Games worth discovering

I no longer want to live in the real world - I want to be a king in The Elder Scrolls: Castles

2K View2023-10-05

SHOULD I PLAY THE ELDER SCROLLS: CASTLES?

The Elder Scrolls: Castles is an excellent game for anyone into base management or anyone who’s ever wanted to be an absolute ruler with complete authority! Like Fallout Shelter before it, Castles takes the sometimes complex management genre and makes it easy to grasp. Though it has some frustrating lag problems, I had loads of fun building up my castle and putting my subjects to work; it felt like being in an episode of Game of Thrones or Succession.

TIME PLAYED

I spent around three hours with The Elder Scrolls: Castles on my Android device. During this time, I built my castle with various collected materials, proclaimed edicts around the kingdom, and ensured my subjects were working and happy. I was even able to wed my chosen citizens and get them to have a baby. Long live the king!

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT THE ELDER SCROLLS: CASTLES?

• Welcome to my house. I loved building my castle with various materials ranging from wood to iron produced by my subjects. The larger my castle, the more machinery, subjects, and tools it could hold to make my people happy. I had free rein to decorate however I wanted. As long as I had the materials, I could add rooms, staircases, and walls, or tear down rooms and use the materials to expand other sections of the castle. And my place looked dope by the time I was done!

• My kingdom, my rules. I made decisions ranging from dealing with traitors to deciding if I wanted to pay mercenaries and even moral choices like figuring out how to handle a subject’s cheating husband. The choices brought to me were always exciting and directly affected my reputation with nobles, commoners, and other groups within my kingdom. The stakes were always high; if I didn’t play my cards right, I could face assassination attempts.

• The social interactions. The king’s reach extends far in The Elder Scrolls: Castles. I could marry subjects to each other, make them have kids, and listen to them complain and comment about daily life. The icing on the cake is that everyone in the game ages—including my royal self. Each day in real life is a year in the game, so I was forced to plan ahead for a successor as well. Still, through elixirs, I could turn children into teens, teens into adults, and so on, ensuring I had a steady working population. Watching my society develop over time was addictive.

• The weird graphics. The Elder Scrolls: Castles has a colorful and vibrant look that I appreciated. Haters might describe the graphics as childish or juvenile, but to me they added to the overall lighthearted nature of the game and highlighted its simplicity. I really dug it.

WHAT SUCKS IN THE ELDER SCROLLS: CASTLES?

• Lag for days. This could easily be due to my older Android model. However, the lag in The Elder Scrolls: Castles was terrible, and there was no way to adjust to lower graphical settings to help. Simple tasks like moving subjects to different job locations or even moving between rooms in the castle became a chore and sometimes caused my game to crash.

💬 Will you play The Elder Scrolls: Castles? And what kind of ruler will you be? Let me know in the comments below!