Summoners War

Most monster-collecting games are won at the summoning screen. Summoners War is mostly won in the runes. This long-running turn-based RPG from Com2uS hands you a sky island, a summoning circle, and more than 1,000 monsters to collect across five attributes — Fire, Water, Wind, Light, and Dark — but the real game is what you build them into.

Battles are turn-based and tactical, and a monster is only ever half the story. Rune sets — 23 types, each with different effects — decide speed, survivability, and damage, so two players can field the same monster and get completely different results. Working out which runes turn a decent pull into a team carrier is the puzzle veterans keep coming back to.

There is no shortage of places to test a team. The campaign and boss dungeons (Giants, Dragons, and more) feed the grind, three-player raids run in real time, the Dimension Hole and Tartarus' Labyrinth push endgame squads, and guild battles add a team layer. Competitive players head to the World Arena, where real-time duels open with a pick-and-ban phase before a single spell is cast.

Summoning has a safety net: mileage builds as you summon and guarantees a top-tier 5-star monster, and new gear called Relics adds another layer of power. The game does sell items, so patience is the free player's best friend. If you enjoy deep team-building and strategy that rewards homework, this is a genre landmark — over 300 million summoners have passed through.