929th played so far
Genre: Strategy
Platform: Wii
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Ronimo Games
Publisher: Ronimo Games
Did you know that the only physical release of Swords & Soldiers seems to have been the German version? It’s the only one I could find, at least, which worried me a bit at first. It was still playable in English though, so I’m fine.
Ronimo Games’ previous game, again for the Wii, was the bizarre but fun de Blob, a fun and quite different action/adventure. It looks like Swords & Soldiers is quite different as a side scrolling strategy game. Not playing to type then, even though this at least gained a sequel, so I will see how it works out.
Our Thoughts
It feels like Swords & Soldiers sits between a few genres. On one hand, there’s the base building and upgrading at the end of the map, from the gold you collect while playing – not unlike Plants vs. Zombies building and upgrading, except that you’re creating and guiding the zombies rather than setting up your defense. On the other hand, you direct the one dimensional approach from your base to the enemy’s, not unlike Patapon‘s set up. It’s an effective combination – you create the units and set them off. With the different velocities and abilities, you have to set them off at the right time, and you can sometimes influence their behaviour to help that further.
You also build and fortify towers as advanced outposts that can then be guarded as additional waypoints. They’re obviously there as barriers for your defending opponent, but they work nicely in both directions and I quite liked them as additional defense mechanism that works both ways. Added to that, the game has a simple magic system using mana. It works pretty much as you expect, adding some different strategies to the game as a whole.
The game’s not too difficult and looks similarly cartoon-like. As you might expect, it feels like it would work perfectly as a phone game, but there’s a bit more length and depth in it than you’d expect from those games. Here it’s the perfect smaller bite game.