Age of Castles Review

... Maybe.

In this game, you are some kind of human lord (there are 5 different ones to choose from), and apparently you are on some quest to liberate a land from all of the evil forces of the Dark Army - among which include goblins, dwarves, balrogs... and that's just in the first five levels.

This is most definitely a strategy game. You advance level by raising your population and protecting it with soldiers. But to do that you also need gold, and then you need a castle to store the gold in and to house your people! It's a challenge to keep your population growing, your gold reserves from depleting, and your castle from falling into a dilapidated ruin.

But, of course, you can get help. Using magic crystals, you can buy scrolls, potions, and other things, which give you bonuses from extra people every day to doubling your castle size. (You also need these crystals to get to new lands, which is vital to winning the game.)

Furthermore, you can encounter dangerous creatures like dwarves, goblins, trolls, and balrogs. You can retreat if you think they'll win (or wipe out a big portion of your population), but they will still kill some of your villagers. And that's no fun, right? Welll, fortunately, your armies can fight them - and even defeat them! If you win, you get gold, magic, and maybe even some slaves to increase your pop. count!

Sounds interesting, right?

Well, the sad truth is that all you get to do is click some buttons and look at some still pictures of people, still pictures of scrolls and potions, still pictures of castles and your surroundings while little tan figures use hammers on it. Sure, you get to see backgrounds which look vaguely different from each other, and you can see your castle get bigger and more advanced, but that's about as interesting as the graphics get.

Furthermore, I have a sneaking suspicion they lifted the graphics for a third-level castle from Age of Empires 2. The walls of a level 3 castle, and an AOE2 castle look amazingly alike if not identical.

As for the music and the sounds, there's nothing special about them. I tuned out the music easily - it is a bit annoying, but you can get used to it easily. Not much to the sounds except the clicking of buttons, the tapping of hammers, and the occasional battle bry during fighting.

Speaking of which, the combat screens are not at all impressive. you have two options: fight and retreat. There are no spells, no items you can use, no "defend" mode. Just two options. Pff.

In conclusion, it's an interesting game concept to boot, but this company carries it out poorly. It's too simple to lure in most players, as the graphics aren't very flashy or fancy, and it looks so deceptively simple it bores players at first. Get to level 5 and up, and it DOES take some work to master. But hardly anyone will make it there before they fall asleep from the sheer easiness of the first few levels.