Games

Games I recommend, and what I want to play next.

Civilization VI Civilization VI Metacritic 88

Institutions, trade, diplomacy, and war across six thousand years. The game that makes you feel why empires expand, overextend, and collapse.

Total War: Warhammer III Total War: Warhammer III Metacritic 87

The culmination of the Total War fantasy trilogy. Grand strategy meets spectacle, with the Immortal Empires campaign offering more strategic depth than any other game in the genre.

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Metacritic 88

The RTS that taught a generation how civilizations rise and fall. Resource management, military strategy, and historical campaigns that still hold up decades later. The definitive edition proved the design was timeless.

Endless Legend Endless Legend Metacritic 82

Fantasy 4X where every faction breaks the genre's rules. The Cultists have one city, the Roving Clans cannot declare war, the Broken Lords consume dust instead of food. Amplitude proved that asymmetry, not balance, is what makes strategy games interesting.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 Metacritic 86

Cold War absurdity as real-time strategy. Soviet Tesla coils versus Allied Prism tanks, played completely straight. The best C&C game and the peak of Westwood Studios before EA buried them.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Red Dead Redemption 2 Metacritic 97

The most fully realized open world ever built. A meditation on loyalty, decline, and the end of the frontier. Arthur Morgan's arc is one of gaming's great tragedies.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Metacritic 97

Open-world design stripped back to first principles. A ruined kingdom that rewards curiosity, experimentation, and self-directed exploration better than almost any game ever made.

Grand Theft Auto V Grand Theft Auto V Metacritic 97

American capitalism as open-world satire. Three protagonists, three relationships with money and violence, none redeemable. Rockstar built a system so detailed the parody became indistinguishable from the thing it mocks.

Diablo II Diablo II Metacritic 88

The game that defined the action RPG. Loot, builds, and one more run. Blizzard at their peak, before they forgot what made them great. Every ARPG since is either copying it or reacting to it.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Metacritic 93

The great party fighter and one of Nintendo's best design feats. Massive roster, sharp mechanics, and enough matchup depth to work both as chaos with friends and as a serious competitive game.

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Old World Old World 83 (2022)

Historical 4X that merges Civilization's empire building with Crusader Kings' dynasty management. Orders are limited, succession matters, and every ruler has a personality. The genre hybrid nobody expected to work this well.

Crusader Kings III Crusader Kings III 91 (2020)

Political simulation across centuries. Dynasties rise, overextend, and collapse through marriage, murder, and mismanagement. Succession the show as emergent gameplay.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri 92 (1999)

Civilization in space, but the real game is ideology. Seven factions with genuinely different worldviews compete to shape a new planet. The writing, the tech quotes, the faction design, all of it holds up. The most intellectually ambitious strategy game ever made.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 92 (2015)

Moral ambiguity as game design. Every choice has consequences, none are clean, and the world does not wait for you to decide. The closest games have come to prestige television.

Elden Ring Elden Ring 96 (2022)

FromSoftware's open world. Exploration, difficulty, and a world that refuses to explain itself. The most complete world-building achievement in the medium, designed by Miyazaki with lore by George R.R. Martin.

Baldur's Gate 3 Baldur's Gate 3 97 (2023)

The most complete RPG in years. Consequences that actually matter, characters that remember what you did, and a level of systemic depth that rewards creative problem-solving. Peak of the genre.

Age of Wonders 4 Age of Wonders 4 83 (2023)

4X fantasy strategy where you design your own faction from scratch. Combines empire building with tactical combat, and the tome system lets you reshape your civilization mid-game in ways no other strategy game allows.

Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith 78 (2017)

The deepest fantasy strategy game ever made. Hundreds of nations drawn from real mythology, thousands of spells, and a god you design yourself. Ugly, impenetrable, and utterly uncompromising. Nothing else comes close to its scale of emergent strategic possibilities.

Factorio Factorio 90 (2020)

Systems building in its purest form. Design, optimize, scale, and watch complexity emerge from simple rules. The game equivalent of infrastructure engineering.

Disco Elysium Disco Elysium 91 (2019)

Essentially an interactive novel. A detective with amnesia investigates a murder in a politically fractured city. Deeply political, philosophically dense, nothing else like it in any medium.

Eventually

Endless Space 2 Endless Space 2 82 (2017)

4X space strategy with the best faction design in the genre. Each civilization plays fundamentally differently, driven by lore that actually shapes mechanics. Amplitude's best game and one of the most beautiful strategy titles ever made.

Stellaris Stellaris 78 (2016)

Paradox's grand strategy in space. Explore, expand, and encounter alien civilizations with stories that emerge from systems, not scripts. The mid-game crisis and endgame threats give the galaxy a sense of escalating stakes that few 4X games achieve.

Pentiment Pentiment 86 (2022)

A small, slow historical mystery set in a Bavarian abbey. Ideas, legacy, and the tension between institutional authority and individual conscience. Obsidian at their most literary.

SpellForce: Conquest of Eo SpellForce: Conquest of Eo 78 (2023)

A mage tower strategy game that combines Master of Magic's spell research with Heroes of Might and Magic's exploration. Build your tower, craft spells, and expand across a procedurally generated world. A quiet love letter to classic fantasy strategy.

Rogue Hex Rogue Hex (2025)

Roguelike hex strategy where you build and adapt your army run by run. Tactical depth on a hex grid with procedural generation that keeps every campaign fresh.