16 Best Turn-Based Strategy Games To Play In 2025

• Developer: Too Kyoo Games
• Release date: April 24, 2025
• Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch

Last Defense Academy is part visual novel, where you follow the triumphs and tribulations–but mostly tribulations–of a group of students tasked with defending the world from invaders, and part tactics game where you fend off those invaders while protecting a defensive barrier. Battles are dramatic, multi-wave events that force you to think about risk and sacrifice in unique ways. You get a set number of action points to use on attacks and movement each turn and, eventually, far more characters than action points, though you can gain extra points by defeating elite enemies. Deciding which character to attack, on which front, and against which foe often makes Last Defense Academy feel more like a puzzle game than a strategy one, though its unique flexibility means there’s usually more than one correct solution.

All attacks earn voltage, which you can spend to power up a single character for the remainder of the fight or use to execute a special attack that leaves the character stunned and vulnerable the next turn. They can also use their special when their HP is close to zero, and since dead characters come back to life in the next wave, death ends up being one of the most important tools in your kit.

The story is best experienced without spoilers, so we won’t say much here. Suffice to say that if you’ve played Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka’s games or the Zero Escape games from Kotaro Uchikoshi, you still won’t be quite prepared for the all the places that Last Defense Academy goes or just how deep it gets.