I remember fondly the days of playing Heroes of Might and Magic II, never played HOMM3 or anything after, but as I looked at the latest and most “recent” heroes games… they’re all rated/reviewed SO harshly. Apparently, they never gained steam like the earlier titles. RTS seems to have the same issue, tapering off. Starcraft is basically dried up and dead, and we never got another Warcraft unfortunately. Even WC3 Reforged was a total flop/disaster, people were hoping one day to get Warcraft 4. Would’ve been nice, honestly… But it never happened. as of today, I can’t find a single RTS or RPG I actually enjoy that isn’t some old ‘classic’.
What happened to these genres?
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If you don’t mind gacha games, I’ve been enjoying Honkai: Star Rail. The battles are turn based, some of the puzzles and events are a bit reaction time dependent, but not difficult generally.
For RTS I can highly recommend Beyond All Reason (BAR). It’s very similar to Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander and runs on a very performant custom engine. And the best thing: it’s free and open source, even though its still in active development it already has quite a stable playerbase and is extremely polished with a ton of qol features.
HoMM is a turn-based strategy game, not RPG (with the notable exception of HoMM IV where you had real hero development). That said, there was a genre of RPG’s, which used to be very popular in the 80s and 90s, and which all but disappeared. Those were party-based first-person RPG’s with turn based (or close to it) combat. Popularized by Wizardry, and followed by Might and Magic, they inspired other series like the Ishar Trilogy. Other games employed real-time combat, but slow enough or pausable, to mimic turn-based. Popular series were Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, Dungeon Master, and others. Nowadays, I occasionally see one of these games from independent projects, but it seems that the golden age of this sub-genre has passed.
Turn based RPGs ain’t doing that bad. I mean, BG3 was the hype in the last year or so…
To be fair, BG3 is one of the most remarkable games I have ever played. Like ever. I have struggled to find other games like that which I really enjoy. Divinity original sin 2 I haven’t tried yet but I’m tempted to. Just really struggling to find stuff that’s decent and enjoyable I guess
I’m playing D:OS2 now, and it’s most of the way to BG3. I’d also highly recommend the Wasteland games.
The graphics are much simpler than BG3, but Owlcat has done some fantastic work with their Pathfinder games.
Wrath of the Righteous is much more polished and expanded than Kingmaker, but they’re both great. They both have the option to play in turn-based like BG3, or real time with pause like the old BG games.
I’ve heard a lot of concerning things about Pathfinder being way, WAY more complex and challenging than BG3, like absurdly, crazy complex combat and game systems that I’d probably struggle with and bar me from getting really into their game.
That’s a fair assessment. There are a ridiculous number of classes and subclasses each with their own quirks. And that’s without getting into multiclassing or Wrath’s mythic path system. I’ve definitely spent 20+ minutes leveling up before.
Do you like JRPGs? Yakuza: Like a Dragon is fairly recent and has a sequel (that I haven’t gotten to play yet). The story is NOT your typical RPG fare, it’s a modern drama about an ex-gangster trying to get back on his feet after prison (it gets emotional, I cried). But the combat is a classic turn-based RPG and it’s fun, stylish, and just barely complex enough to stay engaging.
The unanimous game of the year last year is a turn-based RPG, and I can promise you Metaphor: ReFantazio this year will do well critically and commercially, just like Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth did earlier this year. There are plenty of turn-based RPGs to go around. If you meant turn-based tactics or strategy, same thing; plenty of those to go around as well.
RTS sort of peaked with StarCraft II, at least in terms of popularity, but you find some here and there. Battle Aces and Stormgate are both from ex-Blizzard devs chasing that high, and both are live service, so those two will soon be dead, but there are others out there that are less popular that come out from time to time.
For C&C fans, Tempest Rising is C&C in all but name. The most recent playtest felt like a hybrid of Tiberian Sun and Tiberium Wars. It’s not out yet, but I’m very excited about it.
While it definitely felt to me like turn-based RPGs were looked down on for a time, particularly when Final Fantasy abandoned its roots, I’d say the pendulum has been swinging back in the other direction for quite some time now.
Persona 5 was a smash hit, Fire Emblem is doing quite well, Dragon Quest is still going. Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler were solid mid-budget titles carrying on FF’s roots where actual FF won’t. Mario & Luigi is getting a revival. Over in the indie space, Sea of Stars and Chained Echoes have done well. And then you have tons and tons and tons of classics that have been getting remasters or even full remakes lately.
Oh yeah, and then there’s a li’l game called Undertale that seems to have been fairly well received.
I started replaying the original ffVii on my steam deck, now. Using several 7th Heaven mods that really make the game look and sound like it didn’t come from the PS1 Era. It’s a slow start, but so far it’s still shaping up to be the great game I remember playing 25+ years ago.
Plus, unlike the remake, it’s all one game instead of 3+ take your money releases across two or three console generations.
They’re just not as popular as they used to be, and there are so many players on console nowadays. I can’t imagine playing an RTS with a controller.
Age of Empires seems to be doing really well though. The first 3 games got great remasters, and AoE 4 is well received from what I understand.
I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more gaming pcs now days, too. Consoles have been loosing out on the gaming market share since the 90’s. PC overtook consoles in both popularity and profits a bit over a decade ago.
Disheartening enough though, is that as far as profits are concerned, mobile games make $ more than pc and console combined.
Warcraft II!!
An RTS yes, but not turn based. In fact I bet we don’t fine any turn based real time strategies.
How would you categorize one of my all time other favorites, KOTOR?
KOTOR was literally epic, same with WC2… I haven’t found many like that these days unfortunately.
Sea of Stars is a turn based RPG that came out
thislast year. It is a modern homage to Chrono Trigger and it is great. Highly rec.That actually came out last year.
Ahh, time is collapsing on me. My bad.
Turn-based RPGs I can understand, but “RTS” is “real-time strategy” – it’s intrinsically not turn-based.
You can get turn-based strategy games, but they aren’t RTSes.
It depends on what you’re looking for. There are more hard-warsim oriented games at Matrix Games, though a number of those are also available on Steam these days.
Steam has a “Turn-based Strategy” tag:
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&tags=1741&supportedlang=english&ndl=1
There’s a turn-based RPG sale/event happening on Steam right now. I can’t vouch for any of those games, but new ones do exist.
As for why they seem to have declined in popularity I can only guess - smartphones happened, removing the need for a home computer from many would-be RTS gamers.
AOE2DE is the 72 most played game on steam currently in reference to RTS, its much higher than several other games.
There’s a perceived unpopularity with these genres. However, some truly great games like Baldur’s Gate 3 are living proof that you can make a niche genre very popular. It’s just that almost no one tries, or doesn’t like the risk involved. That’s why you don’t see a lot of these genres anymore. Well, you DO see them, if you look close enough and include indie and A/AA titles, but a massive AAA title with big budget and advertising for those genres is pretty much non-existant (I’m not familiar of any other exception like BG3). I think big studios are unlikely to risk such things. Look for smaller game studios, they’re much more innovative and either keep “dead” genres alive or they try mixing genres in innovative ways.
If you are looking for something similar to HOMM: https://store.steampowered.com/app/867210/Songs_of_Conquest/
Isn’t Steam literally having a turn-based sale right now?
Anyways, I think turn-based games are less fun and more tedious. Except Field Commander on PSP. That was a lot of fun.
Yeah, a turn based RPG sale. I browsed through it, didn’t find a single thing it felt like I’d actually enjoy since I already have BG3 and Wasteland 2
