Top 20 Best Classic RTS Titles... You Should be PLAYING

with my recent opportunity to play home World 3 I was surprised at how many comments mentioned never having played the original game it got me thinking about classic RTS as they're worth a look for those new to the genre the ground rules for this list the list is limited to games that still hold up at least I think pretty well even if one of them's a little hard to find these days all right so let's get started first with the obvious ones band and Conquer in the Red Alert series don't look so surprised Commander Classics from the now defunct Westwood Studios from Tiberian Sun all the way to generals I recommend trying them out honestly getting started with the originals is super easy these days with a remaster release being a great starting point the games hold up decently well but you're starting off with the very first Command and Conquer you're going to find that they're missing some of the more quality of life features of modern rtss and some of the old school mechanics may drive you bad like infantry getting run over by tanks you aren't microing but it's totally worth it for the B Movie Stories the live action briefings and the killer [Music] soundtrack 2003's Rise of Nations and its expansion pack I loved this game back in the day when it came out it felt like the obvious continuation of game mechanics from titles like Age of Empires Age of Empires 2 Empire Earth and weirdly civilized a it's not everyone's cup of tea but I always loved how the city and Nation buildings worked in this one seeing your cities be connected by roads from Traders and seeing your borders on your Nations literally fight back and forth against the influence of other countries it's a fun game with some surprising levels of detail for 2003 the units look great the buildings are very detailed and there are little bits like watching World War II era infantry set up sandbags if they stay long enough in a certain location and it actually gives them defensive Buffs it's stuff like that I absolutely love it even has a meta campaign mode that I must have missed back in 03 I guess they added that in the expansion you can find Rise of Nations over on Steam these days fairly cheaply and it still has an active modding community over on mod DB since we mentioned it Age of Empires and Empire Earth Age of Empires 1 and two are fantastic games and Empire Earth is just sprawling through the timeline of humanity all the way past it into like mechs and stuff while love these games and I do recommend checking them out for a little history lesson my top is still Rise of Nations in this weird micro genre of classic arts's though Age of Empires 2 is a classic for a reason the home World Series it would be unforgivable not to add the home World franchise in this list it's how we started the video being one of my all-time favorite games even outside this genre the entire series is s tier worth a checkout even more impressive than the fully 3D combat which is still super unique in PC gaming with only one game expanding on this style being nebulus Fleet command which was released a couple of years ago by a small team there aren't many others but what's even more impressive than all of that is the fact that the presentation and story for home world 1 meets and maybe even beats the gameplay the remastered by gearbox is definitely worthwhile though they did make some changes check out mandalore's video for a deep dive details into those changes if you're interested but I still recommend the remaster sadly they left out the expansion for home world 1 back in the day called cataclysm which is a horror RTS that somehow the team managed to pull off you can find that over on Gog and I recommend it World in Conflict we did a full let's play of this one just a couple of years ago it's an alternate 1980s Cold War and the war just got hot a full invasion of a Seattle by the Russians as you running an ad hoc defense with guard and army units whatever you can muster to slow down the enemy's spearhead after the initial release an update came out adding the Russian perspective with its own campaign mixed in between the original one for me this broke up the original story in some really odd ways but still the music the era representation and one of the coolest mechanics ever the way you call in assets really sells the scale of the war and the vibe of the time I can't help but smile calling in air strikes A10 runs Naval bombardments and the way you choose the units you're going to fight with so you can help break through the enemy line it's great you'll get your order shortly get us to the CP and step on it yes sir Supreme Commander talk about a series with a long pedigree starting way back in the 9s with total Annihilation Supreme Commander was the spiritual successor it's just more and better SubCom is all about scale massive armies of Walkers and tanks and artillery clashing huge amounts of resources building up larger and larger forces as a game goes on super weapons and mega units artillery that can fire clear across the entire map this is the game that I am terrible at due to the high level of multitasking but it's never been such fun to be crap at it the game had a number of successors like Planetary Annihilation or the fan-made beyond all reason which are fun but the classic is a classic for a reason check out the fan-made Community Driven project forged Alliance forever if you're interested in many quality of life updates new maps game modes and even Cooperative campaign paid for the title modders are so freaking cool super easy to install as well if we're talking rtss then we got to talk about my favorite World War II one Company of Heroes there is in my opinion no RTS in the World War II genre that had a bigger impact that was nearly as strong as Company of Heroes if good games Come Out Swinging this one came out with a you know nuke armed to its chest and a no shits given attitude oh maybe this what's that plutonium core TR Mell does that translate from detailed units a unique squad-based cover system destructible environments vehicle weak points armor bounce system suppression system unique resources and map control setup brought over from dawn of War the production and sound design is on point this was without a doubt Peak Relic RTS title and they've been struggling to live up to it ever since sorry Relic I should take another swing at company Heroes 3's campaign and see if they've worked out all the bugs yet you can find the classic on Steam as as well as the third one which has pretty mixed reviews overall though Company of Heroes 1 and two definitely fun times Sergeant Connie ready yes sir well I mentioned it dawn of War from 2004 the start of the design for Company of Heroes can be seen in dawn of War I while it lacks the cover system that we get to know in Company of Heroes and the destructible environments you can't just take cover in craters your artillery made in this one one it makes up for all that by being the most heavily modded 40K title around also it's 40K meaning the factions each have a very unique flavor to them style and campaign with later expansions coming out with even more and more factions that you can play as you end up with one of the most flushed out rtss with the greatest variety ever the Imperial Guard are still the best though and I will fight you for the Empire sins of a solar Empire you got to say it just like the trailer guy anyone notice a trend that most of the games on this list have really decent modding support me neither sins of a solar Empire took Everyone by surprise on release it had the scale of a 4X game but it was real time like it's hard to capture how major of a deal this was some of my Fondest Memories of land parties back in ' 08 was in this game the base game is a fine mix of three factions each unique with light RPG Mechanics for the capital ships and a very cool way of dealing with building up to your unicap choosing when to research how many officers you have or your total Fleet size means that it costs you more for the rest of the game to maintain that Fleet meaning the bigger the Army the harder it is to support it the real reason to get S though is for the mods from Star Trek Armada three to thon's Revenge we've covered a massive number of them here on the channel I recommend just looking up sins on the XP Gamers and you'll see all the craziness most of them located over on mod DB so yeah go mod it it's awesome stronghold it's one of the most detailed Castle simulators and for some reason I just love the campaign for the first one maybe it's because it's got characters like the rat and the Wolf very subtle guys it had some terrible re-releases and reworks but if you're looking to make some interesting castles where you can watch a guy chopped down a tree by a woodworker hauled over and refined one board at a time then have those boards sent to storage to be picked up by a Fletcher to get Whitted into a single bow before dropped off at the Armory so you can train a single Archer this is the kind of game for you and you can see inside all their little buildings too you can get stronghold HD over on Steam for around 5 bucks and it's a really good $5 to spend Battle Zone the original game was in 1998 and they released a rework it's a firstperson RTS it's the only firstperson RTS on this list and one of the very few that are good battle zone is a series about driving Vehicles building a base and completing whatever your Oddball objective was in the mission it was a trip to be playing in RTS as a unit on the ground when this one dropped with only a handful of games sort of like this and most of them not very good getting biometal and leading the charge it's been revamped for a steam release with a fairly decent update graphically the combat is intense RTS FPS and uh once again I wish we had more of them and we very much might looking at you new guy Medieval 2 Total War if we're talking classic rtss then I I am going to throw the total war series on here and I'm going to bring up the one specific one I played the most of back in the day Medieval 2 Total War it set the stage for what I've been looking for in each edition of the franchise and to be frank I spent more time playing this game modded than not the maps were bigger we got General speeches at the beginning of battles lots of campaigns to play as hot seat multiplayer and I think the graphic style holds up probably the best so let's talk about well you guess it mods check out mods like the third age for a Lord of the Rings Vibe or the Elder Scrolls Total War mod if you ever wanted to take over Tamriel play as the Nords and take the fight to the Empire I'm a bit surprised that the definitive addition for this is still $25 so keep an eye out for a summer sale for this one 25 seems a bit high for how old it is but worth a look now for the game that I mentioned was kind of hard to find Lord of the Rings battle for middlee one and two specifically two here this one is a bit of a pain in the butt cheeks to find these days releasing in 2004 the original distributor lost the rights to the IP meaning we can't have it on steam or GG it's abandoned wear and you can find it fairly guilt-free online though there are some fan projects in the works to bring this baby back with a full overhaul making it a modern RTS that looks really good check out the video I did on reforged a few years ago Project's still underway sadly it's not done yet Battle for Middle Earth had a unique base building system all the main characters you'd expect to see in Lord of the Rings a killer campaign unique abilities and Magic strong multiplayer and some of the most impressive overhaul mods that are still being worked on and still getting new releases the best part of the base game was just how different the factions were nothing they like playing this while running Lord of the Rings on a side screen all right I feel like this video is going to need two parts as the script has gone a bit long and I haven't even chunked my list yet I had to shorten almost every one of these descriptions let me know what your favorite classic RTS is maybe I missed one and you can introduce me to a new game to play I'd love that anyways thank you all for watching let me know your thoughts in the comments and I'll see you next time because I am an American what does an American want democracy capitalism I want to sell out and settle down s

Channel: TheXPGamers

Views: 114,610

Keywords: Mod, Modded, Modding

Id: iqf9t7dyfRU

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2023