SGS Halls of Montezuma

SGS Halls of Montezuma

Great game! I like how the main focus is on the battles and yet the cards and other aspects of the game add the historical background and events of that time period. The game has been well supported and updated too.

Real player with 177.8 hrs in game


Read More: Best Turn-Based Strategy Historical Games.


In 5 hours of playtime, I have found the game so far to be fun, easy to learn and play and at the same time seriously historical, detailed and challenging. Excellent, colorful graphics, an awesome soundtrack and manual, and a wonderful video tutorial are just icing on the cake. I’m a serious wargamer from way back and would recommend this title without hesitation.

Real player with 18.9 hrs in game

SGS Halls of Montezuma on Steam

Battle of the Bulge

Battle of the Bulge

Very good game. What I like is the simplicity. You can play this game immediately and have a good game with the AI wrapped up in 30-60 minutes. The real enjoyment is verus other players and PBM. It is a cross of chess and a traditional board wargame. The game is well balanced and both sides will be on offense and defense for roughly half the game. You do need to know the nuances of the rules but they are not overly complex. I hate when I play games that are about say Operation Barbarosa and you have to get down to the detail of how many tires need to be ordered for your motorized units…if you take my meaning. This game does not have that detail. Your big issues will be guessing the enemy’s next move, concentrating your forces for offensive action and sometimes trying to withdraw from sticky situations. Offense and defense both take skill and preplanning. This is because once your forces are committed and engaged it gets hard to unengage and redirect. I feel this is historically accurate.

Real player with 1319.6 hrs in game


Read More: Best Turn-Based Strategy Tactical Games.


This is a beautifully designed and executed game, a real gem. It looks great, plays quickly, is well balanced, and offers both sides multiple potential strategies and paths to victory. The PBEM system hosted by Slitherine works well, and a small but dedicated cadre of players is available to challenge you online.

A notable weakness is that the AI is not consistent enough to make a challenging opponent. It can execute quite good moves but as often will make terrible blunders. It also seems to try to play on general “good tactics” criteria but doesn’t seem very concerned with the specifics of the victory conditions, which acts to its disadvantage.

Real player with 529.8 hrs in game

Battle of the Bulge on Steam

Conquicktory

Conquicktory

Conquicktory is a minimalistic turn-based strategy focused on top-level decisions in your civilization’s development. You’ll control the diplomacy relations with neighboring countries, declare wars, plan the key strikes and distribute funds to the peaceful/military issues. Your subjects will do the rest of work - there is no need to deeply micromanage all the aspect of your glorious growing empire.

The game map has 3 views:

1. Military view. If you see a spear with a flag over one of your cities, it means that you can create an army in it. Simply touch and drag from it and you’ll see the army path. Army will capture cells around its path. The same dragging way is used to plan the movement of your existing armies. Also you can see the cells defense ratings on this view. Cells are defended by nearby armies, cities and forts.

2. Diplomacy view. Here you can select a country and see its current enemies (red) and allies (green). You can select a country and suggest a treaty to it, or declare war. Also here you can answer the treaties suggestions from other players

3. Economy view. You can see how much each of your cities brings to you, and set the funds spreading to war, peaceful growth and treasury. You can fund new cities and fortresses in this view.

Game features:

  • easy control mode which lets you focus on the top-level questions of you empire

  • simultaneous moves, which are performed once all the players have issued orders

  • challenging AI, which does not cheat but can make clever moves

  • spectator mode, where you can relax and spectate how the AI play (and try to guess the winner)

  • prebuilt maps of the world, continents and countries, which you can conquer


Read More: Best Turn-Based Strategy Minimalist Games.


Conquicktory on Steam

Epicinium

Epicinium

Really fun strategy game with an environmental twist. This premise has you doubting between going all-in for the win and playing more conservatively to preserve the environment. I played beta for the past two years and the final version is even more polished! Server issues on launch day aside, great game and I certainly recommend it.

Extra fun when playing with friends, the AI is a decent matchup for beginners but can be predictable at times.

Update: Even better with the map editor and workshop update. You can now play with your friends on maps that you created yourself.

Real player with 54.1 hrs in game

I would rate this:

Overall - 7/10

Strategy - 10/10

Graphics - 7/10

Originality - 9/10

Replay ability - 4/10

This game is great fun and it seemingly has the perfect balance of R.N.G. and strategy. I have never found myself in a spot where bad R.N.G. couldn’t have been avoided. Playing with friends is great if you can, but the AI are a good challenge. (The AI NeuralNewt on hard can put up a great fight.) This game isn’t really complete yet, I heard of some additions and maybe a campaign being added later on but the game as it is is fantastic- in concept. As I said don’t let its retro graphics fool you. It can drag out and be a bit and become, well, less nuanced to state it simply, and after playing it for a while, both through playing many rounds and/or long games.

Real player with 46.6 hrs in game

Epicinium on Steam

Total War: ATTILA

Total War: ATTILA

Attila is, in my opinion, the best Total War.

A lot of people complain about optimization issues, I’m not saying they’re lying, but I don’t have these issues so it’s not impossible to run the game properly.

What Attila does GREAT is giving you very different campaign experiences: you can pick from massive empires under pressure, small tribes with one settlement, small hordes that have to flee from the Huns and try to conquer some land and settle down, or as a massive horde that will grow, loot and pillage.

Real player with 798.0 hrs in game

Disclaimer:

Please note that this review, as with all reviews, is heavily influenced by personal opinion. I am in no way attacking you should you love the game, I just want to let others know the good AND the bad of this game before they purchase it. And if they like some of the things that I have listed in the bad? Then it’s all good, at least they are informed.

tl;dr - Great launch, graphically pleasing, better AI response from units. Badly designed Horde mode, Limited choice of factions that all boil down to three types that generally look the same, jacked diplomacy system, all the illegitimate children of the world come from one of your general’s loins, campaign AI are all led by the Joker. They just want to watch the world burn.

Real player with 717.4 hrs in game

Total War: ATTILA on Steam

Total War: THREE KINGDOMS

Total War: THREE KINGDOMS

I’ve been a fan of Total War games, but I’ve typically stayed away from ancient/classical warfare titles like Rome, Shogun and Medieval. I’ve gravitated more to the early-modern titles like Empire and Napoleon. So, by all logic, I should have avoided this one.

Why?

Well, despite this being yet another rendition of ancient warfare, it’s set in a period of history that I am not very familiar with (the eponymous Three Kingdoms Era of Chinese history, and the fall of the Han dynasty). Based on the famous historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, TW3K allows you to take on the role of one of many warlords during this period and forge a new dynasty for China. This game was really my first true exposure to this period of history and all the fascinating characters that inhabited it. I suspect the story is much the same for any other Westerner playing this game. I can say definitively that playing this game made me want to research more about the Three Kingdoms period and its prominent actors (my personal favorites are the Sun family).

Real player with 1266.7 hrs in game

While I do agree with most people on how bad CA have schrewed up with cencoring mods, and partnering with NetEase, I will speak for the game and the game only.

It has potential.

It has Interest.

But it falls short… Quite short.

Firstly, Three Kingdoms do a lot of things right, if you can ignore the bugs. Let’s go over that before we tackle the bad.

-The foodsystem, while I would have liked it to be more advanced, is a nice toutch.

-Diplomacy has a new coat of paint and seems to be a bit more smooth and easy to understand. With personalities to each faction leader, making them unique and interesting to negotiate with.

Real player with 822.5 hrs in game

Total War: THREE KINGDOMS on Steam

Age of History II

Age of History II

Alright let me get this straight just because i have 700+ hours on this game doesnt mean that its the best. Obviously this game has some features and inequalities that i would like to tell people about. Now i wouldn’t consider myself a professional jusut yet but it has some bugs that i think are either bugs or baad game design. I like to structure all of my reviews based off of Price to gameplay so here are the 10 things that i will review to give the game a simple 1/10 score.

Well for starters this game is very simplistic which i like in a game + 1

Real player with 1248.0 hrs in game

at least let the community fix your game pls. or do something with it again? its fun but dont buy until something happens with this.

Real player with 726.8 hrs in game

Age of History II on Steam

Age of Conquest IV

Age of Conquest IV

Age of Conquest is a great Strategy game for busy people. Since I have nearly reached 3,000 hours play (over years), i thought it deserved a review.

Based on Risk-style games, it has enough extra options to make it interesting and a very simple battle system. Nation building and diplomacy with other players are just as important as military. Many game settings can be changed and this leads to surprisingly different game strategies.

Slow (Long haul) games are usually one turn every 24 hours so you can usually find 10 minutes in your day somewhere to play against people from all around the world (and have a few different maps/games going at once). It is an intellectual game so you get people who are mature (I mean in attitude - not age) and online abuse is not tolerated in the Game Community. Over time you get to know players and can work with them in games - or against them :-). Different maps have 20,30, 50 or more player nations so some games are big. You can also jump online and play a “fast” game (30 minutes to 3 hours) - bring on the weekend.

Real player with 3827.9 hrs in game

At first I thought this game might just be another pointless browser game where you just take over territories with a certain amount of troops and wait for your troop count to regenerate. But no, it’s much more fun and advanced than that. I love how you can collect taxes every year, adjust your levies on commerce, throw nationwide and or certain territory parties, how you can fortify your cities, and how you can send all sorts of messages and requests to other players. Basically, I love everything about it. It’s also extremely addicting. So yes, I absolutely recommend this game. It’s very much worth taking the couple seconds to download it. There are a couple things I have questions about, however. 1. How do the towers help you at all? I find that I can always see enemy troops next to my territories. Are they supposed to see enemies within a certain range? 2. When are you going to make all of the maps free? Me being a Bernie supporter, I want everything to be free. (Kidding). But seriously though, I feel like there should be at least two maps available. It would entice me to buy the rest of the maps.

Real player with 1934.6 hrs in game

Age of Conquest IV on Steam

Banality Wars Carridin

Banality Wars Carridin

War breaks out on the eastern continent and Lorret’s Fourth Regiment are forced to launch a counter attack. But as the death count rises questions start to emerge as to the true cause of the conflict.

Through 26+ campaign maps spanning 5 acts discover the secrets of Project Carridin, a military project that was abruptly killed four years ago, and uncover who really is behind this war and what they could possibly want from the doomed project.

Banality Wars Carridin is the spiritual successor to Advance Wars Days Of Ruin. It features a more impactful story (but don’t worry, it’s not as dark) and gameplay that that is more varied than what you’d expect to see in an Advance Wars-like.

Banality Wars Carridin on Steam

Battle for Iwo Jima

Battle for Iwo Jima

yes, but:

1. It goes so extremely slow, mainly i think due to unnecessary graphic duration. The very worst is the flare shooting into the air at each nite attack. It goes dramaticly on & on, but, you know, after the very 1st time, ok, we get it. Actually same re artillery & j attacks, and movement in general - i think the units could move a lot faster if the sound&graphics were abbreviated.

2. I play over&over & lose EVERY time. OK i learned, but this last time was especially bad: Day 13 end turn, i’ve achieved green on 3 of the so-far 4 objectives, red on the 4th :(, several days remain to get to the next 1, only 235/320 j points, truly it feels the opposition is COLLAPSING, i am racing to the final objectives with plenty of time left, seems i’ve finally got this fig’d out, and suddenly “japanese decisive victory”. WHY?

Real player with 55.0 hrs in game

38 hours playing to lose after 7 days max every single game. jap artillery hits and always causes casualties, they can fire 2 hexes always causing casualties, they can ambush and always hit, they banzai and always hit, the Americans have support which does nothing, they cannot hit anything, they cannot assault. Pointless game made to look pretty and that is it.

Real player with 42.9 hrs in game

Battle for Iwo Jima on Steam