Didn't Live up to the Hype
I will set the stage by stating that I love strategy games (see my lists to get a flavor of the games that I like) and have played pretty much everything in the genre. I played a little of my brother's copy of Tactics Ogre on the Playstation years ago, but didn't think it stacked up to the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics from a gameplay standpoint. I was excited to hear about the remade PSP version given the number of announced gameplay changes and new features. While there were some improvements made, I can honestly say that most of my gripes from 10 years ago are still present, albeit slightly different.
The character balance is still out of whack (I'm looking at you Canopus and Archers) and there are little if any reasons to use many of the classes. For a game so dependent of using an effective mix of classes, this is a huge problem. The revision made to allow classes to level up in addition to individual character levels is a good change; however, it didn't go far enough. Every new class starts at level one, which is cripplingly weak once you are a few hours into the game. Your choices become 1. Grind on random encounters to raise your class level, or 2. Keep using the same classes that you've been using. Unlike Final Fantasy Tactics, a fair amount of your character stats are tied to the class level, so you are constantly faced with this unfortunate choice. Additionally, the kamikaze guest character AI is still present, which forces you to use stupid strategies (stripping down Canopus for rescue runs) to compensate for developer inability.
While I liked the story, the game is sufficiently difficult that you won't see it unless you put up with the aforementioned grinding. In the end, I put this game down after 10 hours once I realized that this previously mediocre PS1 game is just a mediocre PSP game with a new coat of paint. Unless you've played all the Fire Emblem games, Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars (and list of better strategy games goes on), then I wouldn't recommend that you make time to play this one.