What Makes a Great Strategy Game
A great strategy game hands the player a system to master rather than an enemy to out-shoot: it rewards forethought, resource management and reading an opponent over quick reactions. The best ones give every decision a lasting cost, so a single misjudged turn, build order or expansion ripples through the rest of the game. This list is hand-curated for the PlayStation strategy games that deliver that depth and spans the sub-genres strategy fans gravitate toward: 4X empire-building like Civilization VI and Stellaris, turn-based tactics like XCOM 2 and Mutant Year Zero, real-time tactics like Desperados III, grand strategy like Crusader Kings III, roguelike deckbuilders like Slay the Spire, Balatro and Inscryption, and colony and city builders like Frostpunk, Tropico 6 and Surviving Mars. Shooters, MOBAs and RPGs that merely carry a secondary Strategy tag are deliberately left off, because they belong to different genres.
Curated by Ugur Saritepe. Rankings weigh aggregated player ratings and review sentiment collected from Steam and the PlayStation Store, with catalogue data from IGDB. How we rankPlayStation StoreSteamIGDB

















