The 22 Best Turn-Based Strategy Games of All Time

Sid Meier is practically the father of strategy games. His name is placed right in front of one of the most recognizable kings of the genre (more on that one later!). Back in the day, Meier linked up with Brian Reynolds (esteemed designer of Civilization II) to go beyond the stars in a game that's smack dab in the middle of the Alpha Centauri star system. The epic act of colonizing space with one of seven factions led to a game full of captivating gameplay - fully understanding the cultures behind your chosen group, putting their units to good use during moments of fierce warfare, and employing diplomatic maneuvers to gain more of the upper hand are the reasons why we enjoy this game so much.

The Heroes of Might and Magic series is another retro strategy classic that delivers on its promise of delivering grand battles in a realm dominated by fantastical elements. Out of the seven games that have come from that franchise, we saw fit to honor the fourth one thanks to its major gameplay changes in regard to combat. Heroes of Might and Magic IV marked the active involvement of caravans and heroes in all the onscreen action that goes down on a regular basis in this game. The game's initial six campaigns are worth the price of admission all on their own. But when you factor in all the extra campaigns, troops, and maps that come with this game's two expansions, you have one of the most content-heavy entries in the Heroes of Might and Magic series.

The PS1's Final Fantasy Tactics continued the fabled run of Squaresoft after the launch of Final Fantasy VII. And once Sony's first handheld machine came onto the scene, a new and improved version of one of the best turn-based strategy games ever made. Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions' battle system gives players access to a satisfying gathering of character jobs to master in order to prevail during epic encounters that play out like nail-biting chess matches. The well-tuned character customization and combat systems are this game's strongest features, but we're also quite fond of its wonderful soundtrack and crisp 2D art style. Emerging dominant over your foes within the vast world of "Ivalice" felt good back on the PS1 and feels that much better in the palm of our hands on the PSP and mobile devices.

We fondly remember the inclusion of Fire Emblem's Roy and Marth in Super Smash Bros. Melee, which exposed Nintendo's prized strategy RPG franchise to younger gamers in other regions beyond Japan. Thanks to that amazing decision, the decision to localize Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade for the Game Boy Advance came to pass. The handheld series entry we love to death is most definitely this one, though! Fire Emblem Awakening gets plenty of accolades for being one of the best turn-based strategy games and one of the best Fire Emblem games period. The game's intriguing storyline, higher-than-expected production values, and captivating combat push this game to uncontested greatness (those moments of party member permadeath broke out hearts way too many times, though…). YOU'RE THE BEST, CHROM!

Now we would be crazy to shout out just a single Fire Emblem game here. Luckily, we have some sense and are of the right mind to place one of the series' finest Nintendo Switch installments. Fire Emblem: Three Houses implements a cool main protagonist structure where players step into the role of a notable professor who presides over one of three houses, where impressionable students fall under their leadership. When the time comes to enter the heat of battle, the strong foundations of the series' battle mechanics shine through. The addition of helpful "Battalions" and their mastery over "Gambits" adds a cool wrinkle to the combat that makes an already great approach to strategic clashes that much better.

Now we're back to show even more respect to the man most associated with the strategy genre. The series that defines his recognizability as one of the greatest designers in gaming is Civilization, which has been around since 1991. The series entry we consider the strongest and the best representation of the "4X" sub-genre is Civilization V. It's easy to lose yourself in building one's very own society from the prehistoric ages right up until the far-flung future on procedurally generated maps. The hexagonal spaces play a huge part in freshening up the combat by presenting more strategic opportunities to take advantage of. Plus the new & improved diplomacy system makes the act of bargaining with other world leaders an even more fascinating endeavor.

The nostalgic developers at Chucklefish took inspiration from Nintendo's Advance Wars series and got in the lab to create something that evoked the best parts of those games. The result of their hard work is Wargroove, a spiritual successor to one of the best turn-based strategy games Nintendo fans have ever seen. The pixelated cartoony art style of this game grabbed our attention and the gameplay did an amazing job of keeping us attached to it for hours on end. Warrgoove hits in all the right places thanks to addictive gameplay, a bunch of charming "Commanders" to adopt, and dynamic combat maneuvers that come from the implementation of "Grooves." Hopping online to contend with other Wargroove strategists never gets old, by the way!

Modern-day Square Enix has adopted the "HD-2D" visual format to breathe new life into the nostalgic movement behind bringing back classic RPGs. That graphical touchup job is also being lent to brand-new genre releases that take fans back to the good old days. Triangle Strategy is evidence of how successful that trend has become - it features a splendid 16-bit art style and battles that hearken back to the combat of classic Fire Emblem games & Final Fantasy Tactics. When it comes to original features, we're big fans of this game's "Conviction" mechanic and the major impact that voting has on the many different paths of the story.

Nintendo has always done a good job of injecting Mario and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom into non-platforming games and crossovers. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is considered one of the best SNES games and RPGs of all time. And when it comes to a turn-based strategy experience, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle turned out a million times better than gamers expected. The game's grid-based combat is fun in its own right. But it's all the unique weaponry that Nintendo and Ubisoft's kid-friendly characters use that adds to this game's battle format. Playing this wild turn-based strategy mashup game still elicits plenty of laughter and moments of hard-fought victories.

Something that everyone figured would suck worked well on its first attempt. And thankfully, that idea made its welcome return in a sequel that maintains a high level of quality for the Mario gang and all those mischievous "Rabbids." Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope makes great improvements to the first game's combat structure by getting rid of grid-based movement and allowing characters to freely move around map spaces. Also, we're huge advocates for the newly added party members (Edge, Rabbid Rosalina, and Bowser) and the elemental boosting "Sparks" that offer each character a new ability to implement into their battle plan.

The best way to enter the alien-dominated world of the original X-COM: UFO Defense is through this modern-day reimagining. XCOM: Enemy Unknown properly reboots the entire series - it manages to bring back the best portions of the original game and offers a better implementation of turn-based strategy combat. The stakes are incredibly high as the "permadeath" feature challenges players to carry out their actions as carefully as possible (because if they don't, they risk losing their favorite soldiers). Keeping a close eye on the operations of your underground headquarters and fighting to keep your member nations from getting more paranoid about their alien foes are two more reasons why XCOM: Enemy Unknown is regarded as a highly lauded strategy game.

It's wild how XCOM 2 starts off on such a somber note - the alien threat that arrived in Enemy Unknown has actually become our alien overlords by the time its sequel arrives. With that premise at the heart of this follow-up, we had all the reason in the world to beat them back and help humanity reign over the Earth once again. Adding procedurally generated maps, new soldier classes (the "Reaper" and "Grenadier" types always got us out of a really bad situation!), and a stealthy concealment system are what makes this sequel feel like a giant leap forward for the rebooted XCOM chronology. When you're speaking about the best turn-based strategy games, this sci-fi resistance experience deserves mentioning.

Commanding the overwhelming power of giant mechs to assault a group of merciless beasts is a simple concept that attracts us in video game form. Into the Breach takes that familiar gameplay concept, adopts it for a turn-based strategy format, and fine-tunes it to the point of near perfection. Making the proper moves needed to defend civilian-filled buildings and keep the "Vex" at bay across bite-sized battle maps is captivating enough to classify it as one of the best turn-based strategy games of all time.

It's no surprise when turn-based strategy games gear themselves toward historical heads that want to play out the real-world battles that erupted during past world wars. The first Unity of Command handles that theme well as it tackles the 1942/43 Stalingrad Campaign on the Eastern Front. Unity of Command II offers an even better experience for players looking to get sucked into the realm of "wargaming" - participating in the explosive battles of World War II on the side of the Western Allies results in dynamic campaign playthroughs and a "Headquarters" mechanic that goes a long way toward keeping your troops in the fight.

Imagine our surprise when the third-person shooter gorefest known as Gears of War changed things up by adopting the sort of gameplay we're used to seeing in XCOM! This hard shift ended up resulting in an experiment that passed with flying colors. Gears Tactics keeps all of the trademark combat maneuvers of the mainline games (such as throwing grenades to destroy "Emergence Holes" full of the "Locust" contingent) while adopting the themes that made the rebooted XCOM games so successful. Gears Tactics also deserves a ton of credit for being one of the most visually impressive turn-based strategy games out there and a game with an intricate skills system worth mastering.

We have another game on our list of the best turn-based strategy games centered around taking massive mechs onto the battlefield to save the day. And that game is BattleTech, which comes from the remarkable creators of the MechWarrior universe. The feel of a tabletop RPG translates incredibly well to this game. We especially love the nice variety of "MechWarriors" available to players and the deep customization that goes into maximizing their movement & combat potential. BattleTech is all about giant robots shooting down other giant robots, which we're definitely big fans of.

The Viking-themed trilogy of The Banner Saga is one of the most emotionally devastating games we've ever played. From the very first game, we grew to despise the "Dredge" and made every attempt at leaving most battles against them with as few fallen units as possible. The Banner Saga 3 puts a nice cap on the saga as a whole - on top of an ending that largely wraps things up on a worthwhile note, this threequel excels in the area of combat thanks to new enemy types and 40 awesome heroes that we had a hell of a time upgrading to the fullest.

Sega and Creative Assembly's Total War franchise has regularly pumped out some of the finest turn-based strategy games across PC and mobile devices. Whenever we get the urge to drop ourselves into the battles patterned after the Samurai struggles of feudal Japan, we choose to do so via this next pick. Total War: Shogun 2 marries the gameplay themes of real-time and turn-based strategy combat to produce a game where every second attached to making crucial decisions counts. Building, battling, and scheming to assert dominance over rival clans can easily soak up a whole day of playing this game to death.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was first released on the SNES. Then it got a quality remake on the PSP called Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. And finally, that remake got a meaningful refresh via a remaster called Tactics Ogre: Reborn. This version of one of Square Enix's biggest triumphs in the turn-based strategy genre is the one worth seeking out thanks to its improved graphics, highly adaptable AI that results in more interesting battles, and faster combat pacing. Someday, we're going to get an all-new Tactics Ogre game. But until then, we'll keep enjoying our time with the most refined version of the 2010 remake. LONG LIVE SIR DENIM POWELL!

Firaxis Games got one of the biggest opportunities in gaming when it got the rights to Marvel Comics characters to create a unique superhero take on the turn-based strategy genre. The result of the studio's creative vision resulted in the creation of Marvel's Midnight Suns, a game that deserved way more love when it made its initial debut. Too many people turned their noses up at this game's card-based combat system, which is super enjoyable. Being able to use the environment to dish out big damage and pull off each hero's signature superpowered attack makes each combat scenario in this game shine. And getting to mingle with the likes of Blade, Wolverine, and Scarlet Witch during everyday conversations appealed to our inner comic book geek.

Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising drained plenty of batteries as they got hours of dedicated playtime on Game Boy Advances everywhere. We're thankful for Nintendo and WayForward's union that led to the creation of a remake compilation for both games on the Nintendo Switch. Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp arrived with a new coat of paint that greatly improved the game's Saturday morning cartoon-like visuals. And the Charismatic "Commanding Officers," their beneficial abilities, and land, air, & sea-based skirmishes lead to addictive turn-based warfare.

For the final selection on our list of the best turn-based strategy games, we're going to delve into another World War II-themed experience. Hexagonal spaces play the part of the spaced-out battlefields where players get embroiled in the European theatre of the Second World War. Panzer Corps 2 is feature-rich as it offers challenging AI battles for solo players, co-op/competitive multiplayer options, and tons of modding options for the more creative gamers out there who love creating maps for their fellow digital military commanders. The replay factor for this game is off the charts and has a good way of keeping war historians/strategy game hobbyists busy.