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The worst strategy games ever made

MilesBeyond

Cipher
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May 15, 2015
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716
Inspired by the thread over in RPG Land, I realized that while terrible RPGs are often lovingly curated, I've never really heard much at all about the worst the strategy genre has to offer. MoO 3 and Outpost are the only ones that come to mind.

So I gotta know, what are the worst strategy games that have ever been made?
 

Nutria

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MOO3 would certainly be high on the list.

For the most disappointing implementation of a great idea, I'd go with 1994's Central Intelligence. The user interface rivals Dwarf Fortress and the gameplay is thoroughly bugged and broken.
 

Lahey

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
Stalin vs Martians. Not only is the game intentionally designed to be shit (because playing shitty games is HILARIOUS guise!), it also rode early kickstarter and youtube lper culture to the bank with a cynical forced-meme marketing campaign that generated enough ironic support to produce two sequels. A precursor to the tidal wave of shit that constitutes early access, inspiring every "dev" out there with deams of making their very own harambe simulator.
 

hellbent

Augur
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Aug 17, 2008
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322
All the AoE / WarCraft / C&C ripoff RTS games from the early 2000s sucked. Everyone hopped on the RTS bandwagon and the vast majority were garbage.

Examples:
America
Real War
Kingdom Under Fire: A War of Heroes
World War 3: Black Gold (Not to be confused with Black Geyser)
G.I. Combat

For the worst of the worst, I'd say that the RTS officially hit rock bottom with the release of Left Behind: Eternal Forces. Not just for the rampant endtime Christian bullshit messaging, but also for the EB ads in the game itself.

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Star Wars: Force Commander was probably my personal greatest disappointment.

Dark Planet was the worst Star Craft knock off.

I gotta say the Left Behind game looks putrid though.
 

Comte

Guest
Sierra Games Outpost. Completely broken buggy piece of shit game. AGEOD's Pride of nations is absolute garbage still runs like a pig on modern systems.
 

spectre

Arcane
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Messages
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So many low hanging fruit here...here's a quick list of games that actually made managed to get me angry by existing and wasting my time. Sometimes even money.

(o) I agree that Moo3 deserves a mention on any such list, I remember being hyped as fuck right there at the race selection screen.
Then I got into the game and I genuinely thought I was doing something wrong, perhaps missing an option that would make it all click into place so that it starts being good.
This was perhaps the first time I felt touched by the Decline(tm) in my own genre (I'm not big on RPGs, even though I played the majority of the classics), and it was indeed a special moment for me.

(o) UFO Aftermath. Like a lot of folks I was mislead into thinking it's somehow related to Enemy Unknown. It had a nice post apoc vibe at the start, but never really delivered on anything.
The two next games kinda redeemed the first installment, even had some good parts, but still managed to drag out the endgame into a snoozefest.

(o) Medieval 2 Total War. Yeah, it's a controversial one, people would swear this one's the shit because of all the mods. Myself, I still remember the launch of this game - it was unplayable out of the box, with non existing AI
that would just stand there and eat arrow fire or move out of the castle to let it be taken. Yeah, mods might have salvaged this game, but it took a few patches to even give it modability.
People say total wars turned to irredeemable shit with Empire, for me it was Med2.

(o) Jagged Alliance Flashback. I could probably gather all the attempts to cash in on the legend of JA2 in one place, as one entry, together with the jagged edge, ja3 and all the other shit that I can't be bothered to remember by name.
I think Flashback was special because the devs tried, really tried to convince everyone that they "got this" to the end, despite everything pointing to the contrary.

(o) Planetary Annihilation. I was never a fan of the classic Command and Conquer formula, yet somehow Total Annihilation was something that clicked with me. I struggle to write something substantial in this entry, because PA turned out so fucking bland.
The devs should probably win some kind of an award. The original TA was renowned for its fugly unit and building models, PA managed to make them even more ugly and forgettable.

(o) Heroes of Might and Magic 6. I vaguely remember this one. I think I played this and actually thought: Ok guys, what the fuck happened here?
Never played any recent HoMM game since.

(o) Civilization 5. I actually made an effort to get into Civ5. Tried vanilla, thought it was shit. Tried it with expansions. Still shit. Tried it in multiplayer. Ok, so this is supposed to be fun?
Unfortunately, it looks like it also set the course for later civs to follow. I am still hoping that some mod or expansion manages to salvage Civ 6, but we all know it's hopeless at this point,
RIP yet another franchise I grew up with.

(o) Disciples III. I was genuinely taken by surprise here. I really liked Disciples 1 and 2, despite their simplifications and quirk, they were entertaining and felt like they had something different going for them.
Now, here comes part III which shits on all this and tries to ape HoMM, fails spectacularly at that. I think I didn't even complete the tutorial, just thought to myself: what the fuck is this shit, uninstalled and deleted the iso.
I heard that at some point part three got fixed and was close to playable, but I couldn't convince myself to try this shit again. It was like a match made in heaven, me and that game, only in the opposite direction.

(o) Frontline Tactics. You probably never heard of this one. It's a shovelware, free game by an unknown studio. So how is it surprising that it sucked?
Not going to lie, I was actually curious and entertained at first, I was looking for something to numb the pain after yet another failed Jagged Alliance reboot, and I needed some time away from 1.13. So this game was turn based squad tactics, why not check it out at least?
The core mechanics weren't that bad, looked like something to play on a tablet in my spare time, or something. We quickly parted ways when I discovered it has blatant fucking level scaling, in a turn based fucking squad tactics game, no less.
Whenever you unlock a new weapon or item, all enemies magically start using it, turning any progress meaningless. The absurdity of this made me remember this turd until now (though I had to do a google search to recall the name).
The RPG fags probably had the same experience with Oblivion; well, this was my special Oblivion moment, but in a different genre.


Anyways, what is interesting with strategy games, one man's shit can be another man's goty (HoMM4 springs to mind, myself I heard a lot of bad shit about Panzer General 3D, but I actually enjoyed both installments).
Not to mention, the genre seems to have declined so much in the recent years one can go back to older titles that were considered poo back in the day and discover that they aren't actually so bad by today's standards. For example, I've seen Xcom Apocalypse being
bashed almost universally back in the day, myself, I still can't bring myself to give it a fair spin after all the bad taste it had left in my mouth back then. After a brief encounter with the new SEXCUM, I am seriously contemplating giving Xcom Apoc another shot.
 

Nutria

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I agree that Moo3 deserves a mention on any such list, I remember being hyped as fuck...
This was perhaps the first time I felt touched by the Decline(tm) in my own genre

For me it was like Star Trek: Voyager or the Star Wars prequels. It was when I learned that no matter how good something is, it can get turned into shit in the next installment.

I am seriously contemplating giving Xcom Apoc another shot.

You should. I can't remember how it got so much hate. Maybe it just had a lot of bugs at release? But it's not a bad game by any means, and it had some really creative ideas.
 

spectre

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I am seriously contemplating giving Xcom Apoc another shot.
You should. I can't remember how it got so much hate. Maybe it just had a lot of bugs at release? But it's not a bad game by any means, and it had some really creative ideas.
It mostly boiled down to three things: poor weapon design and balance, atrocious art direction, and that EU and TFTD is a high bar to be held to.
 

Nutria

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poor weapon design and balance

I do have to admit that I savescummed whenever the aliens ships appeared because the air combat part of the game never really worked right.

atrocious art direction

You'll get no argument from me there. The aliens in the original were as frightening as you can possibly make something that's only 50 pixels. The weird blue & pink aliens in Apocalypse just looked ridiculous.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The worst strategy game contest makes little sense.... I mean there must be worse games that no one has heard of because of how crap they are.

That said, one of the biggest disappointment would be Matrix's World in Flames adaptation:
WiF is an awesome wargame that covers all WW2 at the army corps level. Which means it will take you and 4-5 other players 100h of real time to complete a single game.
The computer adaptation shipped with no AI, and no network multiplayer... So you could play hotseat (good luck with that given the specifications of the game), or TeamViewer.
So basically, for 90€, you can play against yourself and not have to set up and teardown the game (ok, it takes a complete room to play, so this is a big advantage actually, but still...)
 

sser

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The worst strategy game contest makes little sense.... I mean there must be worse games that no one has heard of because of how crap they are.

That said, one of the biggest disappointment would be Matrix's World in Flames adaptation:
WiF is an awesome wargame that covers all WW2 at the army corps level. Which means it will take you and 4-5 other players 100h of real time to complete a single game.
The computer adaptation shipped with no AI, and no network multiplayer... So you could play hotseat (good luck with that given the specifications of the game), or TeamViewer.
So basically, for 90€, you can play against yourself and not have to set up and teardown the game (ok, it takes a complete room to play, so this is a big advantage actually, but still...)

This is why I listed Squad Leader.

There are many crap strategy games, but Squad Leader's source material makes it extra disappointing.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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I'd say Lords of Magic. Big game from a big publisher. Came out at a time when if you called an actual turd a pc strategy game, I would play it. Obviously made to cash on a popularity of homm II for which I had a huge hard on. I played it for like 2 hours and never came back.

Modern times I'd say modern Firaxis games. It's not like they're some ultimate turds, but their utter blandness and inability to design a game that isn't based on completely arbitrary rules that make little to no sense is pretty disappointing.
 

thesheeep

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Empire Earth III.

I was paid to betatest it for the Polish distributor and had to finish it... There is NOTHING good about it!
Yeah, I read in several articles how they managed to screw up that one.
It's almost a miracle no one saw that coming :lol:
 

Severian Silk

Guest
Sierra Games Outpost. Completely broken buggy piece of shit game. AGEOD's Pride of nations is absolute garbage still runs like a pig on modern systems.
Yeah, I got this as a kid. I thought the game was incomprehensible because it was too "deep" for me.

Didn't know until later that it was simply busted.

I'd say Lords of Magic. Big game from a big publisher. Came out at a time when if you called an actual turd a pc strategy game, I would play it. Obviously made to cash on a popularity of homm II for which I had a huge hard on. I played it for like 2 hours and never came back.

I didn't play this game much either, but it got good reviews, and seems to be a "classic" according to a lot of people.

I'm just not a big strategy game fan, unless you consider JA2 to be strategy vs. an RPG.
 
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Space Satan

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Vatnik
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Galactic Civilization 2 and 3 - rock paper scissors and planet quality mechanic killed the game dead.
Everything Kalypso vomited.
UFO: After...shock,...match...and whatever they released more. This franchise was literally built upon milking UFO's popularity.
Seven Kingdoms - WE WUZ DIPLOMATS
Majesty 2 - pure repetitive shit, unable to repeat Majesty's awesomeness.
Warlock - WE WUZ CIVV.
Civilization V - a pinnacle of dumbing down everything that could be dumbed down.
Civilization VI - when you thought CivV was bad but things rapidly got worse.
 

spectre

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UFO: After...shock,...match...and whatever they released more. This franchise was literally built upon milking UFO's popularity.
This was true for the first game, aftermath. like I said, I felt ripped off by this one, but the later two games actually managed to build something interesting on that trainwreck. They weren't terrible
(I'd on par with the recent SEXCUM - i.e. something you try when you've played all the good stuff out there),
If you can forgive map repetition an a drawn out lategame, I quite liked the RTWP. While they kept going with the UFO in the name, they dropped any pretences of being related to it in any way after the first game.
Aftershock had an interesting character development system based on character levels and specialized training.
Afterlight on the other hand had a totally different feel and style, less grimdark and more cartoony. The character pool was limited, and the focus was on individual backstories.
I quite liked terraforming Mars in this one as it had an actual effect on topography.
 

Uncle Skull

Educated
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Jul 8, 2017
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(o) Medieval 2 Total War. Yeah, it's a controversial one, people would swear this one's the shit because of all the mods. Myself, I still remember the launch of this game - it was unplayable out of the box, with non existing AI
that would just stand there and eat arrow fire or move out of the castle to let it be taken. Yeah, mods might have salvaged this game, but it took a few patches to even give it modability.
People say total wars turned to irredeemable shit with Empire, for me it was Med2.

Rome 1 didn't have mod folder support up until it was patched in as well IIRC.
I don't know what Medieval 2 was after launch since I played it years after Kingdoms was released, but vanilla Medieval 2 is pretty much a straight upgrade from Rome 1. Same engine that handled animations/damage the same way with the addition of occasional sync kills. AI seems less eager to waste generals by charging them straight into the front line in every single battle. All factions have certain advantages/disadvantages and several unique units, which cannot be said for all of Rome's factions. The biggest improvements were made to the camping:
- Much better way of handling recruitment that actually meant that you would mix your forces a bit instead of spamming Principes/Urban cohorts/Sacred band/Spartans/Companion cav
- The pope has a far bigger impact than the Senate, gives bigger rewards and penalties. The Senate in Rome 1 hardly does anything at all other than being an annoyance and a lategame goal, holding positions in it means that your characters get special traits which give you bonuses. Having very low relations means that they might start the civil war early, which is impossible to do unless you go for it yourself.
Having good papal relations means you can influence the pope to call crusades. Crusading generals gain considerable stat and camping movement speed boosts, no upkeep for the duration of the crusade, and ability to hire cheap, powerful special mercenaries at the cost of the army starting to waste away if it does not take the crusade goal quickly and not being able to fight other catholic armies while on crusade regardless of the diplomatic situation. Pissing off the pope too much by declaring war on catholics and not giving a shit about his complaints or having a lot of heretics around means that you get excommunicated which gives you a big public order penalty and makes you a potential crusading target.
- Autoresolve isn't broken because there aren't any chariot factions
- Reputation/notoriety system means that there is at least some penalty to going to war with allies, since nobody will trust you then since they know you are a scumbag and the stigma remains for quite some time.
- Heretics, witches, inquisitors, Jihads and the aforementioned Papal states mean that religion is a lot more important than in BI.
- Guilds/Crusader orders.
- Mongols, Timurids, Black Death, invention of cannons and gunpowder and the opportunity to go into the New World (even tough it is somewhat disappointing when you actually get there) make the lategame actually interesting, compared to Rome 1s fight of your blob empire vs (other) Roman/Briton/Egyptian blob empires.
 

Jugashvili

管官的官
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Medieval 2 Total War.

M2TW was bad, but ETW was objectively more of a shitshow on release and even after patches it remains one of the weakest TW titles. Shogun II was also a bugfest but it manages to be entertaining. In my view ETW and R2TW are tied for some of the most disastrous releases by CA.
 

Baron Dupek

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Hired Guns - Jagged Edge - boring JA inspired game with grenade spamming problems. I read that devs show the game on some game conference (PAX? Expo? or whatever) had huge problem with the show when they were constantly showered with enemy grenades with pinpoint accuracy.

Brigade E5 - New Jagged Union. Some potential that was better used in E6 (7,62 High Calibe/ Hard Life) and E8 (Marauder - Man of Prey). It was like Gothic3 of tactical genre.

Extermination (by Techland) - boring uninspiring human vs. aliens game, with game breaking bug hiding somewhere stopping your progress when you least expect it.

Myth III - Wolf Age - jumping into new engine + cut in development time? We saw it already in few cases, never ended well. Not balanced on higher difficulties (proper way to play is starting with highest difficulty or go home... you know, the real one, not infested with undead horde).
 

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