Daily Review: Swords and Soldiers HD

Daily Review

Swords and Soldiers HD

System: PC (Steam)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just finished the campaign.

So this was a short and quick little game, definitely what I would call bite sized. It has multiplayer elements, but I definitely can't see myself playing them. I'm actually debating to just call this completed, since all that's left otherwise is achievements, which I can't fully complete since I won't play the multiplayer. Either way, this will be my only post about it.

The game is pretty straightforward, and reminds me of numerous flash games I've played before. You create troops, they walk right until they run into enemies and die. Your objective is to usually just destroy the base on the other side of the map, building certain combinations of troops to overcome what they're sending you. It is a very simple design, which isn't a bad thing, once you get the hang of the game the difficulty curve is nice and even right up until the end of the campaign.

There are three 'races' to play, though the differences are there, in essence all you need to learn is which units are best against whatever race you're playing against, and make them over and over. If you play Aztec, you want the priest to make zombies and the melee dudes to rush in. If you play China, you want the old men to instakill anything, and a mix of warriors and rocketeers. If you play Viking, you make regular melee and ranged and just lightning bolt everything else. Other than just clicking the buttons to create the units and occasionally casting spells to help them work through blockages, there's really little strategy to it. Some of the campaign missions throw weird things at you, but after you overcome them, it boils down to the same thing.

The campaign is 30 missions, and can be completed in one sitting if you're determined, two if less so. There are three challenge maps that just serve to get achievements, obviously a skirmish mode and the multiplayer. They really think that people will play the multiplayer, because the campaign bugs you to go play it...every three missions. Seriously.

If you see it cheap on steam, it might be worth picking up, but if I had the choice to buy it individually I wouldn't even bother. I got it as part of an indie pack, and the other games made up the value, not this one.