Strategygames and story modes often don’t overlap. Many of the most successful strategy games out there, likeSid Meier’s Civilization VIIorStellaris, have no story mode and rely on competitive matches against AI or other players.
While mostGrand Strategyand 4x games, the most clear-cut strategy sub-genres, don’t have a dedicated story mode, many city-building, real-time strategy, and strategy-focused tactics games do. Often, they even have more than one.
Strategy games don’t need a story most of the time. What makes the genre great isn’t storytelling, but story-making through gameplayand difficult accomplishments. Of course, that doesn’t mean a well-made story mode isn’t appreciated.
10Homeworld 3
There’s No Place Like Home
Homeworld 3
Homeworld is aReal-Time Strategyseries set in space, and given the nature of space, works with all three dimensions rather than two as is traditional in RTS games. It’s also an RTS series that features prominent story modes in each game.
Homeworld 3offers over a dozen story missions that test your spatial awareness in ways other strategy games don’t. The 3D RTS gameplay is truly where the game shines.
The story is rather straightforward sci-fi, and it gets the job done. It relies on a lot of tropes, but the story is largely there to set up the next objective, and it does that well enough.
It’s In Your DNA
Fextralife Wiki
XCOM 2not only has fantastic turn-based tactical combat but also has plenty of larger-scale strategy features, mainly when it comes to planning around your mobile base, the Avenger.
The game tells a compelling story of aliens who have infiltrated much of society through genetic engineering and formed an authoritarian government. The humans think this new government is benevolent and are unaware that they’re essentially farming humans for DNA.
The first enemies you encounter appear human; however, your team knows that’s a ruse. They’re genetically engineered human-alien hybrids that effectively don’t have a mind of their own and were designed to keep humans in check.
Throughout the game, you raid government black sites crawling with more alien variants like Sectoids, which have psionic powers and can even reanimate corpses. These black sites reveal how twisted the alien experiments on humans are.
8Tropico 6
Viva El Presidente
The Tropico series is an engaging, comedic, and story-driven take on city-building games. You assume the role of El Presidente, the ruler of a tiny, fictionalisland colony-turned-nationin the Caribbean. You build your city-state over a century, and as you might expect, plenty of bizarre events happen.
Tropico 6is particularly zany, with you starting the game by smuggling gold in coconuts, which you call goldnuts, to heisting world wonders like the Statue of Liberty Despicable Me-style, and even dealing with AI overlords.
While the gameplay is great on its own, the story provides a lot of direction that can be useful for learning the mechanics, as well as compelling, albeit often silly, reasons to explore the game’s features.
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7Invisible, Inc.
Just Don’t Spill It
Invisible, Inc.
Invisible, Inc.is a tactical stealth game with heavy roguelike influence, creating larger strategy components.
For example, you’re limited in time on what missions you can take, but get to choose from a variety of missions with different rewards. Picking the right rewards at the right time is crucial for surviving the endgame. Simply beating each mission isn’t enough.
The story starts pretty straightforwardly. Corporations rule the world, and they seem to have collaborated to wipe out your spy agency.
Your agency has state-of-the-art AI that requires charging to prevent it from shutting down permanently. At the same time, you’re trying to figure out what the corporations are up to.
As the story progresses, you discover things aren’t how they seemed.
6Frostpunk
Getting Warmer
Frostpunkis a post-apocalyptic city builder where you’re tasked with rebuilding society after the world freezes over. You have a large heat generator, a few survivors, and things are only getting colder.
The game has multiple story-driven scenarios, with the main one being A New Home.
There are supposed to be several cities built around these generators; however, in A New Home, after discovering that the other cities have already fallen apart, people in your city start contemplating leaving.
Unknown to everyone is that a massive blizzard is coming. Not only would too many people leaving hurt the city’s chances of survival, but they would also struggle to make it out in the cold.
Pathwayis a tactical RPG with a strong focus on resource management. On top of combat, you also have to navigate the world on your adventure, managing how much gas you have and finding a variety of random encounters.
Its story is split into multiple chronologically ordered campaigns that become progressively more difficult, where the completion of a previous campaign unlocks the next one. However, there is a lot of replayability in the campaigns, allowing you to replay them out of order later.
The story is very reminiscent of Indiana Jones or Captain America, with pre-WWII Nazi enemies scouring for secrets to increase their power. This kind of story has been done before, but it is interesting to see what secrets are revealed as the story progresses.
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It’ll Grow On You
Pikminis an iconic and beginner-friendly real-time strategy and puzzle game series.Strategy games can be hard to get into, which creates a unique niche for Pikmin.
InPikmin 4, the single-player mode has you play as a recruit sent to rescue the previous series protagonist, Captain Olimar.
Of course, it’s a Pikmin game, so you command Pikmin as the recruit to help you in your journey to rescue Olimar. As you progress throughout the story, you will discover new Pikmin with varying abilities to help you solve puzzles and defeat enemies, which eases you into the game’s RTS mechanics.
The story that develops as you try to rescue Olimar can be much more compelling than the simple win-or-lose format of most RTS games.
3Circus Electrique
Circus Electrique
Circus Electriqueis a strategic, story-driven tactical RPG with base and resource management.
While it has a lot going on, it does a great job of steering you in the right direction, making itmuch easier to get intothan the similarDarkest Dungeonseries. The story plays a large part in that direction.
The story begins with people in the city suddenly losing their minds, and you use a circus to both fund your adventures and recruit carnies to defend you as you try to uncover what caused the Maddening.
As the story progresses, more and more mechanics are introduced, but the game takes time to ease you into them.
2Command & Conquer Remastered Collection
& Choose Your Timeline
Command & Conquer Remastered
Command & Conquer is an iconic RTS game seriesthat offers story-driven campaigns on top of the win-or-lose matches that the genre is known for.
InCommand & Conquer Remastered Collection, which remasters the first two games in the series, you have multiple campaigns split into missions. Each mission has a distinct objective, and several feature live-action cutscenes to establish the narrative.
To keep things interesting, the story splits into two timelines: the original Tiberium timeline and the alternate Red Alert timeline, depending on the game you’re playing.
The story is a bit cheesy and over-the-top at times, but it does its job. It’s an RTS game, after all, so the narrative isn’t the point.
It’s just icing. It gives you a reason behind a variety of objectives that might be a bit more unusual than you would see in a standard combat scenario.
1Starcraft II
Zerg Rush!
StarCraft 2
StarCraftis a legendary sci-fi RTS series, and it happens to include story-driven campaigns.
StarCraft 2has three different campaigns focusing on each of the series' races: the Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss. It also has an additional mission pack that serves the purpose of a fourth campaign.
The story provides the dense and complicated lore you’d expect from something like Star Trek. While the series may be more known for its multiplayer aspect, it does not skimp on the writing.
It’s also a more forgiving way to learn the basics ofthe notoriously difficult gamebefore hopping into multiplayer.
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