You can turn this off at any time, to swap out a broken force for a pre-set loadout for the mission-This saved me a couple of times later in the campaign when I suffered massive losses at a critical moment. On the default campaign setting you bring units across from mission to mission, and the missions are well paced to allow you a breather after finishing a particularly tough battle.
It also has a decent linear campaign that borrows the right elements from the original Homeworld games. I didn’t think that a game based on Homeworld’s DNA could work properly on the surface of a planet, but it does this surprisingly well, and terrain encourages a lot of play over features like the ridges of dunes. The Honor Guard for faction leaders are another neat persistent element. The campaign preserves a your base after you have won a province (something I really would like to see happen more in RTS-it feels right to come back to somewhere you’ve already battled and see your progress in that area preserved).
Also, as you progress you’re able to apply wargear to your chosen leader, further customizing them and giving you a fun sense of progression and growth even without much of a story to go on beyond Warhammer-generic Endless War. Given the start locations of each faction, you can acquire these customizations in different orders. Territories give you access to unique customizations that can change how you approach the game. Dark Crusade’s iteration stands out amongst them for a number of reasons. Other games in this list, like Ardennes Assault and Emperor: Battle for Dune, have meta-layer strategic campaigns, and darn good ones. These factions are interesting in and of themselves as members of the Warhammer 40,000 lineup, but in the context of RTS, they’re quite a pair. Dawn of War: Dark Crusadeĭark Crusade introduced two of the most interesting and fun factions in all of RTS gaming: the Necrons and the Tau. And, along with Red Alert 2, Emperor stands strong as one of the best examples of enjoyable campiness in real-time strategy gaming. Along with Ardennes Assault, Emperor: Battle for Dune remains the gold standard for an enjoyable meta-campaign. You can also ally with (or fight) the Minor Houses, which creates some variation across playthroughs. The game throws in story-progression missions every couple of levels to give you a break from the unrelenting desert-some missions take place on Spacing Guild Heighlighers or other planets like Caladan. The campaign gives you a Risk-style territory map where you must battle two AI Houses for control of the planet Arrakis. Westwood adapted the Command & Conquer formula and dressed it in the campiness of the 1984 Dune movie. Emperor: Battle for Dune is here because of all of these things. Some titles are on this list due to the replayability and depth of their systems. Some titles on this list are here because of the presentation of their story, and how memorable their characters are. Mission design is relatively varied, from holding a defensive line to standard Control Point capture, and the finale is memorable without being over-the-top ridiculous like some final missions can be (It’s coming up next, but Battle for Dune could fit here) easily. There’s a lot of nuance in the system, and honestly this campaign style is one I’d love to see ripped off time and again. You can cut off these retreating enemies by maneuvering your companies on the map, but doing so means you might miss out on time-critical missions. defeated enemies can retreat to reinforce territory you haven’t taken yet, making subsequent missions harder than they otherwise would have been. Ardennes Assault does this by using reinforcements to create rewards and consequences. One thing I kind of like about several of the RTS on this list is that they don’t try to emulate the political layer of Total War games and instead let battles take front and center. The armies are interesting, but it's the surprising depth and uncompromising difficulty of the Ardennes Assault meta-layer map that really sets it apart. Each has their own backstory and personality, which you see reflected in the forces of the three playable leaders. Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault tells the story of the Battle of the Bulge through the eyes of four commanders (three of which are playable).