Swords & Soldiers

Genre: Tower Defense

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

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Review:

Swords & Soldiers is a side-scrolling Tower Defense game originally released on multiple platforms in 2009, and brought to the Nintendo Switch a full decade later in 2019, with the Super Saucy Sausage Fest expansion included for free. This game has players managing resources, summoning armies of fighters, building up defenses, and using magic spells to combat a competing army to try to win the day (as well as winning the feast they’re all fighting over).

This game’s visuals are cartoony in style, and not impressive in any way, but mostly work well enough for the game. I say “mostly” because one of the big frustrations here is how units can jumble up on the map, both making it hard to see individual units to parse what’s going on, as well as making it difficult to target individual units with spells. On multiple occasions I tried to send a lightning bolt at a large enemy that was wrecking the battlefield only to hit one of the countless tiny enemies scurrying around him.

In terms of gameplay, this is mostly decent strategy fare, with four different factions with their own unique strengths and a good variety of forces, and there are even different development trees to pursue so even within a faction you can have different strategies. Unfortunately, much of the strategy of the game is undone by how chaotic the battle can get.

This is in part because of the way units bunch up, as mentioned before, but it’s also because you apparently cannot command units individually. Want ranged attackers to hold position behind the safety of a tower? Too bad. Want gold farmers to go to that second gold mine to double your resources? I swear, it seems like their should be a way to do it, but if there is, the game isn’t telling me how and I can’t figure it out.

I will give the game credit where it’s due – this game has full support for the Nintendo Switch touchscreen, and while I think I prefer standard controls, the touchscreen controls aren’t bad. There’s also support for 2-player competitive play, which is nice.

In the end, Swords & Soldiers is mostly a decent Tower Defense game with some fun variety, but the chaotic elements and lack of control over the troops on the battlefield really rob it of much of its potential strategy. It’s still some decent fun, but there are better options out there.

tl;dr – Swords & Soldiers is a side-scrolling Tower Defense game that has you managing resources, commissioning troops, and competing with an opposing army. While there’s some good variety here, and good support of the Nintendo Switch’s features, multiple design choices limit the strategic potential of the game and make battles far messier than they need to be. Not bad, but there are better options out there.

Grade: C+

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