The best way I can summarize my experience with Medieval Conquest is to say "don't try to make the game into something it isn't." Medieval Conquest is a cute little fantasy game that seems more suited to young people who are getting started in strategy games than to experienced gamers looking for the next challenge. Had I approached the game with my usual mindset while playing a RTS, I would have dismissed the game as frustrating and repetitive. My son, on the other hand, enjoys playing it and doesn't see the things that are so bothersome to me. That works just fine for me. With school out for the summer, the more variety I can find to keep my kids entertained, the happier I am.
The problem is that somehow Medieval Conquest earned itself a "T" rating, so parents may avoid it at first. To be honest, the game makes me think of what would happen if the creators of Shrek got together and made a fantasy-based strategy game. But with so many strategy-type fantasy games to choose from, the limitations of gameplay in this one cause me to leave it as a game for my kids to enjoy, rather than one I'll play through myself. And with the low price tag on the game, I don't mind at all giving them something that introduces them to a new type of game experience and keeps them busy for hours.
You play the leader of an army of characters who is trying to be the next savior-of-the-world. Your role is to build up your army of warriors, rangers and mages as you see fit, create a town to support them, and send them off to clear the land of evil critters. The story of the game is told in chapters, each with three separate goals for you to complete before advancing. I've played through three of these chapters, with each seeming almost a repeat of the first. And this is where I start to have trouble enjoying the game. In each chapter I've played, my characters seem to top out around level 18, and then I find myself starting all over again with little money, no army and a ruined town. I find myself with a feeling of "been there, done that," hoping against hope that each time when the chapter completes I won't be back to square one, only to find I am. There really is little character development, though there are support buildings, items and spells for characters up to level 50. And in the second chapter the "big boss" at the end that I had to defeat said it was a level 40 creature. My army of level 20s was able to defeat it, however, with only two warriors dying in the process. And I think this is one of the reasons why my son likes it. He feels like he's done something amazing when such low level adventurers are able to defeat such a high level creature.
The challenge of the game itself comes from deciding where to build your city and outposts and what buildings to put where. Once you've mastered that in the first chapter, it becomes pretty easy to make your way through the rest of the content. And content is one of the areas that Medieval Conquest does do alright. They have a lot of it, with each map being large enough to take hours to thoroughly map out. And if you take the time to read the entries in your Demon Log, you'll find yourself chuckling at the sense of humor of the writers. Each time you encounter a new creature a page is created in the log that gives a brief description of the creature, along with a count of how many creatures of that type you killed (and, of course, how many adventurers that creature killed.) The problem is that you don't have to thoroughly map out the content in each chapter to advance to the next one. And you don't have to develop really large armies in order to fight your way through the content either. I was able to keep two groups of adventurers consisting of just warriors and rangers in the field, with a third running around town doing whatever adventurers needed to do, and still complete the chapter goals.
This brings me to one of the other problems I have with the game. You really can't control when a particular adventurer in your army goes running off to take a nap, or command them to head back in for healing. You can control what buildings and support equipment are available to them, such as horses so they will travel faster on roads. And you can control who is in which army group so you won't have to have half your army on their way back for an evening's entertainment while the other half is out in the field. But if you loose track of a particular adventurer it is difficult to find them, there doesn't seem to be a keyboard shortcut to "find adventurer." And you can't command the single adventurer in the group who decides not to buy a horse when you put up a new stables to go ahead and buy now, so that the whole group has horses. It would be much easier to manage the game if, once you grouped them, your adventurers acted as a unit, going to town for food/rest/entertainment and buying equipment as a group rather than individuals. And while you can set the area that your army will patrol (called "hunt" in game), you can't force them to stay in that area if a creature spawns near it that you'd rather they didn't fight.
Lest you think that the game has no redeeming value whatsoever, I have to confess that I have gone back to it simply for the cute graphics and to see what the story itself is. I know that someone in my family, be it my son or I, will someday complete the game. Of course, it is more likely to be him because he doesn't feel the need for an ever increasing challenge in a game the way I do, but if he loses interest, I'll have to play just to admire further the creativity of the developers. It's a fun, lighthearted game. And if you approach it from that point of view, and ignore the "T" rating, then you are in for hours of enjoyment. If you are hoping to create the next great army supported by a huge metropolis created by hours of computer-generated sweat, then you'll have to keep looking. That doesn't seem to be the point of Medieval Conquest and, frankly, it doesn't need to be. The game is enjoyable enough just as it is.
I’ve played computer games since college, addicted first to story type games like Might and Magic. I have 3 children who also love computer games. My oldest son is a typical kid who loves the challenge of pressing the right combination of buttons and levers on a joystick in just the right way to make something happens, and frequently gets frustrated with mom’s slow fingers. ;) We use computers for both education and entertainment, and sometimes even bribery for good behavior.
The “glory days” of computer gaming for me were when games like Spectre Supreme, Pirate’s Gold, the Might and Magic series, the original Prince of Persia… those sorts of games were coming out on a regular basis. Back then I owned a Macintosh and was a die hard Mac fan. I was one of the first in my area to buy an iMac and on it learned the joy of playing games on the internet like daily crossword puzzle and “mind bender” type puzzles. My first online RPG was given to me for Christmas the year EQ was released, and I was hooked from day one. I played EQ for about a year. I started playing DaoC during late alpha testing, and was hooked on it.. well, to be honest I still am. I’ve tried pretty much every MMORPG I can get my hands on, from big names like EQ, to more obscure ones such as Underlight. I’ve been writing for IMGS since the first DaoC guide, and find I love the challenge of learning a game and presenting what I’ve learned (and sometimes my opinions), to other players.
I’m not a very strong player as far as learning PvE or quick reaction times, so I tend to stay away from games where I’m pitted against someone else in a way that requires physical (rather than mental) response. I still enjoy story and puzzle games, and in a way that’s how I still approach online games. I would much rather spend hours working through a quest than 5 minutes in combat against another player. I still get lost in simulation type games, obsessing over them until I’ve gotten them beaten. And I like being able to sit down at the computer when I’ve got less than half an hour and playing through a few levels of a puzzle game. I tend not to like first-person shooter type games, or anything with person to person violence, so I steer away from them unless they are fantasy based settings. All in all, I enjoy computer gaming so much that my life feels incomplete somehow when my computer is down.
