Lego Kingdoms Castle – A Lego Castle For The New Generation
The Lego Kingdoms King’s Castle is the centrepiece and largest set in the Lego Kingdoms line. A great many of us got our first Lego experience on a Lego castle set (this is only the latest in a venerable line), so no doubt we are anxious for our children to experience feudal Lego fortifications too!
The storyline – such as it is! – revolves around the castle of the good King which is under siege by the bad guys – the evil Dragon Knights. His task is to repel the attack with the help of his best soldiers, making sure of course that the drawbridge is up and the gate shut!
The first time you see the box in the shop it is straight away obvious that this is a MAJOR Lego set – the box is absolutely gigantic. This is the kind of Lego set you get your children once and it keeps them going till college (when you finally get to play with it). When you get the box back and open it this first impression is additionally reinforced by the sheer quantity of the contents. For one thing, as we said earlier, the set has 933 bricks (see below). There are also (slightly overwhelmingly) three different instruction books and initially it was a little challenging for our test subject (an 11-year-old boy) to know how to begin! One minor complaint about the instruction books was that instructions are given entirely in pictures, no written explanations whatsoever!
Sure, this simplifies things for Lego in localising for a variety of countries, but some non-visual types prefer a little in the way of written explanation. No huge issue, just an observation.
But once the build was in full swing, the Kingdoms Castle was logical and fun to assemble and the time seemed to go by in seconds!
The castle will most likely take two kids an bare minimum of several hours to complete (if you actually want them to have fun doing it too and not just finish as quickly as possible for the sake of finishing) but we divided the job between 2 successive bad-weather days. Once the build is finished and you have got over admiring it of course there is more fun to be had, flicking Lego bricks around with the big working catapult!
Of course, the fun doesn’t end there either because your children now have a huge pile of bricks to build other projects with.
The Lego Kingdoms Castle includes the following pieces and figures: the King, the King’s throne, four King’s soldiers, 1 Dragon Knight, 2 Dragon Knight Soldiers, 2 small catapults, 1 large catapult, a secret jailroom, a lowering drawbridge and a wind-up gate.
The kids especially appreciated the action pieces like the drawbridge and portcullis that can be cranked up and down – the catapult we need not even mention..!
If we had to say anything negative about the Lego Kingdoms Castle it might be that some parts of the structure seem a little fragile in construction, bits of the walls in particular can get knocked off perhaps a little too easily. But if your kids can manage that with a well-aimed catapult salvo they are hardly going to complain! Also, you need to take the age limits seriously – with nearly a thousand pieces, many of them small, this is not anything you want falling into the hands of a young child.
However, this is just minor fault-finding – the Lego Kingdoms Castle is a set that no child should be without, that will go on to provide thought-provoking enjoyment years from now.
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