GOG Patron
Unlike a lot of RTS games this one impresses me with how quickly the game transitions from base building to battle, and how customizable your approach to battle can be! There's only two resources generally (rice and water) and units spawn and train quickly but the key strategy at work is all the work that goes into crafting the right balance of melee and ranged fighters, heroes and ordinary units. Eventually you can train horses adding a whole new level with mounted archers and spearmen who can be unseated but don't die immediately along with their mounts (even Warcraft 3 couldn't manage that). I love the aesthetic: a sort of fantasy feudal Japanese flavor to things which isn't insulting or without purpose in terms of the story, mythology and characters. It's seldom to see something with this kind of aesthetic: a war game set in almost soothingly natural environments of rolling hills, rice fields, stepping stones over water falls and forests with birds that take to flight on the approach of your armies. Lots of great single player campaigns. The voice acting is a bit hammy sometimes but it's all over the place and there's a lot of dialogue so you seldom get tired of listening to your units and heroes. I highly recommend this to people who prefer faster, streamlined, and personal combat. If you like the history of feudal Japan you might also enjoy some of the analogues in the main campaign.
The star off is for a somewhat clunky melee system, but in all other cases an excellent action roleplaying game! This game has startlingly gorgeous graphics (especially running silky smooth on a current generation rig) with real attention paid to a variety of creative textures, lighting effects, and diverse and very entertaining environments. There are plenty of characters to choose from, weapons to upgrade, secrets to find in each of the two campaigns that keeps even replaying levels to look for gold and items from getting stale. There are also some rudimentary but still integral puzzles and some of the more powerful weapons and your companions roster can only be bolstered by looking around the corner or taking the door you're not directed to enter. If you're a fan of fighting in wondrous environments, steampunk and fantasy mixes (all too rare), and can put up with old school difficulty this a classic worth revisiting which in many ways shows up a lot of the current generation 'fantasy' games that don't give you this many options, pays this much attention to the little things and presents a lived-in, gothic feel that makes you feel like you're playing an adventure game of exploration when you aren't sniping goblins or slicing orcs.