15 – Bad North: Jotunn Edition
If you’re the kind of player looking for a minimalistic experience you can get in and out after a long day at work I can wholeheartedly recommend Bad North: Jotunn Edition, offering a deceptively simple yet deeply engaging take on real-time strategy (RTS), infused with roguelite elements. Players are tasked with defending a series of procedurally generated, aesthetically pleasing island kingdoms from relentless Viking invaders. The core gameplay revolves around strategic unit positioning and micro-management of a small band of loyal subjects—archers, pikemen, and infantry—who automatically engage enemies based on their placement and class.
The “Jotunn Edition” includes all free content updates, expanding on the base game with new enemy types, commander traits, and items, adding further strategic depth to its challenging, perma-death-driven campaign. Bad North provides a refreshing and replayable experience for PC gamers seeking a compact yet intense tactical RTS challenge, while also being highly addictive. The fact that’s always so cheap on sale is just another excuse for you to get it without breaking the bank.
14 – Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, the standalone expansion to the original 2007 classic, remains a benchmark for real-time strategy (RTS) games focused on immense scale and economic depth even in 2025 for games like Beyond All Reason and the upand-coming Sanctuary: Shattered Sun. In case you never heard about this, the best way to describe it is by letting you know that you’ll command hundreds of units, across kilometers-wide maps, and still be building up your base and its defenses. The battles are absolutely wild affairs, with thousands of lasers and missiles going off simultaneously, and hundreds of units exploding and collapsing. Add to all of that the colossal “experimental” units capable of devastating entire sections of the map and you can see why this game is still so very much well-loved in 2025. Its seamless strategic zoom allows players to transition from micro-managing individual units to overseeing the entire battlefield, a feature still unmatched by many modern RTS titles.
13 – Company of Heroes 3
After a massive and successful update in 2025, Company of Heroes 3 has become my go-to Company of Heroes game to recommend to players looking for a true arcade experience about the Second World War. The game moves the series from the Normandy bocages of the first game and the massive maps of the Eastern Front from the second one and places the game in a whole new, never-explored setting: the Mediterranean and North African theaters of World War II. Developed by the RTS masters at Relic Entertainment, this installment retains the series’ hallmark intense unit combat, emphasizing cover systems, destructible environments, tank armor, and combined arms tactics, as well as a great execution of the 4Fs of infantry fighting (Find, Fix, Flank and Finish). The basics of the game might still be the same, but there’s a significant new addition in the form of the “Dynamic Campaign Map,” which offers a turn-based strategic layer over the tactical real-time battles, allowing players greater control over their forces, logistics, and decisions across a sprawling warzone, similar to something like Total War.
12 – Total War: Three Kingdoms
I usually go for either Rome: Total War or Total War: Shogun 2 in my historical Total War recommendations, but this time I wanted to highlight Total War: Three Kingdoms. Released in 2019, it’s a unique installment in the Total War series of games by attempting to merge history with the mythological, and doing so successfully, becoming one of the best selling Total War games of all time, and one of the best selling strategy games ever. Famed for its deep dive into ancient China’s iconic Three Kingdoms period, Total War: Three Kingdoms is miles apart from other games due to its character-centric gameplay and arguably the best diplomacy system in the entire Total War franchise, which still hasn’t been replicated to this day. Players choose from 12 legendary Warlords, each with unique personalities, relationships, and objectives, influencing both the grand turn-based campaign and the visceral real-time battles. The game offers two distinct modes: “Romance Mode,” where generals are demigod-like heroes capable of epic duels, and “Records Mode,” offering a more historically grounded experience. If you can, get the full package with every expansion, as each adds a ton of new flavor, unique factions, and generals, as well as new and fun units to toy around with.
11 – WARNO
WARNO is the latest creation of Eugen Systems, the developer better known for creating the iconic R.U.S.E, and then coming up with the game that made them truly famous: the Wargame series. WARNO is the next step in the series evolution. It’s still trying to be a hypothetical World War III Cold War gone hot kind of game, set in 1989. The game’s focus is on massive battles, with hundreds of units, with a special focus on combined arms, unit force customization, deck creation, and a lot of tactical depth. Players choose between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces (always expanding with new updates and paid DLCs) and assemble custom “battlegroups” from over a thousand authentically modeled units, ranging from main battle tanks and infantry to artillery, helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft. With continuous updates, a dedicated community, and recent DLCs expanding its content, WARNO offers a deep and rewarding experience for serious military strategy enthusiasts, making it a prime target for discounts during the Steam Summer Sale 2025.
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