What beginner friendly RTS game can you recommend?
As a quick background, RTS is completely new to me. I spend majority of my time in FPS type games but want to branch out a bit and try out something different/new (to me).
Requirements:
- Somewhat casual (if that’s possible)
- Somewhat easy to learn
- Relatively modern with decent graphics (something that looks nice)
- Runs on Linux (of course) and Steam
StarCraft II. It’s on Battle.Net though so you’ll have to download it through Lutris.
The first campaign is free and there’s a coop mode for casual players. Entirely free except for cosmetics, some coop commanders, and the other campaign episodes. It’s easy to pick up IMO but VERY HARD to master. Graphics still hold up better than a lot of games despite being 13 years old. Despite its age, I believe it’s the peak of the RTS genre. There’s are a lot of community-made mods/maps that you can play for free. You can even play a remake of the WarCraft III campaign there.
Other RTS games that I like:
Not really an RTS game but I’ve been putting so many hours into RimWorld (Steam, native) this year. At its core, it’s a colony-building game but it does have some RTS elements to it (economy, combat, and unit management). Lots of mods available.
Upvote for SC2. People always talk about it being difficult, but that’s only the competitive ladder. There’s so much single player campaign, challenges, co op, and arcade custom map modes that you can play for ages and never even feel the need to touch competitive play.
The campaigns and co-op have four difficulty settings and Casual is perfect if you don’t know what you’re doing. SC2 is only hard if you make it hard!
+1 for Northgard. Dune from the same studio (shiro games) is really nice, but quite hard to master.