What are the best RTS games on Steam?

This game will run on old PC's/laptops without a problem as the game itself is quite old. It can therefore run on hardware that is mostly seen as low spec. So pretty much anyone can run this game as it will even work on integrated graphics on modern CPUs. See More

Top Pro

Runs on very old computers

Top Con

Outdated

As it was originally released in 1999, Age of Empires 2 shows its age, particularly in terms of the UI and graphics. See More

Top Pro

Facilitates the user's preferred pace

This game neither gives the impression of being thrown to the wolves nor that of being left stranded on an island. Whether you want to move slow and steadily through the game or take things at a more heightened pace, Age of Empires 2 will allow for both (with some minor planning). See More

Top Con

Age of Empires II HD is an unsuccessful remaster due to its outdated graphics

With the only notable upgrade being high resolution options, Age of Empires II HD fails at being a proper remaster. While higher resolutions give the game a slight face lift, the rest of the engine is left largely unchanged. This means the graphics we see in this remaster are nearly the same in its original 1999 release. Due to this, the game is grating to the eye and does not deliver on its high definition promise. See More

Top Pro

Less bugs ang crashes and no microtransactions and loot boxes

Good pathfinding. See More

Top Pro

This game supplies what it promises

It is difficult to find good real time strategy games with aesthetics. Its high resolution graphics combined with fairly good RTS experience makes Age of Empires III a rare gem. Its AI and gameplay may not be up to the mark when compared to its predecessor, but still provides you a fair challenge. See More

Age of Empires III

Top Pro

Graphics-gameplay balance

Top Con

Pathfinding can be an issue

Being an older title means that moving your armies can be quite a hassle in certain situations and difficult to control. See More

SmartBalor's Experience

With the definitive edition it provides a wide diversity of nations each with different playstyles and diverse build orders. The popular belief that 3 lacks strategy is simply not true. As there are a number of things to factor in when playing competitively from your card build to your actual build order and how you change your build according to your opponents build. See More

Specs

Age of Empires III features a new and unique card-based system that allows for you to deploy additional units and resources from your Town Hall. By eliminating enemy units and buildings, you are awarded experience, which not only goes toward your City Level (allowing you to purchase more cards out-of-match), but allows you to activate a card in-game. These cards can grant you additional soldiers, increase gathering speed of Banks and Workers, or even a fort that you can deploy anywhere in the map. See More

Top Pro

Card-based upgrades and reinforcements add more to each match

Top Con

Strategy is highly lacking

Especially in multi player, AO3 rapidly becomes a game of "build a maximum army and face the enemies maximum army, then start over". There are some things to try to make the game more strategic, but nothing much. For example, terain does nothing exept determine what types of units can pass, so placing you units on higher ground does not affect there range, and forests do not decrease accuracy and vision range/detectability. See More

Top Pro

Good selection of areas to play in

There are 8 different nations that the player can choose to lead to victory, each with their own different looking areas to explore. This makes for a good mix of differentiation of play depending on what the player chooses to use. See More

Top Con

Could use better sound cues

Keeping track of ones units can become a difficult job (but a fun one) and having audio cues of when something is happening to your units could greatly help in this area, sadly there is very little of this in the game and could have been utilized better. See More

Top Pro

Wide selection of missions

Players will see many different missions ranging from rescue missions to defensive missions. What is even better is that many of these types of missions will be mixed together into one, so there is a varying structure to each making for a different feeling to each. See More

If there is a large building in between the line of sight of the player and the target, your units might hit the building instead. To compensate you can use artillery or missiles. However this type of full scale simulation is at the expense of CPU power. See More

Supreme Commander

Top Pro

Simulation of every shot

Top Con

Large battles with a poor CPU is not recommended in 4v4

The game can slow down significantly in large battles and on huge maps when there are a lot of players. This is especially the case for those using lower-end PCs. See More

Specs

Displays the action on one monitor, and a full, active map on the other. Units can be selected and controlled from either view, enhancing management and planning. See More

Genre:RTS

Co-Op:yes (with FAF)

Controller Support:No

Top Pro

Dual monitor support

Top Con

Steep learning curve and need for planning involved

Supreme Commander takes a while to pick up and learn how to play well. Since everything in the game happens slowly, you need to plan. See More

Top Pro

Authentic real time economy

When you spend resources on a building, they are not spent instantly but rather over the course of building. The same goes for collecting. Your buffer is small so try to match your spending rate with that of gathering. See More

Top Con

Stand-alone add-on Forged Alliance needed for stability

Vanilla game has balance issues, which is why it is recommended that the user installs the add-on, Forged Alliance. See More

Top Pro

Advanced command system

By holding the shift key, you can see the commands you gave as an overlay on the map. Drag and drop commands to adapt them whenever you have to. See More

Top Con

Developers abandoned the game

However there is great community support in which they have released patches in order to fix outstanding bugs as well as support hosting a map vault where players can download community made maps to use in the game. There is also a matchmaking lobby tool available here, which makes finding online matches to play pretty easy. See More

Top Pro

Fundamentally different factions that are well balanced

Each faction in the game will have different abilities, units, transporters or stations that are unique to that faction. While one faction will have an advantage of a hovering engineer, another will have the advantage of a driving engineer, each being prone and un-prone to particular kinds of attacks. Somewhat like a rock paper scissors scenario where it will all balance out in the end. This way it keeps each faction feeling unique, but at the same time disallowing any to have too much of an advantage over the others. See More

Top Pro

Unlimited zoom increases visibility

You don't need a mini map to get an overview of the Battlefield: simply zoom out using the scroll wheel. If you want to "jump" somewhere else just zoom in to that exact spot. See More

Top Pro

Rewarding, high skill cap

This game can satisfy you for hours. It offers a high level of play that not only takes a long time to attain but is also very rewarding when mastered. See More

Top Pro

Massive battles with plenty of outcomes

Battles can involve hundreds of units. This allows for even experimental units that can single-handedly take out entire armies due to their sheer size. This way there is room for experimentation in what can works, or just to see what outcomes they have. See More

Top Pro

Asynchronous tech system

Upgrading one factory doesn't magically upgrade all the others. Decide wisely how much you spend on advancing in tech. Low tech spam can sometimes still be an option. See More

Easy to learn mechanics of economy, castle building and army production. Does not overwhelm players with choices. See More

Stronghold Crusader HD

Top Pro

Great for RTS beginners

Top Con

Lacks polish in some areas

Things like buttons on the bottom of the screen that are not intuitively placed as well as notifications that can not be filtered to the more important. This can detract from the gameplay as it is immersion breaking to have to rifle through inconvenient button placement as well as notifications looking for what you need at the time. See More

Specs

Genre:Real-Time Strategy

Many options are available in the game along with good tutorials that introduce the player to these. While not all options are necessary the inclusion of them is welcome for those that would like to take advantage of them. See More

Top Pro

Deep yet intuitive interface

Company of Heroes 2 is an RTS game that focuses more on smart decision making of micro unit control over macro control and actions per minute. This allows for a more deep strategy to the game as user will need to think aggressively and quickly. Strategy plays a big part as units can utilize cover with buildings as well as vehicles. The action on screen can often be slow which also allows for more micro management and planned out attacks. See More

Company of Heroes 2

Top Pro

More of a focus on smart planning over APM

Top Con

Poor cutscenes

The cutscenes, even though they are not animated with the in game engine look pretty abysmal. Why they are animated so poorly is unknown, but it definitely stands out. See More

Specs

The multiplayer of the game tends to be where the majority of fun can be seen. While single player is a worthwhile en-devour in the game, it just can not stand up against playing with real people. The included multiplayer has plenty of competitive maps as well as a section of co-op maps that are similar to the campaign mode (though not as plentiful). See More

Top Pro

Great multiplayer

Top Con

Flame weapons feel over powered

When facing off against units or vehicles that use flame weapons, the users troops can be killed a little too quickly. being that the weapons can often come out of nowhere, it can be frustrating as the level will most likely need to be replayed with the knowledge that flame weapons will be coming up. See More

Top Pro

Focuses more on smart planning rather than brute force

Company of Heroes 2 is an RTS that focuses more on smart decision making of micro-unit control over macro-control and actions per minute. Players will most likely have fewer units under their command during the beginning of each match, making strategic and tactical placement of each unit necessary, rather than focusing on training many units and attacking head-on. This allows for more deep strategic gameplay to take front and center, as players will need to think aggressively and quickly, keeping units in cover and finding defensible positions, as the loss of even a single unit can turn the tide of a battle. See More

Top Con

Gameplay can be quite hectic

Some of the missions in the game can require the player to keep track of up to 135 units at once, on three different fronts at that , which can be difficult to manage. While not completely unmanageable, this is something to consider for those that want something a bit more simplistic out of their RTS. See More

Top Pro

Top of its class in graphics for an Real-Time Strategy title

While not a huge improvement over the first game in the series, the graphics and art style found in Company of Heroes 2 are still quite astounding for an RTS. The animation quality of each unit is incredibly well polished, with infantry moving with fluid realism, and vehicle movement being heavy and slow. Also, to give an added depth of realism, particle effects and quality are nearly unrivaled, as each mortar blast and each grenade detonation casts large chunks of earth into the air in a billowing cascade of terrain destruction, leaving large craters in the ground. Adding greatly to this is the equally gratifying smoke and spark effects one can see when a tank fires a round from its gun, or when bullets ricochet off armored vehicles. While the gameplay in COH2 is second-to-none, the great graphical fidelity adds an immersive aspect that has yet to be matched. See More

Top Pro

Tons of replayability thanks to Downloadable Content

While DLC has the potential to introduce imbalance, with purchased items that give advantage, so far Company of Heroes 2 has not had this issue. New campaigns, featuring other allied nations, as well as different commanders with their own powerful abilities are proudly highlighted through this additional content. This allows the player base to have more to do and see, added increased longevity into an already brilliant addition to the Company of Heroes franchise. See More

Top Pro

Mod support

User Created Content makes every game better. There is a big variety of nice user created maps and mods. See More

Top Pro

Top of its class in graphics for an RTS

While not a huge improvement over the first game in the series (Company of Heroes), the graphics to be found in CoH2 are still quite astounding for an RTS. Being that the genre tends to have many moving parts in any given level, the graphics tend to take a backseat to gameplay, but CoH 2 decided to offer better graphics than most in a very rich and detailed environment as well as troops. There will be plenty of realistic explosions to watch, as well as smoke after the fact that looks quite real. The animations to be found are also quite good, troops run as you would expect real people to run, vehicles move exactly as expected as well. Just about anything in the graphics department for this game stands out with a ton of polish. See More

Top Pro

Tons of replayability thanks to DLC

While DLC has the potential to introduce imbalance, with purchased items that give advantage, so far CoH 2 has not had this issue. What it does offer through DLC is new campaigns and features such as Twitch support. This allows for more to be added to the game to do and see, which keeps players that enjoy the game coming back when purchasing these items. Other things such as cosmetics can also be purchased through DLC (really micro-transactions), which do not impact gameplay at all but offer a way to individualize oneself from the masses. See More

Top Pro

Control large amount of units

Upped from the original game the player is able to control up to 135 units, which is quite a lot of micromanagement for those that are interested. See More

The progress of the game is structured in a way that allows the player to get accustomed to the game gradually. The AI in the game is also not rushed so the player has time to thing of how they want to maneuver, so is a bit more relaxed than other RTS games. Overall this makes for an experience that could be seen as casual in some respects. See More

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

Top Pro

Gentle learning curve

Top Con

Poor multiplayer balance

Due to the way multiplayer was designed there is no incentive to build up ones technologies, which means each game is just a rush of low level troops facing off against one another. See More

Specs

There are quite a lot of missions in the game that have a varying degree of particular objectives, ranging from stealth to base destruction. There are quite a lot of secondary missions that allow for a good bit of replayability for those that want to complete everything. See More

Top Pro

Long, entertaining campaign

Top Con

Pathfinding issues

The AI in the game has a few pathfinding issues where troops do not go where intended by the player. This can be frustrating in the heat of a battle. See More

Top Pro

Best-in-class FMV breathes life into the campaign

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars features the best FMV to date in any Command & Conquer title, featuring an all-star cast that fill the ranks of both GDI and NOD. The beautifully shot and wonderfully hammy-acted videos ensure that the player knows both that there is a grimy darkness to the campaign and that the it does not take itself too seriously; avoiding the over-the-top nature of the Red Alert series, which is its staple. The video pop-ups during each mission help convey a sense of urgency to the player when necessary, and a feeling of reward when a mission is successful. See More

Top Pro

Very good graphics for 2007

Paradox has a long storied history of releasing lots of dlc. The base game likely will not feel fully fleshed out, and they highly recommend you pick up the dlc to enjoy the game fully. See More

Europa Universalis IV

Top Con

DLC juggernaut

Top Pro

Pausable/adjustable speed RTS

Play straight through on real-time, or pause for as much micro-management as is needed. No rapid attacks and the key here, it is pausable even though it can be a real time system. Basically time can be slowed, sped up and paused with most gameplay taking place somewhere in between. See More

Specs

Genre:Grand Strategy

Co-Op:12 Player Online / 32 LAN

Controller Support:No

When you start out, it can be overwhelming. You have a country and three thousand infantrymen -- what can you do? You decide to attack your neighbor -- and they cut you down like reeds. You start over as a bigger country and attack a smaller neighbor -- and suddenly you're in a war against several large countries at once. You start again and this time you find a weak neighbor with no allies. You crush them and bring them under your control -- and suddenly you find revolutions popping up everywhere. Even after you've learned the basics, you'll still find yourself wondering: if I declare a holy war, will it cost me diplomatic power to annex territory or not? And it's often hard -- certainly in ironman mode -- to undo decisions, so small mistakes and misclicks can end up costing you a lot. The game does give you guidance in the form of alert bubbles in the upper left of the screen, informing you of the things it thinks are most relevant, and paying attention to those can at least show you what you might want to think about. In the later patches, the user interface has been improving to help reduce surprises -- and the game mechanics as well. For instance, rebel uprising progress can be tracked easily -- you won't be surprised by a sudden uprising of Najdi nationalists, and when you're in for a long-term peasant revolt, the game will tell you why it's happening, how to prevent it, and how to get out of it once it happens. But simply finding all these parts of the user interface takes time playing. Determining what's important takes experience. You can pause the game at any time and find all the data you can handle, but if you're not just extracting the important parts, the deluge won't help. Your best bet is to find videos of people playing the game with a bit more skill than you. Streaming is best -- you can ask questions, and most streamers will answer. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Top Pro

Lots of depth

EUIV is a simulation of global politics and war. There is a relatively limited set of choices you can make under normal circumstances: hiring advisors to improve your capabilities, hiring troops, about two dozen diplomatic actions in peace, and a number of different peace deal options when terminating a war. However, these interact to produce a large number of interesting decisions that affect your outcomes. If you want to annex a neighbor, do you declare a holy war on them, or do you fabricate claims on their territory and demand that they "return" this land to you? Do you ally a much larger nation that might try to force you to be their vassal? Conversely, do you try to improve relations with a much smaller neighbor in order to become their suzerain overlord, or do you attempt to conquer them directly and risk pulling their larger allies into a war? On top of that, there are hundreds of events that can occur once certain preconditions are met. Some of them are specific to which country you're playing as. Some require you to hire the right set of advisors. And if you don't keep your country's internal affairs in order, you may find yourself on the wrong end of a peasant's war or facing other national disasters. See More

Top Con

Games can take a very long time

Due to the in depth, meticulous gameplay mechanics, the games can take weeks to finish which some people may not have the patience for. See More

Fight in 14 different epochs. You can start 10,000 BC and develop your civilization up to the future. Each time period being notable, thus creating a change in gameplay and scenery. See More

Empire Earth

Top Pro

Evolving gameplay and scenery

Top Con

Pathfinding, population limit, and resource nodes

Good concept, bad implementation. Pathfinding, particularly when there is a lot of units on the field simultaneously, makes the use of "Real-Time TACTICS", AKA microing, virtually useless. This often makes gameplay devolve into a battle of attrition where the main gameplay turns to resource/area acquisition. This is due to the fact that "Resource NODES" have an insane amount of resource, which makes each NODE a virtuallly unlimitless supply of the three (3) main resources i.e. Stone, Gold, Iron. This might have been a good "feature", if it was possible to micro-manage your military, in order to do hit-and-run tactics on a particular NODE. However, since the pathfinding is quite terrible, this is almost impossible. If for instance, The Pathfinding was MUCH better, and resource NODES did NOT contain as much resources, but instead contain less so that after awhile they "RUN OUT OF RESOURECES", then you could allso add a feature where NEW resource NODES just "popped up" in a DIFFERENT location. This would prevent the battle of attrition by firstly, allowing tactical maneouvres to be performed by your military (and also enemy military), and secondly, the battle lines/area to defend would need to constantly "shift to new llocations", since the resources would be in new locations and would need to be RECAPTURED. This second (2nd) feature would FURTHERMORE, also allow for you or your enemy to "make a comeback", if they get lucky and the resource NODE appears in either players base, provided them with a "TEMPORARY EXTRA SUPPLY" of resources. See More

IntuitiveDazbog's Experience

This is the best RTS ever. You can have one on one battles or multiples. Zone in is also excellent. I still play it consistently. See More

Top Pro

Battles are better than in AoE

The user Interface is intuitive and the battles are way more epic. See More

Top Pro

Better than most RTS games today

Unit diversity is at least 10 times what it is now in RTS games. The AI is not bad for its year of release (better than CIV 6 ) . See More

This can make for a visceral feel as well as an immersive one as everything in the game can be blown to bits. See More

Men of War: Assault Squad 2

Top Pro

Fully destructible environments

Top Con

No tutorial

This makes for a steep learning curve that one will need to spend a good bit of time with the game in order to learn all the mechanics on their own. See More

CooperativeXingtian's Experience

great game, best WW2 RTS out there, real feel of what war really is, intense skirmishes, requires thinking See More

Specs

Allows the player to take a direct control of a vehicle, or an infantryman (followed by their squad if any), which allows the player to take the most important shots themselves, or to park their units into more pristine spots. Even if AI seems to fare well on its own, the more elaborate plans can be conducted by simply using this function. See More

Top Pro

Direct control

The main campaign was designed with co-op in mind which means you and a friend can play through the main story together. See More

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3

Top Pro

Has a co-op campaign

Top Con

Occasional pathfinding issues

Units can get stuck on the map, making for a frustrating situation when those units needed to be in a particular placement but were unable to do so due to poor pathfinding. See More

Specs

Reuses a limited selection of strategies, performs nonsensical actions. See More

Top Pro

Good graphics and colorful visuals

Top Con

Poor AI

Top Pro

Fun campaigns for all three factions

There are three factions that the player can choose to play as (Allies, the Soviet Union, and the Empire of the Rising Sun), each with their own story which makes for plenty of gameplay and a different experience each. See More

You can play through the entire story of Spellforce 3 with a friend. One person will control one companion at a time as you progress through battles, the main scenario and any side quests of your choosing. See More

Spellforce 3

Top Pro

Two people can play the whole campaign together

Top Con

Polarizing ending

Some aspects of the ending feel rushed and unfinished, with certain events that don't live up to how much the story spent building up to these moments. Some players will feel that the ending works well while others will disagree. See More

Specs

Genre:Real-Time Strategy, Role-Playing

The story is set in the year 518 after the Mage Wars between groups of rebellious mages and the ruling class of royalty. Now the war-torn lands are thrust into another conflict as a new ruler, the Lord Marshal, tries to restore peace through autocracy. As the main character, your father was a rebel mage, but in the current day, you're a member of the royal army. Spellforce 3's story challenges you to choose whether you'll remain loyal to your family's history or your place in the army, tackling mature subjects of authoritarianism and betrayal along the way. Characters are also fun to get to know, like Yria, an elven huntress skilled in archery and healing magic. She's a down-to-earth and friendly companion, with great banter between her and your main character about the nearby scenery or the latest rat-filled dungeon you find yourselves in. Situations like these are clever and well-written, encouraging you to play through more of the game to find out what else your companions have to say as you go along. See More

Top Pro

Mature story and interesting characters

Top Con

No tactical pause during combat

Even though Spellforce 3 has the methodical combat that you'd expect from a real-time strategy game, there's no ability to pause the action before making your next move. Some battles will have you scrambling to keep up with the pace. You won't be able to slow down and take your time to think about which abilities you want to use. See More

Top Pro

Full voice acting

Everything in Spellforce 3 from character dialog to loading screen lore text is fully voice-acted. Main party members and the narrator all have top-quality delivery that sounds believable. Side characters and other, less important characters could have had their voice acting scrapped altogether, as they don't sound anywhere near as good as the rest of the cast. But the game still boats full voice acting for everyone, even if the quality varies here and there. See More

Top Con

Army units are weak in combat compared to party members

Soldiers are powerful in numbers, but this is the extent of their usefulness in battle. Your companions, on the other hand, have special, flashy abilities that deal tons of area of effect damage, and most of your time spent in battle revolves around managing these skills. In combat, your army only seems to exist to soak up damage and protect your main party members. It's a waste of potential. See More

Top Pro

Player armies are customizable with different factions

As you progress through the game, you'll get to pick which factions of races you want for your army: humans, elves, or orcs, all with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Humans have a balanced mix of weaker units and more powerful ones to even things out. Elves have fewer units overall, but their ranged units have superior reach at the cost of less damage. Orcs are more aggressive with a larger selection of units, while sacrificing ranged options. For fort-building, you have your own outpost where you can create buildings to fortify the space. You can supply resources to elves to build turrets on your outpost, while orcs have weaker structures that need to be built in larger quantities, and humans again have a more balanced offering of standard construction. See More

Top Pro

Solid framerate

During large battles with dozens of army units and enemies on the field, the game's framerate is mostly stable. Aside from instances of bugs or glitches, performance is solid and reliable. The recommended system requirements list an Intel Core i7-4790, AMD FX-8350 with 8GB of RAM. As long as your specs are near those requirements, you'll have a smooth experience. See More

Top Pro

Great mix of RTS and RPG mechanics

Spellforce 3 features top-down, fast-paced combat, ordering your army units across the field to fight and reach objectives, and collecting resources like wood and metals to build forts along your outpost. The game also has a story with player-choices, skill trees, loot, in-depth inventory management, and weapon, armor, and appearance customization for your party members. Everything fits well into a unique blend of RTS and RPG mechanics, where one moment you're focusing on resource management with your army, and the next you're engaging in banter between your companions as you traverse through lush forests or peaceful towns. See More

There is a tool in the game that allows one to "lasso" their units together into an army. By making an army the player can then control that army as they would one troop unit, meaning that all micromanagement for a large group of troops is unnecessary as the game will deal with it in a more intuitive an easy manner. This can be done with as little or as many troops as the player want, which overall makes for an easy way to control the game when in the heat of battle. See More

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Top Pro

Cool mechanic for controlling troops

Top Con

Lacking in options for factions and units

There are only two factions available in the game to play with, so makes for limited choice. On top of this each faction has only so many different units, which also shows a lack of choice. Combined, once the game has been experienced and both factions played with there will be little in surprise as to what the game has to offer. See More

Specs

Steam Rating:Mostly Positive

Top Pro

Pleasing graphics

The graphics stand out as polished and make for a really nice looking RTS. This is top of its class in graphics for an RTS in 2016. See More

Top Con

Demanding system requirements

The game requires a high end GPU as well as at-least a 4 core processor. This means the game is quite demanding and needs to take advantage of multi-cores in order to play smoothly at high graphical settings. So for those with a mid-range system, the game may play at lower frame-rates, which can be frustrating. See More

Top Pro

Focuses on positioning over micromanagement

The maps in this game are large, sometimes taking up as many as 20-30 zones in a single map. What this means is that the player will need to focus a lot more on position of their units over actually micromanaging every aspect of each unit (due to the vast size of maps and the amount of units on them). This allows for gameplay that has a broader scope in strategy, as it forces the player to plan out what is best to protect and the best position to hold of enemy attacks all while still trying to grow their army in order to overpower their enemy. See More

Top Con

Physics are unrealistic

Many of the units will pass right through each other, making for units that behave in an unrealistic way and can pull the player out of the immersion of the title. The units also all hover over the ground, which means they have no real weight to their actions, when combined with the unrealistic way they move makes for something that just does not looked polished. See More

Top Pro

Easily allows the player to utilize specific info on their enemies

At all times the player can vies on a mini map how much their enemy has expanded and into what areas. There is also a thing called player power rating, which allows the player to know on a point scale what their enemies military and economic power level is. Which means you can get a sense of what fields your enemy is expanding into. Combining these tools allows for a quick way to know where the enemy is expanding and into what fields of tech they are concentrating on. This way the player can adjust their strategy accordingly, making for an even deeper level of strategy overall. See More

Top Pro

Better framerate when ran in DX12

This game is DX12 compatible which allows for a higher frame rate over DX11. DX12 is only able to be taken advantage of on Windows 10, so that is something to consider, but for those that can take advantage, there is a slight gain to be had. See More

Top Pro

Good mix of gameplay modes for any skill level

The game features a single player story mode, a story mode called Ascendancy that will walk the player though how to play the game and multiplayer modes that are ranked as well as custom multiplayer modes. Through the assortment of modes the game allows for any type of player to find gameplay that they may like, whether they are a seasoned RTS player or a newcomer to the genre. Whether playing locally in single player or online with friends or random people, there should be plenty on offer for any skill level. See More

The campaign of Dawn of War 2 differs from other iterations in the series as, instead of base-building and steamrolling your foes with an overwhelming force, you are instead placed in charge of up to four hero units, leading them against the vast hordes of Ork, Eldar and Tyranids. During the campaign you will gain experience and thus allocate skill points into four different trees, with every fifth point in any tree giving your units new abilities and powers, as well as equipping your heroes with new weapons, armor and accessories, further increasing their deadliness in battle. See More

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Top Pro

Campaign Merges RTS and RPG

Top Con

No base building

Unlike in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War I, Dawn of War II does not allow base building. this was done to give the game a different feel but may be seen as a downside to some if that is what they are expecting or looking for. See More

Top Pro

Easier than other RTSs

For those looking for something a bit easier than a standard RTS, DoW II may fit the bill as there is less of a focus on strategy and the gameplay is a bit more streamlined. This makes for an ideal scenario where players looking to get into the genre find a game that they can easily understand how to play. See More

Top Con

Minimal Replayabilty

The game is very linear, not too many branching paths and all preset levels leading to nearly identical runs each time See More

The graphics look great and look to be designed with care, the music is well done as well. There are plenty of pop ups for tutorials as well, which when considering the overall design it shows that much time was taken to have a feeling of polish. See More

Grey Goo

Top Pro

Polished design

Top Con

4 players max

The game is limited to only four players simultaneously, when compared to other popular RTS games can be seen as a bit limiting. See More

Top Pro

Great map editor

Users can create their own maps with the custom map editor, which makes for a ton of longevity to the game as players can create their own maps to play on. See More

Top Con

No way to observe or replay a game

There is no replay feature in the game which means users will not be able to re-see action that happened in the game. See More

Top Pro

Accessible gameplay

Being that this is designed to be a traditional RTS game fans of the genre should find the game familiar and easily accessible. See More

Top Con

Region locked

This means that matchmaking can be a issue as there will not be able to be matches with different regions, meaning it may take longer to find matches since it will be done with a smaller pool of people. See More

Top Pro

Balanced asymmetric races

Each of the three races have their own powers and weaknesses, which makes for asymmetric gameplay thanks to how each is balanced. It is a bit of a rock, paper, scissors scenario as each one has power over the other in some way as well as a weakness, so when choosing a race the player has to keep in mind what they need to do in order to defeat the other races, which will be different from one another. See More

Top Pro

Clever AI

The AI in the game is programmed smartly as it will find a players weakness to then smartly use that to its advantage. It keeps the player on their toes and makes for challenging single player action. See More

Top Pro

Great soundtrack

The soundtrack features different music for each of the three available races. All of it is done well and feels as though it fits with each race making for a more immersive experience. See More

A game can last upwards of 4 hours for the medium/larger games. This can be a detriment for those that do not have the time to sit down and play a four hour game. See More

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Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Top Con

Very long games

Top Pro

Mods are awesome

This game has so many mods for so many different sci-fi fanbases, If you are a Star Wars fan, check out Sins of a Galactic Empire, if you are a Star Trek fan then there is no problem as they have that too in Star Trek Armada 3. Mods are also super easy to install and tutorials can be found online, playing a huge game with 5 friends against a merciless A.I. is superbly fun with mods installed. See More

Specs

Genre:RTS

Co-Op:Yes

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a strategy title on a massive scale, with players able to colonize multiple solar systems in any given match. Due in part to this scale, there is a perceived slowdown in gameplay; lengthy building construction, minutes-long research and slow unit movement. While the game, at its heart, does appear to be slow (and sometimes is), awareness of your surroundings is paramount. With fleets sometimes taking minutes to arrive at a destination, and defensive structures quickly falling to a massive fleet, it is easy for players to move out of position allowing key worlds to become targeted and lost in enemy incursions if they expand too quickly. However, not expanding quickly enough can halt the player from building up a fleet capable of taking on an enemy, or pirates head-on. In essence, you must learn to balance fleet needs, knowing the right time to expand, while keeping large groups of your ships scattered in key positions to await reinforcements should the need arise. See More

Top Con

Slow-paced logistics and combat necessitates situational awareness

Top Pro

Leisurely real time combat

The large scale of the game controlling fleets in may solar systems allows for a leisurely pace to play, which makes for worthwhile way of controlling ones ships across multiple places. This makes for less stress in the game due to how intuitive and evenly paced the game is. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve can deter casual players

While the game is one of the slower Real-Time Strategy titles, there is a huge learning curve that can wreak havoc on fledgling players. With some research required in order to colonize certain planets, researching use of larger fleet and capital ship sizes, to maintaining a thriving economic civilization, it will take many, many matches before players feel knowledgeable and skilled enough to play on larger maps or even against more difficult AI. With no true Single Player to speak of and little way of help in terms of tutorials, you must play in order to learn, sometimes using trial and error as a way of making progress. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful space visuals

Top Pro

Diplomacy used in a smart way

Different factions will send you quests that may effect your relationship with other factions meaning you will have to choose who best to make a friend or make an enemy when taking these missions. This bit of strategy can greatly change the outcome of a game depending on how well you have chosen who to help and who to possibly make angry. See More

Top Pro

Huge, gorgeous battles

Cranked all the way up, the graphics are simply divine. See More