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Despite the age, some older strategy games out there actually hold up well with interesting mechanics and premises. In fact, some of the strategy games turning 30 this year are some of the firsts in the industry, often trying out mechanics that were so revolutionary at the time that they have become part and parcel to strategy games today.
7 Conquered Kingdoms
Players of wargames who want a more straightforward strategy title may consider getting into Conquered Kingdoms, which takes the conventional medieval atmosphere of strategy titles at the time and combines it with fantasy elements. Aside from knights, players can now recruit fantastical beings such as dragons and wizards into their ranks, similar to the stories of future franchises such as Warcraft. The inclusion of these units also give the game advantage in terms of gameplay with more complex combat mechanics compared to conventional swordsmen, spearmen, and bowmen of other games.
Unique to Conquered Kingdoms and its straightforward gameplay is the inclusion of different enemy settings. Aside from being able to play against a conventional AI, players are also capable of duking it out against other players in LAN, and even fight other opponents through the internet.
6 Siege
Set in the world of Mindcraft’s The Magic Candle, players don’t necessarily have to stop the magic candle from burning out and releasing the evil being Dreax into the world. Instead, they now either control the forces of good or the forces of darkness as they try to lay siege on various castles across the region of Western Gurtex.
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In Overlord, players and AI have to approach various things in order to build their colony, from terraforming to creating various structures that facilitate resource gathering and production. As players get more colonies, they’re also able to create various planetary defenses and even stronger armies to colonize other planets. While not as real-time intensive as other players imagine, Overlord’s approach on both pressure and complexity make the game a decent precursor to the genre.
Unlike usual strategy titles like Total Warthat take place while players move units across a vast map, players instead either siege or defend their assigned castle. Depending on their side, players can enlist the help of elite troops, sergeants, berserkers, and even engineers as they create gear and technology capable of laying siege or defending their bases. Such equipment includes catapults, ladders, siege towers, and even mobile bridges that give players different layers of gameplay and strategic approaches to secure victory.
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4 Star Control 2
With the likes of Stellaris showing how space exploration sims have potential in appealing to sci-fi fans, Star Control 2 shows how compelling such a strategy game could get despite being in the graphically-limited MS-DOS. Set after the Hierarchy of Battle Thralls had just defeated the Alliance of Free Stars, a genius child (the player) grows up to control an advanced starship that allows their exiled Earthlings from a distant star system come back to reclaim Earth and stop the Hierarchy once and for all.
Aside from the rather deep storyline, Star Control 2 has its claim to fame primarily through its gameplay elements that mix both strategy and ship simulation. Inside combat, players need to master ship control and understand unique ship features regarding maneuvers, weapons, and abilities. Outside combat, players can navigate and visit over 500 stars and 3,800 planets, with very few of them containing civilizations players can befriend and convince to join their cause or, tragically, transform into enemies.
3 A-Train 3
Players who lovedcity sims like Cities: Skylines know how utterly addictive it is to create the “perfect” transportation system. And while it’s already complex enough to manage traffic on roads, it’s perhaps more riveting to manage the ever-swirling complexity of railways. In A-Train 3, released in 1990 in Japan but released in 1992 in the United States, players still take control of a railway company. However, unlike other entries in the series, there aren’t any opposing companies and instead players have a more liberal, more open-world approach to the game.
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This is also the first game to take place in a near-isometric rendition of the city, giving players more visual stimulation to see what exactly is happening in their railway. Interestingly enough, A-Train 3 puts railways as the front and center for city development, with various approaches to railway transportation changing the direction of how the city is developed. This addition of a city-building component on top of the game’s complex railway management mechanics give players a lot of leeway in the progression of their gameplay.
2 Laser Squad
Sci-fi fans could consider X-COM as one of the most gameplay-intensive tactical RPGs out there, and unsurprisingly enough, its creator Julian Gollop took the game’s inspiration from one of his earlier works: Laser Squad, which in itself adapted ideas from the earlier Rebelstar series. At its core, the game simply had players navigate through a series of various stages with different objectives, with players having to take careful note of how to manage their squad’s arsenal, available movesets, and limited resources.
This turn-based tactics game contained a lot of elements that would be improved to make their way into the acclaimed X-COM franchise. These include the possession of limited action points used to conduct actions such as movement, shooting, and even picking up items. Not only that, various missions would test the player’s organizational prowess through the provision of different initial settings and handicaps, all of which would force the player’s adaptability.
1 Dune 2: The Building Of A Dynasty
While RTS giants Warcraft and Command & Conquer would only be released within the next few years, it’s Westwood Studios’ Dune 2: The Building of a Dynasty that many consider as the game to hold much of the archetypal foundations of the genre. Set in the planet of Arrakis in the iconic Dune sci-fi series, Emperor Frederick IV of House Corrino starts a conflict between three (3) dominating Houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, Ordos) as he declares the House to prevail against the others as the holder of the governorship in Arrakis and its vital melange drug resources.
At its core, Dune 2 establishes many of the fundamental components of most modern RTS games to follow it. Players begin a match by using a harvester to gather spices, using a refinery to convert spice into credits, and using various production buildings to create units and wage war. Other archetypes Dune 2 introduces that games would apply include a fog of war that is removed during exploration. While rudimentary in terms of graphics, the almost-seamless real-time strategy elements Dune 2 introduces is a landmark moment in the industry.
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