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What are the best RTS games on PC for a complete beginner to the genre?

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Sep 5, 2018

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5 Games Considered

Best RTS games on PC for a complete beginner to the genre	Price	Steam Rating	Genre
-- Age of Empires II HD	$19.99	Very Positive	RTS
-- Starcraft	$14.99	-	RTS
-- Company of Heroes	$19.99	Very Positive	RTS
-- Total Annihilation	$4.99	Very Positive	-
-- Total War: Warhammer	$59.99	Mostly Positive	Turn-based Strategy

Age of Empires II HD

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Age of Empires II HD is an unsuccessful remaster due to its outdated graphics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

Specs

Steam Rating:Very Positive

Controller Support:No

Top Pro

Runs on very old computers

As this game is quite old, requiring only a 1.2GHZ processor and 1 Gigabyte of RAM, this title will run on older PC's and laptops alike without issue. See More

Top Con

A lack of proper User Interface scaling makes a clunky UI worse

While this is a remastered edition of a classic Real-Time Strategy title, the UI was left largely unchanged. Selecting workers still prompts you to click buttons to bring up both economic and military buildings, then choosing whichever building you wish to construct. This is uninteresting design and makes the UI difficult to navigate. On top of this, the game does not feature UI scaling. Since the game is bound to your current desktop display settings, the UI will adjust itself to match that resolution. This means if you play at 4K resolution the User Interface will be absurdly small, making it near impossible to see what buildings you wish to construct or what units you want to train. This is counter-intuitive design, for this era of modern gaming, and makes properly playing the game more of a hassle than it should ever be. See More

Top Pro

Easy to start, hard to master

It doesn't have a giant technology tree, but there is some variation of this tree by nations. Overall, it has simple rules that are easy to follow. It can be hard to master because of the impressive number of special troops and variety of maps. See More

Top Pro

Awesome ambiance with a great finish

While the graphics are slightly outdated, they were very well done for their time. And when combined with the history behind the game and its wonderful soundtrack, the game comes across as extremely polished. See More

Starcraft

Top Pro

Well balanced race selection keeps the gameplay fair

The game is fairly well balanced, so nobody gets an advantage by choosing a certain race. While each race will have their own unique abilities, the balancing of these abilities allows the game to play even handed, with no real advantage to any race. See More

Top Con

Lacks widescreen support

Starcraft is only available in a 4:3 resolution. However, a hack to make it work in widescreen can be found here. See More

Specs

Controller Support:No

Top Pro

Tons of personality that keeps the story and gameplay interesting and entertaining

There are three selectable races in the game, Terrans, Protoss and the Zerg. The Terrans being human, while the other two are alien races. What makes the game stand out is that each race feels exceptionally different from one another, each with their own personalities. This makes for a different experience depending on what race has been chosen to play with. See More

Top Con

Old and outdated

With the original release dating back to 1998, the game is quite old now and its graphics are not on par with current game offerings. See More

Top Pro

Built-in offline LAN support

Being an older game, Starcraft suports offline LAN due to not as many people having internet back when it was released. This is something that many games (including Starcraft 2) regrettably do not feature anymore. See More

Company of Heroes

Top Pro

A smart and challenging AI creates a lot of unpredictable gameplay

The AI in the game is actually quite smart in that they tend to be unpredictable enough to offer a good bit of challenge without making obvious bad choices. This keeps the game fresh, being that the games can be unpredictable. See More

Top Con

Difficult to tell teammates apart

There is no way to tell ones teammates apart, as they are all the same color. It would have been nice to see different color options for different players on the same team. See More

Specs

Steam Rating:Very Positive

Co-Op:4 Player Online / 4 Player Couch

Controller Support:No

Top Pro

Just about anyone can run the game as it an older title that can be easily ran on older PCs

Company of Heroes can run quite well on less powerful PCs as it is an older game with minimum specs that are considered quite low for todays standards. See More

Top Pro

Enjoyable co-op play for those not interested in the competitive gameplay of the normal player vs. player multiplayer

There is a co-op skirmish mode where players can work together in order to defeat an imposing force. This easily changes up the online gameplay since that is competition based, which may not always appeal to those that would rather work with their friends rather than compete against them. See More

Top Pro

Large online matches thanks to the 8 player multiplayer

Up to 8 players can play in one online game, making for very large matches. See More

Top Pro

Easily adjustble difficulties

In the settings of the game the player can change the difficulty settings which allow for any skill level player a method to enjoy the game without it being too difficult. See More

Total Annihilation

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Famous for its popularity

CaveDog Entertainment, the makers did an excellent job at making this classic game. See More

Specs

Steam Rating:Very Positive

Top Pro

Great game play

Total Annihilation has many maps, a story mode, and a enthusiastic community of modders. The forums are at: https://www.tauniverse.com See More

Top Pro

Streaming economy

Total Annihilation handles the resources in the game differently than most RTS games in that it is all accumulated at a steady pace. There is no break in the games earning of resources, it is a constant stream. See More

Top Pro

Released in 1997 for Windows 95/98 and MacOS

Although it was built for older operating systems, it works fine on Windows 10 and 7. Also, if you use WINE on Linux, you can install and run the game at decent speed. See More

Total War: Warhammer

Top Pro

Tons of replayability

Thanks to the different factions available in the game, the player has a lot of choice as to how they would like to play, which gives a lot of replayability. There are five different campaigns available (four in the game and one as DLC) that each has its own faction to control and set story, which will take quite a bit of time to each be experience to their complete endings. See More

Top Con

Only four factions are available in the base game

There are only four factions are available without DLCs (The Empire, Vampire Counts, Greenskins and Dwarfes). Other playable races and factions are currently being released periodically as DLCs. See More

Specs

Steam Rating:Mostly Positive

Genre:Turn-based Strategy

Top Pro

Gives players the ability to customize their generals and heroes

TW:W gives players the chance to customize the abilities of their chosen legendary lord, generals and even heroes through a detailed skill tree. Skills vary from individual character skills usable in battles (such as spells) to passive skills which influence army movement in the campaign map. See More

Top Con

Maps can feel constrained

Due to the compartmentalizing of factions and which land they can take over means that the games maps can feel smaller than they appear since only certain sections can be played on. See More

Top Pro

Large Upgrade Trees to customize factions

TW:W gives players the ability to customize each faction with unique upgrade trees that can change the way you approach the game. See More

Top Pro

Great setting

Being based around the Warhammer tabletop fantasy world allows for an in depth game with tons lore behind it. Fighting off vampires and zombies are just some of the things to be found in the game. See More

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