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Game
Game2019
AI War 2
Developer Arcen Games
The most devious and acclaimed artificial intelligence in strategy gaming is better than ever. A grand strategy/RTS hybrid that reverses many conventions of both genres. Take territory without attracting attention, build your empire with care, and adapt to an ever-evolving galactic battleground. From the Steam store page
195 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon) · newest Oct 31, 2026 · last updated Nov 4, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
76
LovedLoved
140 positive · 44 negative
95% range 69–82%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 140 | 44 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 4 | 0 | 6 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
1,191 of 1,343 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
77% recommend · 137 yes, 42 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 179 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (1,363 of 1,562 positive).
Players praise its unique asymmetric guerrilla-war RTS gameplay and deep strategic challenge. [1][2][3] Many note the steep learning curve and intimidating UI as significant barriers. [4][5][6] Some reviewers report severe late-game performance issues and lag. [7][8]
Liked
Representative posts
- [5]
I've tried three separate times to get into AI War 2, and I've had to admit defeat. To be fair, I have never gotten much past the tutorial, but that's because the UI overall repels me. Nothing about it is intuitive, and my appetite for memorizing a game-specific way of thinking about using an interface just isn't big. The problems start early with the third tutorial step, which is "hold Q to rotate the camera" Q? …
- [1]
The apex of multi-threaded, well designed AI combined with a mechanically unique asymmetric guerilla-war RTS. You will not find an experience like AI War 2 anywhere else. Don't worry about having Starcraft-tournament level clicks-per-minute, this RTS focuses more on strategy and tactics and is pausable (having your fleets in the right places at the right times, doing the right things). A word of warning, it takes …
- [2]
This is one of the best RTS games I've ever played. I always loved the genre, but didn't like the high APM necessary and mixed macro and micro tasks at the same time. This game takes a different approach to the standard formula and it gets it so right. Basically, the AI owns the galaxy and you own one measly planet and need to somehow help humanity survive and ideally wipe out the AI. Lucky for you, the AI doesn't …
- [3]
A unique RTS with a toe in grand-strat. It has this completely different model of conquest b/c you can't out-economy the enemy. Instead, you have to look at the map and figure out how you're going to steal power from them while constantly staying under the radar and hiding your true strength so they don't just turn and crush you like an ant. The map of the galaxy is a puzzle. A tactical and strategic one that bears …
- [4]
This is the Finnegans Wake of video games. Absolute masterpiece, and impenetrable without a disapproving professor to explain it to you. (Hi Strategic Sage) The UI in this game tries very hard, and does a few things well, but does a HORRIBLE job of showing you what might be important and informing your decisions when it comes to ship types, turret types, and technologies, which unfortunately are some of the most …
Summarised from 34 of the 189 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 10, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
AI War 2 sits at 76% positive across 184 opinionated reactions from 3 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Reactions
60 of 195 · most liked firstI've tried three separate times to get into AI War 2, and I've had to admit defeat. To be fair, I have never gotten much past the tutorial, but that's because the UI overall repels me. Nothing about it is intuitive, and my appetite for memorizing a game-specific way of thinking about using an interface just isn't big. The problems start early with the third tutorial step, which is "hold Q to rotate the camera" Q? Ok. With a note longer than the tutorial about how this actually isn't a useful…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is hard to recommend to the people who might just read the tags for this game, if you do you won't have the right mind set of what to expect. It's closer to a stealth mission with limited units in an RTS. If you go in blowing up everything and increase your threat level too much you will die spectacularly. You must plan and have a good reason for taking out certain bases, falling back to defend occasionally until you are ready to take apart the enemy at their core. Fail to get it in one or…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The apex of multi-threaded, well designed AI combined with a mechanically unique asymmetric guerilla-war RTS. You will not find an experience like AI War 2 anywhere else. Don't worry about having Starcraft-tournament level clicks-per-minute, this RTS focuses more on strategy and tactics and is pausable (having your fleets in the right places at the right times, doing the right things). A word of warning, it takes quite a bit of time to get competent. AI War is brutally hard, and it will…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The reason for my thumbs down is not because the game is bad, at least it likely is not The reason is because the game is probably not for stupid people like me who cannot handle such big numbers everywhere the amount of ships in the game is massive, and so are the amounts of stats related to these ships. though perhaps other people may be able to see through those stats, what is how effective in combat as well as economically, but I and probably many other people are not this is not like…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Why thumbs down after 40 hours? It's more compelling than fun. This is a game you struggle against. There less exploration and more spamming defenses than I would have cared for. After beating "level 4" - the most basic scenario - I noticed from the achievements %s that most players never beat the game and many of the reviews are from a couple hours of play in early access.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is the Finnegans Wake of video games. Absolute masterpiece, and impenetrable without a disapproving professor to explain it to you. (Hi Strategic Sage) The UI in this game tries very hard, and does a few things well, but does a HORRIBLE job of showing you what might be important and informing your decisions when it comes to ship types, turret types, and technologies, which unfortunately are some of the most critical decisions in the game. There are mods that sort of mitigate this a…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It was quite intimidating seeing the UI at first, but after the 20-30 minutes of OPTIONAL tutorials, I felt much less intimidated. There isn't a whole lot of lore, but what is there is great! The game isn't fast paced which i appreciate, the ability to pause gives you however much time you need to think about any decisions, and there isn't a ton of micro that keeps me away from other RTS games. I appreciate that the wiki is literally accessible from the menu, complete with strategy guides and…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Amazing game, but please hire a UI/UX Artist, your UI looks like crap :P
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I hesitate to call this the Dwarf Fortress of RTS, but that's the most apt comparison I can make. AI War II is extremely dense in information presented to the player, as well as strategies and mechanics available to both the player and the AI. It is not a game someone can just turn on willy-nilly and break the AI in five minutes. It is a commitment, and I find this to be both its greatest strength and its biggest flaw. AI War II does not shy away from giving the player a consistent challenge…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is one of the best RTS games I've ever played. I always loved the genre, but didn't like the high APM necessary and mixed macro and micro tasks at the same time. This game takes a different approach to the standard formula and it gets it so right. Basically, the AI owns the galaxy and you own one measly planet and need to somehow help humanity survive and ideally wipe out the AI. Lucky for you, the AI doesn't think wiping you out is worth its time... yet. As you expand, that…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Here’s a curious fact: look at the achievements and you'll quickly notice something funny. Only about 20% of players have unlocked even the easiest ones that pop up after ten minutes of gameplay. That means 80% of you bought this strategy gem and immediately decided: "Nah, not today, I have 200 other unplayed games anyway." I get it. This isn’t exactly the kind of game that greets you with cinematic explosions or eye-candy visuals. The graphics are functional, like my microwave, practical but…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The tutorial teaches you how to use the mouse to move units, use the build menu to make stations, then it gives up and tells you to figure out the rest by looking up fan tutorials on Youtube. I start a game and the Beginner Tips tell me I should use Science to upgrade my home world. The tips do not tell me how to do this. Nothing in the Science tab does this. So I go to Youtube. I spend a while watching a video that turns out to be useless because it is years out of date, explaining an old…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →How have I not reviewed this game yet, this is arguably one of the best strategy games I have ever played in my life.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Honestly the game was amazing in concept but struggled even with a good PC due to poor coding for years and years. Enjoyed the early game, and the mid game and then the end of every campaign was so slow it took days to run because of how lagged the whole endevour was. The tech and coding have caught up to an amazing standard. I can now play any concept I can create from start to finish without a massive lag drag. Multiplayer has become way more stable over time. Its hard to believe but in…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love tug-of-war strategy games, and AI War 2 had the potential to deliver that experience—but it falls apart under its own weight, both figuratively and literally. What starts as a promising large-scale war quickly turns into a lag-ridden, unmanageable mess, with performance issues, lackluster progression, and an absence of meaningful player agency. Major Issues: Severe Performance Problems Even on a high-end system, the game grinds to a halt a few hours in. CPU usage hits 100%, the game…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Quite possibly the quintessential space macro-RTS game with excellent computer opposition. It has several player faction flavors, continued ongoing post-release support, highly moddable, highly customizable, supports multiplayer. Future-proofed in the sense that it will happily let you overload your PC without crashing. When we upgrade to more powerful systems in the future, it appears to be capable of taking full advantage of the increase processing power to load even more optional features…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Completed the Rite of Passage (the game's "filter" difficulty) and a couple custom games. It's better than most 4X games, that's for sure. I don't really buy into the whole "the AI is way smarter than you bro, it's really devious" type of message Arcen Games tries really hard to push, but it is a more competent AI than most. The truth is that - much like most strategies to make AI harder - the AI is just given way more to work with. That being said, the game is lovingly crafted with some…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A unique RTS with a toe in grand-strat. It has this completely different model of conquest b/c you can't out-economy the enemy. Instead, you have to look at the map and figure out how you're going to steal power from them while constantly staying under the radar and hiding your true strength so they don't just turn and crush you like an ant. The map of the galaxy is a puzzle. A tactical and strategic one that bears careful consideration and constant risk-reward assessment which I found to be…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's no other game quite like it. And while it grew a TON in early access, I can see this one still expanding for another several years at least It's by (mostly solo) tiny team Arcen Games, and their previous release, AI War 2, is still getting major updates 7+ years from its early access debut
neutral · AI labelView post →I don't know anything about upcoming Heart of the machine but I'm sure about one thing, it's going to be updated frequently, it's been 5 years since AI War 2 was relased and this madman still update game like it's fresh project.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I almost never write games reviews on steam. And frankly at this moment I am not in mood to write long detailed review - I want to go back to the game and beat those godd**ed level 8 AIs. =) But I will say this - I have been playing deep strategy games for 3 decades. This (and deep RPGs) are my two favorite genres in computer games. So over the years I've played probably 70-80%+ of games on most "Best strategy games of all times" lists. And this game is certainly in the top 5 or even in the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I am very fond of this game, that is an engine + lots of contents to tune the challenge in very varied ways. I buy a DLC from time to time as a support to the (almost) solo dev, and I end up enjoying the new content. It works great on my HP Envy laptop, which is rudimentary gear. Congrats to the dev(s) for optimizing so well the engine, with thousands of units taking decisions and performing the pew pew smoothly. The game is best played as intended : the player has a tiny fraction of the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great game. I got worried about my threat level getting to high, so I smashed my computer to drop it by 5 levels.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Might be the best 4x game ever made and I say this as a person with more than two thousand hours in Stellaris. Its a hard call for me between the two but its definitely between AIW2 and Stellaris. I know I have low hours as of now but I've played almost all of these types of games and I can just already tell. For newcomers, it skews more Sins of Solar Empire than it does Stellaris. But if you enjoy either of those games, there's no reason you won't love this. They say it has a steep learning…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game can be summarised as roughly: A strategy game where you plan your next steps like in a puzzle, where the progression in a is similar to a roguelike, and the difficulty and playstyle of a session can be adjusted extensively to whatever degree you desire. Make sure you read the things the game tells you, and you'll get the hang of it quite quickly. If you want an easy and relaxed experience, you can have that. If you want it ridiculously difficult - you can have that too.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's honestly a crying shame that a game this original and distinctive should have lost money and disrupted the lead developer's life. The strength of his design is apparent in how willing a core group of supporters have been to keep the game updated half a decade after its release. I don't play this as often as I should, but its rhythm is like nothing else on the market. I blame the decline of the indie-games press between the release of AI War: Fleet Command and its sequel, but that's neither…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is good. However, the controls and audio-visual feedback are inconsistent at best. Combine this with complexity, and it makes for an abysmal learning process. I will probably still play it. The game IS fun once you learn to double check whether orders have gone through or whether your units loaded correctly given that there's no audio-visual feedback for it from the map. However, the question wasn't "do I like the game?" it was "Would I recommend it to others?" And, given how much…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I haven't seen much of the depth and breadth of this game yet, and so this is heavily subject to change, but here is a review primarily about my criticisms. (I have since played about 120 more hours, and will now add my revised thoughts in addendum to the original review. Basically, the more I played the game the more fun I've found myself having!) Firstly, the AI seems weird. Even when it is moments from destruction, it will boldly announce you have 0% chance of defeating it and considering…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →One of the best RTS Games I've played. You are playing against a severly overpowered AI opponent, but the AI only fights back once it feels threatened by you. This adds an important strategic component that is usually missing from games like this. You have to pick your fights carefully and weight the risks and rewards to win. The difficulty however is VERY variable, going from "the AI barely acts against you" to "basically unfair". Apart from that the game offers a ton of additional options…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →one of the main reason's I've played this game so much is the mods and the randomness of the game, you never know what might happen next. and it keeps one on their toes when they're up against a high level AI (difficulty 7+ for me) and the amount of potential factions with all the DLC's can really add a little spice to the game. one of my top 10 favorite games of all time
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is the Dwarf Fortress of the X4 Space Games genre. The depth of the content just keeps going and if you think something would be fun, cool or nice to add to the game, it's probably already part of the game in some form. Losing is fun and figuring out how to not lose even funner.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Much has been said about this game already, but one thing I'd like to add - this is a slow-paced macro RTS/4X that (usually) does not put pressure on you to make decisions NOW. I really like the idea of RTS games but nowadays I find most of them too fast for my liking. This game is slow enough for me to take in the situation and decide where to go, and that is a nice bonus on top of the underdog/guerilla warfare game design that just keeps me hooked. Great game, if you can stomach the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Slowpace 4X rts that doesn't eat too much of micro control, great game to vs AI.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Do NOT even think that you can progress enough if you just keep taking all the planets. I thought I can get myself overpowered on difficulty 4 (out of 10!?) if I add all the minor factions as friends, they instead angered the AI overlords too much and everything got obliterated soon.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a NO! tldr; Do you enjoy reading through walls of text before you can play? If not, move on! Because, you won't enjoy this game, unless you like to spend a lot of time, to go through it's tutorials, read through it's superlong manual, spend time studying superlong and unintuitive tooltips which are rather like a mess than an organized structure, and have hours over hours, before you finally figure some of the game and understand what you're supposed to do. I had to go through the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is one of those games with a "losing is fun"-type philosophy. It makes me think particularly of FTL (although you can probably make the comparison with many other roguelikes). In order to progress at all (scout, get more science, hacking points, new ships or defenses, raise energy (ship/defense cap), etc.), or even just to recover from a bad situation, you have to increase the pressure on yourself. It's straight up explicitly hard-coded as an "AI Progress" (AIP) number that is unavoidable…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Did not read the Subvert Super Terminal hack right and proceeded to cause a wave the strength of 1.24k to descend upon me and my buddy's home worlds while all we could do is sit and watch 3 hours of work be destroyed. 10/10 would get absolutely curb stomped again.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Im mad that how looking at art and everything about this game and the first one made me go "i can't read this ♥♥♥♥ nor understand it so im not going to play it." finally said lets at least try it. And i found out that "Oh. OH! This is my jam." it fits great with my turtle/snowball play style for rts games
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A very fun and engaging strategy game with hundreds of hours of content.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Love a good AI in games, and i'm not disappointed, Also having useful AI allies is often underrated most times but here, it's really satisfying that your mates understand what you're doing almost all the time i thought the game would be impossible to learn unless you spent like 10 hours in tutorials to really try to understand, but the core is pretty simple as it turns out, it's just overwhelming at first, but it's really a "easy to learn, hard to master" situation Deserves a Third game,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There is a bit of a learning curve, but once mastered this 4x game offers endless replay possibilities. The classic 'dumb AI' problem of many 4x games is less of an issue here because of the way the games works with a lot of continuous aggression. Game is very good at randomizing the map, forcing you to adapt strategies and (even expected) events can cause you to make emergency decisions. Excellent support, when an update broke my game they fixed it in a day. My favorite set-up is AI civil war…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love the first AI War and it breaks my heart, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend this game (over the first AI War). The only thing this game has over the first game is that it has better graphic. This game was an instant purchase for me when it came out in early access. - The price increase from the first game? makes sense. - Not all contents from the first game are there even at release? understandable. - Many contents that are clones from the first game/DLCs became DLCs (i.e. no DLC…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →AI War 2 provides a unique and highly customizable strategy experience. The premise of leading an all-but-extinct group of humanity in a guerrilla war against an overwhelmingly powerful foe makes for a compelling and, when you're able to win, immensely satisfying challenge. The idea of having what essentially is the AI's awareness of you as a manageable resource is interesting and gives weight to every tactical decision you make. As an example, in other games the limiting factor for expansion…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Yay! TBH I was thinking about refunding this after the first hour because I was a little overwhelmed. Most games are played in an 80-planet universe and you are surrounded on all sides. So glad I stayed with it! After two or three hours things started to click and now I'm working through the Quick Start Campaigns. This really scratches the itch!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great space 4x with almost no micromanagement. Bit of a rogue like since as the oppressed humans you'll have to figure out the most efficient way to scrounge up the available resources scattered about without getting noticed by the super powered AI.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →"What if someone took Stellaris, ripped out everything but the combat, but made it fun and not just an exercise in painting the map." AI War 2 is a Very Good example of a single-player PVE strategy game. To paraphrase 'A good game is a series of interesting decisions,' AI War is a slow-burn (though not as slow as other games in the genre) game of picking moves against an opponent that cheats. The AI cheats. Does it cheat if it's not playing by the same set of rules you are? They're definitely…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →AI War 2 is a fun little game hidden behind a UI which gives way, way, way too much information at first glance. If you give this a try, don't even pay attention to most of the text it shows at first and just focus on the tutorial. How strong an engine is, the exact damage multiplier against a thing and the mass of a ship are almost entirely irrelevant at lower difficulties thanks to the large amount of automation AI War 2 contains, which makes ships prioritize shooting at what they're good…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →AI War 2 is a true masterpiece of design, one of the most impressive games ever created. In particular, it is a more board gamey take on a 4x grand strategy game. If micromanagement and meaningless but necessary decisions bother you, but you love optimization, this game will be for you. Also look at this game if you want to be able to have huge-feeling campaigns over the course of just a few hours. If you like tactical decisions, it's probably not for you. There are tactics involved, especially…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unique asymmetric RTS with some very interesting ideas and intelligent game design. Playing it feels somehow alien because it's so different than the rest of the strategy games I played over the years. Until you figured it out (which takes a while), you will constantly have to think and strategize in order to adapt to the challenges presented to you. The concept of fighting an guerilla war against an overwhelming enemy, trying to keep his attention away from you until you can go for the final…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →very ingenious game and interesting its the only 4x and strategic game that handles late game perfectly, no steamrolling at all, you have to fight to the bitter end, you'll rarely have parts in the game were you'll just out produce and outmatch the enemy, love it
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →One of those very easy to learn / get into, very hard to master things. On higher difficulty settings, you'll have to pull all the stops and use 100% of what you know, and if you don't know something, you are probably dead. The game itself is very open to player customization, the best way to enjoy it is to customize your own difficulty settings for an optimal experience, as different campaign presets don't have everything. There are so many extra things that you could do in this game that you…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I actually really enjoy this game but i have one major issue, why is it so hard to know exactly how much metal you're spending, and it so stupid and frustrating when all of a sudden nothing will work all because you captured 2 planets back to back and immediately build mines just avoid that problem, what kind of sense does that make!?!?!? Now i have to restart all because there is no way to no how to adjust or destroy any units just so your metal income is positive/negative. oh yeah, the whole…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Interesting RTS with rogue mechanics. However, as for now game is pretty bugged in late game. Game starts stuttering, whole fleets vanish randomly or stations cannot be build. Once, every ship froze for me and i couldn't give them any commands. So, game is worth checking on, but it still contains game-breaking bugs, which can nullify couple hours of gameplay.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Overly complicated just for the sake of complication. This is a huge hassle to get anything done in. It isn't "hard", exactly, because you can set a billion difficulty sliders to whatever you like. Unfortunately, the developers basically took the approach of throwing in every single thing they could possibly think of. There are so many options that you'll waste more time looking at everything than actually playing the game. A really disappointing result from what could have been a good game.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Its like the friendliest RTS you've ever played, everything is explained in detail, there's a million different options, its such an exciting game to get into.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Absolute masterpiece. My only problem with the game is that I took too long to give it a try and that I just can't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ put it down. 11/10 will spend a half hour paused pondering my next move again. and again. and again. and again. Oh and I've barely scratched the surface. There is so much ♥♥♥♥ and all of it terrifies me
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →AI War 2 is a deeply systems-driven strategy game that deliberately challenges conventional real-time strategy expectations by placing the player in a position of overwhelming inferiority. Developed and published by Arcen Games, it is built around the idea that humanity has already lost the war, and what remains is a long, careful struggle for survival against a vastly superior artificial intelligence that controls nearly the entire galaxy. This core premise defines every mechanic, pacing…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I change this if u fix multiplayer
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great concept but clunky, ugly and boring. I would give AI war 3 a shot though if they improve on this.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Arcen are fascinating devs. Their games are chock-full of idiosyncratic ideas, have great music and very well-supported by them. Unfortunately, I've they also tend to be so dense and esoteric as to be impenetrable without spending a lot of time figuring them out. AI Wars 2 manages to retain the best aspects of Arcen while also being impressively accessible. The tutorials readily explain the basics, the UI is clear and there are plenty of useful in-game hints. There's also a lot of scope for…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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