Our best overall pick is StarCraft II. This game is a faster-paced, real-time strategy game for PC. StarCraft II has a style similar to a rock-paper-scissors approach to combat and races. When playing fast-paced games, it is important to have one of the best gaming PCs to match with all of the best real-time strategy PC games in your collection. It boasts a single-player mode of over 70 missions with three different campaigns, an expanse of multiplayer content and community made arcade modes. StarCraft requires more time-sensitive strategically made decisions with a constant feeling of urgency. If you’re up for a challenge and faster-paced gameplay, StarCraft is the choice. Set in space, players take control of a species during the early stages of that race’s quest to explore space. Arguably, that’s the most fascinating part of any science fiction journey and it leads to plenty of potential from Stellaris. You can choose to manage an empire, engage in a plethora of warfare, or learn to pursue the diplomatic route and forge partnerships with other civilizations. There’s a certain amount of flexibility here with each route offering a different form of challenge. The game’s broken up mostly into three key areas - the early game of exploring and colonization, followed by governing, and finally, the ability to trigger galaxy-wide implications based on your actions. That means that Stellaris is always thrilling stuff. With seemingly endless choices available to you, this is something that will last hundreds of hours. There are four factions to choose from including Lizardmen, High Elves, Dark Elves, and Skaven. Each forms part of the narrative-driven campaign mode so there’s a compelling story to follow along in conjunction with the action. Combat is available in two different ways too. There’s the turn-based open-world campaign mode, as well as a real-time strategy option. In either case, planning many moves ahead is vital to your chances of success. You need to concentrate on army building and conquest, as well as resource gathering to stand a chance of surviving. That means plenty of multi-tasking and figuring out which objective to prioritize and when. Researching new technologies is just as important here as dominating through sheer force. Being able to discover new areas is a particular joy, invoking Age of Empires style memories. No longer do you have to focus on just having the biggest army. Elsewhere, there’s a multiplayer mode as well, so you can spend time competing with friends and other players online, with the promise of no two games being the same. If you previously owned the first Total War: Warhammer game, you can combine the two to gain access to a huge combined campaign called Mortal Empires which further extends the fun. For fans of the Warhammer universe, it’s a bit of an unmissable game that can easily last hundreds of hours. The key to success mostly comes down to resource gathering. The game has 13 different resources including materials such as water, aluminum, iron, silicon, carbon, as well as more complicated ideas such as Hydrolysis reactors which can break water apart into oxygen and fuel. How the resources work out for you depend on how the game plays out. As in other forms of business, supply and demand fluctuate constantly so it’s down to you to figure out when to buy and sell and how best to work your way up in the trading world. The underground black market also plays a part if you want to get your hands a little dirtier with the option to purchase things like underground nukes that can wipe out resources before your opponents reach them, or arrange mutinies to slow them down further. There’s a keen sense of real science and real economics here which makes Offworld Trading Company more distinctive than most. In particular, it’ll really grip those with an active interest in financial systems or business ethics. You have to keep an eye on a lot of things such as how best to develop your population, but also best to keep them happy. An unhappy population can lead to treachery and rebellion which anyone with a brief knowledge of history will know never leads to a good ending for the leader. Combat also plays a significant role here with each culture having a different way of waging wars, so your choice at the outset of which clan to use makes a big difference in the long term. Just to give you even more things to consider, you also need to manage the Senate and keep court together and well controlled. Plus, there’s the matter of investing in infrastructure and maintaining your resource bases. The game has over 7000 cities to discover, along with over 83 different regions so you’re definitely going to have plenty of time to sink into the world of Imperator: Rome. Real-world heroes like Liu Bei stand in for iconic figures from Western history for a massive, complex game with a campaign mode as fascinating and endlessly entertaining as its singular battles. With a setting that works well with the Total War brand and balanced mechanics to level it all out, it’s a remarkable showcase of not only developer talent but the massive potential for the genre as well. Even if you find the setting uninteresting, you might change your mind after a few rounds of battle. Similar to other great RTS titles, Halo Wars will tasks you with gathering resources, building units, and attacking the enemy defenses. The developers focused on creating a story focused campaign, by paying attention to every detail in the cut scenes to preserve the rich cross-media narrative the Halo games have built up for two decades now. Halo Wars is also the best RTS game on consoles because the first game was designed to be played with a controller. It removes some of the hassle more complicated games in the genre can have and makes the controls streamlined so you can play this RTS from your couch in comfort. This allows the multiplayer to feel just like the Halo shooters, which makes it all the more fun. In classic survival fashion, you’re dropped into the world as the leader of a modest group of survivors and refugees, none of whom seem particularly well-suited for the menial jobs you’ll have available at the start. No matter, because as you build out your settlement — which surrounds the lifeblood of your operations, a lone industrial generator — they’ll get stronger and smarter. They’ll even grow, with some of your inhabitants starting out as mere children. Some will also come in as escapees or refugees from neighboring colonies, and it’s up to you whether they stay. Your goal in Frostpunk is to build a new civilization from scratch in the freeze of winter with limited resources, giving orders to your people and enacting policies to make that happen. You’ll manage a delicate balance between growth and human resources, and if you’re not careful, you could end up with revolts, an exodus, and even deaths on your hands. Your classic RTS elements are alive and well here, especially in the single-player campaign where deploying firepower in strategic locations becomes your full-time job. The occasional red button press triggers epic abilities that unleash hellacious carnage on the battlefield, giving you a break from being a cunning military commander to watch the jaw-dropping action unfold. Take your talents online, and you’ll see influences from the MOBA genre seeping through every stage of the fight. Dawn of War III has the most impressive large-scale battles of the series by far. Three warring factions in the world of Acheron deploy their massive armies to wrestle control of the goods from the other guys, each with their own motives toeing the lines of devious and righteous. Figure out which side you’re on and see to it they win. For those new to Age of Empires, you start off as the leader of a fledgling civilization. Upon planting your flag in the soil of your desired land, you’ll begin toiling away to gather local resources to build housing, farms, aqueducts, walls, and royal service buildings, all to deliver your people to prosperity. That’ll be much easier said than done with competing civilizations eyeing your every move. That’s why building your army is your chief concern, because you’ll be fending off the envious who mean to separate you from your riches and seize your empire. Able to run on even the weakest of machines, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition comes with all expansions of old and new for a price tag that anyone can manage.
