[POLL] The best RTS of all time

[jester1176]

starcraft...for the following story....

when starcraft came out, i was new to PC gaming. the only PC game i had ever played was Diablo.

my girlfriend, who i lived with, worked at Ziff Davis and the magazine guys got some extra copies of Starcraft so she brought one home thinking i'd enjoy it. woah...enjoyed it a bit too much. besides work, it was all i did. i'd come home, eat dinner and go straight to the PC and start playing online. we'd get into fights over the lack of attention she was getting, how i was never social any more...

a few days after a talk about the amount of time im playing, i come home from work, turn the key in the door and the door barely opens...something's blocking it. i shove it a bit, and there's boxes piled right next to the door. they contain MY STUFF! she wasn't home, but a simple note attached said "get out."

well, what was i to do? i called a friend and we packed my belongings into our cars and i was on my way.

i still have that copy of starcraft...but i haven't played since.

[caesarbear]

WTF?! Starcraft/Warcraft winning? Honestly I can only imagine that those who voted for Starscraft simply haven't played the other games on the list. Sure Starcraft had style and was a great story, but damn, it's got to be the worst of the RTS systems on that list. Poor management, mediocre strategy, decent gameplay in the end. Can those that voted for Starcraft please tell me if you played those other titles, and say why you thought Starcraft was better?

[SuperHiro]

I have played all those games.

When I play Kohan II/Total War series, it's with a different mindset... I'm pretty much playing the game like a turn-based game. Generally I like Kohan/Total War series better than the Crafts... but I personally don't feel like their RTS's in the strict traditional sense.

Ultimately, Starcraft is the pinnacle of the Blizzard design philosophy. Excellence in Execution. It's simple, TA was much more advanced. But Starcraft was just so solidly made out of the box. The single-player game story is the standard for which all RTS's are compared too. Do you ever see a game get derided because it's sp campaign "Just ripped off Age of Mythology"? For me it was more than just style, it was immersive. The art direction behind it was fantastic.

I've played all these games, and yet 80% of my RTS "Here's a fun game I played" memories come from Starcraft . And the last time I actually played it was 2000. It's still supported by Blizzard.

Here was the real kicker for me. Whenever I need to make an oddball political analogy, I always ALWAYS look to Starcraft/Warcraft to make that analogy... because everyone is familiar with it and can basically understand what I'm talking about. The other games on that list may be technically better, but Starcraft has stood the test of time with flying colors.

[knob]

I voted StarCraft. Rome: Total War was amazing, but I don't really consider it an RTS. Only a small portion of the game was an RTS, and if you played the campaign (Atleast in my case), you skipped a lot of the fights.


Edit:

Well said, SuperHiro. StarCraft might not have been the most advanced, in-depth RTS ever released. But it was so well made, so easy to get into, and so much fun, that it easily blows the others out of the water. It's one of those games that'll be remembered for a very long time. I still wish they would have went with World of StarCraft.

[caesarbear]

I dunno... these are sounding like excuses to me.

I mean take Kohan, why do you disqualify that as an RTS? It's clearly in that category. It has great RTS gameplay but the campaign is rather poorly done. That should take some point off, and as such I rate RoN ahead of it. But to use the sp campaign as the primary judgement of an RTS seems silly. After I'm done with the campaign, I'm not going to play it over, I'd rather set up skirmishes or multiplayer games. If you've finished the story, going through it again seems a bit dull.

Are you voting for Starcraft because of the gameplay or all the other polish and "immersion" qualities? That doesn't seem like a good way to decide best RTS. I mean, the Sims was well designed and very immersive for many people, so why not put that in the running for best RTS if those are the qualities we are looking at?

I think that lack of polish and artisitc design is what kept Seven Kingdoms off the list, but I'd easily rate that higher than some of the others.

[SuperHiro]

I voted for Starcraft because it is the most fun, which should be the only criteria for any game.

[The Preacher]

I dunno... these are sounding like excuses to me.

People are finding excuses to vote for Starcraft? O.o

[mori]

Here was the real kicker for me. Whenever I need to make an oddball political analogy, I always ALWAYS look to Starcraft/Warcraft to make that analogy... because everyone is familiar with it and can basically understand what I'm talking about. The other games on that list may be technically better, but Starcraft has stood the test of time with flying colors.

I really wouldn't know what you were talking about. I played a little of Warcraft and Starcraft and know there are orcs and humans/marines. That could describe Warhammer also.

[Scanner]

I really wouldn't know what you were talking about. I played a little of Warcraft and Starcraft and know there are orcs and humans/marines. That could describe Warhammer also.

Not to weigh in pro- or con- on Starcraft, but it's well known that Blizzard was either inspired by or outright stole (depending on your p.o.v.) the Warhammer 40,000 mythology. That's why when it came out some people called Starcraft the best Warhammer game yet...

[SuperHiro]

Actually, the story is that Blizzard tried to secure the Warhammer 40k liscense for the game, but Games Workshop said no. So that's why there's a lot of similarities.

[yossar]

I dunno... these are sounding like excuses to me.

There are a million different criteria for determining what is "best". None were give in the Original Post. Yours are obviously different from most peoples'. But there's nothing wrong with that.

I guess you can (and are) argue what criteria should be used, but would you disagree that there are some things that Starcraft did better than any RTS before or after? I think every game on that list is good (although for whatever reason Medieval: Total War failed to hold my attention for more than an hour) so whatever game is "best" just comes down to personal preference.

[quantum]

Rise of Nations and Myth/Myth 2 tie for my vote.

[Scanner]

Oh wait, I thought of it. Ya'll might think I'm crazy, but I bet the RTS game I spent the most time playing was Total Annihilation Kingdoms!! This game was incredibly under rated.

I did think you were crazy, but I wanted to do my homework so I dug up my old TA:K disks to see if anything had changed since the last time I'd tossed them aside. And I was actually pleasantly surprised.

First, despite the horrible press, a mod community sprung up that added over new 200 units and at least a dozen new races. There's also a couple of hundred new maps. The quality varies of course, but I had expected the game to wither on the vine. No imaginative total conversions as with the original TA, but I did spot a LOTR conversion.

Some of the real boneheaded design decisions, like gates that can only point north-south, have been rectified. There's also an attack-move command, although I was disappointed that right-click still defaults to forced-march.

With my computer, which is cutting edge for 2002 , performance is a non-issue, even with the patch that gives you a 5000 unit cap. Graphics are adequate. Sound still sucks, but the music is ok.

TA:K was so far off the radar that I forgot to include it in the poll next to TA, so thanks for this nice trip down memory lane.

[setaside]

Even though I spent a rediculous amount of hours playing Starcraft, I had to vote Total Annihilation.

TA was just an incredible experience. Cavedog/Chris Taylor did SO many things right with that game (that to this day haven't ever really been re-realized) that it almost immediately trumped Starcraft as my favorite game. The fact that the campaign for TA is virtually non-existant kept Starcraft as my favorite for a short while but soon after that, the intricacies of TA started to come out and I realized just how much better of a game it was. There was no looking back after that.

Starcraft multiplayer still kept me busy, but TA kept me exhausted.

[warning]

I voted for Starcraft because it is the most fun, which should be the only criteria for any game.

Millions of Koreans can't be wrong.

[caesarbear]

Well what's the point of the poll if it's just going to be a popularity contest and we can't debate the criteria? My choice for best RTS could change from week to week with this list probably. I agree that the TW series doesn't quite fall into the regular RTS category, but I feel it has the most strategy of these games. But if the criteria must include how resource management is handled, then I guess TW falls off the top stop.

Starcraft was a good RTS system when it came out, but come on, don't you think RTS games have progressed since then? It just sounds like people are making excuses for Starcraft's now outdated and sub-par gameplay by talking about more nebulous features like art direction and familiarity. I mean, Dune2 has a special place in my heart, but no way I'm crazy enough to suggest it as the best RTS.

[Thin_J]

I voted starcraft for a very simple reason: My definition of the "best" game in any category is always going to be the game I had the most fun playing.

For me, that's easily Starcraft. Especially out of the choices given. The only other one that's close is Total Annihilation, which I also loved to death.

I played Kohan and didn't like it at all. Nor do I enjoy any of the Total War series.

I did have a lot of fun with Dawn of War, but found it didn't draw me in nearly as well as Starcraft did, and wasn't able to keep me playing as long either.

[SuperHiro]

I really oughta give Total Annihilation another look. But I just could never really get into it, it was so ugly.

[Panzeh]

I think the close combat series is the best five RTSs of all time. The best out of that series is 2.

In Close Combat, units don't need to be told to take cover(there wasn't even cover in its contemporary RTSs, and even newer ones require you to tell the men to get into cover). Basically, it modeled tactics more realistically than any of its predecessors and any of its successors.

If I had to give a No.2, I'd say Highway to the Reich.

[Pyperkub]

I had to go with C&C the original - throw the others out (Red Alert did have something, but the Original C&C was the best). Starcraft is probably second then TA then Rome

The first C&C defined the genre, and there was nothing like it for MultiPlayer. The sides and the maps were balanced, and there were so many gameplay nuances that it was amazing - even the stupid harvester AI was actually appropriate. Best of all, it had an endgame for multiplayer that was appropriately balanced. Once the Ion Cannon and Nukes came into play the game hit that third phase endgame that most RTS multiplayer games don't handle well. TA was horrible at it in that it could often degenerate into worthless attacks on super fortified bases and take out the berthas that could get in range - the TA endgame often took hours. Starcraft was always (to me) unbalanced in the Endgame. C&C hit it just right - the four-player maps with just enough tiberium in a defended area, and then central caches that needed to be captured and held - commandos blowing up buildings and engineers taking them over - fleets of choppers and bikes zooming around the map... finding that last crate that had a construction unit in it and building another base when you were down to your last civilian...

Wow! Hands down best.

[Kelric]

I had to go with C&C the original - throw the others out (Red Alert did have something, but the Original C&C was the best). Starcraft is probably second then TA then Rome

The first C&C defined the genre, and there was nothing like it for MultiPlayer. The sides and the maps were balanced, and there were so many gameplay nuances that it was amazing - even the stupid harvester AI was actually appropriate. Best of all, it had an endgame for multiplayer that was appropriately balanced. Once the Ion Cannon and Nukes came into play the game hit that third phase endgame that most RTS multiplayer games don't handle well. TA was horrible at it in that it could often degenerate into worthless attacks on super fortified bases and take out the berthas that could get in range - the TA endgame often took hours. Starcraft was always (to me) unbalanced in the Endgame. C&C hit it just right - the four-player maps with just enough tiberium in a defended area, and then central caches that needed to be captured and held - commandos blowing up buildings and engineers taking them over - fleets of choppers and bikes zooming around the map... finding that last crate that had a construction unit in it and building another base when you were down to your last civilian...

Wow! Hands down best.

Damnit, now I want to play C&C.

[Ka Faraq Gatri]

1. Warzone 2100
2. Total Annihilation
3. Kohan series

[Ronin]

Starcraft got my vote, followed by Total Annialation.

Starcraft is the winner because blizzard took the RTS concept, polished the shit out of it, and then put in 3 very different factions and styles of play. Combine that with a fairly compelling storyline and good graphics for its day, and the fact that it was fun puts it at the top of the heap.

Total Annialtion is next because of the sheer flexibility of its gaming experience. Air/land/sea. Combined arms combat at its best.

Then its Age of Empires 2.

This all comes down to what I think of when I hear 'RTS'. Since Dune, an RTS to me is characterized by the Dune/C&C model. The Total War Series isnt' real time strategy at all. Its turn based strategy with a real time tactical element. Kohan is a strange hybrid beast that is a bridge between the turn based and real time scale. Although great games, I can't bring myself to place it in the same category of what I percieve to be RTS games, ie Dune, C&C, Warcraft/Starcraft.

[caesarbear]

What the heck is turn-based about Kohan?!? It's RTS through an through. I'd call it the pinnacle of RTS really because your time isn't spent on so many option screen like AoE/RoN. Just because you don't have stupid units gathering your resources doesn't mean it's not Real-Time.

[GungHo]

A bunch of winners here; I must've played about 1000 games of AoE back in the day. The Total War series is incredibly innovative and deep, while C&C was just over the top fun.

But I had to vote for Myth and Myth 2. Just amazing, addicting fun and an excellent story to boot.

[is_dead]

Scanner, thanks for the comments. I have an urge to check out the music again myself, although the problem with the single player is that it takes ages to get to the more challenging missions (now that I've played it a few times, I remember that distinctly).

Ka Faraq Gatri - Warzone 2100 - Good choice! Another one I forgot about. Very well put together game. C and C generals really could have taken a lesson from that six year old game, where Tomahawk cruise missiles have a range of more than 400 feet . It was also fully 3d. Some battles were epic in that game. I remember I was once teamed up on by a couple kids, and I could hear them chatting that they were building up their airforce to come and get me, and I built about a hundred missile stations, and defense barraks galore, and I stood up to the massive assault for a good ten minutes, it was wicked.

Man I've played a lot of RTS.