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Swords & Soldiers has now been out for more than a week so it's high time we check out the critics.

Swords & Soldiers’ Critics

Did we design the menu clear enough? Have we made the first level easy enough? Perhaps to easy for seasoned players? Whenever we launch a new game, we feel anxious about… basically everything. As you can see in the image to the right, the consensus is that the game is a solid 8, which is great!

Still, the things that you remember most from reviews are the critical notes. Some of them keep hanging for over a decade (Gamepro review of Toki Tori Game Boy Color complained about the ‘cooky cutter garbage graphics’, which still hurts :)). So let’s see what our critics are critical about.

“The gameplay is set up perfectly for head-to-head competition, and the lack of such a mode is disappointing, especially since the game is presented in terms of “Single Player” – this implies that a multiplayer mode should come at some point, no?” - 148Apps

Multiplayer may come to the iOS version at one point, but it’s too early to be specific about it. Aside from that, this is also a pretty good point. The game features multiplayer on a single iPad, which people really seem to like, but on iPhone there is not enough screen real-estate to make this work. But having the ‘single player’ menu option remain on iPhone raises the wrong expectations.

“The biggest disappointment for me was the initial price, I am really glad to see that they have lowered the price, but I do have to say that even at $2.99 it is a real stretch for my liking, and I would rather spend that money on the next game I’m going to review.” - App Safari

This snippet comes from the lowest rated review we’ve got on Metacritic which is a 3 out of 5 stars. It sadly highlights the low price expectations iPhone and iPad players have these days. We could start a rant about the many thousands of man-hours that were put into this game, but if there is anything to learn from this, it’s that we just need to accept and adapt.

“However, it’s likely your reaction when first starting up the game will be ‘is that it?’. As these concepts are slowly introduced across the first of three campaigns, it soon becomes apparent that there’s more to Swords and Soldiers than first meets the eye.” - Pocket Gamer

We usually say that you have one minute to grab the attention of your customer on iPhone. This proves to be a real challenge for a more complex game such as Swords & Soldiers. You don’t want to overwhelm players with too much info, and you know that a lot of good stuff is still coming down the line. Perhaps someone reading this can share their experiences?

“The only thing really missing is the Space Marine faction teased on the April Fool’s Day before the game’s original release. Now there’s a lot who could use a good humor injection.” - Slide To Play


They’ve got us there. This indeed was a missed opportunity.

Feel free to give us some more critique below in the comments section. We’ll keep an eye out and respond, scout’s honor!

Collin, Tuesday July 19 2011