Welcome to another in the series of Westward games, Westward Kingdoms. In a departure from the usual Wild West location, Westward Kingdoms puts you into a kingdom where you are the Prince or Princess trying to prove to your father, the King, that you are worthy of becoming the next ruler. You will progress through 3 different kingdoms where you will help out the ruler of that area plus discover that you have to rescue your father from a Dark Wizard. In the process, you will use your Villagers to build up the kingdom and keep everyone fed. The Soldiers will help you fight off Barbarians, Giants, Dark Knights, and the like. Your Wizard will provide important wizardly magic in your quest. In addition, to completing the game in general, there is a long list of challenging trophies to obtain (if you are into that).
Westward Kingdoms is very similar to the other Westward games, but with enough changes to make an experienced Westward player change their game-playing strategy. However, this game requires absolutely no previous experience, especially if you look through the General Tips in the walkthrough. I highly recommend this game. It will provide you with many, many hours of entertainment.
The cool thing about Westward Kingdoms is that you can stop playing for a few days (like I did when I went to Disney World with my fantastic family last month) and come back to it without too much difficulty. This is because the game provides an ongoing quest list that shows you the open quests and what still needs to be done to finish those quests. The bad thing is that there is not a Town Status list like in the other Westward games, so you should take a few minutes to figure out what buildings you have and where everyone is working. Of course, it is always a good idea to reassess and tweak everything every now and then occasionally.
Of course, this game may very well be a nonstop play for you. Naturally real life will keep you from playing 24/7 like it did me, but it certainly could become the solitary focus of your gaming life for many days or weeks. Seriously though, it took me over a month to play this game and write the walkthrough. Now during that month, I actually did hold down a part-time job, take care of my family, and go on vacation; but this game definitely gives you more than full value for your $6.99.
