Strategy games is an enormous genre in PC gaming, with real-time, turn-based, 4X and tactics games all flying the same flag to stake their claim as the one true best strategy game. Our list of the best strategy games on PC covers the lot of them. We like to take a broad view here at RPS, and every game listed below is something we firmly believe that you could love and play today. You'll find 30-year-old classics nestled right up against recent favourites here, so whether you're to the genre or want to dig deep for some hidden gems, we've got you covered. Here are our 50 best strategy games for 2023.
]]>After watching the trailer a bajillion more times, I am extremely excited for Assassin's Creed Valhalla. It's been around 48 hours since the announcement and I cannot possibly retain this state for much longer. By the time the Christmas-ish release date rolls around I will either have exploded like a poor little meat balloon, or gone full circle and lapsed into a coma. Like the engines of the Enterprise, she cannae hold - definitely not for around six more months, anyway.
Thank god that Vikings are an enduring and popular theme for games, then! I can inoculate myself against disaster by playing a few of these existing ones while I wait. Such is the versatility of Vikings that they pop up in almost every genre imaginable, too. So if, like me, you are already on the edge of your seat (and that seat is in a longship), here are some recommendations for varied and quality video games that will get you prepared for Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
]]>An idea I’m happy to see the back of, is the notion that “graphics” is a one-way sliding scale towards photorealistic perfection. While I’m certainly fond of games that exhibit hyperbudget beauty along the lines of Metro: Exodus or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I’m equally - probably more - excited by those who eschew realism in order to utterly master a particular aesthetic. Often, this takes the form of homage. Think Cuphead’s take on surrealist 1930s cartoons, or Void Bastards’ comic book style. For my money though, nobody’s done it quite like Stoic Studio, the developers behind The Banner Saga.
]]>We don’t expect much of a typical video game map. As long as it guides us to our destination (and perhaps looks pretty while doing so) most of us won’t waste a second thought on it. And yet, maps can be much more than tools that make our way from A to B a little more convenient. Some games reject the notion of maps as a tacked-on extraneous layer, and instead treat them as an integral part of their world. These maps can tell us something about their world and its inhabitants that goes far beyond topographical information. Rather than creating distance between us and a game, they root us more firmly in it.
]]>Banners, then and now, are often a curious amalgamation of plain communication and naked aggression. They’re well-known as heraldic devices, displaying a coat of arms to identify one side to the other on the battlefield, usually just before they were about to attack each other. However, they’re also just a means of communicating who or what a place or thing belongs to. If you’re shipwrecked, the flags on the boat responding to your frantic SOS can tell you where you are and who is about to rescue you. Even today, flags are used this way. Ships still use flag signalling to send messages without the need for radios. Warships still hoist battle ensigns, huge flags to stand out in the smoke and chaos of a pitched battle, showing that a ship is ready to fight, and which side it’s on.
In The Banner Saga, every clan, including your own, has a banner that flies overhead as you travel. But there isn’t as much talk about the clan's actual, physical banner as there is about what it represents: forging unity from the lack thereof, creating a clan rather than fighting others, and the rite of passing on stories to later generations.
]]>From the outset, everything in The Banner Saga seems designed to encourage you to be careful. As you lead your caravan towards safety, you try to keep people alive by rationing food, managing the number of your followers and weighing the dangers of the unknown. Anyone who has ever given a soldier in XCOM a custom name knows that it takes very little to get attached, and The Banner Saga builds on this by giving you plenty of chances to get closer to the people in your army.
]]>The Vikings have long ago invaded the coasts of pop culture on their dragon-headed longships and carved out their own Danelaw in the realm of video games. In recent years, they’ve grown even bolder, taking over most genres from RTS to RPG, classic point and click adventure to action, with an utter disregard towards distinctions between AAA and indie. They’ve settled in Hellblade and Frostrune, Dead in Vinland and The Witcher 3, God of War and Crusader Kings 2, and of course, The Banner Saga trilogy. Luckily, it’s easy to spot a Viking. Horned helmets, mead-filled drinking horns, bloody battle axes and grim miens are a dead giveaway. When in doubt, tempt the suspected Viking with loot, then wait and see whether or not they can resist the urge to pillage.
]]>After waiting two long years for the final instalment of Stoic's fantastical strategy trilogy, The Banner Saga 3 begins in the best possible way. It picks up where the second The Banner Saga 2 left off, and one of the first things you get to do is punch your scheming arch nemesis - who probably made your last moments of that second game a right misery - square in the face.
You can punch him so hard, in fact, that you can permanently break his nose for the rest of the game. It's an immensely satisfying moment in a series that, up until now, has been more a war of attrition and bleak perseverance than anything else. Sadly, it immediately goes back to being a bit grim again, and pretty much stays that way until the credits start rolling. Is it the ending we've all been waiting for? Here's wot I think.
]]>It's nearly time to sharpen your axe and wade once more into the beautifully illustrated frostbitten apocalypse that is The Banner Saga. Stoic's strategy-RPG series was always planned as a trilogy, and the third and final chapter is excitingly close, now due out on July 26th, two days later than first expected. Within, a new trailer that could be considered spoiler-laden for those who haven't played through the second game, so go do that first.
]]>The bearded warrior looks exhausted. Part of a band of mercenaries, he blinks slowly at us. Even while the player chooses their next words, the crease-eyed humans and horned Varls of The Banner Saga 3 stand there, blinking slowly. Their hair fluttering, eyes searching you for intent. These are quiet moments of incidental detail. Twitching moustaches, billowing capes, tensing fists. They are looping animations, designed to bring life to otherwise static moments, but they are a smooth and subtle reminder that The Banner Saga remains one of the most beautifully animated game trilogies in existence. This tired axeman is just one of the finely-drawn fighters of the series finale. Arnie Jorgensen, Creative Director at Stoic, seems happy to let him rest.
“It’s really gratifying for me personally, as one of the people involved, to finish it,” he says to me, while showing the game at GDC. “Not only that but we’re finishing it to a better degree than we started... We’re not just finishing it, we’re finishing it strong.”
]]>The tale of the little flag that could will continue in The Banner Saga 3 [official site], if a Kickstarter goes well. Yup, developers Stoic have turned back to crowdfunding to conclude their strategy RPG series. We waved the safety flag for the first Banner Saga, digging its look and style but not so much the combat, then waved the chequered flag for its follow-up, which improved the combat enough for us to declare it one of our favourite strategy games. For the third, hopefully we'll end up waving our dotty bloomers on a stick?
]]>Despite its flaws, The Banner Saga [official site] is one of the most memorable indie releases of 2014, and now the second act is here to push the story to even more desperate frontiers. But does The Banner Saga 2 improve upon its predecessor's lackluster strategy combat while still expanding on its promising story? Here's wot I think. (Note: there are spoilers for the first Banner Saga's ending).
]]>I've spent so long frolicking in the intangible tangerine skies of VR-land lately that it's genuinely bewildering to look at a traditional game again. It's so... flat. So... image-y. And also so sharp and fluid and won't make my eyeballs pulsate and flail as if dancing helplessly to some unseen disco beat from hell. Confusing matters worse is that gorgeous strategy/roleplaying/survival opus The Banner Saga - and its upcoming sequel Banner Saga 2 [official site] - continues to look like a game that is simultaneously from the past and the future.
]]>The Banner Saga [official site], which we once described as "the sort of game that is so thick with lore and small touches that a chap can spend fifteen hours with it and forget entire swathes," suggesting this long preamble may in fact be necessary for your ancient brain of limited memory capacity, is getting a board game spin-off.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 10 of the sale.
]]>It's a pleasant fantasy to think that holidays mean long weeks of playing games, but in reality there's trains and planes to be boarded, family to be visited, lives to be unavoidably lived. Gaming during holidays is therefore similar to gaming at any other time, about stealing moments to sneak away to a quiet corner and catch up on backlogs or curl up with comforts. Some of you told us what you played over the break yesterday, but here's what RPS played between the parsnips and presents.
]]>The Banner Saga arrived at the great RPS mead hall to a somewhat mixed reception. We appreciated the manner in which the beleaguered band of luminaries presented themselves but couldn't help but yawn long before they'd finished telling us of the events that had brought them to our table. Whatever its flaws may be, The Banner Saga told an unusually bleak and believable tale of a world in its twilight years, and I'll gladly cast aside my reservations to see the continuation of that tale. The video below doesn't give a great deal away, but it confirms that the next chapter of the saga is incoming.
]]>A side benefit to videogame bundles: they offer the opportunity to write about games that would otherwise go unmentioned on a PC-only site. Take Game Music Bundle 7, for example. For $1, it gives you the soundtracks to The Banner Saga, Broken Age, Luftrausers, The Floor Is Jelly and Device 6. Which is four PC games and therefore ample excuse to mention that the mobile-only Device 6 is a puzzle game with some of my favourite videogame music ever. I mean, listen to this.
Or maybe you don't care about the advantages the bundle offers me, the lowly internet writer, and instead want to know that if you pay a further $9 (for a total of $10, fact fans), you'll also net the soundtracks to The Yawhg, Starbound, Escape Goat 2, Eldritch, Tribes: Ascend, Ether and my fingers are getting tired so I'll just say nine others for a total of 20.
]]>Well, this is a start, I suppose. A slow, lurching start akin to that of a belligerent old truck running on stagnant fuel and wildly outdated business practices, but it's still something. The long and short of it? Notorious Banner Saga pursuer King doesn't want to own the word "candy" anymore. In the US. In EU territories? Well, that's a different story. And it hasn't announced any sort of cease-fire in its war against those who dare wield the word "saga" to describe their games that apply the actual dictionary definition of "saga." Meanwhile, the trademark it's sticking with - "Candy Crusher" - is mired in further controversy. The Candy Saga, in other words, isn't over just yet.
]]>This afternoon King - owners of Candy Crush Saga and an ever-increasing percentage of the dictionary - issued a statement defending their actions regarding the news that they had filed an opposition to Stoic's attempts to trademark "The Banner Saga". A defence that seems odd in the face of what's actually happening. Especially as they're arguably attempting to assert a trademark they don't actually have. Appearing to believe they are the only company allowed to register games with "saga" in the title, King has exercised this by preventing other studios' efforts to protect their unique game names with their own trademarks.
Yet in King's statement (below), they make it clear that they don't believe that Stoic is trying to profit from a similar name, and say they do not wish to prevent Stoic from using the name. A claim that seems, well, rather peculiar given the circumstances, and their appearing to say something quite different in their Opposition. It's something Stoic have now told RPS they're not too pleased about either, stating, "We won't make a Viking saga without the word Saga, and we don't appreciate anyone telling us we can't."
]]>Yesterday the internet was alive with the news about King, owners of Candy Crush Saga, their trademarking of the word "Candy", and their ensuing threats to other developers who are using the word in their game titles. The response from King was to flap their eyelashes and protest innocence - they were only defending the Earth against evil, not liberally chasing anyone and everyone. About that. We've seen the document that shows their attempt to go after The Banner Saga.
]]>Separated from all else by a great storm that ripped the land asunder, Alec and Adam huddle on a fragile, knife-shaped peninsula to watch the world freeze and die. They dream of old gods, they think of roads not taken, they mourn for the lost. And they have a right old natter about Stoic's recently released, uncommonly beautiful, Viking-inspired roleplaying/strategy/giants'n'conversation game The Banner Saga.
]]>The Banner Saga is a tantalising prospect. An independent release from a small team of former Bioware employees, it promises a rich story, a new world and intricate tactical combat. It also has the most stupendously attractive art I've seen in a long time. Impressed by the opening hours, I've since spent several days in the game's icy company, I've deliberated long and hard to bring you my final verdict. Here's wot I think.
]]>The Banner Saga's first chapter is due out next month. It's certainly much anticipated, coming from a team of ex-Biowares, and following a phenomenally successful Kickstarter. A tactical RPG, turn-based combat combined with a unique way of delivering its narrative, it's going to be interesting to see how it suits people's tastes. It certainly divided John and Adam, as they played through the first three or four hours of the game.
]]>Order Of Business The First: You should know that The Banner Saga - which I developed a sort of gleeful Stockholm Syndrome toward after it crushed my spirits like so many brittle icicles for three hours - has a release date! Shamefully, we missed the initial announcement, but I will now atone for that mistake by a) telling you and b) dripping hot wax into my eyes. Alright then, let's begin: The Banner YEAAAAGGHGHGOHHHCHRIST Saga is coming out on NYEAAARGGHHHWHYYY January AAAAAAAAAHHHH 14th PLEASECALLANAAAAAAAAMBULANCE. *Days of intensive care pass* OK, that out of the way, let's watch a video of The Banner Saga's Oregon-Trail-but-with-miserably-tough-choices travel system. (I can't actually see it or anything anymore, but I'll enjoy it vicariously through you.)
]]>You probably haven't heard, but Valve's officially going forward with its plan to launch its own Steam-centric OS, living room hardware, and a crazy, touch-pad-based controller to back it all up. I know, right? It's weird that no one has been talking about it incessantly. But while Valve preaches openness and hackability, it's downplayed an ugly reality of the situation: smaller developers still face a multitude of struggles in the treacherous green jungles of its ecosystem. SteamOS and various Steam Boxes, however, stand to bring brilliantly inventive indie games to an audience that doesn't even have a clue that they exist, so I got in touch with developers behind Gone Home, Race The Sun, Eldritch, Mark of the Ninja, Incredipede, Project Eternity, and more for their thoughts on SteamOS, who it's even for, Valve's rocky relationship with indies, and what it'll take for Steam to actually be an "open" platform.
]]>Multiplayer smart-o-battler The Banner Saga Factions might be out and (mostly) free for all, but even the former BioWare-ites at Stoic will readily admit that it was always a sideshow. The Banner Saga is, at heart, a story and a place. It's a world in conflict, sure, but pensive Viking biffery is only one piece of a much larger, more varied puzzle. I recently got to spend a few hours with chapter one of the Kickstarter darling's single-player campaign, and it prompted many thoughts. Here they are, freshly scooped from my brain and dribbled onto a page for your enrichment.
]]>Viking caravans might be slow, methodical machines, but they make their arrival worth the wait. By mercilessly slaughtering all who oppose them. I'm mostly certain that won't be the outcome of The Banner Saga's impending arrival, but I don't like to make assumptions. What I know for sure, however, is that Stoic isn't just tossing chapter one out in the cold and leaving it in permafrost while time passes it by. The series will continue marching onward, and another go at Kickstarter definitely isn't out of the question.
]]>The Banner Saga: Factions is, you will recall, the free multiplayer aspect of The Banner Saga, rather than the single-player campaign that you're going to have pay up front for. Nathan went hands on with the game previously to tell us all what to expect. I'm downloading it right now for turn-based impressions. Anyone else jumping on this particularly wagon? It being F2P and all that?
Trailer beneath the snowy wastes.
]]>What do boulder-shouldered fantasy Vikings do for the holidays? It's a question that I've pondered far more than I care to admit, but I've never been able to come up with a conclusive answer. Evidently, however, I just wasn't looking in the right places. Instead of scouring their mead halls in search of wafting feast fumes and bawdy tunes, I should've headed straight for the most axe-strewn, arrow-speckled of battlefields. The Banner Saga's Vikings, you see, continue to duke it out even as we speak, and a new Yuletide update's trotted some formidable toys out to the frontline. Thanks, nasty, brutish Viking Santa!
]]>Update: Huzzah! The issue is all fixed, and the beta now loads.
It's been a mere nine months since The Banner Saga was a twinkle in the internet's eye. But now the teeny team of former BioWare artists have put their tactical RPG into open beta. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, providing a big funding boost, those who backed have been in the beta for a while. But as of today, the rest of the world is invited to form an orderly queue. And pay. There's a new trailer to celebrate, below, but there are also some technical issues getting the beta working at the moment.
The Banner Saga saga's not over yet. Not by a long shot. First, we brought you multiplayer impressions straight from the front grid lines, and then you learned everything there is to know about balance, microtransactions, and - in the process - yourself. So then, what could possibly be left? What frigid depths of Stoic's mighty ice fortress have we yet to plumb? Well, mainly the actual Saga - the sprawling, multi-chapter single-player behemoth born of Kickstarter's unholy flames earlier this year. So I asked Stoic about every last bit of it: how it'll progress, what sort of Big Evil Force we're dealing with, where choices will come up and how much they'll affect the storyline, why all the voice actors are from Iceland, how they mo-capped those gorgeous animations (hint: lots of falling on their faces), and tons more. Dig in after the break.
]]>Last week, you (probably, I hope; otherwise we can't be friends anymore) read my impressions of The Banner Saga: Factions, the soon-to-be-released F2P multiplayer spin-off of Stoic's gorgeously animated Viking strategy epic. Those are some of my favorite adjectives stacked together into a scrumptious sentence sandwich, so I came away predictably pleased. But after finishing my session and quaffing a hearty Viking ale grilled cheese from a towering flagon paper plate, I had questions. For instance, how do microtransactions work? How will multiplayer tie into the multi-part single-player storyline? How will Stoic balance all of that? What's the deal with, er, the banners? Then we huddled around a centuries-old storytelling flame desk lamp, and Stoic told me a tale for the ages.
I recently ventured to the definitely-not-cold, completely-un-northern reaches of sunny Austin, Texas, where Stoic welcomed me into its Kickstarter-funded Viking castle with open arms. OK, it was more of a paper-walled one-room office, but still. More importantly, the four-man squad of former BioWarians spent hours showing and telling me every last detail about their upcoming hand-drawn turn-based epic, The Banner Saga. So, in an attempt to make this digestible, I've broken it up into parts. First up, The Banner Saga: Factions, a free-to-play multiplayer spin-off set to launch in November. Inside, you'll find my hands-on impressions. Next week, we'll be posting interviews that cover everything else: how Stoic plans to handle microtransactions, the developer's philosophy toward class balance, how matchmaking will work, gobs of details on the single-player campaign, and tons more. For now, though, here's what it's like to actually play the game.
]]>I'm not sure I should be encouraging this recent habit of indies releasing a single screenshot of their in-development games. When major publishers do that we roll our eyes and shout things like, "THEY'RE ADVERTS FOR YOUR GAMES, YOU IDIOTS - JUST RELEASE DOZENS OF THEM." Of course, Brian Fargo, and now Stoic are both showing the very first in-game image of a project they recently Kickstarted, likely putting them out before they themselves are ready - there's a sense of obligation to share things much sooner when you're funded by a few thousand strangers who want to play the game. And in this first picture of The Banner Saga in action (if you don't count this one), we can literally see it in action.
]]>I'm sure that many of the people reading this have pledged their hard-earned to at least one Kickstarter project and it may be of interest to see where that money has gone. Not into an actual game in most cases, not yet, but what happens when a project reaches its goals, the timer ticks down and the money rolls in? Stoic, the ex-Bioware staff working on turn-based beauty The Banner Saga, have released a video showing precisely what happens. Not only is the continuing transparency wonderful, with details of where the money is being spent, the video itself is fantastic. This is what the brave new world looks like. So many boxes.
]]>The seemingly infinite font of generosity that is Kickstarter has given rise to yet another rags-to-riches-to-restoration-of-faith-in-humanity tale - this time for the ex-BioWare trio at Stoic. If your only chance at survival after being crushed under a massive stack of cash was a bank-breaking, spine-saving donation to The Banner Saga, well, I don't know what to tell you, seeing as the drive has now officially closed out at over $700,000. But, dear hilariously unfortunate reader, there is one upside: extra features! Tons of them! Though, admittedly, Banner Saga's only been announced for platforms on this mortal plane so far.
]]>We've posted about exactly this many Kickstarter projects recently: a few. But what's been going on lately with the likes of The Banner Saga, Leisure Suit Larry, Shadowland, Starlight Inception, Wasteland 2 and Bionite: Origins? In order to find out, I've just turned up unexpectedly at each of their doors, stared creepily at them for a few seconds and then wandered on to the next one.
]]>Morning, Internet. Lovely news from the West: The Banner Saga has been funded on over on Kickstarter. The collective approval of the internet found its way to over $100k in just 48 hours to ensure that the beautiful-looking turn-based RPG with Vikings would find its way into our game collections. This pleases me. Now let's hope that Stoic - a handful of ex-Bioware staff - can really walk their talk when it comes to game design.
Watch that lovely announcement trailer again below.
]]>Turn-based combat, a low-fantasy approach to vikings and a scenario that is more concerned with surviving a world's end than preventing it. That's what The Banner Saga promises, as well as beautiful animation, conversations with consequences and a changeable world that doesn't revolve around the player. It's the kind of shopping list I so often take to the supermarket, only to return with the ingredients for a tasty Thai curry having realised that while the constituent parts of food can be purchased, concepts cannot be bought until they are given form. But they can be funded. Yep, it's Kickstarter time again.
]]>The ex-BioWare bods, Stoic, with their offices in a goat shed have released a trailer for the intriguing The Banner Saga. Revealing the traditional animation style, as well as the ye-olde-school grid-based turn-based combat, along with RPG-like dialogue options, it gives you an idea of the tone being aimed at, if not how it will feel to play. We've also got some rather lovely screenshots that we'll even let you look at. If you're good.
]]>Former BioWareites, Stoic, are formed from a gathering of those who worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic, then ran off into the Texan wastelands to form their own studio. The three-man indie team is working on an online hybrid called The Banner Saga, that plans to merge RPG, turn-based strategy, and vikings. It is the combination mentioned in the Mayan Codecs.
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