[h1] Review - Siege Saga [/h1]
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[h1] RATING: 6.0 / 10 [/h1]
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[h1] Overview [/h1]
Siege Saga is a physics based puzzle game. In this game your main objective will be protecting the King, and also his servants and Queen, but those are secondary, not mandatory. To do so you will be provided different building materials each level and will have to use them in an intelligent way in order to deflect all incoming attacks and leave the King unharmed. Siege Saga proposes a simple gameplay formula that is easy to learn but hard to master, and at its job, being a puzzle game that is, succeeds more than decently with quite hard puzzles as you progress.
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[h1] Gameplay Analysis [/h1]
[b] General Gameplay [/b]
The game is divided into more than 100 levels spanning different regions, in each one of them you will have to build a shelter to keep the King and his subjects safe. Controls allowing you to do so are pretty simple: click a building item and drag to create a plank (steel or wooden), some other building blocks can only be placed as they are, and a few can be attached, like Ropes or Baloons, in order to link multiple objects together. Essentially the mouse does everything as far as controls go, being a mobile game port this is understandable. When you are done building your defense, the level will start and several siege engines and enemies will attack you with various weapons, ranging from catapults to ballistas to meteors to magic, each having different effects on your defenses. Since all defensive blocks have a set amount of health and proper mass, they can move, fall, or even be destroyed as the assault progresses. There are three Stars in total to collect in each level, where 3 Stars is the best rating, achieved by saving all the King's Servants if present and also not using all the available blocks, but only a part of them; this system incentives thinking creative ways to beat the levels in order to gain those 3 stars. These Stars do not unlock anything escept Achievements, since the game has around 100 of those on Steam.
[b] Combat System [/b]
N/A
[b] Content [/b]
With more than 100 levels to beat (presumably all 3 stars), this game will keep you entertained for some hours for sure. In around 4 hours of gameplay i managed to do 45 Levels, and difficulty only increases, so if i have to do an estimate i'd say this game can last 8 to 11 hours depending how good you are at puzzles. There is also a Level Editor with which you can create custom levels, but i found no trace of some online place to share them, so i guess that is just an addition.
[b] Balancing [/b]
N/A
[b] Challenge [/b]
Puzzles are quite easy for the first few ones but they will progressively become harder and trickier, requiring some clever moves to get always 3 stars. If you love pussle games this could very well prove a challenge.
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[h1] Technical Analysis [/h1]
[b] Graphics [/b]
This game sports the very familiar, very glossy and cartoonish graphics typical of many mobile games, with simple stylized models and game objects, anyway done in a more than sufficent quality of art, so it is at least decent as far as eye candy goes. Effects such as explosion etc. are basic and nothign special. There is absence of any advanced shader, shadows, ambient occlusion and so on.
[b] Sound [/b]
The sound compartment is nothing special nor terrible, it has sufficent quality stock sounds that are not very inspired but not terrible either.
[b] Performance [/b]
Nothing to report.
[b] Stability [/b]
Nothing to report.
[b] AI [/b]
N/A
[b] Quality of Life [/b]
The game's control system for building works decently enough, except it would be good to have more advanced options like Cloning, Snapping or Locking of parts while building in order to build more accurate structures with less effort. Currently obtaining planks of the same lenght or putting blocks accurately one onto another requires precision and calm, or else everything will slip away and crumble, some better tools to ease constructions would be very good. There are no quality options, resolution options or volume sliders, this forced me to mute the game's music because my ears were going to start to bleed since there was absiolutely no way to lower the volume, same goes for the sound effects. Other than this, nothing else to report.
[b] Bugs / Issues [/b]
Sometimes the King or Servants will just randomly die for no reason, and then repeating the siege agin will maybe make them survive... it is just random sometimes really, but since you can retry unlimited times this is not a great issue. Other than this i did not notice any other bugs.
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[h1] Conclusion [/h1]
Siege Saga is a nice littel puzzle game that has some good concept to it, sort of an inverted angry birds, that works and does what it has to doo and keeps it simple. It migh not be the fanciest or most complex of the puzzle games out there, but if you love puzzle games you definitely want to give this a try.
