MikeM

Holy ***, what a nostalgia bomb. For some reason I remembered this game two days ago and I just had to play it again. I think I got this game around 1995 and I spent the better part of the late nineties and early noughties trying to beat it -- not once. Even in the best case scenarios where I managed not to get steamrolled by the other lords, some other bastard would get proclaimed king and send me off to the chopping block. That is, in those games when I didn't get excommunicated, invaded and sabotaged into oblivion.

So yesterday, rather than pay attention to my tedious, boring work, I fired up an emulator with the intention of beating the damn thing. I played all morning -- beaten. I started again. 18 years later and with thousands of hours of strategic wargame experience under my belt, I still found the game to be as devilishly hard as it used to be. I looked up all kinds of hints and tricks - I spammed savegames to rescue me from disaster - I relied on every cheap trick in the book. Retreat, counterattack, stack all your units into an improbably small bunch on the enemy's flank. Refine gold like crazy, bribe the Pope, spy on the enemy, apply for king, get rejected, apply again...

And then, it happened. The word spread like wildfire throughout Bretagne -- "Burgundy is the new king!"

As the lame victory screen displayed, telling me my score, I sat back in awe and confusion. I had finally beaten Castles II. It was the end of an era.