StarCraft is arguably the best competitive game of all time, surpassing every other game in mainstream popularity. The game is so popular that it's frequently shown on TV throughout South Korea. War for the Overworld is an RTS god game where players command a dungeon. It was inspired by games like Dungeon Keeper, Overlord, StarCraft and Evil Genius. Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth October 24, 2014.
Best RTS GamesSeptember 2016 Update: We've added even more games to this list with the latest from 2016.
Since the mid-90s, real-time strategy games have become a videogame staple, particularly on the PC due to the mouse and keyboard controls which allow players to point at units, drag their mouse across the screen, and select the armies they'll use to attack other units.
The games belong to the domain of PC gamers, giving the PC platform an edge against their counterparts well beyond just having better superior hardware.
Regardless of the genre's love affair with the PC, the decades have been kind to the genre, offering gamers with everything from ultra-competitive titles like Starcraft to more toned-down real-time strategy games like Gene Wars (which isn't on this list, because it kind of sucked) and even casual titles like The Baldies and Nintendo's Pikmin series of games. Even the Nintendo DS played host to several RTS games, including a Final Fantasy title.
Regardless, you'll find none of those mediocre titles here, as we're only interested in writing about the best of the best in the RTS genre. Expect to find some fan favorites and more than a few games that flew under everyone's radar. We're including them here because that's where they belong.
We've decided to catalogue the 20 best real-time strategy games of all time in the following pages. These date back from way before RTS became a popular genre, to the most up-to-date titles. [Art by Longiy] Click on the next slide to begin!
2016 Addition: 8-bit ArmiesFrom the makers of Command & Conquer comes this Minecraft-looking game that pits polygonal tanks and vehicles against one another. It's minimalist, but it's a great RTS experience that takes the whole real-time strategy thing way back to its roots. It doesn't have a story, but you'll be so caught up in the gameplay that you won't even think about it.
2016 Addition: Ashes of the SingularityThis 2016 release reinvigorates the RTS genre with all the gameplay and UI aspects that one can come to expect from a modern game. It's basically a new take on sci-fi classics like Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, and it delivers this sort of mass, macro RTS gameplay in spades. Players choose from two distinct factions and wage war over large swaths of ground to control the map.
Ashes of the Singularity is real-time strategy on a grand scale, with large-scale battles taking place across enormous tracts of land. Players build gigantic bases and control hundreds of units and send them to war against each other. It's like everything 8-year-old me imagined while playing with toy soldiers.
2016 Addition: Homeworld: Deserts of KharakHomeworld: Deserts of Kharak is the prequel that takes place in the events leading up to Homeworld. A planet is dying, and its inhabitants' only salvation is a mysterious and ancient derelict spaceship found in the desert. In this prequel to the interstellar series of space strategy games, you take on the role of the scientist leading an expedition into the harsh and unforgiving deserts of Kharak to recover an ancient artifact that will come to be the salvation of your people.
2015 Addition: Grey GooDeveloped by Petroglyph, the makers of Command & Conquer, Grey Goo is a return to form. In the game, players fight for survival on a planetary oasis by commanding one of three factions: the defense-oriented Humans, the versatile Beta, or the all consuming Goo. The game caters to a myriad of play styles, including the ability to turtle, by offering players the ability to construct impenetrable walls, dominate from strategic outposts—or become the Goo and overrun your enemies.
2015 Addition: Total War: AttilaSet during the Dark Ages against a background of famine, disease, and war, a new power of steppe warriors rises in the East that threatens to overrun the fallen kingdoms of the classical world. The warrior king approaches, and he has his sights set on conquering Rome.
2015 Addition: Planetary AnnihilationPlanetary Annihilation can be best described as the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation. Within the game, players can colonize solar systems, lay waste to entire planets, and crush their foes in epic battles with multiple players and thousands of units in the field. The game is made even bigger with the release of the Titans expansion pack.
Late Addition: Company of Heroes 2Company of Heroes 2 is the sequel to the World War II RTS that made headlines years ago. It features a huge single-player campaign, cooperative play and a host of standalone expansions allowing players to go head to head in cooperative online mode.
Late Addition: StarCraft IIStarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and its two expansion packs is the trilogy sequel to the multiple award-winning StarCraft and its own expansion StarCraft: Brood War. The graphics are beautiful and the strategies are more complex than ever before.
20. Dune 2Dune 2: Battle for Arrakis is the game that started it all. Developed by Westwood Studios, and set in Frank Herbert's fantastic Dune series of novels, players took control of one of the great houses: Atreides, Harkonnen, or Ordos—the last of which was invented by the game developers and not original to the series.
As the patron of your house, you commanded armies to march across the face of Arrakis to conquer the flow of spice—for he who controls the spice, controls the universe.
Although simplistic by today's standards of RTS, Dune 2 was the first of its kind and established Westwood Studios as an RTS developer.
19. Warzone 2100Warzone 2100 was set in the aftermath of a technological apocalypse that left humanity in tatters . You play one of the remaining human factions who attempts to reunite the survivors and bring peace to the wasteland, and discover the cause of the apocalypse.
The little known game wasn't a typical RTS. Although it played very much like every other RTS on the market at the time, it contained a persistent single-player campaign that allowed you to salvage the technology of enemy units to incorporate into your own armies and use as an edge against enemies.
18. Ground ControlGround Control is one of the earliest RTS games that put players in control of a set amount of units in each mission instead of getting players to construct buildings or worry about build queues.
Instead, you were given a set of units in each mission that you had to use to properly defeat your enemies without taking too many losses, as losing your dudes early on severely handicapped you later in the mission. The game was very much a tactical challenge.
17. World in ConflictWhat Ground Control started, World in Conflict perfected. Set in a scenario in which the Cold War became very much a Hot War, seeing both Europe and America invaded by the Soviets, World in Conflict puts players in the role of an American commander who must take charge of the remnants of the US army and drive back the Soviet invaders–first by activating the nuclear arsenal and then through ground-pounding force.
Like Ground Control, also made by Massive Entertainment, World in Conflict sees players take charge of a small company of units and exercise tactical superiority instead of worrying about build orders and the like. It's a game that very much puts you on the front lines.
16. Command & Conquer 2: Tiberian SunTiberian Sun was the long-awaited sequel to the first Command & Conquer, and one of the first games to use voxel graphics ahead of 2D sprites, or even 3D polygons. The game's use of voxels gave it an impressively unique aesthetic that lent a ton of charm to the game as a whole.
Like the first game, the game offered two campaigns split between separate discs that put you in command of the Brotherhood of Nod or the GDI. It was one of the first games to make heavy use of the environment by allowing your soldiers to become poisoned, and even mutated by Tiberium fields. Ice and destructible terrain also played a role in the game, by allowing you to knock out bridges to close off approaches or funnel the enemy units towards a killzone.
15. Supreme CommanderSupreme Commander is the spiritual sequel to Total Annihilation. It offers ultra large maps and equally huge robotic armies that march across the battlefield. The game allows you to get down and dirty by zooming close into your units or a strategic overview that sees you controlling icons that represent your units from way above.
Playable across multiple monitors, the game offers a sense of scale missing from almost every other real-time strategy game as you send hundreds of units to battle countless others—all of whom are dwarfed by some super gigantic units that walk across the battlefield like titans.
14. Shogun 2: Total WarShogun 2: Total War revisits the setting from which the first Total War originated—Japan. Like the original game, you take charge of a Daimyo pursuing the position of Shogun—or overlord of Japan.
Throughout the game, you're tasked with managing your cities and your territory while commanding your army into battle against enemy samurai and their peasant followers. Depending on which territory you start in, you will possess a multitude of strengths, as well as weaknesses to contend with. Conquering territories will gain you access to more units, wealth, and better technology to use against your opponents.
13. Command & Conquer: Red AlertGames Like Warcraft 3
Red Alert is the not-quite-sequel to Command & Conquer. Why, it isn't even set in the same universe. Instead, we're presented with a Cold War-themed world in which Hitler never rose to power because Einstein, in all his intelligence, decided to shake hands with the dictator before he rose to power and extinguish him from history. His actions had irreversible consequences that caused the Soviets to rise to power instead of being diminished and set back by the Germans during the Second World War.
Predictably, the Soviets construct a war machine larger than anything Hitler could've envisioned and stage the invasion of Europe.
Like the original Command & Conquer, the game's campaign is split across two discs and allows you to tell two versions of the story based on which army you decide to command.
12. Rise of NationsThe success of Age of Empires 2 gave rise to many copycats, but Rise of Nations stood above the rest by actually being its own thing instead of copying Age of Empires feature by feature.
The game offered a persistent campaign that enabled your conquest of the world turn by turn. Every decision you made counted towards (or against) your absolute victory as you rose through the ages from prehistory to the modern age.
Android Games Like Starcraft
11. Medieval: Total WarMedieval: Total War is arguably the best game in the long-running series of war games by Creative Assembly. You play the role of a monarch of one of the many kingdoms that ruled during the middle ages, and it's your task to expand your kingdom and conquer the known world by establishing a dominion larger than any other in history.
Throughout the game, you'll research technology to aid you in your conquests and take command of armies of thousands of soldiers to pillage your opponents' kingdoms and decimate their armies—all the while attempting to keep the peace with Rome, so they don't dispatch an army after you.
10. Dungeon KeeperDungeon Keeper is one of Peter Molyneux's last great games, and one that defined his career as a kickass game developer. The game puts you in the role of a Dungeon Keeper—an overlord, a boss, and fascist king dictator of a monster-filled dungeon.
With the help of your monsters, you must expand your dungeon by digging through the earth, uncovering treasure and mining for gold, and making it a desirable place to live for your evil minions. Having a successful dungeon also makes it an enticing target for the goodly terrestrial heroes who want nothing more than to claim a slice of your treasure and extinguish the beating heart of your dungeon. To that end, you have to construct elaborate traps and hire minions capable of falling even the mightiest knights—or better yet, turning them to your cause.
9. HomeworldOne of the most epic stories ever told in the history of games, Homeworld is also the first of its kind—a space RTS which takes place in three dimensions, as opposed to a two dimensional plane. The game tells the story about a race of humans in the far-flung future who discover a buried alien spaceship in the desert of their planet—a relic of their distant, spacefaring past. In their wisdom, they decide to get off their rock and find their way back home by following interstellar markers left by their ancestors.
As their home planet is destroyed by a race of other hostile aliens, they have little choice but to proceed on their voyage. They must elude hostiles, make contact with benevolent alien races, and uncover the secrets of their heritage on the way home.
8. Myth: The Fallen LordsMyth: The Fallen Lords is a little known game by Bungie (yes, the same Bungie that made Halo) that puts players in control of a commander of a unit not unlike the Black Company in the eponymous series of books by Glen Cook. Like other Bungie titles, it's very heavy on story.
The game features highly detailed 2D sprites within a three dimensional environment, which allows you to deform the terrain with explosives, bounce or roll grenades off hills, or even blow up your own units by accident if they stand in the way of the throw.
7. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2It'd be an injustice to Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 to describe it as Company of Heroes with a Warhammer 40K skin. Cheap pc to play minecraft. We understand that such claims would be made given that they're both from the same developer, but in fact, there are so many element unique to the game that it's a completely different game with a strong set of strengths to set it apart from its WW2-themed predecessor.
Much of the focus in Dawn of War, like Company of Heroes, is on the command of small groups of units instead of build orders and rock-paper-scissors style gameplay. Each unit can be lead by a sergeant or a commander who attaches himself to the unit, earning experience points and even items to bolster his strengths. Buy minecraft pc free.
In the single player campaign, the player takes charge of a set group of heroes who must drive back the alien forces and undertake missions in a persistent campaign that takes both wins and losses into account as you play through the game.
Multiplayer is an entirely different beast, allowing players to play as one of the many alien races in addition to the Space Marines. There's even a horde mode of sorts that allows you to level up your character as you—along with other heroes—fend off waves of enemies.
6. Age of Empires II: The Age of KingsAge of Empires II is the widely acclaimed sequel to the first Age of Empires and is set in medieval Europe. It contained several campaigns which saw players liberating France as Jeanne d'Arc, the rise of Frederick Barbarossa, and the conquests of Ghenghis Khan across Europe and the Middle East. It also had a fantastic multiplayer mode that gave rise to the meme 'wololo.'
5. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty + Heart of the SwarmWings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm take place after the events of the first Starcraft. Starcraft II is the sequel to the game many regard as one of the best real-time strategy games of all time. Building upon Starcraft II is its expansion pack, Heart of the Swarm, which sees the addition of many new gameplay mechanics and makes Starcraft II, which we originally left off this list, deserving of its position on this list.
4. Warcraft 3: Reign of ChaosAs the third title in Warcraft and sequel to the massively popular Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 had huge shoes to fill, and they did so by including an actual narrative that put to shame just about every other previous RTS on the market. It was the first RTS to feature main characters who could level up and equip items—RPG elements, in short.
The game followed the stories of Arthas, Thrall, and Tyrande Whisperwind as they traversed across the lands of Azeroth in the lead of armies of humans, orcs, and night elves.
3. Total AnnihilationTotal Annihilation is the first real-time strategy game to feature actual 3D units and structures in a 3D map which took the vertical axis into account. In other words, weapons had to be fired over buildings and over terrain in order to hit their targets. The game also took velocity into effect, so your bullets would have had to lead moving targets or they would very easily miss them.
Units in the game were designed by Chris Taylor, a toy maker by profession, who made each unit and building in Total Annihilation something you'd want to play with for real.
2. StarCraftStarCraft is arguably the best competitive game of all time, surpassing every other game in mainstream popularity. The game is so popular that it's frequently shown on TV throughout South Korea. I don't think I need to explain the game or what it's about. It's StarCraft.
1. Company of HeroesCompany of Heroes is the number one highest rated real-time strategy game of all time, and with good reason: it's a damn good game. While I could very easily argue that the reason it's also #1 on this list is because it's #1 on everyone else's list, my reasons for putting it way up here are purely from personal experience.
As an RTS, it's the only one that managed to get me to give a damn about my soldiers, all of whom exhibited some manner of personality while earning veterancy ranks to give me good reason to want to keep them around. Not only is the single player campaign, which is extended through the Tales of Valor and Opposing Fronts expansions, it's also host to a damn good multiplayer experience that has more to do with actual battlefield tactics instead of build orders. Eat your heart out, StarCraft.
Pc Games Like Starcraft
Perhaps I have just bought into blizzard games, however starcraft 2 is still one of my most favorite games of all time.
The energy, passion, and straight up word slinging bashes behind almost every match gives a rush like no other, especially if your competitive like I am.
Then again…
starcraft is all I know.
I invite you on this journey with me as we embark on a quest to find other competitive games. You SCV's Ready? (StarCraft Venturers)
So before that, here are some qualities specific to Starcraft II that I'll be looking for
- Balanced unit composition that is updated regularly.
- Resource mining
- Units can be selected and moved into position
- Up to date Graphics
- Good unit variety, however not too many
- Better control over units can turn the tide of the game
- Mediocre campaign
- In game chat
- Fast gameplay that relies on quick thinking and multitasking
- Online multiplayer with leagues to show progress and fair matchups
While starcraft II does offer more than this, I feel these capture the heart of the game.
The Promising – Art of War: Red Tides is the game that is still coming soon…
While it was supposed to be released towards the end of 2016, the developers have ensured us that they have not forgotten about Red Tides.
I as much as anyone I know that a screenshot can be misleading…(actually it kinda is) Art of War has a heavy focus on mass amount of units going into battle. Instead of small armies like starcraft, this game has literally armies! Between the fantasy elements and the epic armies, Red Tides is building up a hype that may help it thrive or destroy it.
The game has 3 races like starcraft with over 40 units for each race. Personally I think it will be hard to get a competitive balance for the game between 120 units, however if you consider many of the 16 units in Starcraft 2 have abilities and the overall simplicity of the game it doesn't seem as impossible.
The game operates different than Starcraft where your goal is to destroy 3 of the enemies turrets and base. You get to choose 10 of the 40 units to battle with and then battle it out. Its unclear how long each battle will take, however it seems like a simpler version of starcraft where you battle it out with skirmishes. From there I imagine proper control of the units will be everything. If not a match for starcraft 2, perhaps this will be a great game to harness your skills. (Reminds me of the many mini games in starcraft like Bunker Defense)
I am following the game closely, I will keep you up to date on it's release. Or you know, you can follow them onDespite the games release in 2003, the Frozen throne offers all the qualities of Starcraft II and then some. Release by blizzard, this game outshined starcraft 1 on it's official release and still has occasional professional tournaments.
The game operates very similar to starcraft with the addition of hero units that level up while you play. As these heroes level they gain specialized powers that are enough to turn the tide in any battle. Each race consists of four different heroes to choose from for each of the four races: Orcs, Night Elves, Humans, and Undead. The unit composition is fairly balanced once you learn how to use them.
Warcraft 3 was much more competetive back in 2003 and has slowly drifted out of the limelight. There have been rumors floating around for some time now that a 4th release in the works. This wouldn't sunrise me with all the great RTS games coming out in 2017, blizzard may decide its time to step up.
The graphics are clearly outdated, however still look oddly better than many of the recently released RTS games.
Company of Heroes 2 sorta fits the bill.
This a a unique and potential more realistic take on real time strategy games.
Right away you will notice the biggest difference with this game is you do not control the buildings, you sit back as a general and control the units. There is also no resource collecting. You take advantage of the environment and control units that behave as if they are in a first person shooter environment.
There are occasional tournaments with COH, however it has only received a fraction of the competitive crowd Starcraft 2 amassed. None the less the game will keep you on the edge of your seat the entire game with non stop action and some fine strategic opportunities.
The Let Down: Command and Conquer Generals 2 Cancelled
One of the games that looked the most promising has been cancelled. To be more accurate the game studio that was releasing the game was cancelled, so it wouldn't surprise me to see this game resurface one day.
While Command and Conquer Generals 2 may be out of commision, you can still try out their app for IOS and Android. Not exactly quality graphics, but not bad.
Other Games
To be honest, there are not that many competitive games like starcraft 2, however other less polished RTS games do exist that are more like command and conquer or Ages of the Empires.
Check out these games like command and conquer for a bigger list of RTS games
On a side note you can grab your phone and try out Clash of Clans or this super addicting browser game for some super simplified RTS action.
