If you're working for an emperor, you'll eventually be called upon to keep him or her safe from wave after wave of encroaching Orc armies. It's in your job contract.
This is the underlying idea found in Topware Interactive's Two Worlds II Castle Defense HD for the iPad, wherein you must defend your emperor from waves of enemies as he searches for ancient artifacts capable of granting him an endless supply of power. Similar to the tower defense genre, you start off with a limited budget and must continuously purchase, repair and upgrade new units to battle increasingly difficult waves of enemies that can rush in from any given entrance on the level.
Two Worlds II Castle Defense HD comes to the table with some neat bells and whistles to add to its replay value. The game sports three difficulty settings, OpenFeint compatibility to track high scores, achievements, and unlocks and a series of unlockable Challenge levels wherein you'll have to keep a central character alive while fighting in a protective circle formation.
The game offers solid graphics, smooth animation, and good use of lighting and particle effects. A strong combination of sound effects and music keeps an energetic pace going and support for up to 50 units on screen simultaneously makes for frenzied end-of-the-level battles.
It's the small touches that make this game work. Set up the right defenses to cover an entrance and you can buy yourself enough time to scroll over and deal with catastrophes as they arise. This, combined with a clever use of the level's scenery, allows certain units to be barricaded off from anything that's marching by on its path to kill the emperor. This in turn allows you to place a ranged unit (such as an archer or magic user) safely the barricade inside while placing melee units where they're needed. Merge this together with an app that runs extremely well under iOS 4.3.5 and a reliable save system and you've got something worth looking into.
If there's trouble in paradise, it comes from two factors: the first is that the game's content feels limited to the five levels found in the basic campaign. While the challenge levels help to a degree, the game could benefit from a more varied look. Perhaps more critical to fix in the near term is a bug within the game that essentially layers some units on top of one another, making it harder to select a specific unit. While not a deal-breaker, this makes gameplay tricker than it needs to be, especially on the fly.
The bottom line. In spite of a few kinks, Two Worlds II Castle Defense HD has its act together, offers a new approach to the tower defense game genre and proves to be a good way to kill 15 minutes or so while trying to defend your emperor...
of 4
iPad running iOS 3.2 or later. Also available on iPhone for $4.99.
Good graphics and sound. Fun gameplay. Solid app functionality. Unlockable challenge levels are a fun break from the standard game. Interesting approach to the tower defense game genre.
Content feels a bit limited/repetitive. Layering makes it harder to select individual units on the fly. It'd be nice if this was a universal app.
