Medieval: Castle defense never looked so good
by Eric March on July 14, 2009 at 11:54 am
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(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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App Name: | Medieval |
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| Developer: | Brisk Mobile |
Version: | 1.0 | |
| Publisher: | Brisk Mobile |
Size: | 10.6 MB |
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| Category: | Strategy |
Price: | $2.99 ($4.99) |
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There are about a dozen or more castle defense games on the App Store, and I think I’ve seen them all — though one can never be certain. What I can be pretty certain of though is that I don’t think any of them are this pretty, this deep, or this engaging.
I’ve played a few castle defense games in my time to be certain, and while I’m no authority on the subject, I can say that I’ve always found them to be decent little time wasters but lacking in any significant amount of depth, and they’re usually pretty simple affairs all around, like most of those particular style of defense/survival games. (Not to be confused with tower defense games, which are a similar concept but different breed.) When I first saw Medieval I thought, “That’s pretty,” but largely dismissed it thinking it was just going to be some sort of artillery/defense hybrid or something with some basic gameplay, because that’s the impression I was left with glancing at just the screenshots. Fortunately, having reviewed Brisk’s games in the past I’m on their list, so when this turned up they shot me an E-Mail and gave me a chance to check it out.
I gave it a play right before bed figuring it would be something I could spend a few minutes on just to get an initial surface impression. Really bad idea. I ended up playing for the next 45 minutes straight and got to bed far later than I should have. Ordinarily, in getting that first overview of a potential review candidate I’ll spend maybe 5 minutes just to check out the menus, options, and some brief gameplay so I can get a first impression on presentation, features, control, and depth. As you might imagine I check out a lot of potential review candidates this way and very few manage to hook me for any significant length of time during that initial tryout period. Medieval did.
Besides having the best graphics of any castle defense game on the App Store buy a wide margin (and better graphics than most games in general), Medieval has a surprising level of depth that over time ends up becoming a kind of tower defense/RTS hybrid. Medieval features four game slots you can save to, allowing you to have up to 4 games on the go at once. The play mechanic is pretty simple. You start off with your castle and one crossbow (or perhaps more accurately a ballista), and you fire it manually by drawing back and letting go to fire much like a real bow. Your arrows follow a predictable trajectory arc based on angle and power, so aside from the manual firing aspect (as opposed to setting angle and power with buttons and timed presses) this should be familiar to artillery afficionados. You’re not going to be making many high arc shots here, though; you’ll mainly be angling low to slightly above horizontal to hit these targets. I suppose you could go for some high arc shots if you really wanted, but then you’re just hot-dogging it.
The enemies you face here come in waves and feature a variety of types that get harder in strength, numbers and speed as you progress. You’ll face down swordsmen, bowyers, cavalry, catapults — even bombers, to name a few, with new enemies introduced periodically as you advance. You have two goal options from level to level: Either survive the waves of attacks from the enemy, or destroy your enemy’s castle before they destroy yours. Accomplishing either one will win the level and advance you to the next — but if they manage to overwhelm your defenses long enough to destroy your castle, it’s game over.
For each hit and each kill you get a certain amount of gold that you can spend to buy upgrades. Killing ground troops and catapults are worth a variable amount of gold, while shooting your opponent’s castle is worth only one gold per hit. On the other hand, you’ll end the level with a higher gold bonus if you do destroy the opponent’s castle. Ideally, you’ll want to kill as many troops as you can without killing them all, and then finish off with the destruction of the castle to maximize your income.
The upgrades — oh, now there’s where things get interesting. You start off with only the one ballista with standard arrows. This one has a fast recharge time but does only basic damage. With more gold, you can upgrade to pierce arrows (shoot through multiple enemies with one shot), fire arrows, multi-arrows (up to 5 arrows per shot), multi-fire arrows, boulders and more — and each weapon has 4 levels of upgrade available that progressively decrease recharge time and increase overall damage.
Where it starts to really get interesting is when you start building things. Catapult factory, archery range, stables for cavalry, armory for axemen and barracks for knights. Each of these can produce extra ground troops to attack the onslaught while you’re busy manning the battlements; troops are generated manually by tapping on their respective along the lower right; each troop costs money to produce, so you have to make sure you’ve got the cash to spend on them. These are not upgradable, and have their own regeneration times before you can produce more troops, but one of the powerups you can choose is the “healing arrow” which, when fired at them, can heal your ground troops and keep them farting in the general direction of those kannnnnnnnnnnigits.
The main problem with this game for some is the pacing at the start of a new game. It takes a while to build up enough money to buy your first ugprade, which means a fair bit of swiping that bowstring back to kill troops and chip away at the enemy castle. Not to honk my own horn but I tend to have good eye for trajectories, so it didn’t bother me at all as I picked them off, but those who may not be so accurate with their aim might find it a little more frustrating and potentially RSI-inducing with the extra swipes needed to make up for the misses. It’s only when you’re able to start buying upgrades to kill troops faster that you’ll catch a break on the manual labour involved, because as you accumulate upgrades you’ll be doing a lot of ammo swapping as you switch to fresh ammo while the other(s) recharge, but the increased damage means more troops killed faster and so less firing, even if they do increase in numbers and strength.
That initially slow pace might give off a poor first impression for some though, and that would be a shame because once it gets going, you really start to get into the thick of things, swapping ammo, firing off shot after shot, producing allied troops, bashing the other castle, and just generally keeping causing more mayhem to your opponent than he does to you. There’s a great variety of ammo and troops to produce, and the level progression and money earned seems to be balanced at a nice sweet spot where you can’t get all pimped out in just five or ten levels, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like it drags on so long that you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere. You get a nice sense of accomplishment every time you buy a new ammo or upgrade your existing ones, and the satisfaction of that “how ya like me now?” moment when you’ve just pumped up your offenses and can now kick more butt.
In case you can’t tell I’m really enjoying Medieval. It’s a surprisingly deep and incredibly engaging castle defense game the way castle defense games should be, all wrapped up in some beautiful graphics and great sounds. (Though my my wife was getting a little irritated with the incessant “Hrrrk!” and “Arrrgh!” sounds when I pegged yet another knight. There’s a small variety of sounds, but when you’re killing so many it can’t help but get repetative.) There’s a strong addictive quality here, and while it may not have the fast, sometimes frenetic pacing of some other castle defense games, it enjoys a much greater depth of play that’s just as likely to appeal to castle defense afficionados and RTS buffs alike, since it shares elements of both. It’s still a castle defense game at its heart, but it’s different enough to set itself apart and much more polished than its brethren, so Medieval comes highly recommended with an App Store badge as hot as the flaming arrows you’ll be firing once you buy it — and you should do that soon, because its current sale price of $2.99 will go back up to $5 shortly.
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Posted in Games: Strategy, Paid Apps
