4 – Cossacks: Back to War
I really can’t put my finger on how I came across Cossacks: Back to War, but I have the vague notion that it might have been a birthday gift from my parents. What I do remember is that it was the first game that made me drop Age of Empires 2 for a while, especially because it seemed like a natural evolution from a timeline perspective. The Age of Empires 2 ages come to an end during the early decades of the Age of Sail, and the Cossacks started there. The base gameplay is similar to Age of Empires 2, with traditional base-building and resource gathering to field troops and then fight. Cossacks also fixed one of my major issues with Age of Empires: the 200 population limit. Instead, you could now have thousands of units, you could organize your troops into proper formations, and battles felt so epic. Overall, Cossacks came into my life during a time when I was also looking for a higher degree of complexity in video games, and it managed to deliver just that, in spades, making it one of the best forgotten RTS games of all time.
3 – Age of Mythology
I think that the first time I played the Age of Mythology Campaign was during the summer of 2003, and I vividly remember waiting for my classes to end to finally pick it up and share it with my cousins. Ask me about the best campaign in the history of strategy games, and I’ll point you directly at Age of Mythology. It wasn’t until I played the adventure of Arkantos from mortal to godhood that I saw the value in having a linear story. Sure, I had dabbed with Red Alert 2, and while that was memorable, it was nowhere near as memorable as Age of Mythology. This is the kind of campaign that has me vividly remembering every mission, something that doesn’t happen all that often. The game was (and still is) so epic that its theme sound is currently playing in my head as I type this out, but that might also be because I recently played Age of Mythology: Retold for its review, and was completely surprised by how well the core of AoM still holds in 2026, with just some minor changes.
2 – Stronghold Crusader
“Stronghold again, Nuno? For real?”, “Always” – I will forever answer. Some of my best memories in gaming come from Stronghold Crusader, and it’s not just because it’s one of the best RTS ever created. You see, the school summer break of 2003 wasn’t only dominated by Age of Mythology. In August, my friends and I started to play Stronghold Crusader at my place, and we just dove straight into it, to the point that when we were at the beach, instead of playing around with our buckets and spades, we were building the “ideal” castle to tackle specific missions of the tough-as-nuts Crusader Trail. If you want to play Stronghold Crusader in 2026, the best way to do it is by getting Stronghold Crusade: Definitive Edition, which is pretty much perfect.
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