Becastled from Mana Potion Studio and Pingle Studio brings us a cozy-meets-challenging strategy game on PlayStation 5. Learn more in our Becastled review!

 

Becastled from Mana Potion Studio and Pingle Studio brings us a cozy-meets-challenging strategy game on PlayStation 5. You’ll be taking on an experience that mixes city building elements with RTS-like tower defense combat. You’ll work hard on building a castle during the day, as you try to defend it during the night. You are placed in the Lord of the Sun Kingdom and must put a stop to the Moon Beasts. Collect as many resources as possible during the day to improve and reinforce your fortress, as you prepare your forces to defend against the attack that will begin as soon as the light is no more. After spending some time in early access, the game is now available on PS5 alongside the 1.0 update.

The game will present to you three game modes to choose from: Tutorial, Freeplay, and Sandbox. As the name suggest, the Tutorial option will allow you to learn the game’s basics as you gather resources, build new buildings, expand your territory, learn how to procure food for your people to keep their mood high, prepare for the night attacks, learn more about the tech tree, and learn how to build and use walls, towers, upgrade your troops, and more. Freeplay allows you to build your castle, gather resources, and defend after wave after wave of enemy attacks. As for the Sandbox one, it will give you a chance to create without limits. You can design your city as you experiment with no resource constraints.

After you begin a run, you’ll be using the left analog stick to move the camera, and the right analog stick to rotate it around as needed. If you need to get a better look at things, you’ll be able to zoom in and out by using the R2 and L2 buttons. Once you’ve opened up the building menu by pressing the L1 button, you’ll be able to choose from the available structures so that you can then select the spot where it should be erected. You can rotate an object by using the L1 and R1 buttons so that it can better fit your plans. You can also build multiples by pressing the Square button if needed.

 

To expand your territory, you’ll need to claim and capture adjacent cells. This will require that you spend some resources. You’ll need to collect a variety of resources, such as wood, food, stone, iron, gold, and Sunstone, to succeed during your time with Becastled. Wood is a very important resource that can be obtained from forests. Just be sure to build a sawmill near a group of trees, so that you can assign workers to the sawmill to start cutting down the trees.

You’ll have to build houses for residents to have a home to go to. The more people you have, the more potential workers you can assign as well. Since each resident lowers the overall happiness by one, you should balance things out by building a tavern. And yes, a tavern will require workers to function. Happiness is all fine and well, but people also need to eat to stay healthy! Build a wheat field to obtain some food. Another good option to complement this will be to build a hunter’s hut. Structures can be upgraded thanks to stones, so be sure to collect as many as possible by building a stone quarry!

To defend against enemy forces at night, you’ll need to protect your city with walls and towers, as well as have enough units to repel the attack. You can select the sun icon at the top of the screen by pressing up on the D-Pad. This will show you the paths that your enemies will take, so that you can prepare accordingly. You can press the R1 button to open the radial menu for troops. From there, you can select all of them, or select the different unit types, from your archers, swordsmen, knights, and pikemen. Once you select some troops, you can use the left analog stick to place the cursor where you want them to be, and then order them to move by pressing the Square button.

In order for your troops to be able to train, you’ll need to craft buildings such as an archery range or a melee training camp. On top of that, you’ll need to collect enough Sunstone for units to train. Be sure to build a Sunstone workshop so that you can keep training enough troops to defend the city, as well as to attack the lunar towers that produce enemies every night. You will need to build additional barracks once you reach the army unit limit. Something else to keep in mind is the change in seasons that can happen in each map. You might have placed your fortress in an area protected by rivers and some moats, only to have Winter crawl in, freezing all water, thus leaving your enemies with a clear path toward your gates.

Another important element to keep in mind is the tech tree. You can open the tech tree by pressing the Touchpad on the DualSense controller. Once you’ve opened it, you’ll be able to go down its many research paths to unlock improvements to your economy and army. You can research a church so that you can build it to boost the happiness of the citizens who live in nearby homes. Other options include a palisade, a simple but useful defense structure, the two-handed knight upgrade, which will allow you to train knights that can wield longswords, or a hospital tent, which can be used to treat wounded soldiers.

Trophy-wise, this one has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy waiting for you. The list is split into 22 Bronze trophies, 13 Silver trophies, and 3 Gold trophies for you to work on. What will you need to do for that shiny Platinum trophy? Some of the objectives to complete in this long list include reaching a population of 100 residents, building a pumpkin field, reaching a mood level of 30, capturing 15 cells in a single game, upgrade the castle to the max level, having a 100-unit army, defeating 1,000 enemies, upgrading a unit to elite level, repairing the ruins of a building, winning a game before day 15, surviving for one in-game year, and winning a game on the max difficulty level, to name some example.

Becastled brings us a cozy-meets-challenging strategy game on PlayStation 5. You’ll be taking on an experience that mixes city building elements with RTS-like tower defense combat. You’ll work hard on building a castle during the day, as you try to defend it during the night. You are placed in the Lord of the Sun Kingdom and must put a stop to the Moon Beasts. Collect as many resources as possible during the day to improve and reinforce your fortress, as you prepare your forces to defend against the attack that will begin as soon as the light is no more. After spending some time in early access, the game is now available on PS5 alongside the 1.0 update. Becastled is out on PlayStation 5 with a $24.99 price tag. There’s also a PlayStation 4 version available for the same price as a separate purchase.

Disclaimer
This Becastled review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Pingle Studio.