Strategy RPGs to look forward to in 2023
2022 was a strong year for SRPGs on PC, and 2023 looks even better.
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If you’re into managing a squad of individuals with varied abilities through both tactical battles and some kind of strategy layer where they improve and maybe all become friends, then you sure were well served in 2022. Games like Midnight Suns, Triangle Strategy, Expeditions: Rome, Hard West 2, Tactics Ogre Reborn, and plenty of others kept our plates real full.
Last year, we wrote about 12 strategy RPGs on PC and called it alot, but that’s nothing compared to this year. There are at least 18 scheduled to come out in 2023, and seven more that are likely to either enter early access or leave it, or both.
About the only way things could look better is if someone would finally confirm that Final Fantasy Tactics remaster we’ve been waiting for. Fingers crossed.
Demonschool
Release date:2023
Demons from a 3D world are invading the 2D human world and only a colorful band of university students can stop them. Demonschool has a Persona-style time management side to it, taking place over the course of a semester in which you have to keep up your studies, maintain a social life, bond with your friends, and find sidequests that will net you new teammates.
Demonschool looks gorgeous, from its comic-book hero designs to the funhouse creepshow boss monsters who seem to invade from beyond the space each level takes place in. On the tactics side there’s a planning phase during which you can plot out potential actions, see their effects, then rewind to try something different. Exploiting elemental weaknesses, performing combos, using pushbacks to maneuver demons around the battlefield, and buffing allies as they attack can all net different advantages.
Capes
Release date:2023
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While Midnight Suns gave us one excellent superhero squad tactics game, that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like another. Capes might just deliver. It’s got an excellent pedigree, coming from a team that includes developers who worked on theHand of Fateand Freedom Force games, and it’s got a neat setup reminiscent of XCOM 2 or Days of Future Past, with the villains having already won and heroes cast as desperate rebels.
Those heroes are all-new characters, so if you were turned off Midnight Suns by the Marvel characters you might be more interested in these heroes and their combinable powers called “team-ups”. Keep them close together and the one who summons crystal armor can create a big crystal spike for the knife-wielding teleporter to stab into some goon, while the one with wind powers adds a knockback effect to the telekinetic’s punch.
Mahokenshi
Release date:January 24, 2023
Mahokenshi is about samurai wizards, equally adept with sword and spells, who are set loose on the hexgrid paths of the Celestial Islands to right wrongs and fight monsters from Japanese mythology. Those floating islands are kind of like a colorful version of Slay the Spire’s dungeon spire in that as you choose how to cross them your decisions let you add, remove, and upgrade cards from a deck representing your attacks, moves, and spells. Deckbuilding worked for Midnight Suns, right? You won’t have to wait long to check out Mahokenshi, which is due to release on January 24.
Metal Slug Tactics
Release date:2023
Following a brief reveal and gameplay trailer, we’re not heard much about Metal Slug Tactics apart from the fact it was delayed from 2022 into 2023. What we have seen suggests this adaptation of the 2D sidescroller will have some interestingly 3D levels, with destructible scenery and characters who can jump between elevations platformer-style. The way new areas plummet from the sky seems like another nice touch.
R-Type Tactics I • II Cosmos
Release date:2023
If you thought Metal Slug and Gears of War were odd choices for turn-based spin-offs, let me introduce you to R-Type Tactics and its wonderfully named sequel R-Type Tactics 2: Operation Bitter Chocolate. Released for the PlayStation Portable, the second only in Japan, these two games take the sidescrolling shoot-‘em-up R-Type and slow it right down. Every level is presented as a side-on hexgrid your units traverse from one side to the other, unable to change facing in classic shmup fashion. This remake package bundles both together, recreated in Unreal Engine 5.
Miasma Chronicles
Release date:2023
The developers ofMutant Year Zero: Road to Edenfollowed that game of stealthy squad tactics in post-apocalyptic Sweden withCorruption 2029, a game of stealthy squad tactics set in post-apocalyptic America that lacked some of the personality of the previous game (notably, it didn’t have talking ducks and pigs). Miasma Chronicles is another game of exploration and setting up turn-based battles from ambush, once again in post-apocalyptic America, but this time it seems to have a little more pizazz. For starters, your main companion is a talking robot with a ricochet shot, you’ve got a glove that lets you control something called “the Miasma”, and the enemies include frog monsters. Do they talk? Let’s hope so.
For the King 2
Release date:2023
Players of 2018’sFor the Kingsaid it was best in co-operative mode, where its roguelike harshness could be offset by going in with friends. The co-op mode was only playable in a group of three, however, something that For the King 2 intends to change, bumping the feisty fairytale comedy up to a four-player game. The cartoon art style remains, but the combat’s getting some tweaks, like the addition of a second row to each half of the battle grid. Finally ranged characters will be able to cower behind the ones with shields, as is only right.
Shardpunk: Verminfall
Release date:Q1 2023
Ratpeople have taken over the city and you’re among the only survivors, forced to scavenge and hide as if you’re the vermin. What you’re scavenging is tech and the material you need to craft and upgrade it, only it’s steampunk tech that can overheat and misfire if not repaired or allowed to cool down between uses.
Each run across the city is randomized, and fights against the rat swarm involve some extremely XCOM-esque use of cover, flanking, overwatch, and enemies who activate in pods. There’s no ant-farm base for you to return to between missions, though. Instead, you scurry from bunker to bunker, pausing to feed and care for your pack, emerging to scrounge, then running for the next bolthole. I wonder what the equivalent of cats are in this metaphor?
Redemption Reapers
Release date:February, 2023
Redemption Reapers looks like an anime version of Game of Thrones, or maybe Glen Cook’s Black Company books. It casts a band of regretful mercenaries responsible for unspecified war crimes as humanity’s only hope against unstoppable enemies called “the Mort”, and if the whole thing doesn’t end in a last stand and valiant sacrifice I’ll eat one of those black fur cloaks that heroes in dark fantasy tales are required to wear.
The five mercenaries of the Ashen Hawk Brigade have team attacks and weapon synergies on their side, but arrayed against them is an army of sharp-toothed patchwork gimps and what sounds like some serious PTSD. I guess fighting an army of darkness is cheaper than going to therapy?
Nemire
Release date:Q1, 2023
When you’re offered a set of fantasy factions to choose from, the undead are always the best choice and I will not change my mind on this. Being able to replenish your forces with fallen foes is a lot easier than having to slog back to base to reinforce, and it’s more environmentally friendly too. Necromancy is just another word for recycling. Nemire understands this and so casts you as a necromancer leading a warband of kooky undead with randomized traits as you turn humankind into something more sustainable: mulch and skeletons.
Dungeons 4
Release date:2023
The homage to Dungeon Keeper returns for a fourth outing, perhaps with slightly more up-to-date references. (Although the trailer doing “Lion King but make it Warcraft” seems a bit behind the times.) As a dark elf sorceress who has a bigger budget for goblin servants than she does for pants, you’ll build and manage a dungeon over the course of a 20-mission campaign in either singleplayer or two-player co-op. Recruit creatures, build traps, and keep the usual dwarves, elves, and humans from taking your stuff. Like the rest of your pants.
Banchou Tactics
Release date:2023
If you’ve had enough of fantasy and traditional sci-fi settings, here’s an upcoming SRPG set in a Japanese high school for gangsters. Apparently the demon king of Minato High graduated the previous year, and that’s thrown the precarious balance of power between three rival high schools out of whack. The result: outright warfare and a whole lot of roundhouse kicks. Banchou Tactics’ battle system includes mechanics for knockbacks and combos reminiscent of the 2D brawlers that inspired it.
Zoria: Age of Shattering
Release date:2023
If traditional fantasyisstill your thing, the world of Zoria offers exactly that. You’ll lead a team of four heroes across it RPG-style, while also constructing and upgrading an outpost, unlocking new wings and buildings that offer different rewards. From there, you can send out your followers on quests of their own, sharing in the XP and loot they earn. Assuming they come back alive, of course.
Untamed Tactics
Release date:Q2, 2023
This spin-off of tabletop card game Untamed: Feral Factions casts you as a dishonored rabbit soldier named Greycoat who leads a band that potentially includes a rhino druid, fox spy, and chameleon alchemist. As well as turn-based combat, Untamed Tactics features turn-based negotiation, with mid-battle conversations handled by playing cards like Piercing Remark, Heartbreaking Tale, Charming Joke, Seductive Remark, Frightening Threat, and Arduous Conversation. I think my deck in real life has a lot more copies of Arduous Conversation stacked in it than those other options.
Desktop Dungeons: Rewind
Release date:2023
The classic browser game returns in remastered form. It’s a cute cross between Minesweeper and roguelikes, and this version will have a rewind function like Into the Breach, something more turn-based games should copy. After battles you heal and recover mana by exploring, but risk uncovering new enemies. There’s a kingdom-building element too.
Arcadian Atlas
Release date:Summer, 2023
In 2016, Arcadian Atlas raised $95,204 onKickstarterwith its promise of a pixel-art SRPG with challenging battles that include “terrain that affects your movement, cover that can hinder the best laid plans, and skills that are never wasted.” An homage to Final Fantasy Tactics, each of its base classes can specialize into an advanced class. Warmancers can become trap-laying druids or chaotic frontline sorcerers, while apothecaries can become punch monks or shamans who control the power of life and death to the point of being able to sacrifice allies to hurt foes. It also promises a soundtrack of “eclectic jazz”. Nice.
Railroads & Catacombs
Release date:Q1 2023
Darkest Dungeon on a train. When you get off the train to explore the grim wasteland you’re crossing, it becomes a card-battler. The supplies you scavenge in the wasteland’s ruins and forests let you improve those cards, which is why Railroads & Catacombs emphasizes that it’s not another deckbuilder. It’s a card-builder instead.
Cyber Knights: Flashpoint
Release date:Q1 2023
Run a cyberpunk heist gang of hackers and street samurai as they take on the corps, upgrading your safehouse and exploring the personal stories of your squad. It sounds a bit like Shadowrun and a bit like Invisible Inc. and those are both fine things to resemble. Also, you can have a cybernetic dog.
Early access SRPGs
Upcoming SRPGs that might be out in 2023
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Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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