Recommended RTSes *spawn*
- Thread starter Davros
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RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
RTS is a genre that I used to love back in the C&C days, but recently I haven't found a good review of a game that looked like I would like outside of some VR offerings (and I don't have VR).
green.pixel
Veteran
RacidLunchmeat, if you are interested, you have recent Northguard, an AoEish game based on North mythology, and last year's HW: Deserts of Kharak from the original HW devs.
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RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
Thanks, they both look rather interesting. Kharak looks like a much larger scale game than Northguard, but I might try Northguard first as a $20 early access title.
What are your thoughts on them, Pixel?
green.pixel
Veteran
Haven't played them though apart from couple of hours of DoK at the friend's pc, it was buggy and hardware demanding at that time last year at lunch due to the Unity engine used, don't now if the situation has improved in the meantime. If you are a fan of the original game, you could check it out. I've been out of gaming for quite some time and probably won't be coming back soon, outside of following news sporadically.
There's also a remaster of 98's Battlezone - http://store.steampowered.com/app/301650/
There's also a remaster of 98's Battlezone - http://store.steampowered.com/app/301650/
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D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
The age of consolitis and always-online DRM (2006~2013?) seems to have blasted the PC RTS genre into oblivion and only recently have some devs decided to pick up the pieces and do something about it.
A rather recent entry is Grey Goo, by some former Westwood devs after EA crippled the Command and Conquer franchise to death. It's a good game but the learning curve isn't very friendly to be honest.
A very obvious pick would be StarCraft II of course. The three episodes should give you a quite large story-driven campaign. As long as you're okay with the always-online DRM that is present on all Blizzard PC games.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak seems nice, but it's from Gearbox and I'm probably never giving them my money again, ever.
Then there's the Stardock games: Ashes of the Singularity from Oxide and Servo from former Age of Empires devs.Servo is actually on early access right now (EDIT: turns out Stardock bailed and development for Servo was terminated..), but I'd wait for the full game to come out.
A rather recent entry is Grey Goo, by some former Westwood devs after EA crippled the Command and Conquer franchise to death. It's a good game but the learning curve isn't very friendly to be honest.
A very obvious pick would be StarCraft II of course. The three episodes should give you a quite large story-driven campaign. As long as you're okay with the always-online DRM that is present on all Blizzard PC games.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak seems nice, but it's from Gearbox and I'm probably never giving them my money again, ever.
Then there's the Stardock games: Ashes of the Singularity from Oxide and Servo from former Age of Empires devs.
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Starcraft always comes to mind as well as Warcraft.
I enjoy both War3 and SC2. SC1 might be a little too uhhh old? Such that the modern UI comforts are missing entirely.
C&C was alright generally speaking. It's always had problems with performance the longer the game goes on, things just keep slowing down. Really weird.
I always had a great time with Dune 2.
that was my gateway game into RTS
I enjoy both War3 and SC2. SC1 might be a little too uhhh old? Such that the modern UI comforts are missing entirely.
C&C was alright generally speaking. It's always had problems with performance the longer the game goes on, things just keep slowing down. Really weird.
I always had a great time with Dune 2.
that was my gateway game into RTSI just bought Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak but haven't play it yet. I'm curious as to whether it's as puzzley as the space game. And if it has that damned auto-balancing nonsense.
Supreme Commander Forged Alliance is my mainstay and has been forever now. I play fairly often with a friend. We like to play against the Sorian AI. The horrific battles make even a modern system choke at times hehe. Look up Forged Alliance Forever.
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. It essentially plays like a form of Sins of a Solar Empire. It's fairly unique I suppose with how its "land fleets" work. Stardock keeps investing into improvements for the game too.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion anniversary edition is apparently coming soon. SoaSE is basically a 4X space game gone RTS. Simplified diplomacy and research, huge fleets. Different ways to approach. Loved the giant space station and dreadnought expansions.
Defense Grid 1 and 2 are my favorite tower defense games by a mile. Especially the original game. Good DLC.
World in Conflict tells a cool alternate reality story, has nice graphics, and plays in an interesting way.
I have Grey Goo but I haven't played it much. It reminds me of StarCraft.
Planetary Annihilation. Plays something like Total Annihilation but with mini-planets and colorful cartoony graphics. meh
Supreme Commander Forged Alliance is my mainstay and has been forever now. I play fairly often with a friend. We like to play against the Sorian AI. The horrific battles make even a modern system choke at times hehe. Look up Forged Alliance Forever.
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. It essentially plays like a form of Sins of a Solar Empire. It's fairly unique I suppose with how its "land fleets" work. Stardock keeps investing into improvements for the game too.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion anniversary edition is apparently coming soon. SoaSE is basically a 4X space game gone RTS. Simplified diplomacy and research, huge fleets. Different ways to approach. Loved the giant space station and dreadnought expansions.
Defense Grid 1 and 2 are my favorite tower defense games by a mile. Especially the original game. Good DLC.
World in Conflict tells a cool alternate reality story, has nice graphics, and plays in an interesting way.
I have Grey Goo but I haven't played it much. It reminds me of StarCraft.
Planetary Annihilation. Plays something like Total Annihilation but with mini-planets and colorful cartoony graphics. meh
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
The 8-bit armies series of RTS games from Petroglyph (many former members of the original Westwood studios that made the old C&C games) are pretty nice for a relatively simple RTS (compared to StarCraft 2). They're also really cheap, even more so when Steam is having one of their big sales.
Grey Goo from the same company is pretty decent as well with one faction being a pretty unique take on an army.
Act of War series from Eugen Systems (Act of Aggression and Wargames developer) is supposed to be pretty good and is really cheap. Studio has some veterans from C&C: Generals (pretty specific, but C&C: Generals was my favorite C&C game). I haven't tried any of their games, however.
Most of the good/decent RTS games have been mentioned here. There's been quite a few indie attempts at RTS with some being better than others. But most of them are pretty bad.
Regards,
SB
Grey Goo from the same company is pretty decent as well with one faction being a pretty unique take on an army.
Act of War series from Eugen Systems (Act of Aggression and Wargames developer) is supposed to be pretty good and is really cheap. Studio has some veterans from C&C: Generals (pretty specific, but C&C: Generals was my favorite C&C game). I haven't tried any of their games, however.
Most of the good/decent RTS games have been mentioned here. There's been quite a few indie attempts at RTS with some being better than others. But most of them are pretty bad.
Regards,
SB
hoom
Veteran
Once I got to understand Total Annihilation I could never really enjoy the CnC/Starcraft type RTSes anymore.
So Supreme Commander, Forged Alliance standalone is supposedly the best but I never managed to get into it, Supreme Commander 2 can be skipped, sad because it had some great improvements but terribly out of scale tiny maps due to consolitis or something.
Planetary Annihilation (same TA/SupCom engine guy, Sorian for AI) is pretty fun, some nice additions to GUI but some steps back (can't reposition queued things), got savaged by reviews mainly because the AI was too hard (yes good AI is a bad thing! AI got scaled way back since, so Easy is actually pretty easy), standalone Titans seems to have sold pretty bad but helps round out the unit rosters.
Apparently there is a Starcraft1 remastered coming, presumably via SC2 engine? I never played SC2, but do enjoy watching ESL games via Youtube.
One of my very favourites but sold poorly & largely ignored is Conquest: Frontier Wars. (available on GoG for a long time but only sort of works on modern systems, apparently now on Steam too)
Was generally (and in many ways not unreasonably) written off as a cheap '3D Starcraft in space' rip-off but actually did a bunch of really neat stuff, especially the Supply system, Fleet Admirals, base building in orbits around planets, multi-system maps.
Another great but largely ignored one is R.U.S.E. by Eugen before they changed to Wargame series, really interesting take on WWII RTS, with really nice & actually practical zoom in to realistic scale, out to war room map table with tokens.
So Supreme Commander, Forged Alliance standalone is supposedly the best but I never managed to get into it, Supreme Commander 2 can be skipped, sad because it had some great improvements but terribly out of scale tiny maps due to consolitis or something.
Planetary Annihilation (same TA/SupCom engine guy, Sorian for AI) is pretty fun, some nice additions to GUI but some steps back (can't reposition queued things), got savaged by reviews mainly because the AI was too hard (yes good AI is a bad thing! AI got scaled way back since, so Easy is actually pretty easy), standalone Titans seems to have sold pretty bad but helps round out the unit rosters.
Apparently there is a Starcraft1 remastered coming, presumably via SC2 engine? I never played SC2, but do enjoy watching ESL games via Youtube.
One of my very favourites but sold poorly & largely ignored is Conquest: Frontier Wars. (available on GoG for a long time but only sort of works on modern systems, apparently now on Steam too)
Was generally (and in many ways not unreasonably) written off as a cheap '3D Starcraft in space' rip-off but actually did a bunch of really neat stuff, especially the Supply system, Fleet Admirals, base building in orbits around planets, multi-system maps.
Another great but largely ignored one is R.U.S.E. by Eugen before they changed to Wargame series, really interesting take on WWII RTS, with really nice & actually practical zoom in to realistic scale, out to war room map table with tokens.
Can't you play it offline now?
Silent_Buddha
Legend
There's already a fan made "remaster" of StarCraft in the SC2 engine. It's available in the SC2 arcade for free. It's actually pretty good and faithful to the original.
An official remaster would be fantastic, however, as it'd then have that Blizzard polish. The fan made one while really quite good can be a little rough around the edges, and you can tell it's obviously a fan made mod.
My mind would be blown if they released a remastered Warcraft battlechest featuring the entire Warcraft RTS series in a new 3D engine with modern (SC2 style) controls and improved AI. If anyone has the time to go and re-play the original Warcraft, it's fun to compare just how much Blizzard has improved its RTS controls and AI over the years.
Regards,
SB
hoom
Veteran
Really really wish other RTSes would use supply something like that, from recollection the Wargame series do something similar.
I do have Sins, never quite got into it. Partly because of all the stand-alone addons that I never got round to buying. Don't remember it feeling particularly similar to C:FW but now you mention it I can see that. *trying to remember on what platform/media I actually have it*
Edit: found in GameStop App which I actually only got around to getting to work again a couple of weeks ago
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
You're right, turns out nowadays you can sign in to battle.net just once and then you can play the campaign completely offline.
The always-online DRM at launch was so off-putting to me that I simply never looked at the series again.
I might keep an eye on G2A or similar for a cheap key to a pack with the 3 episodes. There's probably a lot of campaign hours there.
Doing shameless remakes of the Warcraft series (same story and dialogues, same objectives on each level, same units with same stats and abilities, etc.) would most probably be very successful. Except for the mandatory blizzard FMVs, it would probably come out pretty cheap to make.
But a Warcraft 4 would be even better, probably.
I loved the battlestation and dreadnought addon for SoASE. I tend to just ignore the diplomacy aspect. But the thought of winning through dissent via the cultural broadcast stations is tempting heh.Really really wish other RTSes would use supply something like that, from recollection the Wargame series do something similar.
I do have Sins, never quite got into it. Partly because of all the stand-alone addons that I never got round to buying. Don't remember it feeling particularly similar to C:FW but now you mention it I can see that. *trying to remember on what platform/media I actually have it*
Edit: found in GameStop App which I actually only got around to getting to work again a couple of weeks ago
I'm curious what the anniversary edition will have going on.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
If we're going for slightly older RTS games then people shouldn't forget to include some of my favorite RTS games.
Company of Heroes 1 and 2. Features squad based "units" and control of resource points versus resource harvesting. CoH 2 is still alive in eSports, albeit far less so than SC2.
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. COH but in the Warhammer 40k universe.
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2. Removes the basebuilding and focuses on squad tactics while adding an RPG element.
I've spent way too much time in those games. I can't wait for Warhammer 40k: DOW3.
Going much older, Age of Empires series (I really wish Age of Empires online hadn't ceased operations) and Age of Mythology. Rise of Nations. There was a really good one that I can't remember the name of where you created your army units by mixing the genes of 2 different animals. Empire Earth series. You can get re-mastered versions of some of these on Steam.
There's also a lot of 2D era RTS games that were really good that I can't remember the names of. One of which influenced Relic's decision to go with squad based units. It was really good but I can't for the life of me remember the name of it.
There were also a few space oriented series not named Homeworld that were pretty good. I can't remember the names of most of them. The only one that I can remember is Star Trek Armada.
It's a shame that RTS isn't as alive as it used to be WRT to development, but it's not surprising. It was always a niche genre, and when most PC developers and especially publishers moved to console development, RTS games were easy to cut since they don't translate to console controls well.
Thankfully we do still have some good companies delivering PC exclusive RTS games, albeit at a slower pace.
Regards,
SB
Company of Heroes 1 and 2. Features squad based "units" and control of resource points versus resource harvesting. CoH 2 is still alive in eSports, albeit far less so than SC2.
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. COH but in the Warhammer 40k universe.
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2. Removes the basebuilding and focuses on squad tactics while adding an RPG element.
I've spent way too much time in those games. I can't wait for Warhammer 40k: DOW3.
Going much older, Age of Empires series (I really wish Age of Empires online hadn't ceased operations) and Age of Mythology. Rise of Nations. There was a really good one that I can't remember the name of where you created your army units by mixing the genes of 2 different animals. Empire Earth series. You can get re-mastered versions of some of these on Steam.
There's also a lot of 2D era RTS games that were really good that I can't remember the names of. One of which influenced Relic's decision to go with squad based units. It was really good but I can't for the life of me remember the name of it.
There were also a few space oriented series not named Homeworld that were pretty good. I can't remember the names of most of them. The only one that I can remember is Star Trek Armada.
It's a shame that RTS isn't as alive as it used to be WRT to development, but it's not surprising. It was always a niche genre, and when most PC developers and especially publishers moved to console development, RTS games were easy to cut since they don't translate to console controls well.
Thankfully we do still have some good companies delivering PC exclusive RTS games, albeit at a slower pace.
Regards,
SB
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
IMHO, Red Alert 3 and C&C3 Tiberium Wars represent the pinnacle of the RTS "golden age". There was also Age of Empires III getting decent expansions at that time which was really cool.
After these titles released (almost 10 years ago, sheesh...) Microsoft forced Ensemble to make a console RTS and then closed the studio, and then dropped the franchise after a failed Free2Play attempt.
Then EA forced their LA studio to make C&C4 an always-online titlebecause muh piracy monies for multiplayer enthusiasts, and then dropped the whole franchise after a failed Free2Play attempt.
I tried it, I tried to like it for some 10 hours or more, but login problems aside the campaign was just a shallow and very tedious walkthrough to get people to do PvP matches and/or pay for upgraded units.
I think after those 10 hours I still only had clubmen for melee and slingshot dudes for ranged.
After these titles released (almost 10 years ago, sheesh...) Microsoft forced Ensemble to make a console RTS and then closed the studio, and then dropped the franchise after a failed Free2Play attempt.
Then EA forced their LA studio to make C&C4 an always-online title
I don't get how you liked that game. My experience with Age of Empires Online was really horrible.
I tried it, I tried to like it for some 10 hours or more, but login problems aside the campaign was just a shallow and very tedious walkthrough to get people to do PvP matches and/or pay for upgraded units.
I think after those 10 hours I still only had clubmen for melee and slingshot dudes for ranged.
I too love Supreme Commander:FA and can't believe there hasn't been a 'proper' sequal to it. I was on the FAF website the other week and noticed someone had just released a new AI for FA. The LOUD AI, and it's very good compared with the Sorian AI, worth a look. I'm waiting for a get together with friends/ brothers to test it properly over a LAN, but it is good on Skirmish.
I had high hopes for PA, but is doesn't have the fun factor or the satisfaction of SC, even with the Titans add-on. I keep trying to persevere but I really need my brothers/ friends to do so also, and that is the harder task, mostly down to the utterly stupid spawn points for LAN team games if you are playing on a single planet
As for AotS:E, that is what we're playing at the moment, I quite like it but it all seems a bit contrived with the 'path ways' and the shroud that even hides the lay of the land.
