June 11, 2025, 12:56 pm | Read time: 4 minutes
Building cities, jump-starting the economy, upgrading armies—no video game genre embodies these activities quite like strategy games. The TECHBOOK editorial team shares their favorite titles.
There are games where you fight or shoot your way through hordes of enemies using various weapons and special abilities. Or you might jump and run through lovingly designed levels. But if you want to challenge your brain, you can spend exciting hours with a good strategy game. In these, you don’t fight directly but command others to do so–for example, as a commander of entire armies that you direct across the battlefield. TECHBOOK presents four particularly successful representatives of the genre that are worth a look.
Warcraft III
The title “Warcraft” makes the eyes of many strategy game fans light up. The brand is undoubtedly one of the biggest of its kind, and “World of Warcraft” in particular enjoys lasting popularity. But “Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos” is still a true classic of the genre more than 20 years after its release.
The storyline mainly revolves around the Burning Legion’s attempt to conquer the world of Azeroth. They are aided by an army of undead. Humans, orcs, and night elves must form an alliance to fend off the attack.
All four factions are available for players to choose from. As is typical for a real-time strategy game, you must gather resources, train individual units and heroes, and build bases to defeat the enemy. Numerous maps are available for this, including many fan-created ones.
The Banner Saga
“The Banner Saga” is a more unusual game on this list. It combines elements of strategy games with those of role-playing games and places a strong emphasis on the story being told. It involves a caravan that the player controls, which must face a warlike race called the Dredge, who despise humanity.
The storyline changes depending on the decisions you make throughout. The battles, in turn, are turn-based and take place on a grid where you move and execute maneuvers turn by turn.
“The Banner Saga” received many positive reviews, including for its unique look and great music. It’s also noteworthy that it is a small, independent production–the development studio Stoic was funded with the help of Kickstarter.
Heroes of Might and Magic 5
The fifth installment of the famous game series is now almost 20 years old, but it still holds up well, especially in terms of gameplay. “Heroes of Might and Magic 5” was released for PC in 2006, received very good reviews at the time, and sold well. It was the first part of the series to be fully realized with 3D graphics.
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Gameplay here is also turn-based in battles. Players can choose a “Hero” and learn new skills with them, which then come into play in combat. There are two skill sets in total, each divided into four levels. Additionally, the base game features six factions that compete against each other.
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Age of Empires II
The “Age of Empires” series is also one of the great classics in the strategy genre. Since 1997, the real-time strategy skirmishes have thrilled players worldwide and on various platforms thanks to their sophisticated gameplay and historical settings. The second part, “Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings,” is considered a milestone of the genre.
On Metacritic, the average score calculated from all professional reviews stands at 92 out of 100 points–a result that signifies “universal acclaim.” Compared to its predecessor, the second part scores with numerous innovations and improvements, some of which influenced the entire strategy game genre. “Age of Empires II” also proved to be a commercial success.