The ULTIMATE List Of The Best Medieval Games Of All Time

Ancestors Legacy

Release Date: Ancestors Legacy came out during the first half of 2018, with the only major DLC called “Saladin’s Conquest” arriving in 2019.

Genre: A Real-Time-Strategy with squad-based gameplay.

Best for: Players that love squad-based combat similar to Company of Heroes. Those interested in the events of the Early Middle Ages and Vikings, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Slav cultures. Not suited for players looking for a management and laid back experience.

Excels at: Early Middle Ages.

Feature List: 4 Playable Nations. 3 Singleplayer campaigns with several missions each. Cinematic Camera. With the Saladin DLC, another Campaign is added with 6 missions and a new nation.

A delightful real-time tactics game based in the Dark Ages of medieval European History mixed with a mechanical pinch of Company of Heroes and powered up in great graphical detail by the Unreal Engine 4 technology. A bit iterative here, a bit derivative there, Ancestors manage to successfully adapt the CoH formula into something really unique with its visceral and cinematic combat, with a somewhat deep tactical squad-based combat that takes a sub-genre that’s been somewhat stagnant.

Terrain plays a huge role in this game, with tall grass and fields allowing you to completely hole up entire clusters of units there and use the element of surprise to flank and encircle enemy formations. Chokepoints with defensive stance shielded units allowing you to stop entire armies and turn them into mush. Terrain elevation will give you and your archers an edge in fighting the enemy. When units have evenly matched the outcome of a skirmish will mainly be determined not only by how good or well equipped the units are but how crafty you are at choosing where to fisticuff with your foes. The maps are really interestingly built with chokepoints, roads, tall grass, rivers, forests, housing, and plenty of opportunities for emerging gameplay. 

Combat is brutal in this game. It’s cinematic, atmospheric, and bloody as all hell. But more than that, it’s been really interesting fiddling around with it. Usually, melee-based strategy games turn into one of two things: High speed continuously charges with cavalry (yes, I’m looking at you total war!) or stacks of doom that engulf enemy formations and club them to death with the sheer force of numbers. The limited number of units in Ancestors means that will hardly happen and that with matched forces you can’t disconnect terrain from combat and I truly fancy that concept. It’s not all about how many units your barracks can output per minute, how many arrows you can chug downrange, or how many swords and pikes you bring to the battlefield, but on considering which units to bring, envisaging where do you position them before the fight, and on how well equipped your armies are. Units will also counter each other, with some being stronger against one and weak against the other, your typical rock paper scissors kind of system.

Next: Honorable Mentions

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14 responses to “The ULTIMATE List Of The Best Medieval Games Of All Time”

  1. […] week I released an Ultimate List of The Best Medieval Games of All Time, and by the looks of it, it might have a new entry soon! Meet Field of Glory: Kingdoms, from the […]

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  2. Awesome list, I’m caching up with the blog, I’m playing other stuff from modern warfare, but it made me revisit some of the classics that mention here.

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  9. […] strategy game players have been looking towards Manor Lords in the hopes of finally finding a great medieval strategy title. I’m glad to say that it really hits the mark in every […]

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  10. […] strategy game players have been looking towards Manor Lords in the hopes of finally finding a great medieval strategy title. I’m glad to say that it really hits the mark in every […]

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