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Game Review: Heroes & Castles: Enough Action to Please Any Gamer

In Heroes & Castles, Foursaken Media has created a genre blending game that is part Action-RPG, Strategy and Castle Defense. Either of those types of games individually can bring plenty of fun gaming, but put them together and you have a formula for success. Heroes and Castles has plenty to offer if you are willing to dive in for the long haul. In the name of your King who is near death, you must defend the castle gates.

Foursaken Media is known for the iOS games they have produced such as Bug Heroes 1 and 2, Sky Gnomes, Block Fortress: War and of course Heroes and Castles. Heroes and Castles puts you in control of one of many characters leading the charge in defending your castle which is besieged by waves of enemies. Once you exit the castle gate, you will face shield and sword bearing skeletons, mummies, ghouls, orcs and trolls just to name a few. The game play gets hectic pretty quickly even in the early levels, but that is a good thing because it prepares you for the onslaught of action, adventure and strategy that will be required to advance in the game. Not only will you take control of your hero, but you will also manage your units, and the sources needed to help sustain your castle walls.

The game is broken up into campaign mode and siege modes. In the campaign you defend your castle in over thirty levels from a 3rd person perspective. In the initial levels you can choose to be a Knight, Paladin, Engineer, or Assassin. As you get deeper into the game and successfully complete levels, you can use the in game currency of diamonds to choose other characters which include Rangers, Mages, Veterans, Barbarians and Druids. Each character has stats that increase over the levels and you have the option of upgrading either active or passive skills by using your well-earned diamonds. In the case of the Knight, an active skill is the Hero Strike, whereas a passive skill is heavy armor or leadership. The skills vary for the different characters. In siege mode the tables are turned and you attack the castle as opposed to defending it. Why play a Knight when you can be a Skeleton with a huge sword and shield?

You are going to need help to fight off those enemies! It is a good thing you have access to Peons, Archers, Pikemen, Riflemen, Dreadnoughts and a host of other help that will be at your beck and call. That is, if you manage your gold mines. Here is where this game really shines and where strategy becomes a frantic part of the action. As you are upgrading your hero, you will also upgrade the warriors that help to defend the castle walls. If that wasn’t enough to oversee, you additionally must manage the strength of the castle walls and the keep where the goal is mined. If the keep is destroyed, you have no resources for teammates or repairing walls that are certain to be damaged by Orcs.

Heroes and Castles graphics are quite appealing. You move your hero beyond the castle walls using a D-pad that is pretty responsive. There were a few moments where I got stuck in the middle of the action and couldn’t maneuver the way I wanted to, but that is a minor gripe. Between using your hero to dish out swift attacks in defense, balancing the use of your active skills and passive skills and managing your resources, you feel like you have been in the heat of battle once you finish a level. Heroes and Castles is a deep fun game requiring commitment to the charge of defending your castle. The game play translates well from phone to tablet.  

Heroes & Castles is available now in the Play Store for $1.99 without any other in-game purchases which is pretty rare in games these days. Multiplayer is expected to arrive at some point, making this quite a lengthy game for such a small price.

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