As you can see from my profile picture, I love tactical games and sometimes feel like playing a nice tactics game (SRPG or a tactical game like Commandos, XCOM), especially ones were you have creativity (like environmental things you can interact with and you during and before battle) and interesting skills to use.

What are your favourite tactical games, and do any stand out in terms of what you can do, so they're not just a hack and slash with no interesting skills to use (like some SRPGs turn out to be)?

Commandos: Behind enemy lines and Commandos: Beyond the call of duty are among my favourite games.
I didn't enjoy Commandos 2 and 3 as much, imo they were somewhat dumbed down. Still decent games though.

Regarding turn-based games, I really liked Expeditions: Conquistador, though probably more for the general gameplay and role-playing. The combat itself is fun, but not that special imo.

X-Com: Terror from the Deep. Very cool, very challenging. Sadly no Env-use. For that I heard a lot of good things about D:OS 1+2.

Squad turn based tactical games are my favorite genre.

The two Jagged Alliance games are my favorite games of all time, regardless of genre. I rate them above all others because they don't just have good combat but also excellent hand made maps and campaigns to go with them- nothing random or procedure generated. Lots of tactics games have great combat but the campaigns are just rigid canned missions joined together- still fun but not Jagged Alliance levels of fun.

Other notables over the years: Soldiers at War by SSI- it's like the Dirty Dozen movie done as a TV series.

b]Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle- a great game on Switch.

Gears Tactics- excellent fast paced and mobile combat that rewards aggressive tactics instead of just the usual defensive overwatch style of play. But the campaign is just a series of linked missions and the mission variety runs out. Still worth playing though.

Fallout Tactics- lots of people didn't like it simply because it wasn't Fallout 3.

Mutant Year Zero- much more emphasis on stealth and correct use of your characters skills rather than just shooting things out.

101st airborne in Normandy- more obscure game published by Empire Int. Slow and a bit rough but quite good.

Turn Based
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Blackguards
King's Bounty: The Legend (and its sequels)
Fantasy Wars (and its sequel)
Shadowrun: Dragonfall (Returns is also good)
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark
Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest
Fallout Tactics

Real-Time
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Crookz - The Big Heist
Aarklash: Legacy

Dawn of War II is one of my favorites

quite hack and slashy in a sense but it works

of course the usual suspects such as X-COM

Nexus the jupiter incident, the whole style, story and options such as combining your whole fleet into this superweapon made this one still one of the best space adventures out there

Star Wolves 1-3

games such as mechs and mercs black talons, mordheim, othercide, shadow tactics, hidden and dangerous 1 & 2 and starhammer currently found a place in the backlog, not sure if i ever will find the time or space to properly finish those

Last three I played through and really enjoyed were XCom:EU (2012), Xenonauts and OpenXCom.

Other favorites:
- Mech Commander 1&2
- Jagged Alliance 2 (someday I might actually finish it)
- Commandos 1&2
- Syndicate Wars
- Dawn of War 2
- Sudden Strike (too difficult for me) and the similar Blitzkrieg Those shipping lane missions though 0.o

It's not a genere I like but there are few games in there that I find really engaging:
X-Com: Terror from the Deep,
Xenonauts,
UFO: Extraterrestrials (UFO: Extraterrestrials with Bmans MOD, UFO: Extraterrestrials GOLD)
Phantom Doctrine,
Phoenix Point.

For my tastes the time units based mechanics/gameplay are/is the best and while I find the movement/action one/oness inferior I stil can enjoy those games that make use of it/them.

It may not be the most popular game but Omerta has quite good and challenging squad-based battles. On higher difficulty you really have to utilize special skills of your characters to win.

Sadly, strategrstrategof the game is meh at best. Luckily battles takes more than 50% of the time

Silent Storm.
https://www.gog.com/game/silent_storm_gold

X-Com, any version really, also played a lot of the UFO games and the freeware Alien Invasion.

Shadow Watch, good game for first timers into the genre with a cool art style.

Jagged Alliance 2, though I appreciate the first game, the second is so much better and rivals X-Com and maybe if I play it more surpasses it even.

There are a lot of them I still need to play, like Soldiers of Anarchy, 7.62 Heavy Cal., Shadow Tactics, Close Combat and a bunch more.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun was pretty good for me, but to be honest it was my first jaunt into that specific gametype. But I really enjoyed it regardless of stealth not really ever being one of my favourite things in games.

I have fond memories of Silent Storm, although some of the later missions kinda drag on / get repetitive and I don't really like panzerkleins. The early game is great! (Sadly there's a patch that breaks medic & engineer skill progression in the version we have on GOG).

Then maybe Desperados? Commandos is nice too, though. Both games have some interesting skills, it'd be nice to see a game that takes them all and lets you have fun with them.

I really need to try that Robin Hood game (which looks and plays quite similarly to desperados, AIUI). And I need to (re-)play JA2. I got stuck in it for some reason, back in the day.

Star Trek Away Team and Robin Hood: Legend of Sherwood. I love the combination of Commandos style gameplay with those settings. Robin Hood as lovely graphics, still very charming to this day and I think the combat, where you can control any individual character by making moves with your mouse the character will then repeat with their weapon is so great I can't believe all these years later no other game replicated that simple, ingenious system. And I love running your own encampment of merry men in the forest in between missions. That said the game is probably a bit on the easy side, especially for tactical games veterans.

Away Team on the other hand has a great story (at least if you like Trek), and being able to choose your team for every mission from a varied roster of characters with different skills, gadgets and backgrounds is great fun. The missions are diverse and challenging, and every permutation of your team makes for new ways to accomplish the goals. Especially good are missions dealing with the Borg, who adapt to your weapons after a few shots, leaving you scrambling for other ways of dispatching enemies. Add to that an actually worthwile incentive to accomplish additional goals in the form of new or better gadgets that truly impact the gameplay, and you have what I consider the perfect 10/10 tactical game and a perfect 10/10 Star Trek game.