Toggled
Review
Castle
Strike Review
By
Eric Allen (Co-creator in Spoof)
I'm bored, so I'm writing a review. Lucky you eh? First up, Castle Strike--a
medieval RTS from Germany.
I picked up Castle Strike as an early Christmas gift to myself earlier
this week. I’ve played around with it for a while, so here comes
another inevitable Prillotashekta Review (pat. Pend.)
This game is from Witt Interactive and Data Becker is European, and
it shows. First off, the concept: a real-time strategy game set during
the Hundred Years War. The player takes control of forces from the
English, French, or Germans. You build, defend, and siege castles,
and go to war with armies of medieval troops and led by Heroes (who
double as the main characters is the campaigns).
Why do I say it’s obviously European? The graphics? The gameplay?
Nope, it’s the manual. Reading through it, it is pretty easy
to tell that it has been translated. More (non-Europe related) about
the manual: it sucks. It is thin, barely tells you anything. It does
not even say how to rotate the camera—I had to figure it out
from the brief mention of it in the tutorial mission. Poor documentation
as always been a sticking point for me (I liked Homeworld as much
for its accompanying materiel as the game itself, and I read the companion
books that came with StarSiege more than I actually played the game).
This game follows the current trend to less manual.
The graphics are decent, if a little dated. Character models are done
with minimal polygons, and as a result the faces look bizarre. On
the other hand, the attention to detail in the game world is immense.
Buildings look nice, and the landscape is attractive (they even have
indigenous animals like rabbits and birds for a little ambiance).
You can zoom in extremely close—almost too close. However, the
game does not let you zoom out near far enough. It’s so bad,
that it’s hard to see an entire tower, much less your keep,
on the screen at once.
Now, game-wise. There are three campaigns, one for each nationality.
You have to play them in order, and you have to play the missions
in order for story purposes (though you can replay missions later,
of course). If you can’t beat a mission, the next one is made
available after losing twice. The story follows the von Rabenhorst
family, especially Thorwald and his armor-wearing, shield-carrying,
spear-thrusting sister Svea. Many missions (and skirmish mode) require
you to build a fortress, defend it, and then assault an enemy fortress.
Gameplay is the same-old-same-old. Hire unarmed Serfs to construct
buildings, harvest resources (wood, stone, and iron), and provide
a tax base (for gold). Build a Barracks and a Bowmaker and start churning
out troops. Research upgrades. Build a workshop to make siege engines.
Attack without mercy. Castle building is easy enough, though repairs
can be frustrating. Lay a plan, click “build” and the
walls and towers magically rise out of the earth (combined with the
screen shaking and a rumbling sound effect--really). The catch is,
you can only build your castle in the designated “castle”
spot—a patch of grey, flat ground. You can ONLY build castle-related
buildings (walls, barracks, blacksmiths) on this ground, and you can
ONLY build town related buildings (farms, woodcutters, chapels) off
this ground. This can make defense of your outlying village difficult,
as “town” buildings have no defense, save any troops you
have outside the walls and if they are close enough to your walls
for your archers to provide cover fire. Furthermore, it drastically
restricts the size and shape of castle you can build. There are very
few buildings, and you are only allowed to have one of any given building
at any given time. Stonemason’s too far from the quarry? You’ll
have to tear it down and build a new one. Furthermore, construction
of some things require you to have the earlier things first. For example,
you have to have a stonemason’s to build walls, so if your stonemason
(which is often out away from your castle and thus vulnerable) is
destroyed, that means no new fortifications, no repairs, even if you
have enough stone stockpiled.
Similarly, unit types is severely limited. Each nationality has essentially
the same units: scout, spearman, pikeman, archer, crossbowman, arquebusier
(armed with an early musket) and a melee troop (swordsman, hatchetman—all
of which are essentially the same thing). National flavor only comes
is higher up the tech tree with each having a “specialty unit”
(i.e. the German two-handed swordsman). With no variation in units,
it really comes down to who has the most. Soldiers are cheap, so you
can get a lot quickly, but the population limit does put a cap on
things.
The AI flat out sucks. The skirmish AI can build a (pre-defined) castle,
but attacks are basically a steady stream of raids with the occasional
siege engine thrown in. Your own units are overly aggressive (even
in “defensive” stance) and your peasants are really really
stupid. Serfs with general orders for construction and repair will
not automatically fight fires, for example, and you have to forcefully
select a group of serfs and tell them to put out a particular building
(only to have them continuously run into the side of the well when
they’re done until you tell them to put out another building).
Troops (even the heroes) on aggressive will not stop and fight the
enemy poking them in the backside while marching. In one mission,
I had to fight the controls to keep my archers form spontaneously
attacking an enemy garrison I didn’t want to engage yet. Pathfinding
is also poor.
One bright spot in this game: the music. The musical score is really
great. Also, the attention to detail went so far as the units (excluding
heroes) speak in their native language (English, German, French) (never
mind that during the time period of this game, none of these languages
existed in their modern forms).
Pros: Decent graphics, nice attention to detail, great music, some
missions are actually quite clever and fun.
Cons: Highly limited construction, few unit types, stupid AI, can’t
zoom out enough.
My Verdict: If you’re looking for a good castle builder, this
isn’t it. Go buy Stronghold (or wait for Stronghold 2 this spring).
If you want a strategy game, this one will do, but it’s nothing
special. More than anything, this game has inspired me to reinstall
Stronghold and build some really elaborate castles. |