Defend The Holy Grill In Swords And Soldiers
Swords and Soldiers ($2.99) by Chillingo Ltd is a funny and endearing action strategy game.
There are many castle and tower defense games in the App Store, but this is still a genre that I can never get enough of. Swords and Soldiers is a welcome addition, with easy-to-grasp gameplay and an amusing storyline.
You may have already seen this game on the Wii, Playstation 3, PC, and Mac, but now that it’s available on the iPad and iPhone, I think you’ll find that it’s even better with a touchscreen.
There are a total of three different campaigns, and each one has several levels. During the course of the game, you’ll assist the Vikings on their quest to find the tastiest barbecue sauce, defend the Aztecs’ holy pepper, and help protect the toy-loving Chinese Emperor.
As in most castle defense games, the general goal in Swords and Soldiers is to defend your castle while destroying the enemy castle. After an introductory story, you’ll start out as the Vikings. The first step is to employ some well-endowed maidens in your gold mine, to rake in the gold you will need for other units.
Once your miners are set, you’ll want to start building units. Tapping the arrow in the left hand corner will take you to the upgrade menu, where you can choose what type of units you want to create. In the beginning, you’ll only have berserkers (pure melee units), but as the game progresses, more will be unlocked.
You’ll end up with an array of frosthammers (melee units with stun), catapults, axethrowers, and towers. Those are just the minions for the Vikings. The Aztec and Chinese campaigns have entirely different units, such as corpse-raising sorcerers and bomb throwing monkeys, so you’ll never get bored with the gameplay.
In addition to the army you build for defense, you’ll also have several spells at your disposal that are trained in the same upgrade menu. Offensive spells like lightning bolt damage enemies, and defensive spells like healing help your own army.
There isn’t a lot of control over your units in this game. Once a little Viking is created, he will walk non-stop towards the enemies on the right side of the map and attack whatever he runs into, so you have to constantly create units to keep up. It’s also important to use spells whenever possible to keep your army alive.
The early levels are easy, but as the game progresses, it will take quite a bit of strategy to figure out the best unit and spell combinations to use to succeed. You have a finite amount of both gold and mana at any one time, so creating a huge horde of units is an impossibility. Winning requires more finesse than just amassing an army, thanks to the lack of a formation or unit pause button.
While the general idea is castle defense, there are some variations on that which keep the game interesting and non-repetitive. At times, you’ll need to just survive for a set number of minutes (usually five), and in other instances, you will play with just a few characters or a specific amount of gold, rather than building units.
Besides the three campaigns, there’s also skirmish mode where you fight a random battle against a computer generated enemy of your choice, and challenge mode with specific goals to meet. All in all, there are many hours of gameplay available.
For you competitive types, Sword and Soldiers offers full Game Center support, plus achievements and leaderboards.
I was sucked into Swords and Soldiers from the beginning, thanks to the humorous characters and the story about hosting the best barbecue ever. It’s rare that I really get into the story line of a castle defense game, but it was great fun defending the barbecue sauce while fighting off a host of sorcerers and zombies. I played through the majority of the game and the other two stories were equally amusing.
The graphics were cartoonish, colorful, and fun to look at, which is another reason that this Swords and Soldiers never got boring. I was slightly frustrated at times by the lack of a unit pause button, which didn’t allow me to group my soldiers, and caused them to die one by one, but all in all, the gameplay is well balanced.
My only real complaint with this game is that it wasn’t released as a universal app. The iPhone and iPad games are separate, which is a shame, because I would have liked to play this one on my iPad as well. Hopefully a future update will bring multiplayer capabilities, because skirmish mode would be perfect for playing matches against friends.
I have heard that there are a lot of crash issues with this game, but I didn’t experience any problems when playing it on my iPhone.
If you’re a fan of castle and tower defense games, then Swords and Soldiers is definitely a must buy. The balanced gameplay and funny storyline will keep you entertained for hours, which is well worth the $2.99, or $4.99, if you plan to play on your iPad.
