The best real-time tactics games on PC

The label covers two different things that keep getting filed together. One is real-time stealth: a handful of specialists, a hand-built level, guards with visible vision cones, and a pause you use constantly to line up the next three seconds. The other is squad combat that simply runs, with a pause so you can think, and no turns anywhere.

Both are on this page, in that order, because the stealth half is where the masterpieces are.

Desperados III (Mimimi Games, published by THQ Nordic, 2020). A gang of five in the Wild West, levels that can be unpicked several ways, and a showdown mode that lets you queue up simultaneous actions for everyone and then set them off at once. It is the most polished game of its kind and the right place to begin.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (Mimimi Productions, published by Daedalic, 2016). Five assassins in Edo-period Japan and the game that brought this whole line back from the dead after a decade of nothing. Harder than Desperados III and nearly as good.

Commandos 2: Men of Courage (Pyro Studios, published by Eidos Interactive, 2001). The one the others are measured against: six specialists, maps the size of villages, buildings you can go inside, and a thief and a dog. It is twenty-five years old and the level design has not been beaten.

The same studio closed in 2023, twelve days after releasing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (Mimimi Games), which is the freest-structured game of the three and the last one Mimimi made. The founders said the reason was the toll of fifteen years of this, not a commercial failure.

Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (Pyro Studios, 1998) invented the form. Its standalone follow-up Beyond the Call of Duty (1999) is harder and adds non-lethal options. Commandos 3: Destination Berlin (2003) is shorter and louder and the weakest of the three. Commandos: Origins (Claymore Game Studios, published by Kalypso, 2025) is a new studio's prequel.

Spellbound Entertainment built the parallel line. Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive (published by Infogrames, 2001) is the original Wild West version and still good. Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood (2002) replaces killing with robbing and knocking people out, which is a rarer idea than it should be. Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge (published by Atari, 2006) goes 3D and loses clarity.

Partisans 1941 (Alter Games, published by Daedalic, 2020) adds a forest camp you keep supplied between missions, and the camp is the most interesting thing in it. Door Kickers (KillHouse Games, 2014) and Door Kickers 2: Task Force North (2025) strip everything else away: an overhead map, routes drawn while paused, then everyone moves at once.

This is the part of the genre that cares more about ballistics than about level design, and it is nearly all Russian or Ukrainian.

Brigade E5: New Jagged Union (Apeiron, published by 1C and Strategy First, 2005) introduced the smart pause: real time that stops itself whenever something happens you would want to know about, so you are never watching for the moment to intervene. 7.62: High Calibre (Apeiron, published by 1C, 2007) is the better version, with an arsenal that borders on obsessive. Both are rough and awkwardly translated and both model a gunfight more honestly than anything with a hit percentage on screen.

Soldiers: Heroes of World War II (Best Way, published by Codemasters, 2004) and Men of War (Best Way, published by 1C, 2009) simulate the battlefield down to each soldier's pockets and each tank's crew, and let you take direct control of any of them. Full Spectrum Warrior (Pandemic Studios, published by THQ, 2004) came out of a training tool built for the US Army, and its whole point is that you command two fireteams with positions and suppression rather than aiming anything yourself.

Aliens: Dark Descent (Tindalos Interactive, published by Focus, 2023) is the strongest modern one. Colonial Marines, real time with slow motion, stress and wounds that carry between missions, and leaving a map early treated as a legitimate decision rather than a failure.

Kenshi (Lo-Fi Games, 2018) drops a squad into a vast indifferent wasteland with no story and no protection, and you start as nobody. RimWorld (Ludeon Studios, 2018) runs a colony on a pausable clock with a storyteller AI aiming disasters at you, and generates better stories than most written ones. They Are Billions (Numantian Games, 2019) is the horde at colony scale, where one infected through the wall ends the run twenty minutes later.

Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel (Micro Forte, 2001) belongs here as well as on the turn-based list, because its continuous turn-based mode runs the same fight without turns and pauses when you want it. Jagged Alliance: Back in Action (Coreplay, published by bitComposer, 2012) did the same thing to Jagged Alliance 2 and called it Plan and Go, and splitting that community in half is most of what it is remembered for.

Syndicate (Bullfrog Productions, published by Electronic Arts, 1993) is four cyborg agents taking the world over for a corporation, city by city, and is the oldest thing on this page worth playing for itself. Syndicate Wars (Bullfrog, 1996) moved it into 3D with destructible cities. Satellite Reign (5 Lives Studios, 2015) is the modern successor, in an open city, with agents whose bodies can be replaced.

Cannon Fodder (Sensible Software, published by Virgin Interactive, 1993) is the cruellest joke in strategy gaming: tiny named recruits and a hill of graves outside the recruiting office that grows with every one you lose. Space Hulk (Electronic Arts, 1993) rations how much you are allowed to pause, which is a design idea nobody has improved on. Close Combat (Atomic Games, published by Microsoft, 1996) had soldiers who panic, flee and refuse orders, in 1996.

Freedom Force (Irrational Games, 2002) and Freedom Force vs the Third Reich (2005) are real time with pause with 1960s comic-book superheroes and a wreckable city. The three UFO games from Altar Interactive, Aftermath (2003), Aftershock (2005) and Afterlight (2007), rebuilt the X-COM campaign in real time with a pause, and Afterlight, set on Mars, is the good one.

Broken Lines (PortaPlay, published by Super.com, 2020) cuts combat into planned spans: you give eight soldiers their orders, then watch eight seconds happen with no ability to intervene. Phantom Brigade (Tetragon Works, published by Brace Yourself Games, 2023) shows you the enemy's next five seconds on a timeline and lets you plan your mechs through it. Neither is quite real time and neither is turn-based, and both are more interesting than most things that are.

RAD Tactics is a squad tactics game for Windows, real time with pause, set after a collapse, with zombies and with factions fighting over what is left. It is in development, and we are not going to describe anything in it that is not finished.

This page is the family it belongs to. The short version of what we take from it: the stealth games prove hand-built ground beats generated ground, the simulation school proves a pause can be exact rather than sloppy, and Aliens: Dark Descent proves a modern audience will accept a clock that never stops.