20 Best PS2 Strategy Games

Future Tactics spent years in development under the name Pillage before Crave picked it up for a US release. It came out on PS2, Xbox, GameCube and Windows, and it is a turn based shooter with a strange rhythm. Instead of an entire team moving at a time, only one character may move before it becomes the other team's turn. You line up every shot yourself, so a fight feels closer to artillery than to a grid of numbers. Character progression comes from experience for killing enemies or finding hidden items in the environment.

Players who found it as kids still talk about it like a lost friend. It is the oddest game on this list, and the people who played it would not have it any other way.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII started on Windows and came to the PlayStation 2 the following year. North American players got it on PS2 in 2003, and a Japanese PSP version followed in 2007, nearly 6 years after the original Windows version. The PS2 version left out the Power Up Kit features, so console players got the base game. Famitsu still scored the PS2 version a 32 out of 40, which is a strong mark for a game this dense.

The few players who name it call it a current favorite. It is a slow, thinking game for people who like history, and it rewards patience more than quick hands. If you want a general's view of a whole war, this is the deepest game here.

Kessen III is based on the life of Oda Nobunaga, and unlike the previous two games, you cannot choose a side to play on. Its story covers roughly the years 1550 to 1590. Nobunaga is usually painted as a villain or a demon, but here he is shown in a more virtuous and ultimately tragic light. It takes liberties, too: Miyamoto Musashi shows up, though he had not yet been born when Nobunaga died.

You place your officers on the field and give orders, then take control of any army and fight. After 100 soldiers are defeated, the enemy unit's officer appears, and beating him can earn even more bonuses. Metacritic gave it 73 out of 100. It still has devoted fans who call it their favorite.

Off the Rails is the sequel to the 2006 game Thrillville. LucasArts published it, and it came out worldwide in October 2007. Frontier Developments came back to make it on every platform except the DS, where DC Studios made a completely different game. So the PS2 version is the real follow-up, built by the same studio that made the first one.

Critics cited some repetitiveness, which is fair warning. If the first Thrillville hooked you, this is a second helping of the same thing, with more parks to run. Play it after the original, since the two are so alike that starting here takes some of the shine off the first.

Age of Empires II came out on Windows in 1999 and on Macintosh in 2001, and it is the second game in the series. Ensemble Studios took a year longer than planned to finish it and had to release The Rise of Rome in 1998 instead. Three months after its release, two million copies had shipped, and it topped sales charts in seven countries. It is now considered a classic of its type.

The PS2 version is the odd one here, a mouse and keyboard game moved onto a controller. Players who owned it still put it on their lists of PS2 games worth finding. An HD Edition followed in 2013 and a Definitive Edition in November 2019, but the PS2 disc gave console players their own way in.

Full Spectrum Warrior began as a military training tool, and it plays like nothing else on this list. You never directly control any of your soldiers. Instead, you give orders with a cursor that projects onto the environment, telling a fireteam to hold a position and cover a zone with fire. Legal limits on using the PlayStation for a military purpose meant the training version was built on the Xbox, and the retail game came to the PS2 afterwards.

The PS2 version includes the epilogue missions by default, which Xbox owners had to download. A sequel, Ten Hammers, followed in 2006. Players still bring it up as something different, and it is a great pick for anyone who wants tactics without a grid.

GrimGrimoire was Vanillaware's attempt at their own StarCraft, started after the studio finished Odin Sphere. It ended up coming out first, which made it the studio's Japanese debut and drained its funds. George Kamitani based the setting on Atelier Marie and the Harry Potter series, and Hitoshi Sakimoto led the Basiscape team on the music. You play Lillet, a student who keeps reliving her first five days at a magic tower after it is attacked.

Critics praised its story and how well it brought real-time strategy to a console, but many faulted the audio and the controls. It was a commercial failure, and the sequels Kamitani planned never happened. A remaster, GrimGrimoire OnceMore, reached the rest of the world in 2023. Players who love Odin Sphere keep pointing people to it, and they are right to.

La Pucelle Tactics came out in Japan in January 2002, and Mastiff brought it to North America in May 2004. Prier and her brother Culotte are novices in a demon-hunting organization, and the fights take place on a tactical map. The twist is the dark portals. Each one sends a stream of dark energy across the board, and the stream turns in the direction a character faces, so you can loop it to purify several portals at once. Leave a portal uncovered for several rounds and it releases a new enemy.

The North American release removed nearly every cross from the game, even the ones on Prier's clothes. Players who found it love it and say its battles feel unlike anything else. The later PSP version even added playable characters from the Disgaea series.

Worms 3D is the sixth game in the Worms series and the first to be fully 3D. Team17 announced it in July 2002 as Worms 3, and it was renamed Worms 3D in April 2003. Four players take turns on landscapes you can blow apart, and the series' silly weapons came along, the Banana Bomb and the flying Super Sheep among them.

Not everyone liked the jump to 3D. One critic argued that Worms was built on two dimensions and that adding a third broke much of how it works. Players disagree, and some still call it their favorite PS2 game, mostly because of how funny it gets with friends. Grab a second controller.

Worms 4: Mayhem came out in 2005 on PS2, Xbox and Windows. It keeps the 3D battlefields and adds a shop full of new maps, accessories, outfits and voices for your team. In a series first, the story mode gives you cutscenes before each mission to explain what is going on. Critics were less kind than players. They said it was too close to the previous 3D Worms games, with difficult controls and illogical AI.

Players remember it another way, and it keeps coming up in lists of the PS2 games they grew up with. It is the more complete package of the two Worms games here, with more to unlock. Players rank it just above Worms 3D, though either will do for a night of exploding sheep.

Growlanser Generations is two games in one box. Working Designs put Growlanser II and III together for North America in a package with additional features. The series was developed by Career Soft and is owned by Atlus and Sega. Their soundtracks came out in Japan on King Records, and the series kept going long after the PS2.

Atlus USA later brought Growlanser V to North America as Growlanser: Heritage of War, so if this one hooks you, there is more. Fans of tactical RPGs keep recommending it. It is a lot of game for the price of one, and a good next step once you have finished the Disgaea games.

Kessen is famous for a first: it was the very first PS2 game to ship on DVD. Electronic Arts published it in North America, and it puts you in charge of huge armies in feudal Japan, in the war between the eastern Tokugawa clan and the western Toyotomi clan. Your troops include archers, infantry, riflemen and cavalry, and the battlefields are full 3D terrain. More than 100 movie segments tell the story, with a theatrical feel borrowed from samurai films.

It won a special prize at the PlayStation Awards in 2000 and was a runner-up for GameSpot's best console strategy game, losing to Ogre Battle 64. Two sequels followed. The whole series still has fans, and the first one is where its story starts.

Phantom Brave came out in North America on August 31, 2004, and it was the first game NIS America ever published. Nippon Ichi made it as a spiritual sequel to Disgaea. You play Marona, a 13-year-old girl who can see phantoms, and her guardian Ash is one of them. Her skill, Confine, binds a phantom's soul to an object on the map, like a rock or a tree, and the object changes how it fights. A soldier does well out of a rock, while a witch works better summoned out of a flower.

Phantoms only stay for a limited number of turns, so timing matters. Players who recommend Disgaea name Phantom Brave in the same breath. A sequel, Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero, finally arrived on January 30, 2025.

Operation Genesis is the Jurassic Park game where you run the park. Blue Tongue Entertainment, a studio in Australia, made it, Universal Interactive published it, and it came out in North America and the PAL region in March 2003. You hatch and manage dinosaurs, build attractions, entertain visitors and maintain park security while the park's rating and profits climb. Sick dinosaurs need vaccines you have to research first, including one for the made-up Dino Flu.

The PS2 version got better reviews than the Windows and Xbox versions. The team first planned 40 dinosaurs but cut it to 25, focusing on the ones people knew from the films. Players keep naming it among their PS2 favorites. One look at a loose T. rex explains why.

Disgaea is the first game in the series, and it set the template. Battles take place on a square grid, where your squad of humanoid units and monsters fights a group of enemies until one side is wiped out. Then the game opens up. The Item World lets you dive into your own items to find stronger gear, and you can only leave at every tenth level, where an Item Boss waits. Shop stock changes when you pass proposals through the Dark Assembly, which is exactly as silly as it sounds.

It is also funny. There is a joke ending you can get in the very first episode by losing to its final boss, and the North American release lets you pick English or Japanese voices. The sequel came in 2006, and a PSP version followed. Players still recommend the whole series.

Disgaea 2 builds directly on the first game. You still lead a party across a 3D isometric grid map, and the Item World is still there, now with two ways down: beat every enemy on a floor or find the exit portal located somewhere on it. The hero is Adell, the only human unaffected by a curse. Unlike Nippon Ichi's earlier games, it shipped on DVD-ROM with an animated opening movie.

It is the bigger, more confident game of the two, and players rank it one place above the first. A PSP version, Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days, later added extra playable characters, and a PC version arrived in 2017. Players put it next to the best PS2 RPGs, which is high praise for a strategy game.

Front Mission 4 tells two stories at once. Elsa is a new recruit in Durandal, a European unit looking into attacks on German bases, while Darril is a demoralized soldier in Venezuela who finds a plane carrying part of a governor's gold. You switch between them as the war goes on. Battles split into a Player phase and an Enemy phase, and each wanzer, the series' walking tanks, moves once and spends its Action Points on shots or abilities.

It was the top selling game of Christmas 2003 in Japan, with over 160,000 copies sold. Critics praised its production values and mech customization, but warned about its difficulty. Hidenori Iwasaki wrote the music, using South American instruments like the pan flute. Players keep it on their lists of PS2 must-plays.

Thrillville is a theme park game for the PS2, the PSP and, in North America, the Xbox. Frontier Developments made it, and the studio stayed with theme park games, releasing Planet Coaster in 2016. Critics gave it average reviews on every platform.

Players remember it much more warmly than that, mostly from their childhood. One fan put it best: "I wanna go in the park, ride the rides, play the games, talk with the guests!" That is the whole pitch. You build the park, then you get to walk around in it. It is a relaxed game, and it ranks this high on a strategy list because so many players loved it.

Ring of Red is set in an alternate history where Japan is split in two. In 1950 the communist-backed North invades the South, like the Korean War, and the war ends in a stalemate in 1953. Both sides fight with Armored Fighting Walkers, giant walking mechs, and a no fly zone over Japan pushed both sides to build more of them. It came out in Japan in 2000 and in North America and Europe in 2001.

Battles mix strategy with real-time action in detailed 3D. When two units clash, the infantry squads fight automatically, aiming at enemy soldiers or the enemy walker depending on their orders. Pilots also get Maximum Attacks, unique abilities they can use only a certain number of times in each mission. Players keep naming it as a PS2 game everyone should try.

Gladius was developed and published by LucasArts and came out on the PS2 and Xbox in October 2003, with the GameCube version in November. It is a turn-based gladiator RPG where you build a championship gladiator school, winning arena battles and recruiting new fighters as you go. You pick Valens or Ursula, and each has a separate storyline. In battle, every gladiator has its own attacks and ranges, and the direction an opponent is facing matters, as does high ground.

Critics praised the depth of the combat and, above all, the hit meter you work during attacks. They also found the story thin and the game too long. A friend can join in and control some of your gladiators. Players call it a deep tactics game and a gem nobody talks about, and they recommend it more than any other PS2 strategy game.