Introduction
After the massive success of XCOM 2011, the gaming industry saw a massive surge of new turn-based strategy games. Some titles, like Phoenix Point, Into the Breach, and Xenonauts, soon followed and became hits in their own right. 15 Years later, in 2026, we’re still seeing some amazing new entries in the genre, with games like MENACE (from the Battle Brothers team) and Star Wars Zero Company among the best of the year. With so many great games coming out, it’s only natural that a few will go under the radar. Join me, and let’s take a look at 10 of the best forgotten turn-based strategy games you’ve never played!
10 – Classified: France ’44
When someone asked the question “What if XCOM, but in World War 2?” in a meeting, the result was Classified: France ’44. Developed by Absolutely Games and published by Team17, the game came out in 2024, and I found it to be quite a faithful adaptation of XCOM into the iconic and well-known conflict in Human History, in a way that’s totally not historical, realistic, or has any semblance to reality whatsoever. And I don’t even say that as a bad thing. God knows we have more than enough realistic turn-based wargames set in World War 2.
The game puts you in charge of an elite team of Allied special forces sabotaging the German war effort in the month leading up to D-Day. Turn-based combat is exactly what you would expect from a game that’s directly influenced by XCOM, but with a World War 2 skin on top. The strategic aspect is built around achieving strategic objectives of degrading the war effort and building up a relationship with the French resistance.
9 – Every Day We Fight
Not every game has to be a masterpiece. Not every game needs to be perfect. Sometimes, all a game needs to have is an interesting mystery for a story, passable combat, and a lot of charm, and that’s more than enough to carry it. That’s precisely what happened with Every Day We Fight. Players are caught in a time loop, leading a band of resistance fighters that are seemingly unaffected by the whole ordeal. That’s as far as I’m willing to go; the rest is up to you to find out. The game sets the player free in a semi-open world, and now it’s up to them to explore, fight encounters, scavenge for resources, and complete missions.
The combat adds a fun new twist, where it removes the randomness that’s typical of these sorts of games and replaces it with a first-person shooter perspective where the player must aim and fire at the enemies during their turns, while the enemy is available to move. So imagine Valkyria Chronicles, but the enemies try to evade your shots. It’s really cool. Anyway, if you’ve never heard about Every Day We Fight, it’s currently in Early Access, so check it out.
8 – Panzer Corps Gold
Most of the titles on this list are relatively similar in size and scope. They mostly take place at a very tactical level, and the player controls single soldiers. With Panzer Corps, the scale is much larger! It’s an operational-level turn-based strategy game that manages to hit that perfect sweet spot between being a complex and yet very approachable game. As the name already implies, the game is set in World War 2, and will give you control of the Allied and Axis forces from the first moment the war broke out, to the last bitter end. The game goes on sale very often, and the sheer amount of content the Gold edition has is just mind-boggling: from entire war-spanning campaigns to operations and single battles. There are more units than you’ll probably ever need or play with. If you fall in love with this one, you’ll probably not need a new game for the next couple of years.
7 – Jagged Alliance 3
We need to have a talk about Jagged Alliance 3! For years, fans of the Jagged Alliance franchise had been crying about the lack of a proper sequel to Jagged Alliance 2, with most of the games that came out in that 20-year period that marked the release of JA2 and JA3 being relatively boring.
Well, when Jagged Alliance 3 came out in 2023, there was almost no fanfare about it! It came out, I reviewed it alongside IGN and PCGamer, and nobody else touched it! And it’s a damn shame, because JA 3 is by far the best game in the series, and one of the best turn-based strategy games in recent memory!
What’s there to fault about it? The combat aspect of it is excellent, with a classic action-point system, several fire options, a ton of weapons and equipment to use, and a massive amount of challenges to surpass. The classic mercenary squad management of JA2 is here as well. There’s a ton of side quests, and the main campaign is excellent, and there’s the whole world map to control as well. There’s also RPG-lite elements too! It was an excellent return to form that deserved a lot more attention than it got, and the fact that the game came out fully done, with no predatory monetary practices or quartered content, only makes the whole situation a bit sadder. I hope we still get JA4, because Haemimont Games and THQ Nordic didn’t miss this shot.
Leave a Reply