Clash of Lords: Guild Castle 1.0.522

So what is it this time? Clash of... Lords. Yeah, that's it. Latching on the ever popular hype of Clash of Clans, developer IGG.COM decided to join in the social base building and base thrashing strategy game genre. You will notice that this game has a very similar feel and play stile to the original CoC. That is not a coincidence.

In Clash of Lords you will be managing a town of sorts, that extracts ore, produces money and some other currencies by the way of bonuses or purchased packs and whatnot. The game does a wonderful job at leaving you clueless about what you're supposed to be doing and what each of the 21 button-icons that clutter the screen represent. Of course, most can be figured out in a matter of seconds. However, after a few hours of fiddling around Clash of Lords, I still cannot figure out everything. There are so many enticing screens that lure you to purchase great value packages that I'm left dumbfounded about what should I do.

What I did figure out however is that the combat forces in Clash of Lords are the heroes (not lords, apparently). Depending on your village level, you may recruit two or more heroes and their retinue, which are essentially the forces you use to perform raids against pre-set villages and other user villages. While stationed home, they will protect your village in case someone else turns up. To help with defenses, you may build canons, sniper towers and walls. If placed strategically, these can easily finish off enemies.

Combat is fairly idiotic. When starting a PVP raid, you get an overview of where your heroes can be deployed. The attacker needs to wager the position of defenses against other buildings, as the heroes and their armies cannot be issued any tactical orders during combat. So, for instance, if they engage the enemy town hall, they will keep hitting at it all the while the static defenses are slowly ripping them apart. Every hero has some activated ability that consumes energy. This energy is slowly regained during combat, so you must use it at the appropriate times. However, that's about it. I know that due to the nature of the combat (the defender is not present to organize his defense) the attacking forces would be too powerful if the player could control them directly. However, just like in Clash of Clans, this is a failed idea from the start, and should have been scrapped. But I guess users don't mind it.

Finally, it appears that Clash of Lords is another money-grabber freemium game that lures you in with cutesy graphics and big starting bonuses, but then quickly becomes unplayable without some infusion of real cash, or the promise of logging in every day, just like modern day slaves do. I agree that in part this impression comes from the fact that I loathe the freemium model. Also about the only clash I care about is the current clash of cultures going on in Europe and the US... and the Clash of Cultures board game on the side.

Find something else to do with your time and money, or at least look for quality gameplay.