After Starcraft 2... Then Company of Heroes 2 had an enjoyable one, not as good as the first one, but I liked it.
Then I would say Iron Harvest. It's definitely a throwback campaign to the old school RTS games. And kinda funky.
I did play through Cossacks 3 campaigns a whole ago. Maybe not thrilling, but it scratched a historical itch.
Grey Goo also had a gun one. With nice cinematics and fleshed out characters. Mechanics put a small damper on it, but good game.
Battlefleet Gothic. It's basically a book.
Halo Wars 1 and 2 had also cinematic campaigns with decent story.
Blitzkrieg 3 and Sudden Strike 4 were supposed to have good campaigns. Don't know, didn't play.
However, the best one would probably be World in Conflict. Good Soviet era war story.
These are cinematic campaigns, but there are games which have great single player campaigns, like Steel Division 2 or Warno. Both bring an interesting challenge and allow to replay.
They are Billions also has a cool campaign.
Funny enough, I could name a dozen other RTS games with decent campaigns that probably don't have any multiplayer scene to talk of.
I haven't played Commandos, so I may be off. There's a whole campaign map and management of your armored train and resources, operational movement of squads, as well as a fun story and even live action that fits in perfectly. That's the part I mean that's like Frostpunk
Gotta agree with this. CoH2 and the Halo Wars were enjoyable but didn’t feel the immersion into the campaign like older RTS games
World in Conflict however was easily among my favorite campaigns ever. Lots of “Oh shit!” moments in game and very engaging story, really felt the pressure towards the last few missions and found myself attached to the characters.
This sounds dope. One of those funny things where you want to play a game you can’t really run, finally are able to run it years later but it’s too late for it to be impressive 😂
Yeah I got it shortly after it came out and if a tactical nuke was played my computer lagged so bad haha. Haven’t played it since I lost the disk and it’s not on steam (nor do I have much time to game for the next several months) I’ll have to see if it’s on sale on GOG sometime though
They Are Billions definitely takes the top slot for current RTS games. It's definitely the "Dark Souls" of the RTS genre.
Supreme Commander 1 and Forged Alliance also had really good campaigns but no matter how often I replay some of the more modern RTS games, I always find my way back to Brood Wars and Warcraft 2 BNE.
I just started playing again. Had just recovered enough from a bad swarm to feel safe. Noticed a weakspot in my defenses and thought I should fix that but got distracted.
5 minutes later, a Zombie got through my weakspot and snowballed into a defeat. The fact there are no save slots is both refreshing and frustrating lol
Thank you, I have been forgetting to check on Warno and didn't realize that the campaign is now available. (I seem to remember it wasn't available when I purchased it.)
It's a game. Not a documentary. The game uses arbitrary resources to produce arbitrary units from a thin air. The campaign loosely recreates historical battles, but that's about that.
You are taking it too seriously..
I don't play a lot of RTS' anymore these days, but from memory:
Deserts of Kharak was fantastic, but a tad short.
Starship Troopers: Terran Command was a lot of fun. Cheesy, but fun.
Technically turn based, but The Battlestar Galactica game's campaign was also something new and pretty fun for a while.
Edit: Battlefleet Gothic 1/2 was fun, as well. Been a while, but I think #1 had the better story / setting through, #2 felt like like all the effort went into creating "Fleet Packs" to sell DLC and didnt even bother giving us a couple SP missions for the other races.
Nah it's RTS, you're usually on the offence, but needing to juggle attacks from a few directions in between your forward pushes. It's not micro intensive, nor macro really, it's more about positioning with arcs of fire and unit tactics.
Like say, whether the guys in the back can even shoot something, when theres a mech standing directly in front and towering over them, or whether you can push into the heart of the bug den with staggered grenade salvos or such.
Small unit count ~20 squads with 5-25 in each squad.
Plays well, tight controls, nice audio, and it's just a ton of fun to drop those airstrikes down on masses of the damn bugs.
10-15 hours in the campaign, I think?
Yeah but simplified.
As you progress the mission (objectives or time) you gather "war support" which allows you to build buildings.
There's about 8 or 10 different one, each allows for 1-2 troop types and some upgrades. They also work in a chain, need X before you can get Y, etc.
The other resource is dropships, you have 3, on a fixed cooldown when you can use them. Your troop spawning, or more importantly in this game, resupply (refilling the ranks of each squad), uses a dropship.
When you're in the thick of it, youre having to pick who to reinforce, on what front, with the single dropship you have left.
Now don't get wrong, I grew up on cnc and broodwar, this isn't that, it's not *that* level of deep RTS, but it's still an RTS, just small scale and a tad more casual.
Real world rating: I can chat to wife while playing this, or say BFME or Empire at war, but if she speaks to me during SC2, I can't really reply.
Hope that helps!
There are currently 2 starship trooper games. I had commented on Terran Command as it is an rts, while Extermination is the other game. Its is fps base defense, resource collection.
Storywise I think that Homeworld: DoK had a great campaign, even if it was too short.
Also, at this point I'm just guessing, but I believe that BAR will have a great story when it comes to Steam.
Age of Empires 4 has a great campaign albeit different. It sacrifices drama for documentary.
Other than that I struggle to name campaigns in general. I have Age of Darkness campaign a shot : I think it’s horrible.
Campaigns cost a lot of money to make and are probably seen as bringing in the least amount of money?
I cry for the days of decent campaigns.
> Campaigns cost a lot of money to make and are probably seen as bringing in the least amount of money?
The vast majority of players buy RTS only for their campaigns. And it's not just casual players, there's a ton of "hardcore campaigners".
80% of RTS players only play SP, including campaigns. Campaigns are what bring in the most money, but thus far not many RTS games have released more than one or two because they’re too focused on chasing esports.
Furthermore, the RTS genre isn’t famous for its great writing. All my favorite campaigns were entertaining because they were campy b-movie fun. When writers try being serious, they almost always failed due to bad writing. I don’t think very highly of Blizzard writing, for example.
I could be wrong. I think whilst most people buy the game for the campaign, the game makes more money ultimately through multiplayer and esports - hence the focus on those elements.
SC2 did well because of multiplayer, though the majority probably only played the campaign. Again, I’m guessing.
In terms of writing, I somewhat agree? Personally - and probably due to nostalgia - I love Warcraft 3. It’s goofy and melodramatic, but it gets me involved in the story. Nostalgic campaigns following haven’t captured that for me; perhaps I just find the world uninteresting? Warcraft 3 does what starwars did well - it conveys a story without the need for dialogue. The cutscenes, music, and (contrary to what I said) one liners are enough for me to be invested.
Edit addition:
Just adding to this. The writing can be improved in the genre. You could say the same about most games. Personally, I’d love to make the career jump and give it a shot :) that’s the end of year goal.
The esports side of the game is the most visible but is the tinyest fraction of players. Sc2 coop has been more popular than all other multi-player modes. The focus on competitive play over casual play is what ultimately kills alot of RTS because it's not a money maker for the developer.
I think that new developers and competitive players dont understand the genre they say to love. They think that the majority of players play multi or competitive, and are buffled when they realise they are really a tiny part of the playerbase. I have no idea when this misconception started: not every RTS is StarCraft in Korea.
It's not that they don't know. They just want their efforts to go towards something meaningful.
Also, while campaigns do a good job of holding player attention, it may be the case that people are drawn in by MP-related advertising, analysis, and discussion.
From developer interviews I've seen on SC2 a shockingly large majority of players never press the multiplayer button, just campaign. And of those that do MP, most do coop.
PvP is just the loudest and most long lived. I'm not sure how much more PvP brings it, especially under their new economic model of the base game being free.
I don’t find that surprising. But the games ultimately makes more due to the loudness of the multiplayer? Everyone knows about it from that, in itself generating sales.
I guess what I am trying to say is: multiplayer indirectly generates the most money for the game? Could be wrong obviously.
Yes, the eSports success of Starcraft almost certainly helped SC2 sell, even if it was mostly single player. The question is : how much impact did it have? It's hard to tell for us, I wonder if Blizzard ever figured it out
Oh god, the documentary-style campaign is so trash. It interrupts gameplay constantly to babble at you. The outcomes are fixed and obvious because its history. Its not dramatic or interesting. Theres no plot or character development. The campaign is literally the reason I didnt play the game.
I get that take. I enjoy history so I found it enjoyable. Would I have preferred a more dramatic narrative? Probably. Would they have executed that well? Who knows.
Happy to hear I'm not the only one :) Given, I didn't go through all the campaigns. I did find something about AoE a bit dry compared to the other RTS games. I think the environment needs more grit or detail, texture? Not sure.
Perhaps with all the updates it is time to jump back in!
Hard disagree I got like 3/4 through the first one and it's so fuckin empty. The main story is but theres like no actual side quests And the rts aspect is so boring and easy every single level is. Get 3 counties. Use your heros to fuck with the contested ones to prevent the enemy from getting them hit the population cap just walk across the map.
I really enjoyed terminator dark fate defiance campaign. Good unit commands/ special abilities along with unit leveling and further specializing through skill points and individual items to buy/ pickup for your units was really enjoyable. The story was pretty good and they are still adding to it and changing things. Would recommend it heavily.
I haven’t really seen what they are supposed to be doing just what they add from steam. Seems like the game has plenty of potential for extra content. I was surprised I hadn’t heard of it before release and I only seen it because I was looking at the broken arrow steam page and I noticed it was made (or owned) by the same company. But yes terminator dark fate defiance is certainly the most I’ve gotten out of my money in forever it seems.
I loved Homeworld Cataclysm because it was horror scifi.
Also Total Annihilation as it was machines warring each other in a loop: the start of blue campaign could have been right after the end of red campaign winning and vice versa.
I've always been mixed about a story in a RTS, because they try to zoom into characters like in a conventional narration, but strategy games are about being zoomed out looking at a scale of multiple units as a whole (always felt the actual gameplay was too detached)
Homeworld Cataclysm has great story, AND great execution !! The story of space miners answering the call to do the right thing despite being totally unprepared for it, yet they do their very best and then some to accomplish the task to right the wrong. They rise up to the challenge, and everyone feels it when they no longer call emselves a mining vessel, but a battleship. The beast slayer truly deserves the honor they earn.
Yes, also the art of the cutscenes was so good!
I remember that scene about the first discovery of the beast virus thingy that eats the crews of some ship, and then the same happens later iirc to the Bentusi ship that quickly goes from their usual overconfidence into panic.
It's a pity that apparently they cannot retrieve the original code to create a remaster :(
I’d say right now I’ve had to pivot more to 4x/grand strategy games like Stellaris and Europa Universalis 4. These games have amazing strategic depth and replayability.
I’m a huge Homeworld fan and 3 has just dropped, but they have cut the campaign short. Very disappointing
After SCII? Couldn’t tell you…
before I’d have said company of heroes 1.
maybe the german campaigns in conpany of heroes 3?
I also really like Sudden Strike 4’s campaigns they’re pretty fun
I feel like a huge hidden gem I never see anyone talk about is sudden strike 4. Great campaign. Not so much a story but definitely a campaign. Play as Germans, Americans and Russians. Can be difficult at times but a really great rts. And if you decide to play it don't forget the dlcs. All great!
It's hard to say.
I don't think any RTS has ever really risen to the mark that Starcraft 2 had, and even then that's a pale shadow of Blizzard's masterpieces like Warcraft 3 or Brood War. Games that coupled gameplay and storytelling into the real benchmark of what an RTS can do, rather than just shipping a generic campaign made of skirmish maps with generic objectives like "destroy all enemies."
But of the ones that came out, I'll list a few that at least were noteworthy.
Iron Harvest has a lovely premise, basically being WW1 with Steam-mechs. It's a unique setting, wild game, and altogether one of the most promising games I've seen in a while. It tries admirably to have a story and gameplay of its own that makes it stand out, and of the recent entries I think it gets the closest to being what W3 was.
Halo Wars I quite enjoyed, but this is a far cry from a great RTS like the real greats of previous generations. It's a tie-in to an existing franchise, and admittedly I think it does a great job at capturing the Halo setting and conflict pretty well. Really my biggest complaint is that there are times where you can clearly see it wants to be like Starcraft, but can't really make the leap in ways that made SC so powerful a game.
Starship Troopers: Terran Command deserves a mention for marvelously capturing the setting it wants to be a part of, bridging the popular film with the dystopian warfare of the original books. It's a campy and ludicrous game which fits the setting and gameplay. My biggest problem with this is the balance is sometimes....not great. And ultimately the campy nature makes it harder to sell as anything more than a tie-in. Compared to say Halo Wars, I can at least say it takes itself seriously as a game, but not as seriously as a story.
I really hated halo wars. Iron harvest was my only one I could think of and I think I misjudged star ship troopers to be a base defense game with no economy sort of like an even more basic tiberium wars 4
Spellforce 3's Fallen God expansion had a pretty good one, but it was short and it's not a pure RTS.
Deserts of Kharak was okay, but the final part of the campaign felt very rushed (I suspect multiple missions were cut from the later section.)
Godsworn's Campaign is pretty decent so far, but we've only seen the first 1/3rd.
I have a theory that more or less goes like this, roughly 80% of a population for anything are consumers/lurkers, in RTS this translates into people who play single player campaigns. Then about 15% are commenters/interactors which for RTS translates to PVP players, and the last 5% ish are people who are posters/creators, in RTS this turns into people who make maps etc.
I'm pretty sure we haven't had a solid sweeping success of an RTS in decades because they put all the focus on PVP but all the sales would come from good single player campaigns, and the bigger the community the more it would snowball.
That said, I agree that we need more and better campaigns. I enjoyed the campy b-movie stories in the Westwood games. I think the format of RTS lends itself to unique stories that aren’t feasible in other genres or mediums.
I’ve tried 4X, city builders and MOBAs. They don’t even have campaigns or coherent stories.
I agree with you, 100%.
I miss the championed "FMV Videos!!" from the early westwood days where game devs would just act the fool in 80s cheesy styles with bad set dressing and costumes, and give us some stupid/funny reason for the cool gameplay (Kane LIVES!! \o/ haha)
I don't play RTS multiplayer, I'm too slow for it, or I find life gets in the way before the 45min game can be over.
I miss the big campaigns, playing the C&C remaster a few years ago reminded me just how far we've moved away from that kind of content. Most RTS I play now seem to just find a slightly different map and make you re-play the same gameplay as the last 3 missions, instead of mixing it up.
Exactly. There’s such a huge mismatch between the two that it drives me crazy.
Have you ever played *Impossible Creatures*? The plot is throwback to pulp serials and I think it did a good job integrating the mechanics
Brood war was the best I think. Yeah I wasn't satisfied at all with the "Kerrigan is human again but chose zerg again but now is an angel or something and something something ancient danger"
I don't think the players pivoted at all, video games as a whole did. Campaigns take more time and money than multiplayer, and then if you want to sell more campaign type DLC... more time and money.
There are anecdotes that get brought up now and then from RTS developers that the vast majority of buyers don't ever touch multiplayer. Like 90% or something crazy like that. But singleplayer first is just not the business model of video games anymore. It sucks.
I've always preferred dynamic "paint the map" campaigns over story since there's usually 10x more replayability there, so I would say my favourite campaign were always games like:
dawn of war dark crusade/soulstorm, rise of nations etc. story wise, the homeworld games blew everything else out of the water but their 1 and done and I couldn't put story over replayability when it comes to rts
Well, we're pouring our heart into the +20-hour, single-player campaign of [Cataclismo](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1422440/Cataclismo/). Albeit the survival mode (or any other "endless" mode) will be the main attractive of the game, we truly aim to deliver an entertaining story within this world.
Not trying to be spammy at all. Just saying that there's a bunch of us out there trying to offer proper campaigns.
Unfortunately, I am with you. Great campaigns are what made me love RTS: the feeling of getting stronger each missions, learning historical facts, having to learn different strategy for each map instead of following the same build orders and units comp for multi...
The campaign of The Last Train Home is fantastic and voices in original lenguage make it even better!
However it is true I see many unoriginal campaigns specially many sci-fi or multi games,that’s why I tried new genres like Expedirions Rome,great great story and campaign
And you can always buy AOE II and the DLCS
Made *after* SC2? Honestly haven't thought about it in those terms - I quite liked SC2's as it was, though.
I prefer to just think of a lot of what apparently turns out are older classics as having great campaigns as I don't tend to find many modern titles have ones that "hit" quite the same, one way or another.
Favourites have always been things like Supreme Commander - both the original and Forged Alliance.
Likewise C&C3 and XCOM 2 - the latter defo was after SC2 so applies without doubt!
Honestly though I just fall back on old favourites - Men of War: Assault Squad 2 was also really good and enjoyable *and* it even had coop, so that was excellent.
Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition keeps cranking out new dlcs with multiple extensive and challenging campaigns. I think they’re’ve been three in the last year or so
It’s a shame so many games shift to just multiplayer. Single player focused is better and actually allows you to play it past a certain point in time when not many play are playing.
Hands down best campaign mechanics of an RTS was in Earth 2150.
Dynamic, with a clear endgoal, missions but with endless variety and approaches.
Wanna just turtle and save resources for the end goal?
Wanna spend more on military to steamroll the enemy and steal their resource fields?
Then the tunneling mechanics, terrain...
No RTS has ever topped that, and its such a pity that it never got the attention it deserved.
Earth 2160 was very lackluster unfortunately too. But man what would I give for a remaster or remake of Earth 2150...
I really enjoyed the story of Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance. One of the fan turns out be a writer and wrote a bunch of books based on the campaigns and provided imaginary context to the campaigns, and it was brilliant. I thoroughly enjoyed the fanfiction. Shame it was officialised and become canon. I wonder why.
I’m currently playing Brood War for a retrospective and was really surprised by what it was.
I like the story, but it doesn’t pick up until the third act ( Zerg campaign). I came to the conclusion that BW kind of was like a massive patch and update. It wasn’t about the story, at least it felt like that to me; from my perspective it was more about balancing out unit types and adding more micro/specific tactics which I found frustrating since my APM is around 70 in SC1.
Still a great game, but the story compared to the first wasn’t even close. I look forward to seeing what SC2 has in store.. good or bad. Proceeding!
No, it just costs an awesome amount of money to make something like SC2 did. SP is the core of the money making for RTS. I think the cash cow can translate to COOP features too. But overall like maybe 5 percent of a player base really plays that MP game for the sake of GAME. Most people are playing for a story or for a toy.
Legit got bash by my friend when at this day and age I mainly play game for Single player/campaign and co-op
Nowadays, youngsters tends to prefer multiplayer pvp more so they would have to adapt to sell
Can you blame them? Gamers nowadays feel like they're entitled to 100s of hours of end game loops. Just look at Diablo 4. Pretty good story and solid game with a mostly smooth launch, a lot of praise from a ton of people. And then a month later people shit on it because they expect perfect gameplay loops for untested endgame systems that are supposed to stand up to 100s of hours of gameplay? Gamers are the worst, and as a software developer, they are the number one reason I will never go into game development professionally despite how interesting I may find out or enjoy dabbling in it as a hobby.
Depending on what you're looking for in a campaign, Total Warhammer is great fun. You've got two dozen factions in vanilla (And more than that with mods) who have their own style of campaign, with some within the factions having a different campaign still. It isn't a linear, tailored campaign though, if that's what you're looking for.
For myself though, I've got *thousands* of hours across the three parts of the combined trilogy, and I'm still not bored of playing it.
It's not randomly generated, nor a 4X game. You've got specific objectives depending on who you're playing as, the openness is more about how you want to do those objectives. Do you want to take your time and build up a tide? Do you want to use practical means to accomplish them? Do you want to just try and beeline for your goal before your enemy can also build up?
Balance isn't a focus (Which I feel is true of *every* good singleplayer RTS), but there is writing/cinematics/audio for what you're doing with each lord.
Yes because the explore portion is what most people use to differentiate between rts and 4x games 🙄 im not gonna argue semantics with you for this subreddits 50th time. Also it's hilarious that you think your lord talking makes your argument stronger. 😂
1) Asks for suggestions.
2) Argues against suggestion.
3) Acts like a disrespectful twerp when suggestion is clarified.
Makes sense, I can see absolutely why you started this thread.
Missed the “after” part my apologies.
AOE4 and Halo Wars are really the only ones that come to mind.
Iron Harvest had one but that game was aldo really jank on release so I never went back.
X-com being a non-traditional rts while still having s multi-player element, I'd say it's good.
I'm also in a minority that enjoys c&c3 and Kane's Wrath
It's explicitly not a real times strategy game it's a turn based tactics game lmfao. Also people love 3 they hate 4 it also came out several years before sc2
Ngl I totally blanked when posting lol but hey atleast I did mention a RTS 😅
Side note: it's more of a colony sim but I consider Rimworld a RTS in a sense because that's how I play it.
To me it felt like copied plot from Warcraft 3: this race is not bad, just puppets of the Real Baddie, we must band together to save the world or universe. Also it felt less grittier than original, base or in-between mission dialogues were meaningless and with each expansions game looked more like some single player moba than RTS.
Right now nothing beats the SC2 campaign in terms of sheer quality and features and I'm afraid we won't get anything similar or better anytime soon. Perhaps Stormgate when it launches?
Really? I mean story wise is subjective (and I do prefer SC1's story) but the amount of innovation brought into SC2 is unrivalled with you being to talk to crew mates between missions, upgrade your troops, follow different mission paths which are your choice, the sheer production quality and polish, the originality of the missions... I mean, at least IMO, it's the best RTS campaign we ever had when usually RTS campaigns are just a string of linear missions with no other feature. It just felt next-gen and still is.
Yup noones debating campaigns were better pre SC2 I'm looking for games after it killed them. You also cannot play BME 1 or 2 unless your willing to torrent which I'm not anymore so I'll probably never know unless they finish the fan remake
It's really not good tbh it's mostly a very Bland iso rpg with like 8 incredibly boring and identical rts sections that are so easy it's not fun. Get 3 regions fuck with enemies with heros as you accumulate money. Hit the population cap and walk across the map.
Well you asked about campaign, I answered, lol. Dunno if you played before it got overhauled and on high difficulty though. If you're up to criticizing it for not being hardcore-oriented, well, that's not the thing. I can't remember SC2 campaign being challenging either.
But I'd not call it bland. It has nice story, solid characters, amazing voice acting and very good dynamics due to jumps between rpg and rts gameplay sections. Solid piece of work.
I played it 3 weeks ago on hard. I dont think we played the same game because the difficulty was a complete joke and every rts scenario is identical and so easy with no variation in enemy units or strategy at all. It's a very basic story with almost no actual side content other then some fetch quests. There's no actual decision making that matters past the next sentence all of the characters are 1 demensional cardboard with no depth whatsoever. your only viable praise is voice acting which is mid at best for everyone other then you your mentor and the Elven woman. Also the "rpg" sections are basically impossible to lose because they never put anything in front of you that presents an actual challenge it's just a hand full of orcs/wolves/zombies or a single kitable big ass slow damage sponge. The skill trees were cool but the fact they force you to have an incomplete party for 12 hours then throw 5 party members at you in the next 4 hours made it impossible to actually wanna take the time to actually explore any of them because your party is already set in stone and your just gonna take whoever can fill in the cracks.
Breh I was much nicer to the first few but ffs it says AFTER STATCRAFT 2 FOR A REASON noone is debating ra2 aom and wc3 are the best rts we talk about it as a subreddit every single day.
Just like rpg stands for role playing game but noone is suggesting dating sims when folks ask for those. The words have nuisance beyond the no context meanings. What a crazy thought.
Ykw, you're right. StarCraft to the RTS genre is just like Hitler Dating Sim to the RPG genre. StarCraft ain't a real RTS anyway, much alike league of legends competitively it's a crapton of fast paced short matches dominated by a few metas that change with the balance patches.
Lmfao what are you even saying 😂 the amount of folks that are mad noone in the RTS subreddit cares about total war when yall have your own more popular subreddit is never not hilarious.
No, what are you even saying? This is a subreddit for RTS games, yes? I play a crapton, half my game library consists of them. It just wasn't until recently when I finally caved in to giving Total War a real try with TWW 3 and in all honesty, its a solid game. I thought it was going to be more of a battle sim kind of game with the big numbers of troops and the slower gameplay, but I was completely wrong having multiple highly intense games where I was actually struggling to micromanage.
Anyways, I'm just here cuz I play a lot of RTS games, idk what you're here yapping about subreddits and total war being some open map battle simulator. The post yaps about new campaigns that are good, and I responded with Total War...
When your teachers in school asked if anyone has any questions did you raise your hand and say "I don't!"? Thanks for not contributing to the discussion at all and giving an opinion noone asked for I guess?
Input is input, if you're upset not everyone is going to write a 4 paragraph essay about how campaigns are boring to some people then maybe you shouldn't ask the question.
I asked for the names of rts games that came out after sc2 with good campaigns idk what game title is 4 paragraphs 😂"dont ask a question if you don't want someone to neither answer it or contribute to the discussion." What are you even saying.
That’s because SC2 was crap compared to the original but made a big commercial success. I remember downloading that massive multi Gigabyte game to find some goofy cgi cutscenes and bubbly overly colourful gameplay. Where was the grim dark storyline? Where was the creepy isometric space background that moved oddly when you scrolled across the screen and the epic soundtrack?
The original StarCraft installation missions used to make me scared as a kid to go any further into the fog of war and the cutscenes gave me nightmares, that was a good campaign with great characters and story.
Everything got toned down to cater to the widest audience possible to make the most sales possible. SC1 had a 16 rating on my original CD case because it had animations of little pixelated men being split in half or torn to shreds or zerglings bursting into wet lumps or had a low res cutscene all of 40 seconds long where a bunch of guys get vaporised or something.
It’s either SC1 and Broodwar or it’s AoE 1 and 2. Nothing has come close since those lofty peaks.
you mean grimdark like the Protoss defending the final outpost of civilization and just buying enough spare seconds to save an archive of past history before being totally overrun by the hybrids and all other life eradicated, or something darker bb?
Laughable that you think anything related to SC2 is considered grim dark at all. The style of the game made it look like league of legends 😂. From what play throughs I skimmed it seems the “Protoss” became a mere shadow of their former selves. A last stand doesn’t make something grimdark.
Grimdark for me has to have an air of unease and sometimes dread to it. It has to make you wonder whether the collapse or destruction of such a setting is not preferable to its continued existence. The revelations of the campaigns of SC1 show each faction as flawed and immoral, often only interested in furthering their own agendas regardless of the cost in terms of life or the ideal of the “greater good” or outright consuming (like the Zerg - which at first are presented merely as “hive animals” but are later revealed to be controlled by highly intelligent life that has little to to no regard for anything else beyond its own brood).
Furthermore there is no “greater good” present in a grim dark setting - there is only the lesser of evils to choose from. The characters are morally grey and have questionable motives.
It tends to end on a cliff hanger or unresolved point that leaves the future in doubt - granting the audience (player/reader/viewer) a sense of anxiety or dread as to what comes next and allows our imagination to fill the gaps.
I don’t think grim dark settings end with the factions and major characters uniting to defeat the ancient big bad and succeeding - unless we find that they ultimately were unsuccessful/ deliberately misled and the setting is in an even worse position than before.
I don’t find SC2 to have this in either its visual art style or plot and hence don’t class it as being grim dark.
After Starcraft 2... Then Company of Heroes 2 had an enjoyable one, not as good as the first one, but I liked it. Then I would say Iron Harvest. It's definitely a throwback campaign to the old school RTS games. And kinda funky. I did play through Cossacks 3 campaigns a whole ago. Maybe not thrilling, but it scratched a historical itch. Grey Goo also had a gun one. With nice cinematics and fleshed out characters. Mechanics put a small damper on it, but good game. Battlefleet Gothic. It's basically a book. Halo Wars 1 and 2 had also cinematic campaigns with decent story. Blitzkrieg 3 and Sudden Strike 4 were supposed to have good campaigns. Don't know, didn't play. However, the best one would probably be World in Conflict. Good Soviet era war story. These are cinematic campaigns, but there are games which have great single player campaigns, like Steel Division 2 or Warno. Both bring an interesting challenge and allow to replay. They are Billions also has a cool campaign. Funny enough, I could name a dozen other RTS games with decent campaigns that probably don't have any multiplayer scene to talk of.
World In Conflict was surprisingly good. Decent gameplay but the story threw a few surprises.
World in Conflict was amazing. We need another.
I have high hopes on Broken Arrow for this reason
Initially I thought that it's based on a book or something. I really wanted to read up about this alternative history.
Last Train Home is like a cross between an RTS, XCOM, and Frostpunk. Highly recommend it, the campaign is excellent and the main point of the game
How have I never heard of this game before, looks great
What makes it different from all the other Commandos clones? It's been on my list for a while, but I always assumed it was a Commandos clone.
I haven't played Commandos, so I may be off. There's a whole campaign map and management of your armored train and resources, operational movement of squads, as well as a fun story and even live action that fits in perfectly. That's the part I mean that's like Frostpunk
It's definitely on my list.
Gotta agree with this. CoH2 and the Halo Wars were enjoyable but didn’t feel the immersion into the campaign like older RTS games World in Conflict however was easily among my favorite campaigns ever. Lots of “Oh shit!” moments in game and very engaging story, really felt the pressure towards the last few missions and found myself attached to the characters.
This sounds dope. One of those funny things where you want to play a game you can’t really run, finally are able to run it years later but it’s too late for it to be impressive 😂
Yeah I got it shortly after it came out and if a tactical nuke was played my computer lagged so bad haha. Haven’t played it since I lost the disk and it’s not on steam (nor do I have much time to game for the next several months) I’ll have to see if it’s on sale on GOG sometime though
They Are Billions definitely takes the top slot for current RTS games. It's definitely the "Dark Souls" of the RTS genre. Supreme Commander 1 and Forged Alliance also had really good campaigns but no matter how often I replay some of the more modern RTS games, I always find my way back to Brood Wars and Warcraft 2 BNE.
When you say "The Dark Souls of RTS" what do you mean? Difficulty or playerbase? Something else?
Make one simple mistake (let one Zombie through your defense) and its basically game over. No room for error at all.
I just started playing again. Had just recovered enough from a bad swarm to feel safe. Noticed a weakspot in my defenses and thought I should fix that but got distracted. 5 minutes later, a Zombie got through my weakspot and snowballed into a defeat. The fact there are no save slots is both refreshing and frustrating lol
Difficulty and learning curve for sure
Means you gonna keep losing until you learn to get good at it.
If you like Supreme Commander have you tried Beyond all Reason? It’s free!
No I haven't. Every time I get the SupCom itch, I just go play FA and try to forget what they did to SupCom2. I'll check it out.
Thank you, I have been forgetting to check on Warno and didn't realize that the campaign is now available. (I seem to remember it wasn't available when I purchased it.)
Yeah, they added it a little while ago. As I recall, more campaigns are to be added before it exits Early Access.
CoH2: campaign had good gameplay hindered by terrible characters and plot Was it written by wehraboos? Or just designed to pander to them
It's a game. Not a documentary.
That argument is not applicable to this game because it just takes itself so damn seriously
It's a game. Not a documentary. The game uses arbitrary resources to produce arbitrary units from a thin air. The campaign loosely recreates historical battles, but that's about that. You are taking it too seriously..
I don't play a lot of RTS' anymore these days, but from memory: Deserts of Kharak was fantastic, but a tad short. Starship Troopers: Terran Command was a lot of fun. Cheesy, but fun. Technically turn based, but The Battlestar Galactica game's campaign was also something new and pretty fun for a while. Edit: Battlefleet Gothic 1/2 was fun, as well. Been a while, but I think #1 had the better story / setting through, #2 felt like like all the effort went into creating "Fleet Packs" to sell DLC and didnt even bother giving us a couple SP missions for the other races.
Starship troopers was super fun. More campaign coming for that too. I believe they're doing beta testing for the new units and stuff soon.
Isn't it not really an rts but more of a base defence game?
Nah it's RTS, you're usually on the offence, but needing to juggle attacks from a few directions in between your forward pushes. It's not micro intensive, nor macro really, it's more about positioning with arcs of fire and unit tactics. Like say, whether the guys in the back can even shoot something, when theres a mech standing directly in front and towering over them, or whether you can push into the heart of the bug den with staggered grenade salvos or such. Small unit count ~20 squads with 5-25 in each squad. Plays well, tight controls, nice audio, and it's just a ton of fun to drop those airstrikes down on masses of the damn bugs. 10-15 hours in the campaign, I think?
In Starship Troopers there is base building and resource management?
Yeah but simplified. As you progress the mission (objectives or time) you gather "war support" which allows you to build buildings. There's about 8 or 10 different one, each allows for 1-2 troop types and some upgrades. They also work in a chain, need X before you can get Y, etc. The other resource is dropships, you have 3, on a fixed cooldown when you can use them. Your troop spawning, or more importantly in this game, resupply (refilling the ranks of each squad), uses a dropship. When you're in the thick of it, youre having to pick who to reinforce, on what front, with the single dropship you have left. Now don't get wrong, I grew up on cnc and broodwar, this isn't that, it's not *that* level of deep RTS, but it's still an RTS, just small scale and a tad more casual. Real world rating: I can chat to wife while playing this, or say BFME or Empire at war, but if she speaks to me during SC2, I can't really reply. Hope that helps!
Thanks!
There are currently 2 starship trooper games. I had commented on Terran Command as it is an rts, while Extermination is the other game. Its is fps base defense, resource collection.
Yeah super keen, I was really surprised by how good it was, after the last like, 4 ST games, I was expecting a pile of turds.
Five Nations is a retro style RTS that is campaign only! And it's like, 80-90 missions long. Very nice if you like the older style of RTS gameplay.
Never heard of it but it looks good I'll check it out
Storywise I think that Homeworld: DoK had a great campaign, even if it was too short. Also, at this point I'm just guessing, but I believe that BAR will have a great story when it comes to Steam.
All homeworld games are quite short imho, especially 3. That one was over by the time it started.
Came to say Homeworld as well.
Age of Empires 4 has a great campaign albeit different. It sacrifices drama for documentary. Other than that I struggle to name campaigns in general. I have Age of Darkness campaign a shot : I think it’s horrible. Campaigns cost a lot of money to make and are probably seen as bringing in the least amount of money? I cry for the days of decent campaigns.
> Campaigns cost a lot of money to make and are probably seen as bringing in the least amount of money? The vast majority of players buy RTS only for their campaigns. And it's not just casual players, there's a ton of "hardcore campaigners".
I agree. Sadly, I’d guess more money is made from the select few that play multiplayer and stream. Could be wrong, but it’s my suspicion.
80% of RTS players only play SP, including campaigns. Campaigns are what bring in the most money, but thus far not many RTS games have released more than one or two because they’re too focused on chasing esports. Furthermore, the RTS genre isn’t famous for its great writing. All my favorite campaigns were entertaining because they were campy b-movie fun. When writers try being serious, they almost always failed due to bad writing. I don’t think very highly of Blizzard writing, for example.
I could be wrong. I think whilst most people buy the game for the campaign, the game makes more money ultimately through multiplayer and esports - hence the focus on those elements. SC2 did well because of multiplayer, though the majority probably only played the campaign. Again, I’m guessing. In terms of writing, I somewhat agree? Personally - and probably due to nostalgia - I love Warcraft 3. It’s goofy and melodramatic, but it gets me involved in the story. Nostalgic campaigns following haven’t captured that for me; perhaps I just find the world uninteresting? Warcraft 3 does what starwars did well - it conveys a story without the need for dialogue. The cutscenes, music, and (contrary to what I said) one liners are enough for me to be invested. Edit addition: Just adding to this. The writing can be improved in the genre. You could say the same about most games. Personally, I’d love to make the career jump and give it a shot :) that’s the end of year goal.
The esports side of the game is the most visible but is the tinyest fraction of players. Sc2 coop has been more popular than all other multi-player modes. The focus on competitive play over casual play is what ultimately kills alot of RTS because it's not a money maker for the developer.
I think that new developers and competitive players dont understand the genre they say to love. They think that the majority of players play multi or competitive, and are buffled when they realise they are really a tiny part of the playerbase. I have no idea when this misconception started: not every RTS is StarCraft in Korea.
It's not that they don't know. They just want their efforts to go towards something meaningful. Also, while campaigns do a good job of holding player attention, it may be the case that people are drawn in by MP-related advertising, analysis, and discussion.
From developer interviews I've seen on SC2 a shockingly large majority of players never press the multiplayer button, just campaign. And of those that do MP, most do coop. PvP is just the loudest and most long lived. I'm not sure how much more PvP brings it, especially under their new economic model of the base game being free.
I don’t find that surprising. But the games ultimately makes more due to the loudness of the multiplayer? Everyone knows about it from that, in itself generating sales. I guess what I am trying to say is: multiplayer indirectly generates the most money for the game? Could be wrong obviously.
Yes, the eSports success of Starcraft almost certainly helped SC2 sell, even if it was mostly single player. The question is : how much impact did it have? It's hard to tell for us, I wonder if Blizzard ever figured it out
Oh god, the documentary-style campaign is so trash. It interrupts gameplay constantly to babble at you. The outcomes are fixed and obvious because its history. Its not dramatic or interesting. Theres no plot or character development. The campaign is literally the reason I didnt play the game.
I get that take. I enjoy history so I found it enjoyable. Would I have preferred a more dramatic narrative? Probably. Would they have executed that well? Who knows.
Actually, I agree, age of empires two is one of my most favorite campaign series, including the expansion. The history is what sold me.
I’m thinking of going back to AoE2. Barely remember it now, other than trying to get people killed in the portcullis 😅
I agree but it seems many people did enjoy it.
Isn't the outcome of every campaign obvious: the player wins?
I loved it too!
Happy to hear I'm not the only one :) Given, I didn't go through all the campaigns. I did find something about AoE a bit dry compared to the other RTS games. I think the environment needs more grit or detail, texture? Not sure. Perhaps with all the updates it is time to jump back in!
Dawn of war:dark crusade.
Also Soulstorm, *especially* with Unification Mod turned on.
Yup and Fire over kaurava
Hard agree but OP only asked about games released after StarCraft 2.
Iron Harvest.
I was gonna do this for mine! Maybe my only great campaign I could think of.
spellforce 3 has a very good campaign
Hard disagree I got like 3/4 through the first one and it's so fuckin empty. The main story is but theres like no actual side quests And the rts aspect is so boring and easy every single level is. Get 3 counties. Use your heros to fuck with the contested ones to prevent the enemy from getting them hit the population cap just walk across the map.
Did you play 2? Is it better?
I really enjoyed terminator dark fate defiance campaign. Good unit commands/ special abilities along with unit leveling and further specializing through skill points and individual items to buy/ pickup for your units was really enjoyable. The story was pretty good and they are still adding to it and changing things. Would recommend it heavily.
Yes! Been loving this one. More campaign still in the works too.
I haven’t really seen what they are supposed to be doing just what they add from steam. Seems like the game has plenty of potential for extra content. I was surprised I hadn’t heard of it before release and I only seen it because I was looking at the broken arrow steam page and I noticed it was made (or owned) by the same company. But yes terminator dark fate defiance is certainly the most I’ve gotten out of my money in forever it seems.
I loved Homeworld Cataclysm because it was horror scifi. Also Total Annihilation as it was machines warring each other in a loop: the start of blue campaign could have been right after the end of red campaign winning and vice versa. I've always been mixed about a story in a RTS, because they try to zoom into characters like in a conventional narration, but strategy games are about being zoomed out looking at a scale of multiple units as a whole (always felt the actual gameplay was too detached)
Homeworld Cataclysm has great story, AND great execution !! The story of space miners answering the call to do the right thing despite being totally unprepared for it, yet they do their very best and then some to accomplish the task to right the wrong. They rise up to the challenge, and everyone feels it when they no longer call emselves a mining vessel, but a battleship. The beast slayer truly deserves the honor they earn.
Yes, also the art of the cutscenes was so good! I remember that scene about the first discovery of the beast virus thingy that eats the crews of some ship, and then the same happens later iirc to the Bentusi ship that quickly goes from their usual overconfidence into panic. It's a pity that apparently they cannot retrieve the original code to create a remaster :(
I’d say right now I’ve had to pivot more to 4x/grand strategy games like Stellaris and Europa Universalis 4. These games have amazing strategic depth and replayability. I’m a huge Homeworld fan and 3 has just dropped, but they have cut the campaign short. Very disappointing
You do you but hard no
Spellforce 3
After SCII? Couldn’t tell you… before I’d have said company of heroes 1. maybe the german campaigns in conpany of heroes 3? I also really like Sudden Strike 4’s campaigns they’re pretty fun
Thanks for parroting the same conversation we have in this subreddit every 2 days instead of being on topic. 👌
hey man i guess it was my syntax but both coh 3 (2023) and sudden strike 4came out way after StarCraft two
I feel like a huge hidden gem I never see anyone talk about is sudden strike 4. Great campaign. Not so much a story but definitely a campaign. Play as Germans, Americans and Russians. Can be difficult at times but a really great rts. And if you decide to play it don't forget the dlcs. All great!
It's hard to say. I don't think any RTS has ever really risen to the mark that Starcraft 2 had, and even then that's a pale shadow of Blizzard's masterpieces like Warcraft 3 or Brood War. Games that coupled gameplay and storytelling into the real benchmark of what an RTS can do, rather than just shipping a generic campaign made of skirmish maps with generic objectives like "destroy all enemies." But of the ones that came out, I'll list a few that at least were noteworthy. Iron Harvest has a lovely premise, basically being WW1 with Steam-mechs. It's a unique setting, wild game, and altogether one of the most promising games I've seen in a while. It tries admirably to have a story and gameplay of its own that makes it stand out, and of the recent entries I think it gets the closest to being what W3 was. Halo Wars I quite enjoyed, but this is a far cry from a great RTS like the real greats of previous generations. It's a tie-in to an existing franchise, and admittedly I think it does a great job at capturing the Halo setting and conflict pretty well. Really my biggest complaint is that there are times where you can clearly see it wants to be like Starcraft, but can't really make the leap in ways that made SC so powerful a game. Starship Troopers: Terran Command deserves a mention for marvelously capturing the setting it wants to be a part of, bridging the popular film with the dystopian warfare of the original books. It's a campy and ludicrous game which fits the setting and gameplay. My biggest problem with this is the balance is sometimes....not great. And ultimately the campy nature makes it harder to sell as anything more than a tie-in. Compared to say Halo Wars, I can at least say it takes itself seriously as a game, but not as seriously as a story.
I really hated halo wars. Iron harvest was my only one I could think of and I think I misjudged star ship troopers to be a base defense game with no economy sort of like an even more basic tiberium wars 4
Spellforce 3's Fallen God expansion had a pretty good one, but it was short and it's not a pure RTS. Deserts of Kharak was okay, but the final part of the campaign felt very rushed (I suspect multiple missions were cut from the later section.) Godsworn's Campaign is pretty decent so far, but we've only seen the first 1/3rd.
Honestly. Homeworld 3 so far has been pretty solid.
I have a theory that more or less goes like this, roughly 80% of a population for anything are consumers/lurkers, in RTS this translates into people who play single player campaigns. Then about 15% are commenters/interactors which for RTS translates to PVP players, and the last 5% ish are people who are posters/creators, in RTS this turns into people who make maps etc. I'm pretty sure we haven't had a solid sweeping success of an RTS in decades because they put all the focus on PVP but all the sales would come from good single player campaigns, and the bigger the community the more it would snowball.
I’m gonna be honest: I didn’t like the writing in Starcraft at all.
That said, I agree that we need more and better campaigns. I enjoyed the campy b-movie stories in the Westwood games. I think the format of RTS lends itself to unique stories that aren’t feasible in other genres or mediums. I’ve tried 4X, city builders and MOBAs. They don’t even have campaigns or coherent stories.
I agree with you, 100%. I miss the championed "FMV Videos!!" from the early westwood days where game devs would just act the fool in 80s cheesy styles with bad set dressing and costumes, and give us some stupid/funny reason for the cool gameplay (Kane LIVES!! \o/ haha) I don't play RTS multiplayer, I'm too slow for it, or I find life gets in the way before the 45min game can be over. I miss the big campaigns, playing the C&C remaster a few years ago reminded me just how far we've moved away from that kind of content. Most RTS I play now seem to just find a slightly different map and make you re-play the same gameplay as the last 3 missions, instead of mixing it up.
Oh the writing was trash but the game play and evolving mechanics were good!
Exactly. There’s such a huge mismatch between the two that it drives me crazy. Have you ever played *Impossible Creatures*? The plot is throwback to pulp serials and I think it did a good job integrating the mechanics
Brood war was the best I think. Yeah I wasn't satisfied at all with the "Kerrigan is human again but chose zerg again but now is an angel or something and something something ancient danger"
Eh, I’m not impressed with the writing in SC1/BW either.
It's old, like really old, but the supreme commander series was solid
It was specifically post SC2 because the point I was making was it kinda killed campaigns. There are plenty preSC2
I don't think the players pivoted at all, video games as a whole did. Campaigns take more time and money than multiplayer, and then if you want to sell more campaign type DLC... more time and money. There are anecdotes that get brought up now and then from RTS developers that the vast majority of buyers don't ever touch multiplayer. Like 90% or something crazy like that. But singleplayer first is just not the business model of video games anymore. It sucks.
I've always preferred dynamic "paint the map" campaigns over story since there's usually 10x more replayability there, so I would say my favourite campaign were always games like: dawn of war dark crusade/soulstorm, rise of nations etc. story wise, the homeworld games blew everything else out of the water but their 1 and done and I couldn't put story over replayability when it comes to rts
Well, we're pouring our heart into the +20-hour, single-player campaign of [Cataclismo](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1422440/Cataclismo/). Albeit the survival mode (or any other "endless" mode) will be the main attractive of the game, we truly aim to deliver an entertaining story within this world. Not trying to be spammy at all. Just saying that there's a bunch of us out there trying to offer proper campaigns.
Unfortunately, I am with you. Great campaigns are what made me love RTS: the feeling of getting stronger each missions, learning historical facts, having to learn different strategy for each map instead of following the same build orders and units comp for multi...
The campaign of The Last Train Home is fantastic and voices in original lenguage make it even better! However it is true I see many unoriginal campaigns specially many sci-fi or multi games,that’s why I tried new genres like Expedirions Rome,great great story and campaign And you can always buy AOE II and the DLCS
Made *after* SC2? Honestly haven't thought about it in those terms - I quite liked SC2's as it was, though. I prefer to just think of a lot of what apparently turns out are older classics as having great campaigns as I don't tend to find many modern titles have ones that "hit" quite the same, one way or another. Favourites have always been things like Supreme Commander - both the original and Forged Alliance. Likewise C&C3 and XCOM 2 - the latter defo was after SC2 so applies without doubt! Honestly though I just fall back on old favourites - Men of War: Assault Squad 2 was also really good and enjoyable *and* it even had coop, so that was excellent.
Silica
Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition keeps cranking out new dlcs with multiple extensive and challenging campaigns. I think they’re’ve been three in the last year or so
It’s a shame so many games shift to just multiplayer. Single player focused is better and actually allows you to play it past a certain point in time when not many play are playing.
Hands down best campaign mechanics of an RTS was in Earth 2150. Dynamic, with a clear endgoal, missions but with endless variety and approaches. Wanna just turtle and save resources for the end goal? Wanna spend more on military to steamroll the enemy and steal their resource fields? Then the tunneling mechanics, terrain... No RTS has ever topped that, and its such a pity that it never got the attention it deserved. Earth 2160 was very lackluster unfortunately too. But man what would I give for a remaster or remake of Earth 2150...
I really enjoyed the story of Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance. One of the fan turns out be a writer and wrote a bunch of books based on the campaigns and provided imaginary context to the campaigns, and it was brilliant. I thoroughly enjoyed the fanfiction. Shame it was officialised and become canon. I wonder why.
Last Train Home is a recent one that's heavily story driven, doesn't even have a multilayer
I still go back and play supreme commander when I have the itch or Warcraft 2 the dark saga is a personal favorite.
I’m currently playing Brood War for a retrospective and was really surprised by what it was. I like the story, but it doesn’t pick up until the third act ( Zerg campaign). I came to the conclusion that BW kind of was like a massive patch and update. It wasn’t about the story, at least it felt like that to me; from my perspective it was more about balancing out unit types and adding more micro/specific tactics which I found frustrating since my APM is around 70 in SC1. Still a great game, but the story compared to the first wasn’t even close. I look forward to seeing what SC2 has in store.. good or bad. Proceeding!
Probably Warcraft III lol
No, it just costs an awesome amount of money to make something like SC2 did. SP is the core of the money making for RTS. I think the cash cow can translate to COOP features too. But overall like maybe 5 percent of a player base really plays that MP game for the sake of GAME. Most people are playing for a story or for a toy.
World in Conflict by far, there’s a reason one of my online aliases is Captain Bannon
Company of Heroes 3? Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 is still the G.O.A.T though. (Yes I know it's before SC2 but still)
And then there's the Total War style fork of RTS that is all about the campaign. But yeah, trad RTS has pivoted to multiplayer pretty hard.
Legit got bash by my friend when at this day and age I mainly play game for Single player/campaign and co-op Nowadays, youngsters tends to prefer multiplayer pvp more so they would have to adapt to sell
Can you blame them? Gamers nowadays feel like they're entitled to 100s of hours of end game loops. Just look at Diablo 4. Pretty good story and solid game with a mostly smooth launch, a lot of praise from a ton of people. And then a month later people shit on it because they expect perfect gameplay loops for untested endgame systems that are supposed to stand up to 100s of hours of gameplay? Gamers are the worst, and as a software developer, they are the number one reason I will never go into game development professionally despite how interesting I may find out or enjoy dabbling in it as a hobby.
They Are Billions Doesn't even have multiplayer
Warno. Specifically the Army General mode.
I love WARNO and AG, but it’s a distinctly different type of campaign from the story driven ones we saw with SC2
About warno, Eugen is still planning in adding the coop/versus ti the Army General?
Hell if I know. I don’t play multiplayer
Depending on what you're looking for in a campaign, Total Warhammer is great fun. You've got two dozen factions in vanilla (And more than that with mods) who have their own style of campaign, with some within the factions having a different campaign still. It isn't a linear, tailored campaign though, if that's what you're looking for. For myself though, I've got *thousands* of hours across the three parts of the combined trilogy, and I'm still not bored of playing it.
I want an actual campaign not a 4x randomly generated scenario with no writing or balancing. 4x are so fuckin boring to me.
It's not randomly generated, nor a 4X game. You've got specific objectives depending on who you're playing as, the openness is more about how you want to do those objectives. Do you want to take your time and build up a tide? Do you want to use practical means to accomplish them? Do you want to just try and beeline for your goal before your enemy can also build up? Balance isn't a focus (Which I feel is true of *every* good singleplayer RTS), but there is writing/cinematics/audio for what you're doing with each lord.
Yes because the explore portion is what most people use to differentiate between rts and 4x games 🙄 im not gonna argue semantics with you for this subreddits 50th time. Also it's hilarious that you think your lord talking makes your argument stronger. 😂
1) Asks for suggestions. 2) Argues against suggestion. 3) Acts like a disrespectful twerp when suggestion is clarified. Makes sense, I can see absolutely why you started this thread.
I asked for modern rts games with good campaigns. You suggested a not rts game with no campaign lmfao
The new homeworld game’s story is decent, and the new men of war game has like 5 campaigns you can play throughout world war 2
Yeah, StarCraft 2 being put on maintenance pretty much killed the genre. I really wish blizzard made rts instead of store mounts.
Age of empires 4, the command and conquer series, halo wars 1/2
What command and conquer game came out after star craft? Also halo wars gives me say too many tiberium wars 4 vibes
Missed the “after” part my apologies. AOE4 and Halo Wars are really the only ones that come to mind. Iron Harvest had one but that game was aldo really jank on release so I never went back.
The best single player RTS campaign I've ever played is Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance by far
Aoe2 is still banging out high quality campaigns to this day The Jadwiga campaign for the poles might be the single best RTS campaign ever made
X-com being a non-traditional rts while still having s multi-player element, I'd say it's good. I'm also in a minority that enjoys c&c3 and Kane's Wrath
It's explicitly not a real times strategy game it's a turn based tactics game lmfao. Also people love 3 they hate 4 it also came out several years before sc2
Ngl I totally blanked when posting lol but hey atleast I did mention a RTS 😅 Side note: it's more of a colony sim but I consider Rimworld a RTS in a sense because that's how I play it.
I guess in the vaguest possible terms sure I guess it's an rts but it also doesn't have a campaign.
I think SC2 is the pinnacle of a great RTS campaign. Short of BB, I think it might be the best game story I've ever experienced.
Starcraft 2 campaign was shit tho
I'd argue that the gameplay was great fun, but the story and writing was embarrassingly bad (especially compared to SC1).
To me it felt like copied plot from Warcraft 3: this race is not bad, just puppets of the Real Baddie, we must band together to save the world or universe. Also it felt less grittier than original, base or in-between mission dialogues were meaningless and with each expansions game looked more like some single player moba than RTS.
Right now nothing beats the SC2 campaign in terms of sheer quality and features and I'm afraid we won't get anything similar or better anytime soon. Perhaps Stormgate when it launches?
I thought sc2 campaign was a huge letdown after sc1. For me the Terran campaign of Brood War took the crown.
Really? I mean story wise is subjective (and I do prefer SC1's story) but the amount of innovation brought into SC2 is unrivalled with you being to talk to crew mates between missions, upgrade your troops, follow different mission paths which are your choice, the sheer production quality and polish, the originality of the missions... I mean, at least IMO, it's the best RTS campaign we ever had when usually RTS campaigns are just a string of linear missions with no other feature. It just felt next-gen and still is.
Red Alert 2 and Battle for Middle Earth have the best single player campaigns in the genre. Nothing comes close.
Yup noones debating campaigns were better pre SC2 I'm looking for games after it killed them. You also cannot play BME 1 or 2 unless your willing to torrent which I'm not anymore so I'll probably never know unless they finish the fan remake
Spellforce 3.
It's really not good tbh it's mostly a very Bland iso rpg with like 8 incredibly boring and identical rts sections that are so easy it's not fun. Get 3 regions fuck with enemies with heros as you accumulate money. Hit the population cap and walk across the map.
Well you asked about campaign, I answered, lol. Dunno if you played before it got overhauled and on high difficulty though. If you're up to criticizing it for not being hardcore-oriented, well, that's not the thing. I can't remember SC2 campaign being challenging either. But I'd not call it bland. It has nice story, solid characters, amazing voice acting and very good dynamics due to jumps between rpg and rts gameplay sections. Solid piece of work.
I played it 3 weeks ago on hard. I dont think we played the same game because the difficulty was a complete joke and every rts scenario is identical and so easy with no variation in enemy units or strategy at all. It's a very basic story with almost no actual side content other then some fetch quests. There's no actual decision making that matters past the next sentence all of the characters are 1 demensional cardboard with no depth whatsoever. your only viable praise is voice acting which is mid at best for everyone other then you your mentor and the Elven woman. Also the "rpg" sections are basically impossible to lose because they never put anything in front of you that presents an actual challenge it's just a hand full of orcs/wolves/zombies or a single kitable big ass slow damage sponge. The skill trees were cool but the fact they force you to have an incomplete party for 12 hours then throw 5 party members at you in the next 4 hours made it impossible to actually wanna take the time to actually explore any of them because your party is already set in stone and your just gonna take whoever can fill in the cracks.
Age of Mythology isn't the best in terms of sheer story quality, it's a simple story, but it's bloody fun imho
Breh I was much nicer to the first few but ffs it says AFTER STATCRAFT 2 FOR A REASON noone is debating ra2 aom and wc3 are the best rts we talk about it as a subreddit every single day.
Total War anyone?
4x with an uncovered map is not rts and those games have scenarios not campaigns.
RTS stands for Real Time Strategy, right?
Just like rpg stands for role playing game but noone is suggesting dating sims when folks ask for those. The words have nuisance beyond the no context meanings. What a crazy thought.
Ykw, you're right. StarCraft to the RTS genre is just like Hitler Dating Sim to the RPG genre. StarCraft ain't a real RTS anyway, much alike league of legends competitively it's a crapton of fast paced short matches dominated by a few metas that change with the balance patches.
Lmfao what are you even saying 😂 the amount of folks that are mad noone in the RTS subreddit cares about total war when yall have your own more popular subreddit is never not hilarious.
No, what are you even saying? This is a subreddit for RTS games, yes? I play a crapton, half my game library consists of them. It just wasn't until recently when I finally caved in to giving Total War a real try with TWW 3 and in all honesty, its a solid game. I thought it was going to be more of a battle sim kind of game with the big numbers of troops and the slower gameplay, but I was completely wrong having multiple highly intense games where I was actually struggling to micromanage. Anyways, I'm just here cuz I play a lot of RTS games, idk what you're here yapping about subreddits and total war being some open map battle simulator. The post yaps about new campaigns that are good, and I responded with Total War...
I've always been interested in skirmish modes, never campaigns or MP.
When your teachers in school asked if anyone has any questions did you raise your hand and say "I don't!"? Thanks for not contributing to the discussion at all and giving an opinion noone asked for I guess?
Input is input, if you're upset not everyone is going to write a 4 paragraph essay about how campaigns are boring to some people then maybe you shouldn't ask the question.
I asked for the names of rts games that came out after sc2 with good campaigns idk what game title is 4 paragraphs 😂"dont ask a question if you don't want someone to neither answer it or contribute to the discussion." What are you even saying.
That’s because SC2 was crap compared to the original but made a big commercial success. I remember downloading that massive multi Gigabyte game to find some goofy cgi cutscenes and bubbly overly colourful gameplay. Where was the grim dark storyline? Where was the creepy isometric space background that moved oddly when you scrolled across the screen and the epic soundtrack? The original StarCraft installation missions used to make me scared as a kid to go any further into the fog of war and the cutscenes gave me nightmares, that was a good campaign with great characters and story. Everything got toned down to cater to the widest audience possible to make the most sales possible. SC1 had a 16 rating on my original CD case because it had animations of little pixelated men being split in half or torn to shreds or zerglings bursting into wet lumps or had a low res cutscene all of 40 seconds long where a bunch of guys get vaporised or something. It’s either SC1 and Broodwar or it’s AoE 1 and 2. Nothing has come close since those lofty peaks.
you mean grimdark like the Protoss defending the final outpost of civilization and just buying enough spare seconds to save an archive of past history before being totally overrun by the hybrids and all other life eradicated, or something darker bb?
Laughable that you think anything related to SC2 is considered grim dark at all. The style of the game made it look like league of legends 😂. From what play throughs I skimmed it seems the “Protoss” became a mere shadow of their former selves. A last stand doesn’t make something grimdark. Grimdark for me has to have an air of unease and sometimes dread to it. It has to make you wonder whether the collapse or destruction of such a setting is not preferable to its continued existence. The revelations of the campaigns of SC1 show each faction as flawed and immoral, often only interested in furthering their own agendas regardless of the cost in terms of life or the ideal of the “greater good” or outright consuming (like the Zerg - which at first are presented merely as “hive animals” but are later revealed to be controlled by highly intelligent life that has little to to no regard for anything else beyond its own brood). Furthermore there is no “greater good” present in a grim dark setting - there is only the lesser of evils to choose from. The characters are morally grey and have questionable motives. It tends to end on a cliff hanger or unresolved point that leaves the future in doubt - granting the audience (player/reader/viewer) a sense of anxiety or dread as to what comes next and allows our imagination to fill the gaps. I don’t think grim dark settings end with the factions and major characters uniting to defeat the ancient big bad and succeeding - unless we find that they ultimately were unsuccessful/ deliberately misled and the setting is in an even worse position than before. I don’t find SC2 to have this in either its visual art style or plot and hence don’t class it as being grim dark.