RPGs. I’ve only played SF2 (or mostly watched a friend who had a Genesis play it) and might recommend it if I remembered more about it. I’ve never liked the Breath of Fire games and of the SaGa series I’ve only played SaGa Frontier, which I loved but everyone else hated. There’s a recent remaster of that game on Steam, too, with an all-new eighth main quest that was planned for the Playstation original but never put in the game. I’m not sure it’s worth the money, just because a lot of people do hate it. There’s a Final Fantasy Legend (aka SaGa) 1-3 collection on Steam. It’s hard to take those games as seriously as they deserve because they’re on Game Boy, but Romancing SaGa 1-3 ended up on Super Famicom.

Chrono Trigger is one of the most overrated games on SNES and it’s cracking fantastic. Both these things can be true.