Shaping up to be a great Real-Time Strategy that novices and experts alike will enjoy playing.

Few things in life have blended so perfectly. Peanut butter and jelly, arcades and pasty gamers, Jenn and Ben. OK, so maybe not Jenn and Ben but in the world of PC gaming there is no better marriage than Real-Time Strategy Games and the Medieval time period. Castle Strike doesn't want to ruin a good thing and it shows to an extent. While the game may seem familiar to regular RTS players the game does feature some innovative areas that make it much more enjoyable that others in the genre.

Before starting the main campaign players will want to go through the short tutorials. The lessons are often short but help immensely if your not used to this type of game. Where most game tutorials are extremely boring CS's keep you interested while they last. The only complaint I have is that some tutorial instructions are a bit fuzzy.

Most players will probably have more fun experimenting with different castle building techniques than following the tutorials goals anyway so this can be overlooked slightly. Nevertheless these lessons are fun and allow you to relax before heading to the actual meat of the game.

At first glance I thought that Castle Strike would be a run of the mill RTS. After a few moments of playing through the main campaign I realized that it is much more. The major difference in CS is that you focus more on fast paced action and kingdom building than tedious resource gathering. The gathering of resources is definitely important but it is made easier by a little thing I like to call a Task Slider.

This near revolutionary feature allows you to quickly and easily command your peasants to gather all your resources without having to monitor their every move. The slider is made up of a sliding bar and a triangle. The bar will allow you to send out any amount to peasants that you want by simply sliding the gauge to the right side.

The three tips of the triangle represents your three resources, wood, stone, and ore. Inside of the triangle is a small pointer that tells the servants how much of the resources you want gathered.

Say you want to collect all of your resources at once, all you would have to do is position your small pointer in the center of the triangle and slide the bar to the right to command the servants as you slide the bar the little people scatter and start chopping and mining. This gives you much more time to concentrate on building up your castle and creating large armies.

Combat is where Castle Strike shines. Unlike so many other games in this genre Castle Strike forces you into developing a strategy. If you simply rush in with all your soldiers you will quickly die. This is because the gameplay is so expertly balanced. Most of the time your enemy will have a collection of siege engines.

Devices like trebuchets and an assortment of cannons can easily swipe out an entire army but it is possible to get around this. Instead of destroying the machine you can kill the men operating it and take the engine as your own. However, Castle Strike isn't all combat. During the campaign you will be asked to use your stealth to sneak into enemy castles at night to talk to a friendly monk.

This may seem odd for a RTS but it works surprisingly well. When you are presented with these stealth missions the guards will usually follow a set path and a large green field of vision are will be projected in front of them. Most of the time its all a matter of sneaking up behind them and smacking them with a sword when they stand still but other guards make it more difficult by continuously walking and switching positions. Luckily if you take the time to observe them you won't be overwhelmed and should make it past with little effort.

Another fine point in CS is the building of your kingdom. The creation areas are separated into two areas, the castle and the village. In the castle area you are allowed to build things like your castle walls, training camps, healing tents and much more. In the village area you are only allowed to build residential buildings, the tax collectors house, and resource storage facilities.

The interesting part is that you are not allowed to create a village inside the castle areas and vice versa. Basically the system boils down to this, village relies on the castle for protection and the castle depends on the village for resources and labor. This type of gameplay will keep players on there toes as the village will be one of the first things to be attacked during a raid. Players will also be able to customize there castle to an extent.

Once you build your central tower and the walls you have the opportunity to position towers that are built into the wall. You have the choice of two different sizes large and small. The advantage of having these towers is that your archers will be able to mow down the attacking enemy long before they have the chance to do any damage.

When it comes to sounds and graphics Castle Strike is no slouch. The voice acting in CS is top notch and never gets irritating even though they have strong accents. For the buildings, characters, and terrain to be appreciated the game settings have to be cranked up a little. At 1024x768 with all the graphic settings locked at High Castle Strike looked great but there were a few problems in the preview build.

During some of the cut scenes when the settings were on high the game would crash and restart my PC. It wasn't until I turned the settings down that I could get past this large bug. Hopefully this bug has been or will be addressed by the time the game ships out this October. While the graphics are very nice and are highly detailed they aren't the best of the bunch but this can be ignored since you will be too busy planning your next attack than admiring the scenery.

All in all Castle Strike is shaping up to be a great Real-Time Strategy that novices and experts alike will enjoy playing. Even with the games flaws it is still worth your time to check out and purchase when it hits shelves this October.


Preview by Christopher Burkett.