Game Reviews

Conquest! Medieval Realms

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Conquest! Medieval Realms

We're always up for a bit of Civilization-style action on mobile devices - after all, turn-based strategy is the perfect genre for playing on the go.

Conquest! Medieval Realms resembles a more simplistic version of Civ, with the turn-based action reduced to attacking and pushing the enemy back until you own the majority of the land.

While this bottom layer is solid enough, a few poor choices on the part of its dev mean Conquest! Medieval Realms doesn't quite live up to its gaming inspirations.

Let's be civil for a moment

Slitherine's strategy sim plays out on a grid filled with territories, cities, military units, and enemies. The sole way to win is to own 60 per cent of the board, and you accomplish this by buying troops and using them to claim surrounding land.

Units can grab land that isn't protected or land that is protected by a building or soldier that is weaker than your unit. Slowly but surely, you chip away at your enemies' defences and connect your territories together.

Territories are a huge part of the game, for they determine how much money you make on each turn and where units can be moved. If an enemy can cut your territory at any point, your empire will be split, thus rendering each part weaker than it was before.

It's worth noting, too, that you need to watch your cash balance, since you need to pay your units' wages each turn. If you don't have enough to pay them, they will rebel, which is definitely not a good thing.

The gameplay is wonderfully tactical, as you attempt to gain an advantage over your opponents while making sure you have enough cash in reserve. As you play, you'll come to realise that cutting an enemy up or destroying its city is sometimes a better option than simply stopping its incoming forces.

What a con

Conquest! Medieval Realms is a fun and engaging title, but it contains a handful of issues which we hope will be patched up in future builds.

One major gripe is the inability to save partway through a game. Matches can take a good hour to complete, yet you can't save and go back at any point - instead, you must play all the way through in one go. This is, as you'd expect, a huge hindrance to your overall success.

There's also no multiplayer mode whatsoever, which is a huge shame for the gameplay lends itself well to multiplayer. Again, hopefully, this will be dealt with via a future update.

Finally, we encountered game crashes periodically during play. Couple this with the fact that there's no way to save a game midway through a session, and it's safe to assume that we pulled a great deal of hair out while playing.

Conquest! Medieval Realms is still worth investing in despite these issues, especially if you're a strategy game buff. But it's a noteworthy example of how a solid title can be slightly soured by such simple problems.

Android version reviewed.

Conquest! Medieval Realms

Conquest! Medieval Realms is a thoroughly engaging Civilization-esque sim, which suffers from a few niggly issues that can hopefully be resolved via future updates
Score
Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.