Download Castles

Interplay has made a fine game yet again. Those of you who played the sequel may already have an idea of the concept of this game. You must build up a castle, create a powerful army, and defend yourself in case of danger. There are many aspects of this game that I liked. First of all there is the starting menu. There you can choose the difficulty, your name, name of your castle, whether or not you wish to receive messengers etc. When you’re ready, you can start building your mighty fort. Just a note: to bring up the menu press “z”. You may want to begin with the design. Not many options there – you can choose between two types of towers, the walls and the gate (there is also an erase option).

Okay, you made the foundations. The problem is that you will need someone to build them, and to do so, you must hire workers. You will also have the option to set their wages, but don’t bother yourself with this if you want a stable economy. It will also be a good idea to immediately start building your army, because it takes a lot of precious time.

The building part you’ll have to do manually. Clicking a wall, tower etc. will bring you to a menu allowing you to determinate the height, the width, building arrow slits and cauldrons for the walls, or making windows on the towers. From this menu you will choose the amount of workers you want to use for completing the construction. On the menu you can also see in how many days it will be complete, are there workers assigned to construction, is it stable and so on.

During your construction, messengers, who can vary from soldiers to nuns, will visit you. They will tell you about their problems and you’ll have to choose between 3 decisions - this will affect your status as a king. Making good decisions and having pity will raise you in the people's eyes. When a battle is coming, a pop-up screen will warn you about it. You will have the time to put your troops on the map and when you are prepared, the combat begins. If the menu is enabled close it again using “z” and the camera will change, allowing you to see your soldiers fighting the enemy. If you don’t want this, you can still watch them like dots that will stop when they’re dead. Your army has only consists of archers and infantry. Some horsemen would perhaps be a good addition, but the creators thought otherwise.

There are many other aspects you must cover in this game, like buying food, replacing the old equipment, taxes etc. The graphics are wonderful. You can see every step in the wall buildup process. The sound is good although it can get boring after long time of playing. I will mark this game with a 4 because, in order to win, you must build 8 castles, and that can get boring, especially when you develop a good strategy.

Give Castles a try and you won't be disappointed.

Reviewed by: Kosta / Screenshots by: Kosta / Uploaded by: Kosta

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