Clash of Kings 9.18.0

Welcome to the wonderful Clash of ＼（〇_ｏ）／ Kings! It saddens me to see beautifully done building art, characters and crisp interface, on another meaningless sTrATeGy game wannabe. Just as all other games of this ilk, Clash of Kings is a rather boring game-like activity in which you are tempted to just follow "Tips" indefinitely. I know, you would rather prefer it'd let you do your own thinking for a change. Well, you're not getting it here either.

Build a Farm there. Build a sawmill here. Upgrade the city walls. Now upgrade the Farm. Build a depot. Upgrade your walls again. Good boy, here's a reward!. Build a third farm. This kind of endless tutorial is nothing short of annoying. Instead of explaining core concepts, or strategy tidbits, it acts like a slave driver with a carrot, and it got me annoyed after a while. After the first few "tasks" you simply resort to tapping where the little king hand tells you to, ignoring text and whatever else might prove to be interesting simply because it forces mindless automatism in the player.

Apparently, you'd want to develop your city to produce more resources and research awesome stuff. You get to have recruitment buildings from which you can recruit all manner of troops. These guys can be sent on the map to occupy external resources, attack generic enemies, or raid your neighbors. Each player has his/her own piece of land on a potentially infinite plain (I didn't check). There's no point in dreaming about expansion though. You even get a dragon, but it does nothing... I guess you need to raise it somehow, but I haven't got the time nor patience to care for a mythological being, even less for one that only sits and does nothing all day.

The gameplay in Clash of Kings resembles classic freemiums. Production buildings stop producing after finishing one batch, blissfully waiting for you to tap their bubble before they can continue. Luckily, recruitment buildings churn out the entire order and then notify you with a bubble. You don't need to tap for every one of your 600 archers, thankfully.

The troops you produce will be visible inside your castle. There are also several soldier companies marching about on the streets and in front of the walls. I also got a bull that likes to run around the outskirts and then return to the gates. it then stays there in defiance of anybody who would like to come in. Unfortunately for him, he's a sprite, so guests and invaders will simply pass through him. Well, that's life.

Enough joking around. Be careful. Unlike other games of this sort, Clash of Kings features weekly subscriptions. In the North East of the castle map there's a port. There you can sign your soul and wallet so that your castle becomes a nice looking cash drain. The game itself is a cash farm anyway.

Final Thoughts

You can see from a mile what Clash of Kings is. If however you can get past it's Clash of clone status, and totally uninteresting gameplay you might be tempted to invest some money into the welfare of your digital play thing. In that case, good luck.