Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders

Sam opens fire on this fantasy RTS game...

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The combat itself is an enjoyable affair. Smashing into a bunch of Orcs or puny humans is satisfying and suitably hectic. Unfortunately there are hardly any moves at your disposal; two basic attacks, blocking and a super attack. That's it. As the abilities are unavailable during melee the battles very quickly become repetitious. Finding the leader of the enemy unit is the best way to defeat them for if you take the leader down the whole unit is destroyed. So the fact that it's next to impossible to differentiate between leader and troop unless the leader happens to be a massive ogre or some such other titanic foe leaves the player with little option but to swing away until all the grunts have expired. The use of combined arms is handled well but the fiddly controls hamper the free flow of action. The trigger buttons cycle through the player's available units but as holding them down brings up the mini-map things can go a bit skew-whiff in the middle of a frantic fight. The shoddy graphics do not help much here either. While there's some nice artwork on display the engine is so poor I would not have been surprised to see this running on a PS1. Blotchy textures abound and the level of fogging is frankly atrocious. On some levels visibility is so bad you cannot see the edge of your own battle line and all through out the game you will only see the enemy about one second before they are upon you. There are coloured markers to indicate enemy positions in the distance but this is no substitute for a decent draw distance. Slow down is also a big problem with the judders kicking in whenever there's too much happening on the screen.

There are a number of tactical considerations to keep in mind. Tight formations slow the troops down and make them more susceptible to ranged attack while seriously increasing the damage the unit can handle. A loose formation allows for quicker movement across the battlefield but it weakens the units' combat abilities. Swapping is a simple matter of tapping the white or black buttons; the best implementation of those two annoying aberrations I have yet to see in an Xbox title. Hills will slow troops down as they ascend and give them a little kick of extra speed as they go down. I couldn't tell if there was much benefit to holding the high ground, but some of that may have been to do with the terrible fogging again blocking off my perceptions of the battlefield. Another example is that the angle of the sun affects archers and some other units. If they are firing at the enemy with the sun in their eyes they will have a far harder time actually striking their foes. This necessities some quick manoeuvring on the player's part.

There's not enough scope for initiative however. On more then one occasion I set my troops up in what I thought would be good position only to either be told to go somewhere else or nothing would happen and I would have to send a unit off to find the trigger point. Which would invariably result in instructions to go to another spot. So on the one hand it is good that the game does its best to try and guide the player but the parameters by which you can engage the enemy and drive the mission along are too restrictive. At the start of each mission there are very good briefings with an animated map to indicate the plan of attack. However, once on the battlefield the control issues, specifically orientation, quickly destroy any sense of space that the player may have had, turning battles into a confused and somewhat haphazard affair. And let's not even think of retaliating at your reviewer by saying that's realistic since your foes are often giant scorpions or giant flying birds. Unfortunately for my happiness the developers chose not to allow saving during the mission. Nor is there an autosave of any kind. The latter is of course inexcusable and could conceivably lead to some poor gamer losing 10 hours of their life. The former is also a rather large pain, especially in the longer missions where a lost battle against the controls can see the end of your hero, the possible end of the controller and a chipping away at any determination to finish the game.

Kingdom Under Fire has a lot going for it. It's a pleasing blend of RPG and fighting game with a reasonably recounted story and a presentational style that comes from the leftfield. Much of the game works very well and the balance between rewards and challenge is set almost perfectly. Unfortunately the technical side of things lets down the designers. The shoddy graphics engine is the most apparent deficiency while it's a pity that the fiddly control system, most specifically the errant camera, feels compelled to dampen the gamer's playing experience. Along with some frustratingly anal levels Kingdom Under Fire's attempt to be something different is sadly something of a let down. There is still a good game underneath it all, and if you give it enough time it almost becomes possible to ignore these shortcomings. A little more determination to address the problems and Kingdom Under Fire would have earned itself a better recommendation. As it is, gamer's looking for an unusual style of game will be reasonably well served by this title. Just don't go expecting a revolutionary experience that you will be talking about for years to come.

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By Sam Gibson