10 Best Turn-Based RPGs Like Critical Shift

Critical Shift gives you the best of several worlds. You have your cake of body horror, featuring grotesque flesh infused with metal enemy designs. But you eat your cake too enjoying a most eerie atmospheric setting. Beyond the exhilarating visual design seen in the trailer, the mystery-driven story also sparks intrigue. An underground facility below the Antarctic is overrun by strange creatures and events. And no matter what you do, you must never allow what’s underground to see the light of day. 

For turn-based tactical fans with RPG and survival elements, Critical Shift has a dose of goodness for you too. All of these will be available to play later in 2025. And while you wait for the launch, we recommend keeping busy with these best turn-based RPGs like Critical Shift.

10. Sea of Stars

First up is Sea of Stars, a multi-award-winning turn-based RPG. Its story will keep your eyes peeled with its dozens of intriguing characters. You explore brilliant, but sometimes silly, themes that aren’t afraid to pull on your heartstrings, too. 

But the turn-based combat is also quite engaging, incorporating swimming, climbing, and hoisting up ledges traversal methods. But also keen mechanics on tracking animations with button inputs. 

Mixing and matching abilities come in handy, as you discover more powerful combo attacks. All the while mastering perfect timing of your hits.

9. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader

You can experience the Warhammer universe in turn-based format, too. Introducing Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, a deeply explorative and intense action-oriented game that takes all that’s grand about the Warhammer universe.

The turn-based combat doesn’t just take into account your positioning but also using the environment to take cover and launch traps. It adds thoughtful decision-making when aligning with factions. 

Your crew is also a diverse range, ensuring that you’re almost always running into new creatures and exploring numerous opportunities for pursuing mysteries and making wild discoveries. 

8. Gears Tactics

For a deeper strategic take driven by teamwork, you might consider Gears Tactics. Hordes of monsters stand in your way of bringing down an evil mastermind. However, with powerful weapons in hand and a keen survival instinct, you just might make it out of visceral encounters alive. 

There are over 20 skills you can equip and master. And, in turn, lots of powerful enemies and towering bosses for applying depth and strategy toward defeating them.

7. Invisible, Inc.

A lot of careful planning and wits go into beating Invisible, Inc. Only a clever mind can sneak in and out of heavily guarded corporations unseen. Despite its demanding brain power, the actual game is a ton of fun. 

You enjoy employing stealth sneaking past heavily armed guards and evading alarm systems. Meanwhile, precision and teamwork are key to coordinating your movements and completing high-profit missions with your life intact.

6. Fallout 2

After a devastating nuclear war, you’re left to pick up the pieces. Your ancestors traversed the wastelands to find a new home. However, lots of challenges face your people, from backstabbing to megalomaniac mutants.

Together, you must survive the threats in Fallout 2. You must learn to trust your instincts and develop optimum survival strategies. Otherwise, you may have survived a nuclear disaster only to fall prey to human deceit, crippling radiation, and more threats. 

5. SteamWorld Heist

As part of a steam-driven pirate crew, you’re tasked with surviving epic shootouts in SteamWorld Heist. Uniquely, the game allows you to manually aim your guns at enemies. Thus resulting in hugely satisfying kill shots. 

Plus, you need a deep strategy in your aim, like using ricochet bullets to take out several enemies at once. Soon, the action grows more intense as bullets fly and bounce off walls, clearing diverse multi-tiered levels one bullet at a time. 

4. Shadowrun Returns

Fans of Shadowrun, over two decades in age, will love the modern take of Shadowrun Returns. Now, you can head back into the fantasy and cyberpunk futuristic world with gusto, mastering the magic spells and technology devices at your disposal to beat the game.

As a mercenary for hire, you take on various odd jobs that lead you down unexpected paths. Tracking down a mysterious killer spans into a more complex web of recruiting other runners and treading carefully through the darkest slums of the city’s megacorps. 

3. Darkest Dungeon

Another of the best turn-based games like Critical Shift is Darkest Dungeon. It tasks you with leading a group of heroes through dark paths riddled with famine, disease, stress, and unexpected horrors of the night. 

It’s a roguelike turn-based RPG that consistently feels fresh and engaging. Even as your travelers grow more stressed traversing ruined crypts and twisted forests, you never run out of the thrill of beating the challenge of keeping them together and alive.

2. Into the Breach

Into the Breach also keeps things interesting across runs. It features powerful mechs you can control against an alien invasion. However, for each new run, the challenge to eradicate the aliens randomly regenerates. 

Moreover, you get a variety of mech squads, weapons, enemies, bosses, pilots, and more, to ensure that you’re always grappling with new strategies and experimenting to your heart’s fill.

For even more challenges, you can check out the “Unfair” mode. As the name suggests, it’s essentially a high-difficulty run on steroids that pushes the most skilled turn-based gamers to the limits.

1. XCOM

From Critical Shift’s trailer, you’ll draw close similarities to the XCOM franchise. It feels almost like a spiritual successor that hopefully delivers on expectations. Still, you can refresh your memory and skill by checking out the XCOM titles, particularly XCOM 2. 

It features a successful alien invasion. However, humans haven’t quite given up yet, launching a new mission to disrupt the aliens’ sinister plans. Gradually, you’ll build a global resistance against the alien invaders and eventually, take back your home and save humanity. 

Compared to Critical Shift, XCOM is definitely a more high-budget and exceptional turn-based RPG, with sleek visuals and rewarding strategy, perhaps one of the deepest strategies in turn-based gaming.