If you’re a fan of strategy games, then you’re in for a real treat! Whether it be turn-based or real-time, grand strategy or tactical, this genre is as diverse as they come. It’s challenging to determine which are the absolute top strategy games, which is why we’ve created this list of the greatest of them that will blow your mind. It’s time to try looking at strategy guides. If there’re games you’re unfamiliar with on this list or if you want to find some new games to play, read on!
CRUSADER KINGS III
Talk about a frustratingly challenging grand strategy game! Whether or not this emergent-storytelling, dynasty spanning successor claims the coveted throne of its now free-to-play predecessor Crusader Kings 2, it’s unquestionably started its reign with royal excellency.
Crusader Kings 3 has significantly redesigned the series’ ‘in the past’ byzantine interface, making it a welcome change for new players while still keeping a significant part of the depth the series is known for. It might seem like your average grand strategy map-painter, and keeping in mind that it also includes in-depth features for waging wars, the core of Crusader Kings 3 lies in its own hilarious stories.
Will you steal power through military force, religious influence, wealth, diplomacy, or fraud? Each character you play has their unique personality and way of life, and every person from your dynasty will shape their empire, regardless, before granting it to their heirs. It’s a game that makes individual plots planned behind closed doors just as significant as wars and battles between nations.
If you’re still not entirely convinced, I highly recommend taking a look at the Crusader 3 review. There’s also a Crusader Kings 3 starting characters guide for hacks and tips, a Crusader Kings 3 amateurs guide, and a Crusader Kings 3 mods guide.
OFFWORLD TRADING COMPANY
Offworld Trading Company is at the opposite end of system games such as Civilization, even though Soren Johnson, the games creator, also worked on Civ IV.
While Civ traverses the history and a bit of the future of humankind, chronicling the advancement of humanity, Offworld Trading Company is mostly about becoming rich by completely exploiting our red neighbor, Mars.
It’s a strategy game crossed with the complexities of the best management games, one in which success isn’t accomplished by tossing tanks at foes or crushing their bases. This keeps players entertained for long periods of time.
Instead, your weapons are your money and resources, which you have to use to control the marketplace to not only get rich but to trick your rivals. You probably won’t expect an economic strategy game to be this aggressive, yet Offworld Trading Company urges you to be about as antagonistic as a militarist.
When you’re looking at menus, deciding what to build and create, what to sell, which business to launch a hostile takeover against next, it’s pretty much as exciting as when you’re sending infantry across artillery-pummelled fields or dispatching sneak air assaults against a rival’s fortress in Company of Heroes or StarCraft II. The same game developers have recently delivered their interpretation of 4X games/Civilization, called Old World; it’s worth looking at.
XCOM 2
XCOM 2 is one of the most incredible turn-based strategy games, and it got a great score on XCOM 2 reviews. It takes the best parts from the series, such as the savage struggle, the devious aliens, the ragtag group of legends, the tight strategic battles, and adds improvement after improvement to top it off.
It’s a shot in the dark regarding whether the War of the Chosen expansion is a better game, although many amazing XCOM 2 mods can take the vanilla game to a more satisfactory level. That said, both are equally rewarding experiences. There’s a lot of other XCOM 2 DLC as well.
The battles are also unique but still quite challenging, packed with horrific rivals that have interesting but tricky and unexpected abilities. Yet, the most significant changes are found in the strategic layer. You get to travel the world infiltrating black sites, setting up cells, searching for more resources so you can get more potent tools and weapons – it’s a compelling game.
HOMEWORLD: DESERTS OF KHARAK
Blackbird Interactive has done the impossible with Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak by transposing the glorious, minimalist space battles of the first Homeworld games to just one planet, in the process making one of the most incredible strategy games. Somehow it just works.
It’s truly a journey across an immense desert guided by your mission to save an entire civilization. Each battle is associated with the last, including the ones yet to be fought. Each unit that manages to survive will live to fight another day in one more mission in this never-ending fight for survival.
Even though Kharak is a giant desert, it’s also a tremendous planet-sized battlefield that does what the originals achieved for space, for the earth. The expansion of territory and elevation mimics the 3-D battles of past games, with the dunes giving cover, concealing spots, and high ground from where you can unleash dangerous attacks.
Just as the games before it, this game is honored with the absolute best art design you could expect to find in a strategy game, which means you can take awesome Homeworld screenshots. Don’t forget the unbelievable sound design and a genuinely fascinating narrative; Deserts of Kharak is a work of art.
