Here's my experience with SRPGs, spoilered due to length.
FFT
This is always the first one mentioned, and with good reason. It's got a solid story and system, even if the difficulty is all over the place. As for translations, there's the error riddled PSX version and the re-translated War of the Roses Lions version. The re-translation is generally more coherent, although the pseudo-Old English dialog ruins some of the punchiness, such as “Don't blame us. Blame yourself or God” becoming “Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I”. I've also heard about problems with FPS drops and audio quality, although this may have been fixed in the PSN release.
Tactics Ogre: LUCT
It's pretty much the proto-FFT, so the gameplay is a bit less polished. On the other hand, Matsuno isn't restricted by the Square-mandated quota of political intrigue to crystals and demons.
FFTA
Essentially the opposite direction of TO. The gameplay is addictive, even if it is poorly balanced, overly easy, and complicated by the infuriating law system. On the other hand, even if you agree with him the protagonist is an unlikable dick who mistreats his friends, family, and allies and never justifies his actions.
FFTA2
Fixes some of the balance issues of the original, although in some cases it just makes it worse. The law system has been slightly nerfed (although it should have been removed), although the game is even easier than it's predecessor and the plot is non-existent. Also, displayed statistics blatantly lie to the player in a cheap attempt at increased difficulty.
Disgaea
I'm not going to lie, I consider this more of a “numbers-going-up” game than an SRPG. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you're playing for strategy you won't find many other than level grinding. Enjoyment also depends heavily on your tolerance for small annoying anime characters and their sense of “humor”.
Fire Emblem
It's got a lot of good ideas, even if some of them are poorly implemented. Permadeath adds an element of strategy, difficulty tends to scale fairly well, and maps tend to balance open area objectives for fragile, fast units and chokepoints for powerful, slow units. On the other hand, it's infuriatingly RNG-based, often forcing you to reset because of a bad roll or only use certain units, i.e. never using melee glass cannons or dodge based units to mitigate risk. I've heard that later games in the series use a non-random generator to fix this, but I've only played seven and eight.
X-COM
If I were to recommend one SRPG, it'd be this one. Characters grow better without turning into plasma-eating supermen and are expendable enough that you can play without savescumming. It has destructible, 3-D terrain with cover, both cramped urban areas and open rural areas, and day/night vision effects. The weapons allow for a lot of tactical decisions beyond dealing damage, such as using rockets to destroy cover, flares or incendiary ammo to light up night areas, or smoke screens to block line of sight. I'd advise installing the fan patch, as it fixes a number of problems with the vanilla game.
It's all up to personal preference in the end, but if I were picking an order it'd be X-COM, FFT, FFTA/Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, FFTA2, Disgaea.
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Topic: SRPGs? (Read 5266 times)