Halo Wars 2

A fantastic, worthy sequel and welcome addition to the franchise, with incredibly fun, well-polished, and surprisingly accessible real-time strategy gameplay that proves an RTS can work brilliantly on consoles. The campaign is an enjoyable ride bolstered by charismatic characters, gorgeous visuals, a strong soundtrack, and a deep codex system, though it ends on an unsatisfying cliffhanger that feels built to sell DLC. The biggest blemish is the blatantly pay-to-win Blitz mode, alongside a lack of leaderboards, rankings, and map variety.

A solid, surprisingly deep but heavily dumbed-down console RTS with plenty of content across campaign, Skirmish, Blitz and multiplayer. It is undercut by forced base placement, controller-first design with poor keyboard controls, and a campaign ruined by intrusive cutscenes, boss fights and relentless hand-holding. Fun for Xbox players, but not worth the price on PC where it can't compete with StarCraft 2 or Command & Conquer.

A solid, fun little RTS with a surprisingly beefy single-player campaign and excellent cinematic cutscenes that tell one of the better recent Halo stories. The faster pace and unit groupings improve on the original, and it feels distinctly like Halo. Its main drawback is simplicity, lacking the depth PC RTS veterans want, plus occasional frame dips and a divisive card-based Blitz mode with microtransactions; best suited to console and Halo fans.