Castles 1+2

A Castles is a fairly straightforward management sim; you hire workers, gather resources, handle your funs and build a castle. You’ll be attacked from time to time, offered alliances or choices to make with other claimants, but all in all, the core of the game is castle design and construction. Castles 2 is a different beast altogether. The wonderful little micromanagement of building single castles is gone, and replaced instead by an equally wonderful political climate. You play as one of five faction leaders contending for the Pope’s support in your claim as king. While castle building is important to the strategy, it’s just one slice of the pie; you must forge (and keep) alliances, maintain the good graces of the Pope, collect resources, build and maintain an army, keep tabs on the enemy’s forces, strength, and political power, all while keeping enemies from your borders, protecting yourself from agents and saboteurs, and keep your people happy. Failing to do any ONE of these things will result in your rather immediate loss, either because of excommunication, a catastrophic loss on the battlefield, or making one too many enemies. Make no mistake, even on easy, this game is aggravatingly difficult. A significant loss of your battlefield power is not easy nor quick to replace. A loss of Pope Approval is staggeringly hard (and expensive) to build back up. A revolt in any of your territories is costly and time-consuming to win back, and your enemies are extremely difficult to deal with. The only complaint I’d really have is that it can be quite irritating sometimes, especially when your borders touch with two or more rival claimants. They send diplomats to hound you for gold every couple of minutes (each) and failing to pay them off will likely result in war (and subsequently, a loss of papal approval which makes claiming the throne more and more difficult). All in all, though, Castles and Castles 2 are both fun, intuitive and clever little games that are punishingly difficult at times, but all the more rewarding for that. I would definitely recommend both.

Back when I was a kid, my family had a copy of this game, and I loved playing it, even though the closest I ever got to winning was the mediocre "the king likes you so you get to live" ending. The manual I had came with a strategy guide of how to lose the game, which was HILARIOUS, especially the part about not paying your army - after all, when you were in the army, you were paid with sticks. ("Yeah, and they were wet too!") So needless to say, being able to purchase and play this was both fun and a blast from the past. It's astounding how well this holds up. Are the battles as epic as the Total War series? Is the government simulation as detailed as the Crusader Kings series? No, but this is one of those "it's loveable because it's simple" games. You start the game with action points that you use to gather resources, attack other players, raise armies, scout out neighboring provinces, etc. The ultimate goal is to become king, and hence you have to deal with the various computer AI factions, including the Pope himself. Along the way, you have to deal with random events within your country, as well as diplomatic niceties from the AI. This latter often led to hilarious moments in my past, where at times I would get upset enough that I would behead all the messengers sent to me. (Yes, that's an option... I wouldn't recommend it.) Of course, part of this game is you get to build castles, and while the game comes with default plans, it does give you the option to come up with your own designs, which, even with as limited as it is, can still be fun. (Seeing the little pixelated men run around and construct your castle is pleasing as well.) Again, if you're looking for a super detailed medieval simulator, there are plenty of modern or recent titles available, but if you're looking for a fun old game to kill some time, I highly recommend this.

These are the games we all played before the Total War series games were even a twinkle in someone's eyes and well before someone ruined the Lord of the Realm series by releasing the embarrassingly terrible Lords of the Realm 3. If you are a fan of either of the two above mentioned series, I would recommend these games as the Castles games were their precursors.

On my machine, castles 2 had some serious bugs (at least it seemed to me that it must be a bug) and castles 1 did crash on start. The fights in castles 2 are also very old fashioned and the interface is "clumsy" at best. Seems, that this title did not age well and having these video clips and speech inside the game does not make up for it. This is my biggest disappointment in GOG games till now, because I trusted all these good reviews, but many did report their experience decades from now, it seems.

Before the Total War series, before Stronghold, even before Lords of the Realm(gog you better get that one too!), there was Castles and Castles 2. I had the special version of Castles 2 with the documentary on castles, it was very informative. The game itself is great, building your own castle, conquering the land, rts combat, you cannot go wrong at this price.