19 Best PS3 Strategy Games

Worms 2: Armageddon is a follow-up to the 2007 Worms game, which in turn was a port of 2006's Worms: Open Warfare. The idea is the same as always. Two teams of worms take turns firing at each other across a landscape that breaks apart under the explosions. A training mode has tutorials on aiming weapons and moving your worm around, plus firing ranges where all weapons are available for practice.

Local multiplayer has six game styles, from Beginner and Pro up to Rope Racing and Crazy Crates, and private matches support four players. Six downloadable packs added more, among them a Retro Pack and a Puzzle Pack. It is the Worms to put on when friends come over and nobody can agree on anything else.

Record of Agarest War is a strategy RPG with a very strange family tree. The story moves across points on a map, and at each one you fight creatures, take a quest, visit a town or sit through a conversation. Its hook is the Soul Breed system. The story runs for five generations, and in each of the first four the hero marries one of three female companions. Their son becomes the next hero and inherits stats and abilities from his parents.

Aksys Games released it in North America on April 29, 2010, as a download on the PlayStation Network, and it kept the original Japanese dialogue. It is long, and it is odd. Players who liked it tend to recommend the whole series, prequel and sequel included.

On consoles, EndWar is a real-time tactics game designed by Ubisoft Shanghai, and its big idea is the voice interface. A speech recognition engine takes your orders through any headset that works with the console. Officials at Ubisoft Shanghai said you could play using only voice commands, and a CNET writer watched a demonstration run for twenty minutes without any perceptible faults.

The setting is a near future where crude oil costs US$800 a barrel and the European Union has merged into a single superstate. The game received mixed to positive reviews. Shouting orders at a television still feels like living in the future, even if the future mostly sounds like a man losing his voice in his living room.

Team17 released this Worms for the PlayStation 3, and it is largely a port of 2006's Worms: Open Warfare. You control a small platoon of worms across a deformable landscape, battling teams run by the computer or by other players. It works offline or online through the PlayStation Network, and full voice communication is there for the trash talk.

It is turn-based, which makes it one of the easiest games on this list to share. Pass the controller around and it becomes a party game. Players rank it above its own sequel, which says a lot about how fondly the first PS3 Worms is remembered.

Red Alert 3 came out for Windows in October 2008. The PlayStation 3 version, Red Alert 3: Ultimate Edition, followed on March 23, 2009 with additional material. The story is pure Red Alert. An unintended consequence creates a third world power, the Empire of the Rising Sun, and all three sides go to war.

The Soviets have the Vacuum Imploder, a warhead that sucks humans, vehicles and damaged buildings into a dense hole before it explodes. Executive producer Chris Corry said the team wanted to play up the silliness in each faction whenever possible, and it shows. Reviewers liked the co-op and the bigger role of naval combat compared to other real-time strategy games.

R.U.S.E. is a real-time strategy game developed by Eugen Systems and published by Ubisoft, released for the PlayStation 3 in September 2010. The name is the point. You win with ruses, tricks that fool or bluff an opponent. Some reveal information, some hide it, some create fake structures and units to trick the enemy, and some change how your own units behave.

The campaign follows Joseph Sheridan, a Harvard dropout who joins the U.S. Army and ends up in control of the First Armored Division. Its IRISZOOM engine lets you zoom from an aerial view down to detailed maps without a break. It is the rare console strategy game built around reading the other player's mind.

Civilization Revolution is a spin-off of the Civilization series, and Firaxis made it for consoles first. Programmer Scott Lewis said it was originally an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 project and was in development for over a year before the Wii and DS were added. It is a turn-based strategy game, and each turn covers several years, from 100 years at the start down to two by the end.

You can win through science by researching everything needed to build and launch a space ship and being the first to reach Alpha Centauri. Each week a new Firaxis scenario became available to download. It is the quickest way to get that one-more-turn feeling on a PS3.

Rainbow Moon is a tactical role-playing game released through the PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3, and later for the Vita and PS4. It started as a digital-only game. A limited physical run of the PS4 and Vita versions only came on August 19, 2016, through Limited Run Games, and a successor called Rainbow Skies arrived in June 2018.

Reviewers liked the length of the main storyline and the graphics. Their complaint was content that forced them to grind. Players who recommend it point to how long it lasts, and that is fair warning in both directions. This is a game for someone who wants one cheap download to fill a whole winter.

Dungeon Defenders grew out of Dungeon Defense, a showcase for Unreal Engine 3. You play the young apprentices of wizards and warriors, defending crystals against hordes of monsters. Your heroes can build and upgrade towers and other defenses, or wade in and fight with melee and ranged attacks.

It came out on the PlayStation Network in late 2011, with support for the Move. It sold over 600,000 copies by the end of 2011, and by February 2012 its publisher reported over one million sales across Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam. With friends it turns into the best kind of chaos, with everyone arguing over where the next tower should go.

Disgaea D2 is a direct sequel to Disgaea: Hour of Darkness on the PlayStation 2, with that game's main characters back in the spotlight. Laharl has been crowned Overlord of his Netherworld and has taken his father's place on the throne. It came out in Japan on March 20, 2013, and the battles play the same as in the other core Disgaea games.

Etna changes colors and becomes 2P Etna, while Flonne develops a habit of oversleeping, which gives you a fair idea of the tone. Players tend to name it in the same breath as Disgaea 3, and they point out that it never left the PS3.

Enemy Within is the expansion to Enemy Unknown, and on the PS3 it came as part of the Commander Edition bundle with the base game in November 2013. Operation Progeny, first planned as separate DLC, is included. The 47 new maps took the single-player total to well over 120, and multiplayer went from five maps to 13.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences gave it Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year. One new alien type cloaks and avoids a straight fight with your squad until your soldiers engage another group. Soldiers can now speak one of several languages, which matters more than you would think when the one you named after your best friend is about to die.

Enemy Unknown is Firaxis going back to the 1994 game. It was first planned as an exact remake, but the developers improved the mechanics and modernized the series over four and a half years of development, with Jake Solomon leading and Sid Meier helping. You are the commander of an elite military organization, sending squads of up to six soldiers into turn-based missions against invading aliens.

Between missions you research recovered alien technology and expand the base. It came out for the PS3 in October 2012. Critics praised the turn-based combat and the difficulty, and it has since been called one of the greatest games of all time. Taking cover behind objects is essential for a soldier's survival, and you will learn that the hard way.

Disgaea 3 is the third game in the series and the first one on the PlayStation 3. It is a tactical RPG, and most of the game is battles on isometric maps where you control a group of characters. You can throw your own units around the map, and a character thrown to a monster-type ally bounces an extra distance.

The story follows Mao, who wants revenge and ends up going after Aurum instead. A Vita version came out in 2012 outside Japan with all of the PS3 downloadable content included at launch. If you have never played a Disgaea, this is a good place to find out whether the series is for you.

PixelJunk Monsters is the second game in the PixelJunk series. It came out in Japan on December 6, 2007, and Sony released it worldwide on the PlayStation Store on January 24, 2008. It plays like a tower defense game. You build towers along the enemies' path to keep them away from your hut, and each enemy that reaches it kills one of your offspring.

Unlike more traditional tower defense games, you walk a character around the screen, collecting coins and building the towers yourself. The Encore expansion added 15 levels, some laid out like Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Its soundtrack was the first audio album released through PSN. Players name it among the best downloads on the PS3.

Disgaea 4 came out in Japan in February 2011 and in the U.S. that September. Combat is turn-based strategy. Nippon Ichi felt it had used up what a school setting could offer, so this time the story is political. A human named Judge Nemo runs both Earth and the Netherworld from behind the scenes and plots the destruction of both.

GameZone gave it 9/10 and said it cements Nippon Ichi's legacy as the kings of the strategy RPG genre. It has voices in Japanese and English. Players rank it above both other PS3 Disgaeas, and one summed it up as "Best 400 hours of my life."

Plants vs. Zombies is a 2009 tower defense game from PopCap Games. George Fan first saw it as a more defense-oriented sequel to his fish game Insaniquarium, then turned it into plants fighting zombies. Development took three and a half years. It came out first on Windows and macOS and was later ported to consoles, the PS3 among them.

On the roof, every plant has to go in a Flower Pot. In the I, Zombie puzzles you switch sides and place zombies to reach the brain at the end of each lane. It was nominated for Strategy Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards 2010. Laura Shigihara composed the music, and good luck getting it out of your head.

Brütal Legend is Tim Schafer's heavy metal game from Double Fine. Jack Black voices Eddie Riggs, a roadie transported to a fantasy world inspired by the artwork of heavy metal album covers. Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford all lend their voices, alongside more than one hundred metal songs that Schafer selected.

It earns its spot here because several main story missions are Stage Battles based on real-time strategy. Each unit has a special co-op move with Eddie, and he can toss his first ally, Ophelia, at foes like the Fastball Special. When Schafer pitched it, he was told to change the style to hip hop or country, which would have been a very different album cover. Reviewers praised the writing and the voice cast, especially Black and Osbourne.

Fat Princess is a multiplayer game for up to 32 players, and it is a twist on capture the flag. The goal is to rescue your princess and bring her back to your team's base. The catch is that the other team has been feeding her magical cake, which makes her harder to escort back to your castle. It came out on July 30, 2009.

You switch class by picking up hats from the hat machines at your castle, and every class except the Giant can sit down to eat cake and heal. A free patch later added same-screen co-op. Players often recommend it next to LittleBigPlanet.

Valkyria Chronicles is a tactical role-playing game set in Europa, a fictional region loosely based on Europe during the early years of World War II. Sega's CANVAS engine makes it look like pencil drawings in motion. Its turn-based BLiTZ system has real-time controls inside it: pick a soldier and you run them across the battlefield yourself. The action point system was built to copy a soldier's fear of taking a step in case hidden enemies are waiting.

You lead Welkin, his adopted sister Isara and the Edelweiss tank in the Gallian militia. Foot soldiers handle anti-tank units, anti-tank units destroy tanks, and tanks are devastating against infantry. It earned numerous awards and has been cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Players recommend it far more than any other strategy game on the PS3.