Castles

Always been curious to know how to play this game, but never bothered to learn, until now. Wasn't too hard tho.

The PC version has way more... artsy stuff (mainly some full-screen pictures) than the Amiga version, but the music in the Amiga version PWNs the PC version IMO, even if the PC version used SoundBlaster or whatever soundcards.

There are two versions - this one that I did, and then an updated version (v1.1) called "Castles: The Northern Campaign". They were both released in 1992, and the 1.1 version is only a data disk with which you need to use the normal Castles disks to create a new 3-disks set.

This updated version has some new conquests and graphics, a more extensive commodities market (e.g you can buy and sell stuff). More troop and combat options. Viking units too I think, and other stuff. New plot lines and messenger screens.

But I decided to do this standard version instead of the updated one, as this is the one most of us know and love, and is the "true" version IMO. If I did the other one, you would miss out on the original plot lines and stuff.

I played through it twice while learning, then did a final recording. I don't play amazingly well I guess, but enough to win (which is not hard in this game, at least not on the difficulty I chose). My castle design is crap, I just wanted to build 50 pieces or whatever. I tried to be as good of a King as I could, which seemed to have paid off as the ending result stuff seem to be everyone loved me.

There are two "game modes" (worlds) tho. The Real World and the Fantasy World. So after I completed the Real World, I did the fantasy one, at 1:32:15. I was excited to try the fantasy one, as I read it had dragons, orcs, elves and other magical stuff. But was kinda disappointed that it was all just in text-form during the "messenger" screens. Still tho, was fun to see what happened and how it played out. Each time you start a game in either worlds has kind of a different story. Some stuff I had happen during my training playthroughs didn't happen in these two recorded ones.

The Fantasy World playthough went better than the Real World one, as I learned a bit more during the longplay. So built the castle a little bit better, did some better management of stuff, also showed off how you can reverse the view so you can look behind the castle by pressing the F key, which I saw none of the videos on YouTube show. Same was with the T key, which you can push during the messenger screens to show the amount of gold and soldiers you have. One Amiga guide on YouTube of this game gave the advice that you need to write down these stats every now and then so you know how much you have when people ask for gold or troops from you, as "there's no way to view this info during the messenger screen". Well, just read the manual and you would know there was/is a way . There's more keys that does different things, but F and T were the important ones.

My favorite moments was... I think during the Fantasy World run, where this dude who kept killing my deer (or whatever the animal was) over and over again, and I kept pardoning him over and over again . Eventually the other knights weren't happy that I kept doing this so they wanted him dead or whatever, but I just ordered to let him be, let him hunt. Then one day he disappeared, so it was probably one of the knights who finally had enough . Too bad, I kinda miss him now lol, we had many meetings.

To win the game you just need to have all the placed pieces completely built, and you'll then get the question if you are done with the castle (this probably only happens after you've built enough pieces, didn't test it). What happens then is the final battle begins and the computer comes at you with some units, just survive and you win, ez pz. The longer I played, the more the stories seem to kept unfolding, so I was kinda tempted to keep going during the fantasy one, but decided to finish the game so completed the last pieces of the castle and defeated the enemy. I got the evil magical portal to close (chose to send the nun there to close it, which seemed to work, wonder what would have happened if I picked another option), and my deer poaching buddy was killed or just disappeared (forgot), so decided to end it there

There was one thing about this game that annoyed me, it's how I often accidentally click away messages and stuff the second they appeared (especially the ones telling me from which direction the enemy comes), as I was currently busy clicking on stuff. So it was often important messages was unread as they came and disappeared just as fast.