What Makes A Great Real-Time Tactics Game in 2025?

A couple of weeks ago, a reader of this website emailed me, asking me to write a top 10 list of the best real-time tactics games to play in 2025. I came to the realization that this is a sub-genre of strategy games that, despite being one of my favorites, I had never written anything dedicated to it. With that challenge in mind, I first wanted to try and define what a real-time tactics (RTT) game is and what sets it apart from real-time strategy (RTS). The best distinction I came up with is that real-time tactics games minimize the aspect of base-building, and often eliminate it entirely, as well as resource gathering, to focus the player purely on micromanaging their units in battle, often by controlling a very limited selection of squads or individual characters. Games that excel at portraying small unit tactics, offer deep and tactical challenges, and manage to keep things limited to a small number of units with plenty of options are what makes a great real-time tactics game in 2025.

After scouring my previous experiences with this genre, I compiled a list of 10 real-time tactics (RTT) games that I believe are well worth your time and money. I also made sure to select titles that are often heavily discounted during Steam and other online store sales. This means you can use this article as a guide for the RTT games you might want to purchase during the upcoming Steam Winter Sale of 2025.

10 – Partisans 1941

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Partisans 1941 is a compelling real-time tactics game set on the Eastern Front of World War II. Players command a small, ragtag group of Soviet resistance fighters waging a guerrilla war behind enemy lines against the German occupation. Its core gameplay is a direct evolution of the “Commandos-like” formula, focusing heavily on stealth, ambushes, and intricate tactical planning. The game enhances this experience with new mechanics, such as a pause-and-play system to synchronize the unique abilities of your squad members, each of whom possesses distinct skills like silent melee kills or long-range sniping.

What truly sets Partisans 1941 apart is the strategic base management layer between missions. Here, players must manage resources, craft essential equipment, and assign non-deployed partisans to various camp duties. This meta-layer is crucial for ensuring the survival and combat readiness of your growing resistance movement, adding a compelling strategic depth to the intense tactical missions.

9 – Broken Arrow

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Despite its initial launch issues, I maintain that Broken Arrow is currently, in 2025, the best large-scale, modern military real-time tactics game available. It features one of the best campaigns, where players alternate commanding both US and Russian forces in high-intensity battles set in the Baltic region. The campaign is designed to be an excellent primer, teaching you the mechanics if you ever wish to transition to multiplayer. Drawing direct inspiration from titles like the Wargame series and WARNO, Broken Arrow features no in-mission base-building or resource gathering. Instead, players must tinker, experiment, and customize a “Battlegroup” deck of over 300 highly detailed land, air, and naval units, each with custom loadouts and ammunition types.

Gameplay centers on combined-arms warfare, where success hinges on meticulous unit placement, maintaining line of sight using recon units, coordinating various combat systems (from tanks and artillery to attack helicopters and fighter jets), and managing the limited deployment points earned throughout the battle to call in reinforcements. Because it is set in the 21st century, Broken Arrow’s weapon systems possess a level of lethality and precision not typically found in other Wargame-like titles set during the Cold War era.

8 – Last Train Home

Last Train Home has to take the cake for the game with the best and most obscure setting on any strategy list. Being set right after the end of the First World War (WW1), the player commands the Czechoslovak Legion soldiers on their tumultuous road back home, aboard an armored train, in the midst of the Russian Civil War between the White and Red Armies. Last Train Home is a unique blend of real-time tactics and survival management, alternating between two modes: a large-scale strategy map where you manage your armored train—assigning soldiers to roles like cook, medic, or engineer, balancing resources like fuel and food, and making crucial decisions to keep morale up—and intense, squad-based real-time tactics missions where you deploy small teams into hostile territory to scavenge supplies or fight the Red and White armies. The best part of all of this is that the game is based on a real, rarely told story, and the game did extremely well, managing to score an 87% Steam Rating.

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