7 – Scourge of War – Remastered
The bulk of my historical knowledge starts with the fall of the Roman Empire and goes all the way until the late 15th century. It jumpstarts itself during the latter years of the 19th century. Given that, I don’t consider myself very knowledgeable when it comes to what happened between the mid-1500s and the late 1800s. I know the overall strokes that defined European history, and something about the maritime expansion of European empires, but aside from that, I know little. For years, I have avoided the topic of military history for that time period, but when I started playing historical games more often, I started to become interested in Napoleonic warfare. First with Total War: Napoleon (because of course), and then with Scourge of War – Remastered.
I don’t think you can find any game out there that even dares to match the scale of Scourge of War. Do you know how the Battle of Waterloo goes in Total War? Well, for the scale of Scourge of War, that would be considered an insignificant scuffle. There are dozens of thousands of units on screen, and the terrain is built at a one-to-one scale. This game doesn’t play around when it comes to taking historical reality to its extreme, because it goes out of its way to depict every single thing it can to be as accurate as possible to the real deal, from the colour of the uniforms, the position of troops, the control you can exert over them, the accuracy of the weaponry, and all else in between.
6 – Burden of Command
It’s super exciting that this list of my favorite historical games features not only one, but two games from 2025! If Europa Universalis 5 has been a massive success with me at the grand-strategy level, then Burden of Command completely revolutionized the way I look at future World War 2 games at the tactical level. I know that Luke Hughes, the lead designer of Burden of Command, prefers to have Burden of Command be called a leadership RPG, but the game as a whole is still an amazing tactical experience. The unique experience of taking control of a company and lead them from the first days in boot camp all the way to the end of the war is unmatched by any other game out there, and if you’re the kind of player that’s looking for the equivalent of a Band of Brothers experience in videogame format, Burden and Command will perfectly go hand in hand and be a perfect pairing to play alongside Brothers in Arms. In my review, I called it my favorite World War 2, and nothing that has come out in 2025 has done anything to change my mind.
5 – Europa Universalis 5 (EU5)
Call it hype. Call it what you want, but I have fallen in love with Europa Universalis 5 (EU5) since I started playing it for my review on Strategy and Wargaming. I genuinely think this is the best game of the Europa Universalis series, and also the best game Paradox Interactive has ever put together. The grandiose scope of Europa Universalis V is just daunting for a new player, and the amount of possibilities the game provides you with can be hard to wrap your head around, but its interconnected web of overlapping systems is precisely the kind of thing that excites a historian’s brain like mine. The dynamic population system, the addition of an even more complete and complex market that can be manipulated to achieve your economic goals, the addition of Estates that the player must manage and take advantage of, and the biggest map the series has ever seen are just the tip of what earned Europa Universalis 5 an instant placement in this list. The game is also a stage to recreate History as closely as possible to reality, and playing as my country and making historically accurate decisions while navigating its more random nature has been so satisfying.
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