Banished vs Kingdoms and Castles
Banished
Banished is a medieval-themed city-building simulation that can be pretty difficult to get into at first mainly due to its many nuances and lack of a comprehensive tutorial. But once you get the general idea of how things work (we'd recommend starting with easy mode), you'll start to truly appreciate the game as the challenge that it is. In some way, this game is quite similar to SimCity in many ways with the obvious difference being the themes and the lack of piping, waste management or electricity. Different maps will pose a different challenge and of course, the bigger your village is, the more stuff you'll need to manage. Although it does have some strategy elements to it - mainly in the form of village management, the game is not a war game. There is no fighting involved but your villagers will die from natural causes or disasters like illnesses or famine.However, once you've gotten the hang of the game, Banished becomes less of a punishing game and a bit more boring due to the same-y looking buildings and the soundtrack. When it comes to replayability, we'd say that the game has maybe tens of hours in it before you'll get bored and move on to the next game... and this play duration may be drastically reduced if you happen to be a pro SimCity player.
So, in short, Banished will appear to be a somewhat frustrating game at first, but once you've gotten the hang of it, the game might gradually becomes boring mainly because there is nothing else to do except to expand, expand and expand! However, we can't say that we didn't enjoy playing the game, and even for the shorter play duration it has to offer, as opposed to triple A city-building titles, the game is worth the money it costs.
Kingdoms and Castles
Kingdoms and Castles is a fun medieval city building game developed by the indie games company, Lion Shield. In this game, you'll get to not only build and develop your very own villages around your castle, but you'll also need to defend it from outside invaders. Being the leader, it is up to you to ensure that your people get enough food and supplies to survive the day-to-day in addition to the occasional raider and dragon attacks. How you optimize your cities is also another fun aspect of the gameplay as it provides you with plenty of population-boosting structures to build.Despite its blocky looks, Kingdoms and Castles is a surprisingly in-depth medieval-themed city-building and management game. If you enjoy other games of the same genre, you'll definitely like this game.