Best TURN-BASED Games | Top10 Turn Based PC Games

Best TURN-BASED Games | Top10 Turn Based PC Games

Best TURN-BASED Games | Top10 Turn Based PC Games Are you wondering what strategy or rpg game you should play which is turn based? To answer this question you have to watch this compilation of the best turn based games for PC in 2020. Games like Slay the Spire or Darkest Dungeon are in this list of the Top10 Turn Based PC Games.

Top 10 Games for solo player who like turn based rpg and strategy games.

#BestTurnBasedGames, #TOP10PCGames, #TurnBasedStrategy, #Turn-basedRPG

If you want to know more about the top 10 turn based strategy games or you are not sure why you should buy or start playing one of these games, here are some reasons why you should start playing:

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

A humanoid duck, a grim pig and a woman with frog legs come into a bar ... that's how either very bad jokes or surprisingly successful tactical adventures start, like Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. In the test we got into tough battles with mutants on PC. It is a really fun turn-based strategy game. If you are looking for a hard xcom genre game you find it here with this tactical gem.

In principle, one marches first to the north of the zone and then to the south. The largely linear scavenger hunt is interrupted in some places by optional passages where you can fight against additional enemies and thus gain more experience and items. There is no respawn – once killed, enemies remain dead, so it is not possible to “grind” experience points. To come back to the story again. The actual story of the search for Hammon is actually rather unspectacular and ends somewhat abruptly. It’s rather the game world that makes it interesting and Bormin and Dux have also succeeded as characters. The later team additions usually don’t make it beyond the mercenary status. Also the effects of the actions of the stalker team are commented by the eldest at most, but do not cause any events. In any case, the impression that everything had to go a bit “faster” in the end and that there is a lack of subtleties, the liveliness of the world and other cutscenes is a bit obvious.

If you meet opponents, it becomes really interesting and exciting – in each case on the higher two levels of difficulty; on “normal” it is almost too easy. If you have spotted enemies, you are basically faced with the choice whether to storm right into the middle of the action and use at least as loud as effective weapons or grenades – or whether you try to decimate the enemies as unnoticed as possible and take them out with silent weapons. The silent method is preferable, because the enemies are usually outnumbered and have a higher level and more health points than the stalker team. Especially on the higher two difficulty levels it is essential to decimate the enemy beforehand, which usually includes observing the running paths and planning ahead for the upcoming fight.

Often the encounters are so precisely balanced that you can just as easily take out the enemy with silent weapons, if at all. If you don’t manage to kill an enemy in one round with a surprise attack, the enemy will call for reinforcements and you will have at least one new problem. If you use normal firearms or grenades, half of the map immediately knows about it and moves in. Sometimes, groups of enemies can even be completely bypassed and only attacked again later, when you have become stronger.

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a thrilling tactical adventure that gets a little out of breath towards the end! This game is under the TOP10 best turn-based PC games because of the combination of real-time exploration and sneaking with XCOM-style turn-based combat, which delivers a highly entertaining mix. Especially the quiet variant around the silent elimination of individual opponents is very entertaining. The only strange thing is that you can’t hide corpses. Thanks to the good computer intelligence, the destructible environment and the cover possibilities, the battles are tactically motivating and thrilling. On “Heavy” or “Very Heavy” they gain in ambition and require constant forward planning due to the scarcity of resources and uncompromising balance. The dark and at the same time familiar post-human game world is designed in a class of its own. 

Battle Chasers Nightwar

A discontinued comic book series by the Darksiders illustrator meets supposedly dusty round tactics fights of classic JRPGs. The test of Battle Chasers: Nightwar shows how well these two worlds harmonize.

The tactical round robin battles are the heart of the game, but are only one of three game levels in Nightwar. Between battles, we travel with our squad across a stylized world map, talk to villagers and stock up on better equipment and potions to be ready for the next dungeon. Once there, we first choose one of (initially) two difficulty levels (hard = better loot), then we search rooms full of traps and enemies in real time to collect valuable treasures and ingredients.

All heroes have special dungeon skills, so before we enter the dungeon we have to think carefully about which three characters we want to take with us. The old mage Knolan, for example, illuminates dark areas to find secrets. The war golem Calibretto can heal us between battles, while the brash rebel Monika confuses enemies. To loosen up, entertaining logic and switch puzzles await you in the partly randomly generated dungeons, which lure you with additional loot boxes. Random battles do not exist, all enemies are visible in the dungeons and the upper world. If we touch one of them, it goes to the actual battle screen.

Cumulative status effects that build on each other and a continuously increasing level of difficulty keep the per se rather slow combat action exciting and challenging. The eight dungeons in total can be re-entered at any time with higher difficulty levels. Thanks to the 153 different types of enemies and impressive combat animations, there is also a lot of visual variety. If we are strong enough, even small standard mobs on the map no longer annoy us unnecessarily. The game then asks us whether we want to attack these “unworthy opponents” at all.

Whoever has not been able to win much in round strategy fights so far, will surely not become a fan of this mechanic with Battle Chasers anymore. If, on the other hand, the action-packed development of modern JRPGs does not appeal to you, you will find many old virtues in this insider tip for role-playing games, which have been enriched with clever innovations and variations and which are very harmoniously combined with a beautiful comic world.

Darkest Dungeon

Darkest Dungeon does not leave any ambiguities in the test and starts with an unmistakable announcement: "Quests will fail or must be cancelled. Heroes will die," says the first text panel, which we get to see as new heirs. As such, we start off in the dark dungeon crawler of the Canadian indie studio Red Hook Studios, which collected over 300,000 crowdfunding dollars via Kickstarter in spring 2014. Our task: Eliminate skeletons, demons, devil worshippers and tentacle beasts and clear the family name ... at all costs.

In Darkest Dungeon there are no shining heroes. Positive and negative characteristics, strengths and quirks give the characters more personality. Crossbow shooter Montgomery has a tendency to alcoholism, bounty hunter Percy shudders at the thought of undead, grave robber Isla is afraid of the light. Sometimes these are just typical role-playing effects (more or less damage in certain situations), but it also gets strange: kleptomaniacal fighters, for example, open treasure chests on their own and pocket the loot themselves – or set off traps that poison the entire team.

With a group of four such anti-heroes we storm dungeons full of undead and explore slimy swamps and grottos where nasty fish-men live. Each dungeon is a – sometimes more and sometimes less – tangled network of rooms and passageways, which we wander through in 2D view. There is no campaign. We are presented with randomly selected quests per region, which are quickly repeated. Mostly it’s about visiting 90 percent of the rooms, mastering all combat rooms or using certain items. If we complete enough tasks in an area, a boss battle is unlocked. Once this is mastered, the game repeats itself with new quests until the next boss battle. The further we progress, the more difficult the challenges become – then higher level characters are needed.

Darkest Dungeon has traits of the infamous “Roguelike” genre. There is only one automatically maintained score, deceased characters remain dead. We can’t lose completely, with new recruits you can always earn enough gold to keep going if in doubt. Nevertheless the question of fairness arises. Even more so, because due to bad luck, fights can fail terribly in the wrong place, which in turn can ruin an entire visit to the dungeon, and which can also kill your favorite heroes. Darkest Dungeon definitely requires a certain degree of frustration resistance – but the game never gets really unfair. When things went really badly wrong, we could usually find the fault with us: Did the group composition not fit the area? Did we risk too much when a retreat would have been appropriate? Darkest Dungeon is 80 percent playful skill and 20 percent chance – we think that’s fair and above all appropriate to the setting, especially since the level of difficulty can be adjusted via the options in an exemplary manner. 

As a player you can tell many great, exciting and horrible stories about the experiences in Darkest Dungeon. The game itself has almost no plot, which we find a pity. During boss fights we only unlock audio fragments in which the ancestor tells about his research and his path to madness. This motivates to continue playing, but there would have been much more in it, especially since the off-speaker is so splendid. 

Together with the matching soundtrack and coherently creepy sound effects from bone cracking to door squeaking, the result is a famous atmosphere. And finally, Darkest Dungeon is not about epic adventures. It’s about despair, about doom and gloom and about the barely visible light at the end of the tunnel … which turns out to be an approaching train … a train that runs over us because something has gone wrong again. So you are often painfully reminded of the announcement at the beginning of the adventure: “Quests will fail or have to be cancelled. Heroes will die.” Nevertheless we do not give up!

Disgaea

Since the first part of Disgaea in 2003, the spirits have been divided. For some, Nippon Ichi's tactical role-playing games with their turn-based battles are too overloaded with options and technically outdated. And others swear by the immense possibilities they have on and off the battlefields.

In the entry levels you will be introduced to a special feature of the Disgaea series: Geo Panels including Geo Cubes. The former are colorful floor tiles that have either no, one or more effects. By destroying Geo Cubes, you can change the color and effects of the tiles. If you are on the changing panels while changing colors, you will lose some of your health. With the right tactics, you can even trigger chain reactions that will send some enemies to the afterlife right in the first round. The more tiles you change during a chain reaction, the higher your bonus level will be. The system not only motivates with the rewards, it’s also fun to think about how to
most opponents with a successful combination. However, Geo Cubes and Panels are not on every map. In such cases you fill the panel for example by making attack combos as long as possible. At the end of each round, you get as many bonuses as you have reached levels. With a higher number of levels, you will receive rare and mostly non-purchasing items.

The entertaining story campaign consists of several episodes with several levels, each chapter ending with a boss battle. You’ll soon find out that you’re not strong enough just because of the experience gained in the story. Now you have to kill enemies until your team is strong enough. The creators have also come up with a special feature for this: the Item World. Through Laharls Castle you can enter the Item World, where you can upgrade your characters and even improve this item. The item world is generated completely randomly and goes on and on and gets more and more difficult with every level. However, this can be quite time-consuming, as you can only leave the item world at checkpoints after ten levels. 

Besides all the side activities you should not lose sight of the funny main story. The game doesn’t take itself so seriously, which always provides funny moments. For example, the king doesn’t die of something tragic, no, he just chokes on his favorite snack and suffocates. Moreover, in the world of demons, one of the nicest compliments is to be called a creep. Apart from the humorous narrative, you should not neglect the intelligently constructed story levels. These require much more tactical thinking than the random cards of the item world and become much harder the further you progress in the plot. Despite the increasing level of difficulty, don’t despair, you will be encouraged to return with a higher level team.

The Banner Saga 2

The second part of the tactical role-playing saga, planned as a trilogy, takes us back into the unique fantasy world of its predecessor, demands all our strategic skills again and demands the most difficult decisions from us non-stop.

In the style of a Game of Thrones, the events change location and narrator again and again. While a last great fugitive can slowly escape the chaos under our leadership, we steer deeper into it elsewhere with a tough, battle-hardened troop. With clear effects on the protagonists’ minds and actions.

The story ties in seamlessly with the end of the first part, in which we narrowly escaped the largest Dredge invasion in living memory. Thanks to an (optional) savegame import, the level ascents of our heroes, our supplies and even the exact number of clan members in our troop are taken over from the predecessor, in addition to the most important decisions.

Essentially, the game consists of the same elements as the first part: a constant alternation between travel sections with our respective subjects, lap battles and dialogue passages with our heroes. On their automatic march, our tiny caravans pass by the drawn landscapes, interrupted again and again by many events, mostly consisting of a text window, which demand difficult decisions from us right from the start.

When we are not talking, we have to feed our caravan by stockpiling supplies and keep morale high by taking breaks. To do this, we need supplies above all else, but they are only reputable for the one resource. We get them almost exclusively by winning battles. Unfortunately, we also need reputation for each level increase of our heroes, which grants us bonuses on character values and – this is new – unlocks further special attacks. So we are again faced with a difficult decision: supplies or hero tuning?

The tactical round fights still follow the same principle as in the predecessor and are again really tricky. We and the opponent take turns with a fighter on the battlefield, trying to combine our attacks and special abilities as useful as possible. For example, if an opponent absolutely doesn’t want to fall into our arrow trap, we simply push him into it with the furious headbutt of a Varl.

Basically, each figure has an armor value and a strength value, with the latter representing both life and attack strength. The special trick: With every attack we have to decide whether we want to attack the opponent’s armor or his health points. While less armor makes the enemy more susceptible to further blows, an attack on the health also weakens the enemy’s attack power. However, a large part of the blow bounces off the armor.

Pillar of Eternity II: Deadfire

The Ultimate Edition of the role-playing game offers almost limitless freedom and several hours of fun with big and small improvements over the original.

The flexible class system allows you to adapt your party members to your mood. If you like it uncomplicated, you can choose a class and become a druid, fighter or hunter. If you want it more special, you can choose the subclass of sniper for your hunter to become even better in ranged combat.

If you wish, you can also combine two classes and make the sniper a wizard at the same time. This will make him develop comparatively slowly, but he will not only go into battle with the blunderbuss, but also throw fireballs around him.

The alternate combat system works fine for the most part, but the pathfinding AI can be a bit stupid at times, so you may have to guide heroes step by step. If you have avoided the game so far because of its hectic real-time battles, you should take a look now at the latest.

There are many exciting combinations that encourage experimentation – this also increases the replay value! Above all, the system is sensible, intuitive and does not require extensive study of the rules to create powerful heroes. You also have the choice to fight in real time as in the first part or rather turn-based. The newly added turn system is fun if you don’t mind the inevitably longer battles.

If you had your own castle in the first part, this time you pimp your own ship with cannons, a crew and other extras to explore the huge world map freely and to your heart’s content. This way you will find many islands, large and small, which you will search for treasures, dungeons and events. In addition, you’ll fight with enemy ships, which means tactically dry battles, because they’re only presented as text. If you don’t like it, you can also board the enemy barge directly and fight with the crew using the familiar battle system.

Besides excellent background music Deadfire also offers very good speakers. All dialogues are set to music – but only in English. Those who do not understand them will read many (and long) German screen texts, typical for the genre.
 
Deadfire is not a game that you just play on the side or in a few quick sessions. In fact, since all DLC and expansions are integrated, there is so much content here that a complete game can take up to 100 hours. And because we influence the course of the game’s history through our actions, a second or third run-through with other decisions is still a lot of fun.
 

Into the Breach

With Into the Breach the team around Justin Ma and Matthew Davis finally releases its next work. This time, too, rogue-like elements are the focus of attention and are intelligently linked to round tactics. The result is a tactical gem that challenges its players enormously - but also manages to motivate them again and again.

With your squad of three different Mechs and their pilots, your first goal is to defend four islands controlled by large corporations against the beasts’ attacks before you take action against their nest. The battles take place on manageable, randomly generated 8×8 fields on large maps, on which buildings, forests, mountains and other objects are distributed. Your primary task is to protect the civilian buildings from damage. Every destroyed house also means damage to the planet-wide energy network. As soon as the power grid has dropped to zero, an unstoppable number of monsters come out of the depths and the game is lost.

To emerge successfully from a battle is not an easy task, because the enemy is usually numerically superior to your three combat units. Also, new enemies appear regularly, which only aggravate your problems. This game is therefore less about destroying the enemy completely. Instead, you always try to keep the possible damage as low as possible and to keep the enemy away from your destruction targets through intelligent movements and attacks.

Most of your units’ attacks not only cause damage, but also have a push effect. This effect varies depending on the mech and the type of attack. Our Combat Mech, for example, uses its titanium fist to push an enemy back one space. The Artillery Mech, on the other hand, fires a projectile that shifts all surrounding enemies by one field at a time.

To make tactical use of this mechanism, the game always shows where each opponent’s next attack will be aimed and how much damage they will do. This creates an incredibly motivating tactical depth. Instead of simply concentrating on inflicting as much damage as possible on the enemy, you work out strategies for using the maximum of three attacks of your troops per round to move the enemies so that their attacks are no longer directed at a target but into the void. Even better, of course, if you can even make it so that the aliens do damage to each other.

But despite all planning, you will eventually reach a point where you fail. Then you have to start a new attempt. You can take your best pilot with you into the next timeline. In addition, you unlock up to eight pre-built squads with very different fighting machines. Each of these squads offers completely different playing styles and requires new tactics from you. Professionals create their own teams from the unlocked Mechs to create their own ultimate tactics.

No question, Into the Breach is very challenging and will always let you fail. But it also motivates you to try again and again, because you always have the feeling that you can improve. Even the simple pixel-look display subordinates itself to the precise gameplay and never misses a more elaborate presentation. Into the Breach is a real feast for tacticians who like to experiment.

Slay the Spire

The card-based Slay the Spire by indie developer Mega Crit Games has already built up a loyal fan base during its early-access phase and is considered a real insider tip. The basic principle is quickly explained: As one of three possible brave warriors (different starting conditions and special abilities) we fight our way from room to room through a dungeon full of hostile creatures. After three acts we reach the evil end boss.

When you start Slay the Spire for the first time, you will be greeted by a relatively rudimentary splash screen, which only presents the standard game mode as a possible choice. Although you will be offered both the randomly generated daily ascent, which comes with its own leaderboards on which you can compete with friends from all over the world, and the so-called special mode, but as a beginner you have to start the campaign first, because only by successfully passing, you unlock the additional modes.

This pattern of torturous withholding is immediately continued, since two of the three belligerent heroes are also sealed off from your untrained beginner hands. The resulting consequences for the course of the game are much more far-reaching than it seems at first glance, as each character not only has different starting bonuses, but also the cards you get access to during the runs are completely different. As a result, each hero has a different playing style, opening up new strategies to master in order to successfully complete the final act.

With over 280 cards, Slay the Spire offers a variety of combinations and possibilities. The deck building is dynamically integrated into the game and introduces us carefully to the strategic subtleties. Each run begins with the standard set of simple attack and defense cards predefined for the character. After each battle won, the game then presents us with three new cards, from which we choose one as a reward. This card is now part of our repertoire and changes all subsequent fights.

The powerful relics, which come into our possession through the victory over crisp elite opponents or through random events, had an immense replay appeal. Some of them even fundamentally change the rules of the game and ensure, for example, that hand cards no longer have to be discarded per round as usual or that our shield value is carried over into the following round. Over 160 different relics can be unlocked. This high number and the incalculable shuffling of the cards makes the game very dependent on luck in some places, but attractive.

Both our character and the opponents do not carry out attacks visibly, but are only animated in a slight back and forth motion. The creatures and enemies are visually lacking in liveliness and variance. We also quickly got fed up with the same dungeon type over and over again. At the end of each section, an especially fat boss is waiting for us, who tests our deck and our skills and demands new tactics. And improving them is also the appeal of the game.

Divinity: Original Sin II

A few years ago, Divinity: Original Sin, along with a few other titles, revived the genre of classic isometric role playing games. With the successor, this renaissance has now reached its peak. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the result of what happens when you take an already very good template and improve it in almost all areas.

The playful freedom for the player is always in the foreground. How you interact with the world is entirely up to you. You want to hunt down everything and everyone? No problem, the game gives you the freedom to do so. There are indescribably many ways to misbehave in this world and sabotage yourself, sometimes unintentionally, and yet it goes on and on. The game never maneuvers you into a dead end from which you can’t get out. There is always an alternative solution. You just have to find it.

The fact that almost everything you find in the game world can be manipulated, moved or collected helps in this process. This is not only important for creative solutions on the way to the next quest goal, but also promotes the feeling of moving in a living game world. Chairs and benches can actually be used to sit on, a campfire can be used for cooking and the anvil of the blacksmith can be used for own work. In short, there is a lot to discover. You can easily plan a good 100 hours of playing time. Depending on the type of game there are almost no limits.

Fight is in Divinity: Original Sin 2 again in tactical round fights. The principle is the same as in the predecessor, but the developers have worked hard on the tactical depth. There are only up to six action points and skills cost between one and three of these points. This makes the trade-off between movement, several small skills or one powerful skill even more important. Also new is the armor against magic and physical damage, which is now available on most items.

The health points are now protected until the respective armor is broken. It is also not possible to apply negative status effects with still active armor. It is therefore always important to consider whether it is better to use magic or direct physical attacks on an opponent. Another key to success is mastery of the elements. Wind, water, fire and some more play a major role again. Rain makes drenched enemies more susceptible to lightning attacks, a pool of oil combined with a fire arrow makes a nice fire carpet and a poisonous cloud can turn into a beautiful explosion. There are many possible combinations. A paradise for tacticians.

New possibilities arise additionally by the introduction of curse and blessing. Each element surface can now be additionally cursed or blessed. While the former increases the destructive effect, the latter usually offers positive effects for your group. For example, cursed fire turns into necrofire, which is much harder to remove. A blessed puddle becomes holy water that heals characters standing in it. This opens up completely new tactical possibilities. However, the enemies also make use of all these means. Especially on the two higher levels of difficulty, the game is no walk in the park, but really crunchy.

If you don’t want to face this challenge alone, experience the campaign with up to four players in a co-op, where the craziest situations can arise. Or you can test your tactical skills against other players in the multiplayer arena. Pen&Paper friends create their own adventures in the game master mode, which they experience with their friends. All this is purely a bonus and would not have been necessary to underline the outstanding position of this role-playing game in the genre. For lovers of chic fantasy worlds and role-playing fans, there is no way around Divinity: Original Sin 2.

XCOM 2: War of the Choosen

It's almost impossible to list all the new features War of the Chosen has added to the basic game - but each of the many new features actually makes the original XCOM 2 a bit better!

The aliens may rule the world, but some things never change. The XCOM defense force is still resisting the intruder, even if it now has to fight its way through as an underground guerilla corps. To this end, we are again leading a team of up to six agents into tactical lap battles. In essence, they inherit the game principle of the predecessor: With two actions per nose and round, our squad advances across the field in search of the best cover and strikes the enemy as sneakily as possible in the flank.

An excellently designed bag of tricks consisting of items and skills on both sides ensures high standards and diversity. So far, so proven, so first-class – just like its predecessor, Part delivers two round tactics in top form. And on top of that, it knows how to stage them attractively: Our guys open fire in cinematic mini-camera shots, kick in doors when spurring over the map or swing smoothly over obstacles.

The aliens leave no stone unturned to fight us back. They regularly initiate “dark events” and equip all their soldiers with armor or poisonous ammunition for the next few missions. Devilish: We see these events coming and are allowed to regularly launch a guerrilla operation to disrupt one of them. But three of them are always planned at the same time and we can never stop them all. So with every decision we make, we also choose which harassment the aliens are allowed to inflict on us undisturbed. XCOM 2 leaves no doubt that we are dealing with a hopelessly superior enemy as underdogs, and that makes it damn exciting.

This tension is almost completely fed by the game mechanics: Although XCOM 2 builds a cool scenario, it doesn’t tell an overly dramatic story. Especially the characters, i.e. our XCOM staff, remain flat like in the predecessor. The story focuses on the war against the aliens and less on personality or depth.

Our people are growing closer to our hearts than ever before, because they really are our people: From the face to the armor design, everything can be customized, even the “attitude” can be determined by us – a nervous soldier actually comments our orders more timidly than a strictly concentrated one. All this, of course, calculated perfidiously so that the Permadeath stroke of fate hits us even harder when a lovingly designed and highly-bred veteran kicks the bucket.

More extensive, better, more interesting: What applies to soldier design can also be said about XCOM 2 as a whole. Despite its quirks with the level of difficulty and the controls, it has become a fantastic lap tactical game.

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