I want to introduce the RTS games with very high replay value but not too familiar names.
To become a classic, a game often has to have common elements such as compelling storylines or great gameplay, but that is only enough for them to achieve high scores but not enough to force gamers to return with it always. In this article, I want to share the games with too high replay value with you enough to consume you hundreds to thousands of hours in many different genres that I have “fought” or known.
RTS on the ground
Speaking of RTS, we all think of the familiar Age of Empires, StarCraft, or Command & Conquer, and you’ve probably plowed through the titles in these series. So I want to introduce to you a new name: Generals.
As a sub-series of Command & Conquer, Generals is more realistic when describing the conflict between the three factions of the United States, China, and GLA (terrorism) in a fantasy world set shortly. The game features RTS gameplay to build houses, earn money, buy regular troops. But have very different details from the original Command & Conquer, such as money coming from fixed positions instead of ore blocks, king gems scattered throughout the war zone.
Command & Conquer: Generals.
Its realistic gameplay also allows gamers to engage in battles that are much closer to reality, with infantry, tanks, artillery shells, and machine guns instead of lasers, spacecraft, and flying saucers. Therefore, gamers passionate about military tactics like playing sneaky on the flank, artillery paved the way – swept tanks; Or use landing helicopters to blink. There will be opportunities to implement them in the game. Also, the game tempo is a bit slower than Red Alert or StarCraft, so it does not require too many microphone skills but more attention to the ability to judge the situation and maneuver your army.
After the success of Generals, EA launched an even better expansion pack, Generals: Zero Hour. This expansion gives gamers the generals of each faction, with similarities in tactics and military units, and unique variations with their nuances. The US Air Force general does not have tanks but possesses a series of “fire-burning” air units, and her counterpart is that the Chinese general has poor airpower, and a tank army can “flood the map.”
Thanks to the gameplay that is entirely different from the games and how to build a house – buy other troops, Generals and Generals: Zero Hour has a large fan community and many different mods to make the battle even more attractive. The top three mods I like are Shockwave, Rise of the Reds, Contra, each with its unique feature: Shockwave retains the gameplay but “enhances” it with new units and heroes, Rise of the Reds speed up the game and make you play faster, while Contra directly pushes the battle into the future where cyborg, nanotech and other fiction technologies emerge.
RTS in space
This is a branch with fewer members than the RTS family, partly because it requires more development and play effort. They allow you to control the army in three-dimensional space is much more complicated, and it often takes a lot of time to end a battle due to the size of the battlefield. Fortunately, though rare, this genre’s representatives are beautiful: Sin of a Solar Empire and Homeworld, two titles with old and old names with RTS’s great fans.
Homeworld is a game with memories of many Vietnamese gamers because it was introduced in the first issue of Game World magazine every day. The game has images and gameplay that were top-notch at the time when Red Alert 1 on PS1 was still quite popular, plus a complex interface with many elements that RTS gamers at that time rarely encountered as the squad. , choose the location you want to attack the target, an enormous 3D battlefield. It takes a lot of time to get used to this game, but it is the foundation to get acquainted with Sins of a Solar Empire later. Currently, Homeworld 1 and 2 have been remastered, a spin-off Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak tells what happened before Homeworld was released in 2016, and Homeworld 3 is expected to release around 2022.
Sins of a Solar Empire is a product of Ironclad Games and has received eight different DLCs since its release – the latest DLC called Minor Factions was launched in late 2018. These DLCs always add new elements to the game, and some of them are excellent, such as Rebellion splits factions in two and brings many new war weapons, Entrenchment allows gamers. Building massive bases in space with incredible durability and firepower, Diplomacy offers many new diplomatic options for gamers.
Like Homeworld, Sins of a Solar Empire takes you into a war in the universe but has a broader perspective as you seek to become the ruler of the galaxy among many other hostile forces. Because of its sci-fi setting, I was allowed to build giant spacecraft, build weapons to destroy the planet, and use them to penetrate space and destroy enemies. Of course, to do this, you need to create a strong empire and harvest the necessary resources (money, metals, and crystals) through direct mining or tax collection, reward hunting,…
In addition to the complexity of military features, you can find several similar civilization management features in the Sins of a Solar Empire, such as the indexes of each planet (population, culture, environmental conditions …), the ability to create trade networks, military value (expressed through Tactical Slot) and more. So, if you’re a fan of 4X and RTS games, Sins of a Solar Empire might be the game you need because it blends both genres and has an excellent military array.
Other titles
Another notable name is designer Chris Taylor’s Supreme Commander and the Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance expansion. Both games with a super-wide battlefield and battles involving thousands of units should be very popular with gamers. Unfortunately, when doing Supreme Commander 2, Chris Taylor has drastically cut many things from gameplay. To the scale of battles when trying to cram the game into the Xbox 360. This affects the PC version quality and disappoints the series’s fans while not enticing newbies, causing the game to fail miserably.
Supreme Commander.
Company of Heroes and Company of Heroes 2 are exciting World War 2 RTS titles. The game does not focus on exploiting resources. Still, it gives priority to “territory” – the bigger the territory, the more the resources come – and there is more macro-friendly gameplay because the number of troops is tiny. At the same time, each military unit all have their unique skills. Appreciate this game because it recreates the battlefield in World War 2 honestly, especially when you see the war zone being changed continuously, destroyed, and flattened by bombs from weapons. Heavy air in the game.
Warcraft 3 should also be mentioned in this article, but due to Warcraft 3: Reforged ruining the game, it temporarily discourages you from playing it. Try to wait a while for Blizzard to overcome the mountains of problems that exist, and then maybe it will return to the game with a 10/10 replay value.
