Steam's Turn-based RPG Fest is offering lots of discounts on leveling up your guys

Compared to the major seasonal sales, Steam's near-constant, theoretically genre-specific fests have a way of making my eyes glaze over. It's hard to feel like a sale's worth your notice when there's always one going on. Steam's current genre fest, however, has my attention. Running until October 7, the Turn-based RPG Fest is offering deep discounts on games you can easily pour dozens of character-building, tactical-battling hours into.

Almost every game has a little RPG in its DNA nowadays, which means the Turn-based RPG Fest has a lot of genre space to work with. If there's a turn-based game on your wishlist, there's a good chance it's currently on sale. For some ideas of where to look first, here's a selection of discounted games I can personally vouch for as being worth your time, because they've devoured plenty of mine.

XCOM 2, arguably the modern standard by which all other turn-based tactics games are judged, is at a huge 95% discount for only $3/£2/€2.49. You'll have a hard time finding a better gameplay-per-dollar ratio on hand-building a team of elite alien hunters who'll break your heart when they're inevitably brutalized by a chrysalid.

Following the Firaxis tactics vein, Marvel's Midnight Suns is also enjoying a hefty price cut, currently 75% off at $15/£12.49/€15. The card-based RPG was our 2022 runner-up for Game of the Year, delivering some excellent superhero hangouts. I'll support any game where you get to invite Wolverine to a book club.

With Metaphor: ReFantazio on the way, it's a great time to indulge in an Atlus RPG as a warmup—assuming you've got a spare hundred hours or so. Persona 4 Golden cemented its place as my Persona of choice with some truly excellent, small-town slice of life vibes, and it's currently $12/£11/€12, down 40% from its normal price.

If you're coming off Space Marine 2 and still need a 40K fix, you can grab Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus for just $9/£7.49/€9. Instead of power-armored Space Marines, you'll be commanding the