Ah, history. The passing of time. The things that once were. The constant reminder that we as a species are getting worse instead of better. What a delightful topic to discuss! Especially in the context of historical games.
Seriously though, there really are quite a few excellent history games out there. Some of them muddle their influences a bit, while others are more interested in aesthetic than historical accuracy, but they’re valuable period pieces all the same.
So! If you’re looking to satisfy your inner history buff while also mashing buttons really fast and shouting at your telly, you’re in luck. Here are the best history games to play right now, listed in alphabetical order so you don’t come at us with pitchforks for ranking them wrong.
Age of Empires II
A staple of both history games and the RTS genre, Ensemble Studios’ journey to the Middle Ages has been a universally beloved game for over two decades. While there are newer Age of Empires games on the market – Age of Empires IV came out just a few months ago – you’d be hard pressed to find anyone serious about their Age-of-Empiring who’d recommend them to you over the 2019 remaster of the series’ second instalment. Yes, it’s that good.
While the original game boasted 13 civilizations, the remastered edition has added another eight, making for a total of 21 – one for every century after the birth of Jesus Christ. What’s more, the most recent expansion dropped just a couple of months ago, meaning the studio in charge of the remastering process, Forgotten Empires, may decide to add even more down the line. Basically, if you like strategy games, the Middle Ages, and experiences that offer you more hours than you’ll ever be able to give them, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is more than worth a punt. Want more? Our article on the best RTS games will see you right.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
It’s easy to see Valhalla’s violence, mythology, and season passes as detriments to its historical veracity, but Ubisoft’s drengr RPG has quite a lot of truth to it. If anything, violence here has been tempered for contemporary audiences, while the game’s indulgence in mythology is perfectly conducive to how intertwined the Vikings’ own history was with their spiritual beliefs. We’re not sure about Ragnar Lodbrok spending his well-pillaged Helix Credits on a pair of shinguards, but hey – there’s no evidence to say he didn’t.
Like most other Assassin’s Creed games, Valhalla is laboriously researched and written with real reverence for the material its stories are sourced from. Combined with the Discovery Tour expansion, which ditches combat for more scholarly pursuits, this is a history game designed to appeal to both people who know their stuff about Thor and people who think Thor was invented by Stan Lee in 1962. He wasn’t, by the way. If pure fantasy is more your thing, we’ve got a list of the best RPGs.
Call of Duty: World at War
The Call of Duty series is known for basing its games on wars, most of which actually happened and some of which may or may not occur depending on the actions of today’s space-racing billionaires. Of the former, Call of Duty: World at War – the fifth entry in the series – is probably the best one, although we’d take Black Ops: Cold War as an alternative if you played your CoDs right.
World at War is split into two separate campaigns: American and Soviet. Of these, the latter is so far superior that we forgot the former even existed – it’s been 13 years, cut us some slack. The Soviet campaigns’s Sergeant Reznov has become one of the greats in Call of Duty history, and plays a huge role in the game’s depiction of the Battle for Berlin, which is by extension all but the Battle for Europe itself. If you want to play one Call of Duty game set in the past, make it this one. Or Black Ops: Cold War. We don’t really mind. If you’re looking for more like this, check out our list of the best WW2 games.
Civilization VI
This is a contentious one because Civ IV and Civ V enjoyers are probably foaming at the mouth about us going for VI. The thing is, Civilization is an outstanding series of strategy games that lots of people like for lots of different reasons. When we say Civ VI, we’re really just suggesting the most modern and approachable Civ game for people who may be experimenting with strategy for the first time. Not everybody has 2,000 hours in Stellaris.
If you’ve got a bit more of a baseline though, you’re best off having a read through brief summaries for each game in order to decide which one best suits your personal interests. Civilization is dense and comes with tons of expansions for each entry, meaning there’s a whole lot of history to trawl through here. Just remember: that bug that purportedly made Gandhi drop loads of nukes in Civilization II was just a myth.
Crusader Kings 3
Unlike Civilization, Crusader Kings has a clear winner when it comes to crowning the best game in the series. Crusader Kings 3 launched to widespread critical acclaim in Sep. 2020, a whopping eight years after the previous entry in the series, which in turn came out eight years after the first one. That being said, it’s safe to say that Crusader Kings 3 could be the de facto CK game until 2028, meaning you’ve got plenty of time to get good.
Contrary to a lot of other strategy games, Crusader Kings 3 is more interested in dynasty than dynamite, by which we mean you’re more likely to spend time making secret illegitimate babies with the Prince of France than you are lining up trebuchets and sacrificing innocent infantry for future gains. If you liked the more dramatic elements of HBO’s Game of Thrones, Crusader Kings 3 is basically that except you’re the one in charge. It’s great.
Dynasty Warriors
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Dynasty Warriors is an interesting series in that it’s been going since 1997, started out strong, dropped off somewhere in the middle, and has seen a relative resurgence in success with its two most recent entries. Because of that, it’s mostly ok for you to pick whichever game you most like the look of, although there are some pointers for this musou we ought to give you.
First of all, the first game in the series isn’t musou at all – it’s a fighting game. In fact, Koei Tecmo celebrated Dynasty Warriors’ 20th anniversary the day Dynasty Warriors 2 turned 20 because it doesn’t see the first title as canon. On the opposite end of things, the most recent Dynasty Warriors game, Dynasty Warriors 9, decided to change things up by steering the game closer to modern open-world territory. The one thing that keeps the series in line with itself is its constant emphasis on the Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. If we had to recommend a specific game, we’d say go with Dynasty Warriors 8 or Dynasty Warriors 9, largely because of how easy it is to access them on contemporary consoles compared to some of the older games. But as with any series with a million entries and counting, you can technically just go for whichever one you want – it will still be about the same historical period. Probably.
Europa Universalis IV
Like Age of Empires II, Europa Universalis IV is set during the Middle Ages, although it goes right up to the end of the early modern period at the beginning of the 19th century. It’s more interested in grand strategy than regular RTS games, which makes it similar to Crusader Kings 3 in that diplomacy is far more important than military might. Still, there are an enormous amount of moving parts you need to keep an eye on if you’re to be successful in your campaigns, and the historical basis for Europa Universalis IV is sufficiently dense for it to be the history game for aspiring historians. It’s almost as if world politics are complex!
While Europa Universalis IV originally came out in 2013, it’s still receiving expansions to this day, so getting into it now means you’ll likely have even more game to dive into down the line. The most recent expansion, Leviathan, was technically the worst-rated launch ever on Steam, but don’t let that deter you from one of the best grand strategy and history games available right now. It’s easy to have an off day when you’ve been on for eight years.
Ghost of Tsushima
Ghost of Tsushima is a strange title to include on a list of the best history games because a lot of its historical leanings are ill-advised or downright incorrect. Neither haiku nor katanas had been invented at the time the Mongols invaded Tsushima Island, and yet both play large roles in the game likely because of their status as recognizable Japanese iconography today. Also: sharp sword cool.
On the flip side, Tsushima is a period piece that is clearly interested in its source material, even if it does occasionally like to exercise its ability for fictionalization a little too liberally. It reviewed exceptionally well in Japan, which could never have been the case if it was completely devoid of historical merit, and outside of its basis on the past it’s a gorgeous, fluid, and tactile game teeming with color and style. The overcommitment to cinema can be a bit much at times, and wow are some of its insta-fail stealth sections infuriating, but all in all, Tsushima is one of the finest historical games you can play – especially on a snazzy new-gen console.
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
This is another interesting entry, but for very different reasons. After launching in early access last year, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord quickly established itself as Steam’s biggest launch of 2020. General consensus among both critics and players was that it was clearly an unfinished game that still somehow managed to be enjoyable to play. It’s the perfect early access story: sort of great now, definitely better later.
Now we’re approaching the intended release date for the full launch of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – which is currently attached to the rather nebulous window of ‘2022’ – it’s the perfect time for new players to jump into the action. If you want to play through barbarous continental skirmishes fought during the fall of the Roman Empire (fictionalized as the Calradic Empire here) it’s difficult to think of a recommendation for a game more apt than this one. Just be sure to post a compilation of your funniest bugs on YouTube.
Nioh
Nioh is an intriguing and possibly contentious entry on this list for various reasons. While it has fantastical elements and is not necessarily indicative of any true story from 17th century Japan, it’s based on a partly written Akira Kurosawa script and tells the tale of the only Western samurai in history, who is here depicted as an Irish sailor named William Adams, which is not a very Irish name.
It’s definitely a game that is interested in mythology and pseudo-history, but it’s also acutely aware of the Sengoku period it wants to portray and uses its deviations from history to construct a kind of weird, cohesive logic to its world. It might not be the best game in the world to play if you’re looking for a beat-by-beat gamification of a single historical event, but if you’re interested in historical periods and are after a brilliantly designed game that meaningfully explores one, you can do a lot worse than Nioh or Nioh 2.
Red Dead Redemption 2
This might not seem like the most obvious choice for a list of history games, but Red Dead Redemption 2 is set in the 19th century – if Call of Duty makes the cut, there’s no way Red Dead doesn’t.
As we discussed in our list of the best cowboy games, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a masterpiece that depicts a historically accurate Wild West in vivid detail. Whether you’re interested in hunting, fishing, and chilling by the campfire or are more into the idea of showdowns and standoffs, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best possible game you can play to explore the later years of a dwindling American frontier. That’s not to mention how incredible Roger Clark is as rad, sad cowboy Arthur Morgan. Buy it, boah.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Like Nioh, Sekiro is set in the Sengoku period of Japanese history, but also like Nioh, it introduces a variety of fantastical elements into that setting to make it its own distinct thing. In contrast to stunning architectural design and subtle worldbuilding via tasteful tidbits of lore, you’re also tasked with battering headless apes, taking on 20-foot tall monks, and duelling literal dragons. Scholars maintain it’s debatable whether or not those figures are actually from history.
It’s worth noting that Sekiro, like most FromSoftware games, is hard as nails and requires quite a bit of patience to get used to. Once you get the hang of things though, you’ll be grappling your way through its shrines and sanctuaries like a Wolf on the fold. Get it? The main character is called Wolf. We thought it was funny.
Total War
We’re not going to choose one specific Total War game here. This is because a) there are 14 mainline games, b) there are various spin-offs, and c) it’s better to just choose the game that’s set within your favorite historical period. There’s everything from Feudal Japan to Ancient Rome here.
That being said, we really like Total War: Warhammer II, which isn’t actually based on real history at all. Sometimes the best history is fantasy, eh?
Written by Cian Maher on behalf of GLHF.
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