Becastled

Becastled is a city-builder/tower defence game where you defend against massive hordes of enemies, siege weapons, and monsters. You gather resources, house and entertain your people, and train troops. Sadly it does none of this as well as Diplomacy Is Not An Option does. To get a couple of good bits out the way, I think the resource gathering is done very well. Mostly*. As soon as a worker is assigned to a production building, it seems to just produce. No waiting for them to arrive, or go through animations or anything. I think. See, resource income is stated at the top, but no context is given. ‘+100 sunstone’ is all it’ll say, but gives no indication about timescale. I think it’s per minute or something, but I never found a definitive answer. The big exception to this system is wood. While stone, iron, and food deposits are infinite, wood is not. Your lumberjacks have to walk to a tree, chop it down, and return to the sawmill to provide wood. This means when trees get sparse, wood production slows RIGHT down. Trees regrow every few days, but it’s still an odd anomaly. Happiness is also really easy to manage. Get some happiness buildings down, and as soon as you unlock the mansion, you’re golden. Now the less good stuff. Pathfinding, for one. It’s a common theme to mention this in Becastled reviews because...it’s a big one. Granted, pathfinding doesn’t matter for resource production, but it matters A LOT for soldiers. Groups of soldiers get caught ON EACH OTHER and get stuck (made worse by a total lack of formation options). Soldiers get caught on buildings, walls, terrain... Sometimes they stop to fight when you tell them to move away. Sometimes, and this is a really annoying one, you tell them to garrison a wall and one will just...clip through and stand in front of the wall. The game is also quite shallow. With absolutely no campaign, you’re just left with random or custom maps. Every game is essentially the same. And slow. The game is very slow. Once you’re sorted for the day, you just have to wait minutes for the night to come. No way to increase speed DESPITE LETTING US DO IT IN THE TUTORIAL. Progress is basically limited by population rate, and even with +30 happiness it takes ~30 seconds for each person to spawn. So when you’re trying to raise an army that got decimated the night before...you just have to wait and hope you get them in time. And the bugs. This game is very unpolished. Stuff like the pathfinding I’ve mentioned, but enemies can clip through walls too. I had an enemy swordsmen clip into a tower from the outside of the fortress, killing a load of archers. Numerous times my soldiers flatly wouldn’t go where I told them, instead running off to a tower or wall it thought I meant. And if you reloaded a save, it would sometimes just...not spawn some enemies. I basically accidentally glitched by way to victory on the highest difficulty because the dragon didn’t spawn on the final night. Compared to Diplomacy Is Not An Option, this game is incredibly shallow, dull, slow, and boring. To quickly compare: Diplomacy has a SHOCKINGLY engaging story and characters. Diplomacy does horde fights amazingly. There is a lot more variety in Diplomacy, with different factions, enemies, maps, objectives, and modifiers. It’s also a lot more polished than this. I have ~22 hours in Becastled because I wanted to 100% it and stop playing. I have ~100 hours in Diplomacy Is Not An Option because I absolutely loved it and couldn’t stop playing it. That’s my review.

Wouldnt buy this game until a higher than 1x speed function is added. Otherwise, great game.

I bought this game in 2022 in early access and tried a playthrough and enjoyed it but decided to let them cook it up more. it's now post full release with a few updates and I still stumble into irritating bugs. It is a nice experience if you are new to a simple RTS style game with basic city building. The gameplay and content within it overall don't really make me feel like it was worth it for me, it doesn't have enough elements to make me feel there are a lot of ways to switch up the gameplay.

So after ~5 years of development they released the official 1.0 and finished their game, but it was for nearly nothing. Contentwise a small techtree to research a few units and buildings + upgrades and a wave system of enemies which can be extremely tough(RNG). So in short you build a castle/city to defend against lunar/moon people. Small City bulding + defense against waves. You farm resources build some defensive structures (walls towers and siege engines such as ballista and catapults). You have Soldier you can produce and make them a little bit stronger with upgrades and with a little i mean you will nearly not notice it that they have upgrades. Your Soldiers can be swordsman, knights, pikeman and bowman, Your Soldiers can level up but it's useless, because they die very fast and a really kite strategy or else is not really possible. The Siege engines got even worse, especially it takes ages for making them + ammunition (why?). The Castle/City need to have food, wood, stone, iron and gold (money aka Sunstones). Thats all there is after 5 years there came nearly nothing new content for example a bigger techtree, more buildings, units etc. The Game has alot of problems/bugs especially with AI, pathing of every unit, no formations, no priorities which they should attack first, Walls etc don't protect the archers even a little bit, etc. But now it costs 20$€ instead of 15$€ so you pay more for nothing.. i was thrilled to get a nice game which is like age of darkness final stand or they are billions, but after all the years with all the patches etc.. i got really disappointed.

Not too detailed, but still fun. There is a lots of room for improvement, and I hope they'll continue investing to this game.

Very chilling and vibe game. Recommend. And of course Glory to Ukraine!

The game isn't perfect, but I do think some of the reviews people have written are harsh. Sure that damned dragon is a pain in the rear and yes, the path finding is at times questionable and yes, at full price, you expect the game to be a bit more polished than it is. But personally, I find the game fun and enjoyable and can see me putting quite a few more hours into the game over time. Although I have to say... Even on the easiest setting, the difficulty curve can be pretty extreme at times in the later stages of missions, aka that damned dragon. Would I recommend the game. Yes and No. Yes, if you can get it in a sale, No, not at full price.

A game with great promise, plauged by bugs and adandoned by the devs... shame. Pros: A beautiful looking game, with so much potential. Cons: It's just too buggy. Pathing = bugged Collision system = bugged. Building system (placing and building) = bugged. Would love to recommend it but can't in the state its in and Devs words "The game is done and we need to move on to other projects it will only get critical bug fixes". Stay away.