Let's go back and start at the beginning.
One of my favorite games of all time is
King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame. In fact, I strongly recommend the collection. Especially the Saxons expansion, though the base game is so unique.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/king_arthur_collectionThis game might lure you into thinking it's a Total War ripoff, but the base units are not the star. The real fun is in your KNIGHTS, which command the units. They are superheroes and have abilities that alter the course of battles in drastic ways. Whether it be a "champion" class cleaving hundreds of enemies in a few seconds or a "sage" class tossing fireballs to consume an entire squadron of archers.
There were also 3 concepts woven into the games.
1: Morality
The morality circle of King Arthur games determines what units you could recruit, what knights will join your ranks, and how loyal your knights are to you. Yes, some will leave your service if they don't like how you run the place. It was a simple circle with Tyrant vs Rightful and Christianity vs Old Faith/celtic
I always had a penchant for playing my first game as Rightful/Old Faith followed by Tyrant/Christian. (Fie on Goodness, FIE!!!!)
2: Quests
The quest system of the original is either annoying or exquisite depending on your POV. Presented as little story elements, you were rewarded for your knowledge of the lore, which you were free to read or not in the game's library. These quests were typically presented as choose your own adventure quests, with your choices impacting upcoming battles and your alignment on the morality chart.
What made these good is they were well written and the rewards for your choices weren't always apparent. Sure, obviously siding with the druids over the priest would = old faith points, but freeing the prisoners might net you loyal subjects or a larger enemy force for instance, and sometimes killing them was seen as the rightful thing.
3: Combat was rarely about mopping the floor with the enemy army, it was about holding onto particular points on the map. This often forced you to split your army into little groups to capture various points simultaneously.
Fast forward to
King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame 2.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/king-arthur-ii-the-role-playing-wargameI can't really recommend purchase unless you get a screaming deal on it just for the fact it's NOTORIOUSLY poorly optimized and tends to run like trash on a lot of setups.
This game leaned even heavier into the commanders as superheroes but also put some weird restrictions in place. You were no longer free to have your sage powering up a troop of archers, but were stuck with horseback units that would never charge the enemy.
The addition of flying units was more annoying than it was groundbreaking, and the quests from #1 were changed to make it clear what choices would reward what, and the in game lore was more spoon fed.
The morality wheel returned virtually unchanged.
Combat also shifted to a more punishing version of the control points from the first game. You're almost always trying to destroy fortified strongpoints to win the battle. This often means fighting through a constant wave of reinforcements from out those points. I does become a slog at times.
Still, the knights as superheroes is a fun little thing to mess around with and watching your knight lead a cavalry charge into a group of enemies, pop off a blast spell and ragdoll a hundred hellhounds into oblivion to continue charging into the next group is a thing of beauty.
So, here we are with
King Arthur: Knights Tale the third game in the series. I didn't know this entered a kickstarter back in November and stumbled on it entirely by accident. Being a fan of the series I just purchased blindly.
Gone is the Total War styled system, and we are presented with a more Divinity/Xcom hybrid style turn based tactics game. Doesn't feel quite a polished as Xcom, but looking at some of the mechanics I think it may improve as I level my characters.
We play as Mordred, being brought back from the dead by the lady of the lake to kill whatever Arthur has become after the boat carrying him to Avalon was sunk and his body and soul taken by nebulous dark forces. Because, who else do you summon to kill Arthur?
A couple hours in, I've met probably one of each class but perhaps there's more, though there are new classes and looks like minor variations within classes.
There's been plenty of hoards, a duel, and some fairly evenly matched battles. Thus far putting my archer in cover plinking off folks and my melee folks in overwatch to slice anyone approaching her seems quite effective.
You can rebuild Camelot in between missions, much like building your ship in the recent Xcom games though more limited. There's random? events that clearly draw from the old quest system but are severely watered down and still have the clear indicators that this is the tyrant option vs that being the rightful.
Unlike previous games, you cannot choose your starting leader's class. Mordred is a sword and board specialist and that's not gonna change.
Thus far there are multiple health bars in play on units:
HP
Vitality - which if reduced will result in permanent injuries. Have not seen this happen yet so not sure how it works or if only certain attacks target this or if it starts depleting after your regular HP.
Armor - which reduces damage taken by whatever the armor is. Armor can be reduced by certain attacks.
Magic shield - Think Temp HP from D&D
6 new categories and 72 new items added to the shop!
