Games have always been associated with action, being seen as mindless, fast-paced fun from the arcade days until now. This doesn’t help with most games that are about fighting which naturally have to be fast paced or at least require a lot of quick thinking.
Enter tactical strategy games. Role-playing role-playing games of war and battle, these replace that rush of speed for a more strategic and intellectually challenging experience as you manage anywhere from a team of heroes to an entire battlefield. There is a lot of variety in this somewhat specialized genre.
10 blood vessel
Tactics games are very similar in design compared to other genres, and they usually always focus on war, whether modern or ancient. But sometimes you have a game that really breaks into new territories like… soccer? Blood Bowl is a Warhammer spin-off that sees you choose a team to reenact the Blood Bowl, a gruesome and violent version of American football.
While it looks like a sports game with a silly theme, Blood Bowl is actually a deep strategy game with some unique mechanics. The game works like any other soccer game where you have to retrieve the ball and score with it, but more strategy is added due to the ability to take out other team members to clear the path and strategize around that side of your players. And the game always remains exciting because everything is on the dice and you have to make the best out of the situation. It’s weird but it’s hard not to love it.
9 Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle
Remember how we said that outlandish ideas can still make for excellent tactical games? Well, that sentiment goes up to 11 when it comes to Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Mario + Rabbids sees Mario and his friends invade their world and merge with the Rabbids, causing chaos that forces them to team up with alien Rabbid versions of themselves to stop it.
Despite its weirdness, Mario + Rabbids works as an excellent first tactic game as its mechanics are easy to understand, while still offering a great deal of depth. Character choices give plenty of room for different strategies, and the levels are designed as excellent little puzzles. Additionally, the game makes up for any aspects it lacks in its massive amount of charm. Although weird, it’s a great time all the way through.
8 FTL: Faster Than Light
The only thing that can make tactical strategy games difficult is how long they can run sometimes, either they are long matches or very long campaigns, but FTL: Faster than Light gives a small taste of the strategy experience. FTL sees you in control of a ship and its crew as you have to outrun the enemy fleet in order to save the federation, pick up materials and weapons to prepare for your last stand.
FTL gives you long term strategy as you collect materials and customize your ship build and many bite sized battles that usually only last a minute, yet everything manages to feel like a special little puzzle. FTL playback usually lasts about an hour. The game makes up for this by making the game absolutely brutal while having to manage poor resources and each ship being a fight to the death. Finally, getting to the end is quite the challenge.
7 advanced wars
Strategy games are usually hard to get into because they bombard the player with complexity and too many numbers; It can be difficult to find an easy starting place. Fortunately, the Advance Wars series is a great classic to start with. Advance Wars sees you take charge as a commanding officer in a sudden global conflict, and have to take control of the battlefield.
Whereas other strategy games have complex stats for units, terrain, and objectives, Advance Wars keeps things very simple with small numbers and an easy-to-understand troop size system, along with each mission having a capture objective. But, that simplicity yields complexity once the player understands it, considering troop movement, finance, and terrain types — all things that need to be done for a great mental test of battle.
6 civilization
On the exact opposite end of the spectrum, some gamers love the sheer complexity and long-term strategy of these games. For them, civilization will always be king. Sid Meier’s Civilization sees the player controlling a historical civilization from its origin, progressing into the modern era with hopes of taking over the entire world by the end.
Civilization is complexity embodied, with many resources to track down and many potential strategies. Players will have to balance managing resources, economics, diplomacy, expansion, and warfare at the same time to survive on the global stage. But with that complexity, the game is able to offer players so much freedom in how they build and manage their civilization that it’s hard not to love it once you learn it.
5 in breach
Sometimes simplicity is the key to strategy; Too many choices, and you can find yourself unable to make an intelligent decision, but a few leave you to consider carefully – that’s the thing Into The Breach understands. Into The Breach sees you command a group of giant mech pilots and mechs as you travel through time again and again, on a quest to save humanity from an invasion of giant monsters.
Into The Breach is incredibly simple in its combat, with small grid arenas and each mechanic incredibly specialized with only a few things to do, same goes for enemies. But the game balances this simplicity with sheer brutality. The battles are hard, and trying to save both pilots and civilian buildings at the same time while completing the objective is very difficult. It’s a beat-you-down game, so every victory feels pretty cool.
4 wildsmith
While some games try to focus only on the most strategic of combat, others leave the focus on other, more simple aspects like the Wildermyth stories. Wildermyth is a game that sees you controlling a team of adventurers on a D&D adventure, watching them grow and experience their randomly generated stories as the years go by.
The genius of Wildermyth is those stories as choices and small events give the player enough information about these characters that their minds race to fill in the blanks to make them much richer and more detailed than they really are. It offers unforgettable experiences more than compensates for the somewhat simpler and not-so-strategic gameplay.
3 Banner Saga
If you want a strategy game with a deep, rich fantasy story that still has deep and complex strategy mechanics and better combat, The Banner Saga is the perfect match. Set in the world of Norse myth, The Banner Saga sees you herding a caravan of people as they have to flee a world-ending threat known as the Dredge.
The Banner Saga is a deeply strategic experience in many ways, with intense combat that requires real strategies. It also offers a unique system of armor and health that will have you slowly slashing at armored enemies and trying to stay safe; The lower your health, the worse you will perform in combat. It makes for really thoughtful combat, and when you throw in a story that offers you plenty of challenging choices and engaging characters, you’ve got a classic story on your hands.
2 Fire Emblem Series
While most strategy games seem to flip between a heavy focus on gameplay and more focus on a good story, few try to combine the two as well as Fire Emblem. The Fire Emblem Series is a tactical RPG series that sees you step into a different fantasy story where you have to control a team to do the whole battle while experiencing a traditional RPG story.
Fire Emblem is a series beloved for how it merges story and strategic combat by making the people you put into combat to be the characters you know. What happens in battle will affect them in the story, even allowing them to die permanently. Between the simple yet very tense strategic gameplay and the engaging storyline, Fire Emblem is the perfect combination.
Strategy games have seen somewhat of a resurgence in recent years, finally breaking into the mainstream with the help of the success of one series: XCOM. The XCOM series sees you command a small squadron of soldiers trying to defend against an alien threat, fighting tough battles where your men can die for good.
While XCOM doesn’t do anything very innovative with the genre, its basics are polished to shine with interesting mission objectives that change the way you think, plenty of alien types to strategize around, and a wealth of options with upgrades to play how you want to play. XCOM also offers a very challenging experience for those who want it, without taking turns and showing death to your soldiers.
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