From the Store listing:
Age of Empires®: Castle Siege invites you to guide your empire through the Medieval Era on your Windows PC or touch screen device. Choose from one of several civilizations, including the Britons, Teutons, and Kievan Rus. Upgrade your keep, fortify your walls, and garrison defensive troops to protect yourself from marauders. Then, train an army to raid other cities, and command them in battle to dismantle your opponents’ defenses.
Over the ages, you’ll research technology, live through famous battles, and recruit a variety of heroes to your side, including Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, and Joan of Arc. Outsmart your attackers and outplay your victims to earn achievements and climb to the top of the leaderboards.
Take command, and make your mark on history!
You'll get the idea from the in-game screenshots here. As with other 'civilisation' games, especially those of a freemium nature, it's all about juggling numbers and stats, with multiple currencies, metrics, characters, resources, all to keep track of. The music and graphical effects are attractive and do add atmosphere, but (in my opinion) you've really got to be an RPG or 'sim' fan to make any headway here:
Uh oh, not a good start - so the freemium game is released and immediately you can't buy anything? Probably for the best - see the amounts involved below....
Six different civilisations ages/regions are available to play in....
Within each, there are different characters/heroes to play as, each with subtly different numerical abilities....
Starting out with jusy one keep, you build and upgrade, adding manpower, fortifications and weaponry, according to a number of metrics. Uh-oh, a grand total of five seconds into the gameplay you're already being directed to 'buy' something....
Ah yes, it's greedy freemium (the spawn of the devil) yet again. Just say no, people, and this style of monetisation will go away. It's quite appalling.
An attack in progress, with tiny, miniaturised characters swarming around, implementing your grand plan....
A thriving isometric encampment....
During all the action, there are multiple characters, multiple resources, multiple abilities, all to keep track of. All in quite tiny writing, I'd give your eye doctor a call if I were you, just in case....
You can download Age of Empires: Castle Siege here in the Store. Comments welcome - is this as ghastly as I make it sound?