I had a lot of nostalgia for Crush the Castle 1 and 2. I bought this, it was like a 1.50 dollars during a sale, I had sold CS2 cases so why not right? Bad idea as it turns out.
+First game, art style is good, the shots you have are basic but fun. Castles aren't too hard to destroy.
+For the second game, its better. I still like the art style, there's lots of more variety in what you're throwing, castles are more interesting sometimes.
+In the second games expansion there is a special game mode where you kill hordes of zombies running at you rather then destroying castles. Its very short but definitely one of the more fun game modes.
+The third game, the adventures one, is one that I've never played before. The art style is a lot different but I don't think its bad. There's some good additions like the camera being zoomed out so you can see your catapult and the layout of the castle at the same time. Its much more like a children's game with its softer art style, reminds me of Angry Birds. Explosive barrels now go off when either you hit them directly or something hits them with enough force, good improvement from the previous game. Another improvement is dashed lines show you where your previous shot went so you can aim better.
-The issues for the first one start in its expansion, where you get to play custom maps made by the playerbase. Some of these genuinely suck, especially the ones where its clearly just luck if you win or not. Most of them need you to destroy the entire castle in 1 shot to earn gold medals which is annoying.
-Issues continue, somehow the expansion pack for the first one manages to run at... less then 30 FPS. Its quite an achievement to make a flash game run so poorly. Sometimes it jumps back up, 50-60 FPS but then it dies and hits 15.
-When you get cool, new things to throw you never have to switch to the old stuff.
-For the second game, the already existing issues do not get better. FPS still ♥♥♥♥♥ itself, I've seen 9 FPS. While the castles and the tools you have to crush them are more varied and fun, a lot of the missions even outside of its expansion pack rely a LOT on luck and really good aim. Its devolved from a "throw objects at castle, watch it crumble" to "throw this very specific tool into that very specific place 20 times until you get lucky enough to kill everyone in the castle"
-In the second game, the enemies you have to kill have become a lot more resilient. They survive things that they shouldn't which makes it annoying and very luck dependent on if you win or not.
-Similarly to the first game, when you get new and cool things to throw you never have to use the old ones again.
-You could do both direct and indirect fire in the first game which was fun. In the second game something has changed. Your shots fly a lot faster or the distance between the catapult and the castle isn't as large so doing indirect fire becomes a game of dice roll. You can only reliably hit the castle head on; its very rare, difficult, annoying to try and bypass any outer wall that might be there and to hit the center immediately by doing plunging fire.
-You have explosive barrels hidden behind castle walls. They only blow up if you hit them directly. The floor underneath breaks, they fall to the ground or the roof collapses on top of them, they don't blow up. In a game where to earn the gold medal you have to destroy 99% of the castles in 1 shot means that you never get to use these explosive barrels. Either they're in the open so the way to destroy the castle is to literally hit the barrel, you gotta be accurate and can't destroy the castle any other way OR they're tucked behind walls so you need 2 shots to get through the wall first and then to hit the barrel. You never make use of them unless the map SPECIFICALLY wants you to use them.
-Third game, its still somehow laggy but less.
-They've added tutorials now. When you get a new shot it'll show a little tutorial and say "fire shot, it burns wood" I know I mentioned that the 3rd game seems like a copy of Angry Birds, seems much more aimed at kids I would like to hope that a child would know fire is bad and flammable material burns. Do people not let their kids accidentally touch the stove, burn their hands and learn a valuable lesson anymore?
-No infinite shots. Missions have a limited number of shots and types. You make do with what the mission gives. That is bad, not fun, let me fire 20 cuz its fun.
-You can tell the third game had micro-transactions in the past. On the right upper corner you can find the face of the king and it says "reinforcements" with an infinity symbol. You can freely call in "support" if you're having difficulty destroying the castle. Clearly these were not infinite in the past and you had to buy it.
-The luck and physics being silly at times, people being resilient and riding the castle as it crumbles and somehow surviving the fall... Its all still here.
-Previous games had characters and small bits of text but in here its on another level. You're talked to constantly before and after every mission. Its not even fun monologue, its bad.
-The third game adds objectives to missions. Rather then having to complete the mission in one or two shots to earn a gold medal, you now have objectives like not killing animals which give you gold medals in return. At least for some time. Before you know it, the objectives are saying things like "win it in two shots!" or "win it in one shot!" so its LITERALLY NOT ANY DIFFERENT. Its basically the same thing as the previous games just in a disguise! Its not a challenge, its just a waste of time!
-The grave sin of the 3rd game... You don't need to play it. You have an infinite amount of VERY powerful "reinforcements" that were once sold for real money. You can spam them. A single one is enough to win an entire mission on its own. Why play when not only is it not worth it to play but at the same time you're given a free ticket to basically skip every mission. I started skipping every mission unless the layout of the castle and the shots given to me seemed fun enough to bother. I wonder if the devs knew considering one of the missions is literally called "Temple of Boredom" There isn't even an ending. Its either some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about "get all the gold medals to see the ending!" but the game doesn't tell you that or there really is no ending and the last mission is "Cross Your Fingers" and there's a building made of wood, you have 2 flaming shots and there's 5 constantly rotating metal bars in front of the house so its a game of luck about trying to get the shot between those rotating metal bars and hit the building behind. Like thats the level the game is at, even the game is out of ideas and is embracing one of the core points that annoy me about it.
The first game sucks because its short, somehow has FPS drops, its expansion pack is annoying to play through, the stuff you throw only gets interesting at the end and you barely use it anyways. All that considered, the fact that its so short becomes a good point because any longer and it would be torture. Second game sucks because it still has FPS drops, the enemies are a lot more resilient, the castles are a lot more specific in where you have to hit but you can hit the correct spot twice in a row and you'll still have to do it for a third time because you got unlucky with the physics of it or a character survived things they shouldn't have. Its expansion pack is no better. For 1 and 2, nostalgia is the only thing keeping them going. For adventures, its just outright bad. Some things are nicer as memories, let yours stay that way.
