Written by Patrick Orquia
Title: CastleStorm
Developer: Zen Studios
Publisher: Zen Studios
Genre: Action, Strategy
Number of Players: Up to 2 players
Release Date: 16 Aug 2018
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Price: $14.99
Also Available On: Android, iOS, PS3, PS4, PSV, Steam, XB360, XB1, WiiU
What do you get when you combine a tower defense game with real-time strategy elements and then sprinkle a bit of hack-and-slash on it? You get THIS game, CastleStorm, from Zen Studios. Yes, that developer mostly known for their pinball games. Who would have thought that they can also make games like this?
Individually, I’m not much of a fan of these game genres. But CastleStorm made all three work together very well. Your main goal is basically to make sure to destroy your enemy’s castle by hurling projectiles at it (very similar to Angry Birds) while making sure that yours don’t get destroyed as well. Your main weapon is a ballista that you can use to shoot projectiles at the other castle and incoming enemies. The enemy also has its own, and it also sends out waves of axe-wielding soldiers, wolves, and other warriors to try to breach your defences. To counter this, you can also send out soldiers of your own, and even deploy a hero, Sir Gareth, to hack the attacking enemies on foot. The level ends when either of the castle falls down, among many other victory scenarios.
Of course, the game doesn’t give you everything right on the get go. The first few stages work as tutorials, where you learn basic commands and strategies. As you progress, many different game elements get unlocked, such as new soldier types, new projectiles, and new offensive/defensive spells (deploying the hero is considered a spell). You can activate up to five different types of each, depending on your play style.
You can win up to 5 stars per stage, depending on how fast you clear them, difficulty, and achieving special requirements. Getting 5 stars is very hard, especially at the beginning when you’re not yet skilled or upgraded enough, but stages can be re-played so just go back to them later when you get more leveled up.
You don’t level up automatically in the game, but you can upgrade your soldiers, projectiles, and spells, and you do so with coins that you win from fallen enemies. The upgrades can be a bit too costly but the game provides quite an abundant amount of coins. The more stars you get at the end of a stage, the more bonus coins you win. And the more your army and weaponry are upgraded, the more chances you get in winning.
Outside the battles, you can also customize your castle. You can add and remove rooms, which either give different types of upgrades, like being able to deploy more soldiers on the field, or activating certain soldier types (you cannot readily use unlocked soldiers unless you activate them and make some room for them in your castle). You can also upgrade your gate and foundation, to make your castle stronger. You can build castle from scratch or just edit the one provided in the game at the beginning. Also, you can save different castles with different room configurations and load whichever that would give you the most advantage in the game.
Overall, this game is very well-made, despite it looking like a mobile game. The Switch makes the game ideal for playing it in short bursts, as the gameplay can become very repetitive very quickly, plus you can play it on the go. If you get bored of just playing solo in the campaign mode, the game also has some single-player modes, like survival and hero modes, where you get to fight off waves enemies until you get defeated. If that is still not enough, you can also battle with another person for a local versus battle mode or co-op play. If you have no friends around, you can also play with other people online and try to top the leaderboard and be the best there is, if you have the skills, of course.
This indie game will probably be not go down in history as the best Switch game ever made, but for what it’s worth, you get lots of content and game modes while being able to play it whenever and wherever. Maybe a new and better game of this kind will come, or maybe the developers will release sequels in the future, but for now, this game is worth the buy. May your castle stand proud and strong.
REPLAY VALUE: Very High
PROS
- The combination of tower defense, real-time strategy, and hack-and-slash styles makes for an excellent gameplay
- Nice graphical style that looks like it was taken directly of World of Warcraft
- Very good medieval times-inspired soundtrack
- The short cut scenes in-between stages provide some story expositions and tell you what you will be dealing with next
- The game encourages you to just keep on playing and to win levels even if you don’t get all the stars on first try and then go back to them once you already have better upgrades
- Has a decent difficulty curve
CONS
- Controls and animation are not as smooth as one would expect
- Everything looks really tiny when the screen is zoomed all the way out especially on handheld mode
- Gameplay can become very repetitive after a short while of playing
- Hard to find other players online
RATING: 4/5 Medieval Angry Birds
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