Review of Kingdom Two Crowns: the skull is weighty
Our Verdict
Kingdom: Two Crowns can occasionally be a little frustrating, but on the whole it is impressive how much it gets done with so little
It seems that there has been a renaissance of simple strategy games in recent years. Bad North, with its exquisitely understated style and very potent premise, demonstrates just how vast even a basic genre like tower defense can be. Some games, such as Reigns: Game of Thrones, go even further and essentially reduce strategy to something like Tinder: a list of binary options that you have to choose, yet it still manages to function quite well. To put it mildly, I was skeptical when someone tried to describe the idea of Kingdom: Two Crowns to me.
A game about managing a kingdom while side-scrolling? I was unable to even imagine what it may like. But everything came into place as soon as I took it up and began to play.You are a monarch, a king or queen doomed to bring back to life a sick, cursed realm overrun by enigmatic creatures.
Riding your regal horse, you tour this side-scrolling world, bestowing money from your coin bag to train warriors and builders, recruit residents, construct buildings, and do just much anything else you can think of.After all, it's an expensive game of rulling.
Although the principle is straightforward, the game does a great job at escalating it. Every night, monsters assault your town. In this scenario, tower defense elements emerge as you erect watchtowers and walls and make sure your people may safely escape behind them. You also need to be cautious not to be ambushed by monsters because of your horse's endurance mechanics, which cause it to tire out if you run too far.
Your health is also your gold in Kingdom: Two Crowns, and this is where the game excels. A coin will drop each time an adversary strikes you; but, if you run out of coins, your crown will drop. This monarch's game is finished if the adversary gets their grubby hands on it. But then you will return to a monarch who had succeeded you on an earlier island. Quite astute, huh?
I adore Kingdom: Two Crowns in this manner. It doesn't provide you gameplay instructions, just like Don't Starve or Rainworld. Similar to really controlling a country, your only resources are the errors made by your ancestors and the lessons you may draw from them. The secret to easy strategy games, or micro strategy as it is often called, is in the way they factor up in size, escalation, and a straightforward formula.
Kingdom: Two Crowns makes every island you visit more difficult by adding new elements to the game, such as random encounters around the kingdom, a higher number of creatures that attack at night, and new structures and defenses you may construct.Having said that, I understand that not everyone appreciates micro strategy, mostly due to control. Control is the essence of strategy, thus it might be annoying when circumstances become inescapable because you were not granted it.
Although attractive, simplistic design in strategy games may have that impact; in Two Crowns, I did come across a few instances of it.When someone disobeys a construction directive or the archers fail to assemble at the wall you have just constructed, it may be rather annoying. However, these are the anomalies, and to be honest, the game is too fantastic for them to ruin.
The fact that Two Crowns penalizes you for having a too strong economy is one of its strongest features. Gold will start to leak out of your coin bag and fall all around you and into the lake below if you acquire too much, which makes sense given that money is also related to your health. The fact that when you stop by your well-meaning people, they drop the money they are carrying at your feet doesn't help with this. It's a crazy and very entertaining mechanic.
The game does a terrific job of emphasizing parallel growth. It seems like you are an old monarch leveling the area and erecting homesteads as you assign your laborers to cut down trees and build walls. It's also a cunning tactical move, as resource management plays a major role in Two Crown's play. You have to strike a balance between expansion on both sides and the efficient use of your money.
Additionally, Shogun and Dead Lands are two additional themed game modes that change the game environment. Shogun recreates the elements of Japanese feudalism, offering players the option to choose a Samurai avatar and bamboo trees, while Dead Lands has a necromancer theme and transforms all of your residents into mindless zombies—an entertaining game for the whole family!
Overall Kingdom: Two Crowns is a really clever kingdom management game, which only serves to highlight how effective a simple concept combined with stunning visuals can be. If you like having complete control, it might sometimes be annoying, but otherwise, this game's structure is really creative and quite addicting.
Kingdom: Two Crowns is available on the App Store and Google Play.