Black Moon Chronicles
It won’t work by itself.
You won’t get music working.
You won’t see cutscenes.
But it’s a gem, a precious and nostalgic gem with great potential.
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
I have hunted for this game for almost two decades. I only ever played the demo, but I loved it and replayed it multiple times. I then forgot the name of the game and spent many years thinking it was Black Cauldron or Black Song, but never remembering “Black moon.” Then I finally found it. Black Moon Chronicles. YES!
So, I purchased, installed, and launched. But the game wouldn’t launch. BLARG! I was able to get it to work by launching as admin from the local files. See discussions for more advice if you need it.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Celtic Kings: Rage of War
I enjoyed this game very much back in it’s original days, very good strategy style, I like it’s functions, it’s map editor is really good and making scenarios was probably the most fun, besides playing them of course lol
Im really keen to play it’s successor Punic Wars (Nemesis of the Roman Empire) when it’s released
– Real player with 41.5 hrs in game
I used to play this game when i was younger and i loved it and still played it but i needed my CD and my laptop doesn’t have a CD player so i looked online and it was on steam, i love this game, the graphics are ok but it did come out in 2002, the game play is smooth, theres a few things i wish i would change but cant' overall great game
– Real player with 21.1 hrs in game
Cossacks: Back to War
I still remember when I got the game, it was an accident…
My friend gave me a demo cd with a bunch of games on it and cossacks: back to war was one of em.
I kept play that one demo mission again and again…
I think STILL this is the best strategy game of all time, it amazes me how you can control thousands, big cities and navy fleets.
And it takes hundreds of hours to finish the game because there is so much missions in it and of course an editor too.
And this strategy game is unique because the game mechanics are so different than most of the other strategy games, you dont have to rush for resources, there is always a few mine places around you where you can get the resources from.
– Real player with 260.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best RTS Multiplayer Games.
12 years ago, I had an interesting 2v2 battle (online PVP).
It lasted 9 hours.
9 FRICKING HOURS.
Had to call in sick just to finish the game.
–– EDITED + CONTINUATION STORY, 10 Sept 2019 —-
So what happened?
Well, in that particular PVP match, my friend and I had lost a large-scale engagement after a mis-timed assault, resulting in me losing most of my infantry, mercenaries, and cavalry.
Sensing the end the match, our opponents gleefully taunted us (in-game text chat) and relentlessly fobbed themselves over an easy victory.
– Real player with 184.5 hrs in game
Rise of Nations: Extended Edition
I am nominating Rise of Nations – Extended Edition {RoN-EE} for the 2020 “Labor of Love” award.
RoN-EE is the 2014 update of the “old” RTS from 2003,
when it won several GOTY awards for Big HUGE Games.
Despite its age, RoN has held up well, especially when I am in the mood for a quick Strategic War. A full-scale 1 v 3-or-4 game typically will run 60 minutes {game-time} or less.
Using ** pause /pause **can effectively make RoN-EE a TBS.
– Real player with 4981.4 hrs in game
Rise of Nations: Extended Edition
The game from my childhood and the only strategy that I love to play even now. This is a remastered version of the game from 2003 and one of the most popular strategic games. Extended Edition contains the full contents with the addition of Thrones and Patriots. Rise of Nations offers a lot of nice campaign where our goal is to lead our nation to dominate the world. During the game you have to take care not to be destroyed by other nations but also develop a number of aspects such as economy, science, technology, diplomacy and military power. Each of these aspects will give you the opportunity to develop troops, build new buildings and to develop new opportunities in old buildings, but also move to a new era. With each progression of the game is changing the look and statistics buildings, military units and other things. Each nation has its own unique army as long as the nation still exists. In the game to expand, we have to use wood, stone, food, science, and oil at a later stage of the game, not forgetting that each of these resources can run out of. There is also an advanced diplomacy through which you can contain very beneficial agreement with other nation. In the game you can also play scenarios and multiplayer, but only with friends because no one plays. The game in terms of gameplay has hardly changed, improved graphics and added more resolution size. I like this production and do not regret a single hour spent at the game. Great soundtrack, an old but still nice graphics and a lot of things to do while playing the game. In my opinion this is the best strategy game I’ve ever played, many hours of fun for me. The game I am able to recommend, however, the game also has a bug that irritated me at first because I could not change my resolution because the game was crashing. However, it was manageable change in a text file.
– Real player with 371.5 hrs in game
Sacrifice
This is my favourite game of all time, and it’s not just a nostalgic feeling, I still play with this masterpiece. It has a magical athmosphere you cannot find elsewhere, the story, the characters are so well written that I know nearly all quests by heart, yet I still replay them ‘just one more time’ when I get the mood for it.
The story is about a banished wizard, who enters a new realm of magical floating islands that are controlled by five gods, who constantly fight each other for justice, dominance or just fun. All gods control a sphere of natural energies which are earth, fire, air, life and death. You can choose one patron god on every level to do quests for them, and in return you get new spells to cast and creatures to summon from the chosen god’s sphere. Keep in mind though, that if you serve the dark powers, you will soon lose the favor of the benelovent gods and vice versa, so choosing sides has limits according to your previous choices. All the gods have an interesting character that can always surprise you, as the good guys can become quite warlike, the bad guys may become just scared, the smart guys can act foolish and the simple guys quite resourceful, so everything and everyone turns out to be quite different than as they seemed at first.
– Real player with 54.6 hrs in game
A old cult classic. Very interesting combination of a 3rd person RTS with RPG elements for its time.
You control a your own playable character - a wizard - directly in movements with the WASD keys and you can summon creatures that you can order around by clicking on terrain or enemies much like a RTS.
Of course that isn’t the only commands you can give. They can also move in different formations or guard different objectives ranging from yourself to other creatures to buildings.
There are basically 2 resources in the game. Mana and souls.
– Real player with 48.4 hrs in game
Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries
I haven’t found any other strategy game in the past 22 years, which is nearly as good as Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries.
The gameplay is unbeatable so far and this depth of play is unique:
intrigue and diplomacy, trade and industry, betrayal, espionage and conquest - all in one game and real-time.
Back when Age of Empires and Command & Conquer conquered the game market. But none of them was nearly as good as Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries. Macro, but also micromanagement at its finest. These elements that many other RTS games do not have.
– Real player with 133.8 hrs in game
Probably my favorite strategy game ever, a bit different than others in the genre. First game i’ve ever bought (still have the huge box here), and probably one of my games i played most.
In this strategy game manpower is your primary resource instead of wood or anything. Also unit specialization is different from most strategy games i’ve played; every unit regardless of there profession can fight and improve combat skills up to the same cap, with their profession level improving the thing they were meant for (i.e. researches with a high research skill level progress your weapon development a lot faster when in a tower of science).
– Real player with 30.0 hrs in game
Total Annihilation
This is one of those old games that age really really well. like the GOG version it works fine on newer systems. And no need for mods to get 1080p or higher. As the game even back in 1997 did scale to your max windows resolutions, sadly the game UI don’t. Nor the radar. So at 2K or 4K they are really tiny. And ofc this has the addon “The Core Contingency” and lots of other old bonus missions. And yes. I use Win10 and it works just fine. At the time of this writing the Arm campaing is done, 11 hours played and not a single crash…
– Real player with 75.5 hrs in game
My favorite game as a child, i quickly snapped up the DRM Free edition availible through GOG.com. Now OTA is here on Steam in all its glory! It wasnt Starcraft or Command & Conquer that set the bar for late 90s rts games. OTA is the undisputed and most refferenced old-school RTS that to this day inspires the finer qualities in the EPIC War genre we crave.
Its important to note though steam failed to mention it in the product details This edition includes all DLC along with the main game (Original Total Annihilation, Core contengency Expansion, All of the Battle Tactics Expansions, Bonus Maps, Bonus Official Cavedog Units, Patch 3.1 known as the “No CD Patch” Patch 3.1 also is tweaked with the expanded unit cap which can be modified in the system files to a maximum of 5000 units per player in a 10 player battle. updated and fully supported multiplayer hosting for matches complete with thier own communities… The Added bennefit of the Steam Edition is access to the steam community for multiplayer compatibility. by comparison it is identical to the GOG edition with exception that the steam version has better compatibility with modern windows OS. Both copies work seamlessly with Wine if you use Linux or Mac. I reccomend the Steam edition for ease of gaming with friends. but the GOG.com version is DRM Free meaning you can buy one copy and then gift as many as you want to your friends per thier TOS agreement.
– Real player with 57.3 hrs in game
Tzar: The Burden of the Crown
This game is such an underrated old school rts! I’m so happy to see it’s on steam; for years this game existed in the shadows with little to no publicity. In the early 2000s my cousin had this game on a disk that was badly damaged and unreadable. My father and I took it to many different game stores to find a new copy. We never found one, as Tzar was already discontinued in the US, but we did manage to repair the disk so that (sometimes) it was readable! Of course I backed it up on many different machines and thumb drives. Up until today I was playing the game in a Windows 7 VM. Over 15 years after finding it on my cousin’s computer, I still enjoy sinking hours into it. What a dream come true to see it on Steam!
– Real player with 76.8 hrs in game
Ah, what a blast of nostalgia! As if I touched some magic crystal, which sent me back in time to the distant past. I didn’t even notice how few dozens of hours were already far behind. And I still don’t want to come back from my journey…
Legendary classic. Can’t even imagine how many hours I spent playing it back in the days. It is clear that Tzar was heavily inspired by AoE serie. And it even had a lot of it’s unique features, like weather effects, change of day and night, units could gain experience (and potentially become killing machines).
– Real player with 69.5 hrs in game
Z
I recommend the original Z, as far as I’m concerned it is the father of COH games, so it must work and the original works VERY WELL. If you have the original Z CD, do yourself a favour and keep it - you wont get a better Z experience.
This piece of junk works well at achieving what Z did and then BREAKS it further: it has numerous ' bugs' or examples of things that are really frustrating I shall try to list them, but the problem is the design of the game as well as it’s workings.
-As an RTS, there are no key bindings other than the mouse buttons
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
“If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it’s run over by a car, you don’t want it.”
~ALF
First of all, what is Z? Well, let’s just say that when I was a kid, we didn’t have Company of Heroes. We had Z. Aside from the fact that Z takes a humorous approach and cutscenes here are some sort of mix between Ninja Turtles, ALF and Starcrash, heavily focused on robots, Z is pretty much it – an early game in Company of Heroes genre. You capture the flags, you produce units and you destroy enemy stronghold (tower) to win the level. Pretty basic, but addicting stuff. And like Company of Heroes, Z always looked good. Even though it was released only one year after legendary Command & Conquer, it looked way, way superior. Vehicles used to leave traces on the ground, your troops used to shoot some fauna for fun (a lot of funny effects included), there were funny animated portraits and heck, there were even destructible landscape elements! In other words, like I said, this game is pretty much Company of Heroes from 90s. In a comedy-oriented settings. And I sure have a lot of good memories about it. I mean, let’s just admit it – it was one of those games that every RTS fan had on his or her computer back in the days. So, what the heck with a thumb down review? Let me explain.
– Real player with 9.6 hrs in game
Command & Conquer™ Remastered Collection
Great game. Brings back memories.
– Real player with 82.9 hrs in game
It slaps with nostalgia :D
– Real player with 82.5 hrs in game