Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest

Druidstone is a mix of Magicka’s cheeky 21st century humor in a fantasy setting, runaway Diablo storytelling, Into the Breach tactical maneuvering, and grinding missions for stars like Kingdom Rush. While the game has merits, I suggest playing the others over Druidstone. The game gets 3 stars because the missions offered many narrow escapes and challenging tactics to complete them on the first try on normal difficulty with all bonus objectives. Druidstone creates this by providing skills with limited uses, that you need to use, but also need to conserve to remain standing long enough to complete all objectives. The hard difficulty is interesting when you know the level/monster layout, as these are fixed. Unfortunately, Druidstone has two major problems: 1. Bad sound, 2. Terrible AI. I turned off the music after a few missions. It was simply too grand, too overwhelming, too annoying. Once the music was gone, there was hardly any sound left. Cut scenes are mute, and battle sounds consist of a few copy-pastes from Grimrock. Speaking of Grimrock, the devs former game, Druidstone is clearly made with the same engine but from a bird’s eye perspective… and zero improvements. Where a mindless attacking enemy would do in Grimrock, it becomes foolish when AI behavior is presented in a tactical game without fog of war. Enemies not barred by a closed door come in straight lines. Even rats and mindless skeletons charge in from 5 rooms away. Once in range they attack, immediately. Even when they are able to come one step closer and wrack havoc or keep a narrow path open by doing so, they simply stop and attack. Once the path is closed, the next enemy turns around and tries a lengthier route. You can even save a nearly dying warrior by placing a full health archer next to it, forcing enemies to hit the “weaker” character. A tactical game without music that can last for hours and a stupid AI? I fear for Ctrl Alt Ninja's next game. It will not be an auto-buy for sure.

+ awesome art, graphics, animations, sound effects.. + relaxed turned based but: - very little room for mistakes - no voice acting - just text dialogues without SIZE settings, too SMALL.

I'm writing some reviews for all the games I enjoyed and deserve a review, this is one of them, has some cleaver puzzles and a nice combat, I recommend you to buy it. If you have doubts check a gameplay, I'm sure it will convince you, plus it has a level editor!!!!

A very simple game with straightforward mechanics made good by its (mostly) excellent level design. It's very light on the RNG in comparison to most games of its type - what you expect to happen happens the majority of the time since there is no chance to hit or anything like that. Most of the maps are well balanced in difficulty and varied, with the occasional puzzle map thrown in to mix things up. My only complaint is near the end there seem to be a lot more "gotcha" moments. Oh, and the story may as well not even be there.

A funloving turn-based tactics game. +Light-hearted and humorous story. +Interesting mechanics and combat tactics. +Well designed missions and challenges. +Gameplay encourages experimentation with easy and quick retries. +Most of the puzzles. -At times a bit to frivolous story. -Blind progression (difficult to plan equipment/skill choices without foreknowledge and little in the way of respec options). -Arbitrary boss weaknesses (you need to guess at possible ways to two seemingly unkillable bosses) -The Mansion missions 3 digit puzzle.