Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders review

When the Xbox was first announced it was likened to being a PC in a console box. It was suggested we’d have more realtime dtrategy games, more management games and generally more of the types of games that console owners had been missing out on for years.

For the most part, this hasn’t happened at all. The number of RTS games on the PSone alone beats that of the Xbox hands down and the less said about how many Civilisation clones there are on the Xbox, the better. To some degree, Kingdom Under Fire tries to alleviate this situation. It treads on a fine line between RTS and all-out action and what it achieves in doing so is quite surprising.

Once upon a time

Upon booting up KUF:TC and choosing your character, you’re greeted with a text heavy introduction. This proves to be the manner in which the story is told throughout and there are no fancy cut-scenes apparent throughout the entirety of the 20-30 hour game length.

The plot is revealed to you in snippets of character speech between missions. The story, whilst clichéd, isn’t actually that bad but as the game is quite action heavy, the reliance on text read by stilted voiceovers feels a little out of place.

The game proper is divided into four sets of ten missions, ranging from easy to very hard and each representing a different species. Effectively you’re going through the same story from each individual angle. It almost makes playing as each character seem like a seperate game. The first campaign, playing as Gerald, serves as an introduction to the themes, controls and principles behind the game.

Sitting comfortably?

I found that it wasn’t until the 7th or 8th mission that things started to get tricky; at which point it was difficult to beat a mission first time and repeated attempts were required.

Upon completion of Gerald’s missions, I started playing through Lucretia’s (the next difficulty level) and found they picked up pretty much where Gerald’s left off, ie they were no pushover and they provide a decent challenge.

Whilst the missions can be as short as 20 minutes, it’s more common for them to last between 30-60 minutes. Although the first few missions aren’t difficult, I’d recommend playing them through, as they’ll give a good insight into how the game works.

Total war?

The game looks very much like a Total War title, with a relatively high level view of a battlefield and troops. You can manoeuvre your troops across the battlefield with an on-screen cursor or with the help of an overview map. Once you enter a melee with an enemy squadron you’ll find the control method tightens up nicely.

It’s when you get into such close-up conflict that any similarity with larger scale strategy titles falls by the wayside, as it this is where the real action occurs. Upon meeting a rival, the camera drops down into the battle and focuses on your leader, of whom you now have direct control as the game becomes a beat'em up.

Your leader reflects your squad as a whole and the energy bar will apply to your team, as if you die, so does everyone else. There’s a basic but effective fighting engine herein and with the special moves you can call upon when your Skill Points increase, it makes for enjoyable fights throughout.

Stone beats paper

There’s a constant scissors, paper, stone core to the fights, as cavalry can mow down infantry with ease but are particularly susceptible to spear defences and archers are clearly good at longer distances whilst being no match for infantry. This element doesn’t play a big role earlier on, but becomes very important in later missions.

The missions themselves are pretty dynamic for this sort of title. Whilst they are in reality very linear, they feel quite open-ended when playing. You’ll set off into the field with instructions to complete one specific task but the game will sideline you repeatedly in order to fend off newly discovered foes or to assist other troops found out in the open. This is nowhere near as frustrating as it may sound and instead helps hold your interest on what could otherwise be very boring objectives.

Sturm und drang

Of course, one of the major selling points of KUF:TC is the sheer amount of action that can occur on one screen and in this it doesn’t fail. At any time you can see up to 200 troops fighting with some splendid animation and particle effects with no slowdown whatsoever.

True, there’s clipping and it can sometimes be a touch difficult to guide your main character to individual targets when in the midst of such carnage, but it’s forgivable when you can see the scale of the battles that are being fought.

The battle graphics are only bettered by the sounds. This is a game for which a 5.1 system with a decent sub should be compulsory. If you’ve got such a system, grab this game and play through with the volume as high as you can. You’ll thank me after the first time you hear the crackling fires caused by an influx of flaming arrows and even more so when you hear the cavalry for the first time. It really does sound like you’re caught in the midst of the battle for Helm’s Deep. Fantastic stuff.

The jagged edge

Unfortunately there are some negative issues with the graphics and sound, too. Firstly, whilst there’s some impressive depth of field effects going on, there’s a distinct lack of anti-aliasing. I’m not usually one to complain about this, but the models used make it particularly obvious and the jaggies are pretty harsh.

Secondly, the sounds used for battle are top notch, but the voiceovers are nowhere near the same quality, with the acting sounding too clean and soul-less. The music is another matter altogether and it’s here that Phantagram has made an odd move. Instead of opting for some rowsing classical tracks, it has opted for some generic rawk music which doesn’t suit this game too well. The absence of user soundtracks doesn’t make things any better here, either.

A battle won?

The most difficult part of KUF:TC to get to grips with is the control method/camera (which are similar to Full Spectrum Warrior). In early missions you’ll be tempted to direct your squad using the onscreen cursor directly across the battlefields, but it becomes apparent very quickly that this is not the way to go.

Using the overhead map (accessed by holding L or R) is much easier and from here you can control your troops with relative ease, in fact you’ll find yourself only using the main cursor for the odd bit of adjustment rather than any mass scale movement.

When you look at KUF:TC objectively, it seems to be very much more than a sum of its parts. The audio is flawed, the graphics can be dodgy, the plot is thin and the controls are iffy, yet it still proves to be a very compelling and accomplished little action/strategy game. With Live play included (though not brilliantly implemented) and RPG elements of character development, this is a solid action-strategy game that succeeds much more than it fails. Kingdom Under Fire is a surprisingly good game.