Turn-based strategy games bring out the more cerebral undertones of the genre – the break afforded by ‘turns’ allows us to think, ponder and plan our moves with as much expert precision as we can muster, and see the mater plan unfold without a hitch creates untold levels of satisfaction.
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Turn-based Classic Games and Abandonware Sid Meier's Civilization II Sid Meier's Civilization II is the second chapter of the most famous turn-based strategy video game ever created.
Want a little more RPG in your TBS? We've got some excellent Tactical RPGS for you to check out.
- Strategy games are a crucial element of PC gaming and it seems incomplete without some really good Turn based Strategy titles. No matter its RTS or Turn based Strategy games, the unique line-up of characters, their abilities, environments and all the amazing plots are what actually attract the players.
- Strategy Games For PC Full Version Free Download.These Top Strategy PC Games are downloadable for Windows 7,8,10,xp and Laptop.Here are top Strategy games apps to play the best Android games on PC with Xeplayer Android Emulator.
This is a ‘living’ list, in the sense that there are many worthy candidates and not enough room to fit them all in. Every so often (especially as new games come out), we’ll give this list a refresh and an update to bring some other titles their turn in the spotlight.
Let's take a look at some of our favourite turn-based strategy games to play in 2019:
Recent Releases & Other Recommendations
Sometimes a game releases and we don't get a chance to evaluate it properly, or we do and we didn't actually like it that much. Either way, it's good to keep track of what's come out lately that you also might be interested in:
- Ancient Frontier: Steel Shadow
- Slay the Spire
- Element Space
Battle Brothers (Review)
Publisher/Developer: OverHype Studios
Purchase:Steam
Battle Brothers is ostensibly the Game of Thrones: Bron Simulator. A deliciously low-fantasy mercenary manager that is refreshingly free of trope-ridden kings and kingdoms, OverHyper Studios' hex-based combat game is immediately accessible, balanced by brutality and permadeath.
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There's a hand-crafted quality to the game, appealing in much the same way as Unity of Command. Grim little busts of ugly mercenaries plug their way across swamps and forests, paper-dolled with whatever arms and armor you assigned, engaging in violent combat with all manner of armies. What's most impressive about Battle Brothers is the impact with which it conveys every hit, stab, slice and shot. Each successful attack is incredibly visceral, making sure you know that there are no do-overs in the Battle Brothers world. By the end of each encounter, the field is littered with loosed arrows, blood and corpses. Those who died have indeed gone for good. And those that survive just may live a little longer.
It's been modestly supported with DLC & updates as well. The most recent expansion pack, Warriors of the North drops today (May 9th, 2019).
Wargroove (Review)
Publisher/Developer: Chucklefish
Purchase:Steam
While not the perfect successor to the legacy of Advanced Wars, this highly anticipated turn-based tactics title certainly did not disappoint when it finally released in February 2019. An excellent visual design coupled with a rich tactical experience across all the factions meant that this was a game that was easy to learn, challenging to master, but never anything less than a delight to play.
The real strength of Wargroove however is its build-in future proofing. There's plenty to do and try out straight out of the box, but a powerful and robust editor means that there will be some fantastic user-generated content coming down the pipe in the months ahead. People are already recreating maps and entire campaigns from other TBT classics like Fire Emblem and Advanced Wars, so we can't wait to see what the else the community does with the game.
Jagged Alliance: Rage! (Review)
Publisher/Developer: Handy Games / Cliffhanger Productions
Purchase: Steam
A controversial inclusion, given the game's 43% approval rating on Steam, but Martynas was able to look past the legacy Rage is struggling against and appreciate the latest Jagged Alliance game for what it was - a tight, simple tactical strategy game with replayability in the form of mixing up the combination of your two-man squad. Rage forgoes the detail and 'hardcore' element of the original Jagged Alliance games in an attempt to capture the spirit: of mercenaries struggling against better armed and better reinforced opponents, of the connections you make with your soldiers as you guide them from mission to mission.
Jagged Alliance: Rage! can't hold up to the glory of its hallowed predecessors, but for once we have a JA experience that's not really trying to do that in the first place. From where we're sitting, that's a good thing.
BATTLETECH (Review)
Publisher/Developer: Paradox Interactive / Harebrained Schemes
Purchase: Steam, Direct
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Whichever way you cut it, Battletech is a colossal title and a long time coming. A meaty, ruminative turn-based mech battler that does as much justice to its FASA tabletop roots as it does to making a ponderous, complex miniature game come alive in digital form. Its depth and sprawl is the product of thirty-odd years of lore and gaming, and the game most mech-heads were chasing.
This is a game that demands commitment, selling the idea of mechwarrior combat being anything but brief. There's lots of crunchiness to encounters on the tactical level, with heat and weapon management coalescing with environmental factors and position. Mechs are beautifully detailed, evoking just the right mix of old Ral Patha miniatures and the thankful modernisation of MechWarrior Online's artistic precedent.
Higher levels of command stretch the battlespace into the stars, with players developing their lancemates and machinery in acute detail. The universe is detailed and beautifully represented. It's been a bit slow on the DLC front - Flashpointwas the first piece which largely catered to players loitering around the endgame. Come June fans can expect another new expansion - Urban Warfare. There is a third pack planned as well, but we're not sure when that will release.
Space Hulk: Tactics (Review)
Publisher/Developer: Focus Home Interactive / Cyanide Studios
Purchase: Steam
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Given how hit and miss digital adaptations of Space Hulk have been in recent years, we were pleasantly surprised how good this latest adaptation turned out to be. It's not perfect - the Tactics is almost a little too 'true' to the original table-top experience, with a very punishing asymmetrical set-up that favours the Genestealers. It's mean't to be a challenge, but some things deft modern gaming conventions in way that's already rubbed more than a few people the wrong way.
Still, it's a game with very solid foundations and beautiful production values. The two factions have been wonderfully designed, and both manage to feel quite different in how they play, despite sharing common underlying mechanics. The card system is also quite innovative, and all round this is a tense, highly tactical affair that comes close to being the best Warhammer 40,000 game on the market. With good multiplayer and deep customisation to boot, once the early technical issues are sort out, Space Hulk: Tactics' place on this list will be cemented for life.
Frozen Synapse 2 (Review)
Publisher/Developer: Mode 7 Games
Purchase: Steam
Indie sensation Frozen Synapse is very much deserving of its accolades. A simultaneous turn-based breakdown of CounterStrike at its heart, Mode 7 Games condensed the fundamentals of the first-person shooter -- movement, stance, speed and vectors -- into five-second parcels of plotting direction and behaviour. While the sequel didn't try to mess with this simple and effective formula too much, it did try to instil a sense of purpose.
Frozen Synapse 2's main offering is a grand-strategy layer. You run a private security firm in a procedurally generated city, and your goal is to grow, keep the other organisations in check, while also deal with a mysterious new foe that's appeared on the scene. Take contracts, hire recruits to fill out your squads, and fight your enemies in battlegrounds that vary depending on where the action takes place. The initial offering is functional and imperfect, but it's already proven to be a great way of filling Frozen Synapse's excellent WEGO tactical experience with meaning and persistence.
Phantom Doctrine (Review)
Publisher/Developer: CreativeForge Games / Good Shepard Entertainment
Purchase: Steam
We know we're one of the outliers when it comes to how good we thought Phantom Doctrine was, but no one can fault the ambition that's been displayed by this XCOM-meets-Cold War tactical romp. Your mileage on the various technical niggles will vary, but it's probably he most ambitious stealth/turn-based tactics title in recent memory. The turn-based mechanics are easy to parse, immediately recognisable to any genre fan. Players shunt their agents around the map on a grid, throttled by action points and feats.
The multi-disciplined blend of standard tactical cation, mixed with stealth, management and the pre-planning that can be involved (not to mention the investigations and lore) elevates Phantom Doctrine beyond the constraints and norms of its peers. It's not a smooth ride, and we're not saying it handles everything successfully, but if you consider this a foundation on which the developers will build on, there's bright future in store for this game, and we can't wait to see it. Essential strategy gaming.
Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach (Review)
Publisher/Developer: Slitherine Ltd. / Straylight Entertainment
Purchase:Steam, Direct
We're thankfully not short on Warhammer games, and when they're as satisfying as Straylight Entertainment's Sanctus Reach, I say keep them coming. Sanctus Reach is an interesting creation because it strikes exactly the right balance fans would want in retaining the ruminative cogitation of the tabletop with the flair and spectacle of a digital interpretation.
Snapped to a grid and letting the computer do the heavy statistical lifting, players are free to think three moves ahead as they smash Orks into Space Wolves and vice versa. Map design retains a tabletop physicality, strewn with exactly the kind of terrain assets you'd hope to roam amidst, and Sanctus Reach's scale is pitch-perfect for selling its interpretation of digital miniature battles. With asynchronous multiplayer, lengthy campaign and good skirmish, all the game really needs is MORE WARGH.
Sanctus Reach has three DLCS: Legacy of the Wierdboy, Sons of Cadia and Horrors of the Warp.
The Battle for Wesnoth
Publisher/Developer: David White et al.
Purchase:Free
What kind of turn-based list would it be without some sort of open-source or free elder statesman of the genre? Just inching out People's General, The Battle for Wesnoth is a sprawling suite of tactical turn-based hexery. The game itself is accommodating, the community modules vast and varied, and heck, it's even been ported to phones. Wesnoth in its base form feels like it’s at an aesthetic cross-roads between traditional Japanese SRPGS and Western heavy-hitters like Heroes of Might & Magic. Light enough to run on the most dismal of systems, and not costing a brass razoo, The Battle of Wesnoth is truly the people's game.
XCOM 2: War of the Chosen (Review)
Publisher/Developer: 2K Games / Firaxis Games
Purchase:Steam, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Alongside Civilization, there are few games that can share as much clout as Julian Gollop's seminal X-Com. Firaxis spit-shone the formula in 2012 in an all-caps frisson of console-friendly overhauls. Still that same great punitive taste, but with all the bells and whistles of a modern interface. Selling gangbusters, the sequel came in 2016.
XCOM 2 might have had some initial technical niggles around launch, but thereafter has been patched up to shine as intended. Coupled with War of the Chosen, XCOM 2's pot-stirring expansion that throws antagonistic human factions into the mix, there's little reason not to have Firaxis' second tilt at this magisterial series in your library. Asymmetric constraints loom as the player's rag-tag rotation of freedom fighters make grounds against the established occupation, with an emphasis on hit and run missions. Secondary objectives also add an interesting tension to the game, as well as the looming threat of a grand alien program that cooks away in the background, harboring a fail-state if left to mature. War of the Chosen elevates XCOM 2 from admirable sequel to essential addition to the long-running franchise. The story might put humanity on the back foot, but XCOM has never been more ahead.
Don't to check our our tips & tricks guide for the game, as well as our complete break down of the franchise's DLC.
Hall of Fame
These games were featured in an earlier version of this list. For now, they're retiring to their place amongst the legends, but never to be forgotten:
What would your list of top turn-based strategy titles look like? Let us know in the comments!
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