The original Castle Wars was a fun card game where the aim was to stock up your resources then use them to beat your opponent.
Each of you had a castle and victory would come to the one who either destroyed their opponent or built themselves up to be more than 100 blocks in height (I suppose making your castle that high just terrifies the enemy into surrender).
There were various stats to take care of.
First, there are those you use to collect resources. They are builders, mages and recruits. The higher their level, the more resources they give you every turn.
These points are then used for various skills.
Builder points (bricks) allow you to build things, such as making your castle higher or building a defensive wall that your opponent has to destroy before he can hurt you.
Mage points (crystals) allow you to cast magic spells, such as summons that can hurt your opponent or moves that either reduce the number of resources they have or increase your supply.
Recruit points (weapons) are mainly used offensively, calling on your army to destroy your foe.
It may look basic, but it’s fun.
The graphics were simple but they worked well in giving you a sense of the scale of the castle you were building up, something the sequel lacks a little.
The cards were generally well balanced and gameplay focused on deciding whether to make several attacks, depleting your resources, or stockpile over several turns so you could strike devastating blows.
My main tactic would be to use cards to increase the level of my resource creators whenever possible, saving up for bigger attacks while keeping my castle at a decent height.
However, there wasn’t much else to it. Play and win one game and you’d seen all it had to offer.
There was a multiplayer mode but unfortunately it’s a bad joke. It’s easy to connect and find a game but 90 per cent of the people you play will quit out of any game where they’re about to lose, meaning you will never get a victory.
If the game maker had made it so if your opponent quits then you win, this would have been okay. Sadly this is not the case, so multiplayer is a frustrating waste of time.
So what’s changed for the sequel?
The graphics for a start. Look how nice and shiny your castle is.
The biggest change is the new campaign mode. Whereas before there was only one battle to fight, here you have a whole map to go through.
Every opponent starts with a different level of resources, making each fight slightly different.
There are also three difficulty levels, which alters how many resources you begin with.
Sometimes the hardest mode can be frustrating, such as when your opponent gets lucky with his cards and is able to defeat you in a few moves while you’re unable to do anything about it, but it really adds longevity to the game.
There are new cards as well – for instance, you can now use your builders skill to attack as well as defend. You can also unlock new cards by playing through the campaign mode (all of which are both very strong and hard to use).
Quite a few of the cards have special effects, such as nullifying your opponent’s next attack or doubling the power of yours, or spying on your opponent’s cards.
Aside from this, nothing has really changed.
However, the new campaign mode makes this a far superior game to the original, the graphics are more polished and the new cards are fun to try out.
But what about the multiplayer?
Sadly, the biggest problem has still not been sorted out. Are you a sore loser? Then just rage quit whenever you’re about to be beaten and your undefeated reign will never end.
Seriously, not sorting out this issue cannot be called anything other than a massive fail on the part of the programmer.
However, my brother says he has had less of a problem with losers quitting on him so perhaps it’s just my bad luck.
Still, fighting a ten-minute battle then having some guy quit on me is enough for me to ignore multiplayer forever.
The computer will never quit on you. When it comes to this game, he is my only friend.
Single player mode FTW: Castle Wars 2
Written by: Richard Wilson
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