What's Your Favorite Strategy Game?

The summer of Switch continues with Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the long-awaited console entry of the turn-based tactics RPG series. We liked it quite a bit, as you can read in Kat's near-perfect score review.

A lot of us are eagerly awaiting diving in ourselves this weekend, so we thought it was a good time to look back on our favorite strategy games for this week's Community Question. And yes, we're including tactics games, 4X, and anything in-between. If it's the least bit strategy-related, it's allowed. So tell us: What's your favorite strategy game?

I love different strategy genres for different reasons, and so a few always stick out in different respects. Fire Emblem for tactics and SRPG, Civ 3 for grand strategy, StarCraft when I'm feeling competitive, etc. But I will always love the Command & Conquer series the most, especially Red Alert 2.

C&C is the perfect blend of actual strategy and bull-headed stubbornness, with a layer of camp so thick it's bleeding at the edges. Every unit serves a purpose in the gradual escalation of war until you're causing contained climate change and charging squids headlong into aircraft carriers. It's an arcade-y style of RTS that feels like it's gone the way of the dodo, and that's a bummer. I'm not sure if an RTS like C&C can truly thrive in a post-MOBA world. But I would really like to see one try.

When it comes to the broad umbrella of strategy games, I've always favored turn-based tactics games. From XCOM 2 to Advance Wars, those are really my jam. And for this CQ, I'm going with my heart for my answer: Invisible, Inc. I've always been a sucker for spy and heist movies, and Invisible, Inc. is basically an interactive version of one of those. It's complex but never overwhelming, and it's endlessly playable thanks to being procedurally generated. If you haven't checked out Invisible, Inc., I highly recommend doing so. (Now port it to Switch, Klei.)

There's a lot of exciting strategy games on the horizon too: Phoenix Point, Overland, John Wick Hex. Some are looser with the "strategy" genre than others, but I'm looking forward to all three of them when they're out (hopefully) in the next year or so.