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While Final Fantasy Tactics was responsible to popularize SRPG genre in the West, in Japan, the genre was popularized by Fire Emblem and Tactics Ogre. Tactics Ogre has been long considered as one of the best SRPGs ever made, and it prompted Squaresoft to recruit the team behind Tactics Ogre and they released the masterpiece that was called Final Fantasy Tactics.
When SRPGs became more popular in the western JRPG market, Atlus USA saw an opportunity to finally release the english version of Tactics Ogre and it filled the gap left by the absence of SRPG games after the release of Final Fantasy Tactics (the gap was not actually bad - 3 years after its original release on SNES). How these two games western release were released in the same year remained a mystery though.
Visiting TO after playing FFT was an awkward experience because FFT allowed the players to customize each individual unit and overpower their characters by learning different job skills, however this feature was notably absent from the original TO, each character only allowed to equip three spells and one extra skill they got from the bonus dungeon. Battles were slow and felt less dynamic compared FFT, despite being enjoyable. You need to replay the games three times to get a full experience.
In 2010, the game got a remake called Tactics Ogre: Let's Us Cling Together in the western market (TO: LUCT), which incorporated many elements from FFT while keeping the game's unique flavor. Levels are distributed based on class instead of individual units, and there are plenty of options to customize your characters. They also added a lot of anti-frustration features such as Chariot arcana to reverse the flow of battle (which used by Fire Emblem Three Houses), basically allowed you to save scum. Unlike the original release, you could experience the whole branching scenario without restarting a new game. There are a lot of improvement that showed the influence of FFT, for example, in the original SNES release, magic knight class "Valkyrie" was only available for female characters, in the TO LUCT, they allowed both genders to have this class (Rune Fencer for male characters). They also overhauled the english script, and made it closer to the ye olde english style used in FFT War of the Lions. There's some influence of George Martin's A song of ice and fire series and Game of Thrones (TV series) seen in the TO LUCT as the characters talk in flowery and poetic manner compared to the PSX english script.
TO Reborn is a faithful remaster of TO LUCT. The main graphic doesn't look so different compared to the PSP release, but there have been additional features such as voice acting (English/Japanese), buff/debuff cards, more inventory items, individual units gain a level instead of class-based level, etc).
One of the most interesting design choices is probably the way they overhaul the skill system. While TO LUCT seemed to incorporate FFT skill system, TO R seems to borrow elements from the modern Fire Emblem as it limits each character to pick 4 skills only in the battles. Previously on the PSP version, everyone could access the item bag as well. This seems a shout out to both modern Fire Emblem and the original TO. Whether this is a better design compared to TO LUCT remain to be seen.
Story wise Tactics Ogre has a solid storytelling. It was inspired by the Yugoslavian war, ethno-religious wars, and some mix of Babylonian culture. The game features three branching scenarios with multiple outcomes and different endings. You will encounter your ally as an enemy in one story branch and vice versa. It's one of the rare JRPGs where the main character is actually sliding into a morally grey area, because you need to do something morally ambiguous and paid the consequences later for the sake of achieving its goals. There are a lot of missable contents if you don't read Warren report regularly. Don't be hesitate to use a guide to recruit the characters.
In the music department, the songs were composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata who gained a mainstream popularity for the soundtrack they composed for FFT. TO: R featured a remastered version of orchestrated songs featured on TO LUCT, and it's majestic and will get you pumped. The music from TO is one of the best, and actually one of the my favorite OSTs ever. I cannot believe my ears when they could actually make things are even better than the last time.
A complaint from me is probably the party management UI. I find the overhaul makes the interface looks more complicated than it supposed to be and may intimidate new gamers to progress further as it looked cluttered. I just hope it's my bias because I already played the PSX and PSP version, and expected them to not change. Also, I also have a similar complaint from the original PSP remake. The game introduced so many status effects to the point it's kinda... too many. I also didn't bother to use the Craft system since it seems unnecessarily complicated, and by the end game, you will get a lot of end-game equipment that are strong enough without being crafted anyway.
Also, I am not sure why they keep sticking the Ogre Battle Episode VII because Tactics Ogre's popularity has surpassed Ogre Battle in the fandom. Tying Tactics Ogre with Ogre Battle is almost a self-parody, because the game's story never completed, and there are not so ,many overarching narratives between each of the game that has been released. Even Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis which made a direct reference to Tactics Ogre in its ending has a weak tie with this game, and Yasumi Matsuno didn't seem to bother to retcon the events from KoL as the story was written by someone else.
Final verdict: Tactics Ogre Reborn is a solid deluxe remaster of one of the best SRPGs ever made. The story is solid, battles can be brutally lengthy, and the gameplay is is easy to learn and addictive despite being too grindy at times. However, this game is definitely worth the full price. You will be lucky to finish this game in 100 hours though because there are three scenarios to finish, a bonus dungeon, multiple hidden characters, and 4 extra post-game scenarios that will keep you engaged for quite a while. While the tag episode VII seems to imply as if there's a prequel of this game and you need to play the other Ogre series, it's not the case because the story of the other games are not referred at all in this game.