We find it hard to recommend Mutant Year Zero as the frustrating combat, occasional bugs, slow movement, and awkward camera make us quit to desktop more often than not. But at the same time, the story and the world keeps dragging us back for more. And though it has aged us considerably, if you’re a fan of the source material, then it’s worth it to stick it through just to experience the story. Especially if you’re like the rest of us and can’t get a group together anyway.

If you enjoy playing in the Iberian Peninsula and you can overlook a few historical irregularities, then it would be very hard to pass up on Golden Century. If you're obsessed by pirates and can't fight off the desire to pretend to be Jack Sparrow, then this is going to be your best bet within EU4. If you're literally anyone else: While it's only $10 USD, it's not really vital to your experience and doesn't actually bring that much to the table. You might just want to wait until the next actual expansion and pick this one up on sale.

For me, there's really no question on whether to buy this or not. Doing a complete overhaul of the population mechanics, adding in trade as an important system, allowing you access to being megacorporations or mega-cults, throwing in a little slave trade while you're at it? For $20 US, it's a solid purchase.

Flashpoint doesn’t offer anything transformative, the way XCOM 2’s War of the Chosen expansion did. Dedicated BattleTech players will want to give this a look, but with as many options as we have now for interesting strategy experiences, everyone else can consider this addition as highly optional.

Space Race as an expansion is worth checking out at some point, but I wouldn’t be in any hurry. It ultimately does little to solve many of the deep-rooted problems the game still has at the mid-to-late stages. It does make the early-game a little easier, or at the very least more varied (depends on your settings), and there’s definitely some interesting stuff there. Surviving Mars still has a fair ways to go though, and it’s going to take more than small injections of personality to carry it over that hump.

In a situation where you have all of it, HF is going to truly shine, pulling together parts from four or five different DLC and using them together. If you don't have at least one of Sword of Islam or Rajas of India (and preferably both), you are going to run into a significant amount of frustration, especially in randomized worlds.

All in all, Curse of the Vampire Coast is yet another great DLC, worth the admission price to any fans of the factions. It is not as good as Rise of the Tomb Kings, as the lack of ship to ship battles and the boring, constant loop of field and siege battles that Warhammer II constantly devolves to doesn’t really lend itself to a pirate experience, but given what Creative Assembly was working with, Vampire Coast is surprisingly thorough.

Terraforming Mars is a great strategy challenge with huge replay value. But, while pretty and convenient, this adaptation currently has too many rough edges to recommend.

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock is a pretty special game. Not only is it a great experience for fans of the show, but for tactics fiends looking to get their starship combat on, Black Lab Games have been honing and expanding the title since launch in August of last year. They've just released a new expansion, and it’s a belter.

All in all, the Tactical Legacy Pack is a surprisingly good addition to the base game, providing smaller portions of XCOM that manage to be enticing and engaging even without the strategy layer. It is not a replacement to the main campaign in anyway whatsoever, but the deeply tactical battles and powerful squads should provide plenty of fun for any players looking for just a little bit more XCOM.

Rimworld is a new standard in survival/strategy sims, and has emerged from early access with grace. Now the REAL fun can begin...

Bad North strips away just the right amount of complexity and headache that real-time strategy games tend to have, resulting in a core experience that is challenging, rewarding, and very replayable.

If the developers move quickly, Space Hulk: Tactics might yet be the best strategy game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. For now, the grim darkness of the far future is still grim and dark -- and not in a good way.

An admirable return to form, Valkyria Chronicles 4 feels like a safe bet for both newcomers and veteran commanders alike.

An admirable return to form, Valkyria Chronicles 4 feels like a safe bet for both newcomers and veteran commanders alike.

As it stands, Frozen Synapse 2 is truly an interesting experiment -- an attempt to expand the scope while keeping the original's focus and the directive that a successful mission always ends the same way: with everyone but you dead. It is a capable game that should appeal more to hardcore wargamers than more casual strategy enthusiasts, however, as I suspect its unintuitive menu will put off a lot of strategic-minded people with no patience for obtuseness.

In the end, Two Point Hospital is one of the best strategy games of 2018, managing to surprise me with its extremely competent game design, amazing polish, and superb production values. It has a few faults, like any product, and all of them could be easily fixed by patches should the developers choose to. Regardless of changes, Two Point Studios debut title is a serious contender to the bastion of modern classics.

A unique, focused 4X game that proves to be historically authentic and surprisingly deep in terms of mechanics and gameplay. An excellent debut.

A rich, detailed and highly replayable espionage adventure, touting the right mix of strategic and tactical choices within its entertaining fiction.

Inferno shouldn’t be mistaken for a simple expansion pack, it adds core gameplay loops that improve upon Endless Legend enough to where I consider it a required purchase.

In the end, Rise of the Republic is yet another great addition to Total War’s best entry. It’s pacing is a bit harsh, but it adds new mechanics and experiences while retaining the base game’s excellent battle balance, shying away from Warhammer’s unfortunate MOBA-like rush but bringing it’s good campaign map ideas into the fold. The way it circles back to the start of Rome II’s base campaign drives home the dedication and love put into the game as a whole and makes this expansion a must buy for anyone interested in the early days of the Roman Republic.

The Banner Saga 3 is a great game, and crushing enemies both small and large, human and supernatural is still just as fun.

Gladius’s attention to combat goes beyond most 4X games, and it works. In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

Evolution will amuse movie fans and infrequent sim hands, but linearity and lack of meaningful decision-making undermines its lavish production values.

Despite its short-comings, Sanctus Reach is one of the best turn-based strategy games around.

The Broken Alliance expansion is an important one. It is to Deadlock as Brood War was to Starcraft; interesting unit additions and thoughtful writing elevate a dry but highly competent base game. Essential for Deadlock fans, and compelling for the curious. So say we all.

Ultimately, Distant Stars is an interesting expansion that expands the game’s content without pushing any boundaries. It doesn’t increase the game’s scope but given how bare the current mid-game is and the sheer number of new anomalies added in the DLC, it is hard to pass this up.

Evolutionary rather than revolutionary, Ancestors: Legacy takes the best of the genre, adds a dash of Dark Age and at the end of it comes out as one of the strongest entries to the RTS stable this year.