Highlights
- RTS stealth games emphasize patience, cunning, and strategic planning over brute force, making them a demanding and rewarding style of gameplay.
- These games offer ample replay value due to their diverse selection of player characters and skills, allowing for multiple paths to success.
- The best RTS stealth games provide a thrilling combination of decision-making, suspense, and extensive strategy, making them a captivating and unpredictable gaming experience.
The thrills of RTS stealth gaming come thanks to the popular subgenre’s effective fusion of real-time strategy and tactical depth with the cautious, suspenseful style of stealth mechanics. In the process, a new and demanding style of gameplay has bubbled to the surface.
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Instead of prioritizing strength in numbers or just outright brute force, RTS stealth games emphasize the importance of patience, cunning, and strategic planning to get ahead. To succeed, players must normally exploit their interactive environment and carefully manage their player characters and their respective abilities. The typically diverse selection of player characters and skills ensures there are plenty of potential paths to success, ensuring such games have ample replay value. With a bold sense of unpredictability at their core, the best RTS stealth games provide a thrilling cocktail of decision-making, suspense, and extensive strategy.
5 Desperados 3 Is A Colorful Look At Outlaw Life
The 2020 sequel of the acclaimed Desperados series continued the trend of infusing RTS stealth with a Wild West flavor. Placing a heavy emphasis on strategic patience and precision, the game boasts considerable tactical depth.
As is so often the case with RTS games, each playable character here sports their own unique skills which, when tactically combined, can lead to remarkably sophisticated stealth missions. For players, the trial-and-error structure of much of the game's action provides the chance to experiment with all manner of setups to complete objectives. On top of the impressive gameplay, Desperados 3 is bolstered by impressively rendered environments and a compelling narrative. Between its intricate, strategic focus and its surprising level of thematic depth, this game has more than lived up to its predecessors.
4 Robin Hood: The Legend Of Sherwood Is A Colorful, Medieval RTS Adventure
This 2002 release does a fine job of blending RTS stealth thrills with an intriguing narrative focusing on the legendary English folklore hero. Like so many great stealth games, The Legend of Sherwood showcases an exciting blend of action and strategy to keep gamers on their toes.
To top it off, Robin Hood and his merry men make for a diverse set of playable characters. Each of them is equipped with their specific abilities, providing players with a versatile array of tactics to complete missions with. The game not only rewards combat but non-lethal options as well, ensuring that players have to think about more ethical, strategic choices along the way without having to worry about lesser accomplishments. The intricate, hand-drawn graphics lend greatly to the creation of an impressive medieval landscape. Between its memorable take on the legend of Robin Hood and its effective RTS mechanics, this game is a timeless, underrated gem.
3 Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun Is A Thrilling Difficult RTS Game
Taking players into the Edo period of Japanese history, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun impressively uses immersive environments to set up its emphasis on precarious stealth tactics. As is customary with RTS games, players here are provided with a selection of characters who provide different abilities to help get the job done.
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Sporting a notable emphasis on creative exploration, Blades of the Shogun garnered praise for fostering a variety of strategies for action and cooperative gameplay. With an impressively adaptive AI, multi-level landscapes, and even the time of day impacting the gameplay, this Shadow Tactics entry set itself apart as one of the most challenging RTS stealth games ever released. Emphasizing a need for tactical finesse, this 2016 release has proven to be an instant classic thanks to its commendable artistic design, strategic elements, and consistently engaging narrative.
2 Desperados: Wanted Dead Or Alive Provides Old West Thrills
This 2001 release did a commendable job of blending a Wild West setting with the RTS stealth style. The unique combination works like a charm, providing players with a challenging array of intricate-level designs.
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Better still, Desperados: Wanted Dead Or Alive sports a colorful cast of memorable characters, all of whom provide the player with different special abilities. The selection of skills allows gamers to enjoy a litany of options when it comes to tackling missions, ranging from stealth all the way over to full-on, all-action confrontations. A neat enemy AI and a remarkably interactive environment by the standards of the time add further to Desperados' overall depth. The narrative does justice to its Western set-up, providing good fun for fans of the genre and providing some surprises along the way. Overall, between its slick stealth mechanics and entertaining take on the Old West, Desperados is a classic of the RTS scene.
1 Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines Is An Intense Piece Of WWII Gaming
Widely regarded as a pioneer in the RTS stealth subgenre, Behind Enemy Lines threw players into an intense WWII setting where strategy is paramount. First released in 1998, the game boasted a unique gameplay style, calculated tactics, meticulous planning, and an emphasis on patience.
Gamers play as a team of six Allied Commandos, each of whom provides an important ability necessary for both effective teamwork and overall mission success. The game garnered acclaim for its challenging AI, complex level design, and richly detailed environments. Over 25 years later, Behind Enemy Lines sports a timeless appeal thanks to its suspenseful, strategy-focused gameplay. Its influence on the RTS stealth scene can still be felt to this day. While critics at the time believed it wasn't quite up to scratch with the original, time has shown this entry in the series to be a game-changing example of tactical gaming.