Game Reviews

Heroes and Castles 2

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iOS
| Heroes and Castles 2
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Heroes and Castles 2
|
iOS
| Heroes and Castles 2

When all the pieces come together, you can see what Heroes and Castles is going for.

When you and a hundred allies are tussling with waves of skeletons and goblins in tin-can helmets, it almost looks like a battle from Lord of the Rings. Squint a little, and you'll see it.

This is ultimately a tower defence game, where you hire soldiers and archers and blunderbuss-wielding Scotsmen to help stop an army of baddies from wrecking your precious crystal.

But, and here's where many of the problems arise, you are also on the battlefield, splitting your time between hiring troops and bashing in skulls through mushy button-bashy combat.

One two three fortress

But trying to deal with enemies hand-to-hand (or with a gun) always distracts from the strategy. Most of the time, you'll just want to get a top-down view of the battlefield so you can manage your foes more effectively.

Not that the strategy in this game is particularly brilliant.

Your ally AI is pitifully dumb. You can't point your troops where to go. And while each troop type has an advantage, it's impossible to remember where those advantages lie.

No more heroes

Put it all together and you end up with a genre hybrid that doesn't do either side justice. It's a bit of a bland action RPG, and a rather shoddy tower defence game. Mushing them together does not make either any better.

There is, at least, a lot to do. You can take over (and subsequently defend) other battlefields to get bonuses.

There's online co-op and competitive multiplayer, and lots and lots of stuff to upgrade through in-game or real-world cash.

But when you're randomly sending out troops and wailing on a spongy skeleton in some vain attempt to win, you might ask yourself why you're bothering.

Heroes and Castles 2

Heroes and Castles 2 makes a mess of both its genres, offering mushy action and brainless strategy that rarely merge in a satisfying way
Score
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer