I remember quite a few good RTS that were good in quite a few ways, I rate them by difficulty and fun, and presentation.

Dungeon Keeper 1 - For anyone who's played this they understand, it was an RTS and a First Person shooter where you played the bad guy, defending your realm from those good people. The in between stories were funny too =D. The music was especially notable

Empire Earth 1 - Long LONG LONG campaign takes you true cave man times, where you had holy men who could summon tornadoes and the likes, to futurist mechs. I believe it had about 14-17 ages instead of AoE's 4

Star Trek Armada 1 and 2 - Yeah I like Star Trek, these games were very good RTS games though, and had a great campaign, I remember in the Final Stage of Star Trek Armada 2, you could play as Borg and combine 8 cubes together to make a super cube >.> Nothing like assimilating everything in your path.

Also to note for the Armada series, the voice actors lent their voices.

AoE1 - For the Campaign, but online play was horrid and unbalanced. Some Civs could go T3 in 5 minutes and some could go T4 in 8 minutes.

AoE2 Age of Kings - Great online play mediocre Campaign. I was also known as "GodofWar" on AoE2, it came out before the GodofWar series ever did =/ Kratos copied me =( and I copied Aries.

Majesty - A great RTS, but played with a twist, you'd actually have to play it to understand and enjoy it.

Gladiator6

Sweden7024 Posts

April 05 2011 08:24 GMT

#164

Red alert 1 hands down!

BGrael

Germany229 Posts

April 05 2011 08:24 GMT

#165

SC1, WC3 and especially WC3:TFT were amazing. That's why Wings of Liberty felt like a let down. Homeworld was good too, especially the intro scenes and the music. I would only ever play the WC3 and TFT campaign again.

IntoTheEmo

Singapore1170 Posts

April 05 2011 08:29 GMT

#166

Don't think anyone can disagree that WC3 had the best campaign ever. The story, the cutscenes, the music were all top notch, none of that cheesy WoW stuff you see in Cata nowadays.

xZiGGY

United Kingdom801 Posts

April 05 2011 08:30 GMT

#167

Shadow of the Horned Rat, had a good feel to it that I'm sure wouldn't be there if I played it again today.

Kelberot

Brazil364 Posts

April 05 2011 09:09 GMT

#168

I really, really love warcraft 3... but SC2 was extremely well done and addicting. I even replayed it right away because I downloaded it first (Couldn't buy it right away but wanted to play badly - don't worry I bought it shortly after) and I couldn't keep the same save.

Hell I even got all achievements, and I'm no achievement whore. SC2 has the best single player for me.

Zorgaz

Sweden2951 Posts

April 05 2011 09:11 GMT

#169

WC3, WC3 TFT and SC1

SC2 campaign had some cool stuff in it, but story wise it wasn't that good. Too cheesy overall.

SMaD

Spain137 Posts

April 05 2011 09:16 GMT

#170

Probably, my fav campaigns would be:

- Warcraft 3 & Warcraft 3:TFT - amazing story, great characters and in-game scenes. They show how a perfect campaign should be.

- Starcraft & SC: Brood War - elaborated story, music, characters and scenes. Just amazing.

- Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War - This game surprised me with a really well-developed story. Highly recommended.

I'd love to include SC2 between my favs but WoL does not deserve it. Let's see what happens with HotS and LotV exp and their campaigns...

Biff The Understudy

France8183 Posts

April 05 2011 09:26 GMT

#171

Warcraft 3 was horribad, RA were a caricature of propagandist bullshit.

I would say Warcraft 2 and BW. I can't believe that after all the epicness of W2, they manage to make somethinng as horribad as the scenario of W3 and WoW.

Falling

Canada11607 Posts

April 05 2011 09:27 GMT

#172

Hm, I'd probably say Warcraft II Tides of Darkness before they wrecked the Elves and Orcs... similar to what's happening to the Zerg in SCII.

Followed by Starcraft BW and Command & Conquer 1.

Then I'd put SC2, but as far as varied missions/ gameplay- definitely SC2 is at the top.

TheBorg

Netherlands56 Posts

April 05 2011 09:30 GMT

#173

I think mission-wise, SC2 had a pretty good campaign but story-wise... blegh. This time it really is WarCraft3 in space: The Fallen One (ie: Archimonde) is going to destroy the universe (Azeroth) and all of this is foretold by the Prophecy (Oracle/THE PROPHET!!!). He was going to use the Zerg to do it (corrupted Orcs), but they managed to free themselves through Kerrigan (Thrall), so now he has a hybrid army (the Burning Legion) to do it and the only one who can stop them is Kerrigan (Thrall by uniting the races). What makes it even worse, is that some of the music in the Terran campaign (fx: Safe Haven, I think) sounds like it was lifted directly from the Human campaign in WC3.

It was the story of StarCraft and Brood War that made them amazing campaigns (not so much the missions, they were average for the most part). And why? Because there was no cataclysmic event foretold in the future! You had no idea that Mengsk would leave Kerrigan to die. Or that she would be turned into the Queen of Blades by the Overmind. And I remember vividly sitting in front of my screen during the end of SC1, thinking "No, Tassadar, don't do it!" when he steered the Gantrithor head-first into the Overmind.

Story-wise, StarCraft and Brood War are like The Usual Suspects: you really don't know who Keyser Söze is, whereas Wings of Liberty is like Face/Off where you know all along how things will pan out.

DERPDERP

Kyrgyzstan189 Posts

April 05 2011 09:34 GMT

#174

Age of Empires III was pretty sick

Carsto

Germany72 Posts

April 05 2011 09:43 GMT

#175

I would go with Warcraft3 (including the addon the frozen throne) story wise, really enjoyed that one back in the time.

FaCE_1

Canada6185 Posts

April 05 2011 09:46 GMT

#176

Age Of Empire 2 had a pretty good campaign. it was also historic.

[SuNdae]

Finland323 Posts

April 05 2011 10:01 GMT

#177

In the name of nostalgia I must say Warcraft 2 made a huge impression on me as a wee lad. Starcraft 1 was also superb, but somehow Warcraft 2 will always be number 1 for me.

HolydaKing

21254 Posts

April 05 2011 10:07 GMT

#178

I loved the diversity and good of course the graphics of the SC2 campaign. Definitely my favourite campaign, played it three times in a row i think before i started multiplayer

Rain.cz

Czech Republic227 Posts

April 05 2011 10:37 GMT

#179

Red Alert 2 and WC3

hoppipolla

Australia782 Posts

April 05 2011 10:54 GMT

#180

On March 26 2011 00:43 Eishi_Ki wrote:
Age of empire 1, in one of the first missions, was this: they gave you a single priest and it was up to you to convert a villager and destroy two different civs. :D

BEST LEVEL EVER. I played that level so many freaking times... that one priest was a fucking commando priest. It was like playing as the symbian lybanese army in a video game.

Holy shit that mission was so good! I must have done it so many times that wolololo is still stuck in my head.