Facebook Games: Castle Age

The name Castle Age is not new to the Facebook community. With over 2 million players already playing the game, Castle Age is popular among fans that loves fantasy RPG and has been around Facebook for some time now.

Story

The game tells a tale of a lone protagonist who arrived in a village that is being attacked by the forces of evil (same old story you hear every time in RPG). Once you the hero “saved” the village you will be presented with your first general (out of the four heroes) and from there your adventure begins in the land of Valeria. As you journey towards various lands on Valeria you will encounter numerous heroes who will be willing join your cause and also the evil that has been threatening the once peaceful land of yours.

The Story line in this game is presented in text base manner and as you progress throughout the game, small part of the story line will unveil to players. The game does not really end once all the quests are completed. The story is ever evolving as the developers will release a new chapter within every few months to keep the game ongoing.

Gameplay

The gameplay for Castle Age is rather easy to learn and pick up. For those who played Mafia Wars or Vampire Wars will feel right at home with Castle Age.  Players whose actually been playing Flash games in Facebook, will feel that this game is rather complicated and dull at first, but once you get the hang of it, this game can be very addictive.

RPG elements presented in this game is the same as any RPG that you can find in the market as players will be provided with the basic skill set like level, energy, health, attack and defence. Items like armour, weapons, soldier units and heroes will also make their appearance and each of these items will have an effect on how you play it.

During the first few days, it will take new players a bit of getting use to the game mechanics and how the questing goes, but after you get use to it. Things will turn up easy and gold seems to be rather easily obtained once you throw yourself into other additional mission or battles.

Castle Age is represented in 3 types of gameplay for player to choose from. Players can do either the following mode which is Questing, Siege battle or Duel and each of these modes has its own reward and entertainment.

First off we look into Questing. Nothing much can be said as this is the most basic type of thing that is known by any RPG games. You get into a quest, complete it and get the reward from there you move on to the next quest. Castle Age however, throws in some additional stuff into their quest as you need certain heroes to progress on certain quest. If you are equipped with the wrong hero, the game will tell you that you need to choose the correct hero for the land before your questing bar can progress; else you will be wasting your valuable energy on it. Once 4 quests are completed, a special quest will be unlocked on each land you visited and the drops depend on the quest itself. It can be either special equipments or a monster orb which you can later summon for an epic boss fight.

This is part of questing (Epic Boss fight) will involve more than yourself as you will be calling for friends and allies to help you in defeating the boss and gain special reward after each fight.

Once you get tired of questing, you can then try the battle and dual mode gameplay. This is where half of the fun is in playing Castle Age. For battle and duel involved mainly in choosing the correct hero into battle, the right equipments and also having the suitable units. Battle is divided into to two forms, siege mode and duel. In siege mode, you will have your friends to help you. This is call army, the more friends you have playing Castle Age the more powerful you are in siege mode. As in a person with 50 friends will have more advantage with towards a player with only 45 friends, this is where your maths comes in handy. No wonder my teacher used to remind me that math will save the world one day, Thanks Teach!

Dual mode however does not require a lot of army members as in this part of game, having equip the correct hero with the right status and equipment can make you a powerful force to be reckon with. No joke especially when you face off against an opponent that is nearly double your level and you come out kicking the poor fellows butt.



With all those gameplay to keep you occupy, things doesn’t really end here as the developers for Castle Age will throw in special event and updates once a month. The newest event that they held is Arena, similar to Battle, but with better reward which is for limited time only. The rewards are worth investing into as some of the items and units are ungodly powerful.

Graphic

I would say that for a web base MMORPG, Castle Age is one of the best looking games in Facebook. The art is very well done and some of the background is so good that you might even be tempted to put it up as your wallpaper background.



From heroes to villain and to the basic units, all the arts are well done and with a mixture of east and west. Take for an example; Hero unit like Lyra, her hero profile picture is more towards the eastern side with the typical Japanese anime style type of art while the Hero like Crom will have a more western look similar to Conan the barbarian. All in all the arts is praise as the artist put a lot of effort in creating them. However, I do notice that Castle Age heroes do have more female than their male counterpart as most of the heroes presented are ladies. I think this is to attract most of the male players in Facebook.

Sound

No sound in this game unfortunately.

Conclusion

I for one really love the game a lot and it does help me a lot kill some time during working hours as it require no loading and easily open and close after a few minutes of clicking. This game however is not meant for all players as most people will find it really dull while those who enjoy games like Mafia Wars will surely like to take a look into this game. It is worth the try.

I would personally give Castle Age 4 out of 5 in score ranking.

Castle Age Links

1) Facebook- You must have a Facebook account to play Castle Age

2) Castle Age Application at Facebook- http://apps.facebook.com/castle_age/