I honestly thought it was nothing like tactics, to tell you the truth. I mean, I can see some really vague similarities, but they're completely different.
This is basically how it works:
Throughout the game, you obtain the ability to summon new Espers (or Yahri) by learning them in the Ring of Pacts (works kind of like FFX's Sphere Grid or FFXII's License Board). At the start of (nearly) every battle, you'll be able to choose up to 5 of your main characters to use, who are known as "Party Leaders." Likewise, you'll be able to assign 5 Espers to bring into the battle with you. Party Leaders, Espers and monsters all have their strengths and weaknesses, which are based on the traditional RTS "rock-paper-scissors" system. That is, the flying, melee and ranged classes. Flying is strong against melee, melee is strong against ranged, and ranged is strong against flying. The Espers you choose are assigned to the most compatible classes, and you start the battles with them.
In some battles, there are Summoning Gates in which you can summon more Espers from. In order to use these you usually have to capture them by moving a Party Leader on to them and waiting for them to be ready for use. Once ready, you can use the Gates to summon a set number of the 5 Esper types you assigned at the beginning of the battle, but the number is limited to your Affinity level, which grows when your summoned Espers are killed or dismissed. The enemy team also occasionally has Summoning Gates, which keep spitting out new Espers until they are captured, so you'll have to do a fair bit of base-capturing in some battles. The Gates you've captured can also be stolen by enemy Party Leaders.
Each battle takes place on a large 3D battlefield, and to move around on it you'll have to point and click with the stylus. You can drag a square around all your characters on the screen, or you can select a characters-specific tab at the top of the screen to choose only one Party Leader and their party of Espers. Once selected, you simply click the area on the screen you wish to move to, or click the enemy you wish to do battle with. Doing so will automatically cause them to attack each other until their HP is depleted. Each character also has a Gambit which can be set, which is one of a number of character-specific spells that can be used in battle. These are not really similar to FFXII's Gambit system at all, and basically act as a special skill which is spammed automatically. They take a while to be used again though, so if for example you have Kytes' Gambit set to "Blizzaga," he will use it once then resume to attack normally until he is able to use it again.
And that's the gist of it.
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