Arthur - The Role-Playing Wargame

[Meneldil]

Anyone tried this one?

Reviews I read were pretty enthousiastic. I tried to download the demo, but couldn't get it to work. Any opinion, advice?

[Meneldil]

Games on sale on steam, so try it and tell me how it is you filthy rich capitalists :D

[Mailman653]

Looks interesting.

[johnhughthom]

Been looking at this for a while, Steam crashes when I try to buy it. Perhaps it's a sign...

edit: disabling the UI beta let me buy it. I'll post my thoughts later today when I've played a bit.

[Beskar]

New Steam UI worked fine for me when I got Spellforce 2 and the new Borderlands DLC

[johnhughthom]

Very early first impressions:

Battles are small scale and feel quite clunky and unresponsive compared to TW games, of course chances are they will get bigger as the game goes on and I will get used to the controls. I can be very easily put off a game in the first few hours if it doesn't draw me in, I am looking forward to getting into this one.

Campaign map is Britain, divided up into provinces a la TW games. Each province has settlements, forts and other "Arthurian" landmarks to conquer, there seems to be an element of choice in how you conquer, my next mission has me deciding between a noble king (who will join me if I win) and his tyrannical neighbour (who will give me treasure if I win). Looks like the choices will be simple good/evil decisions, there is a "moral compass" to the game, your decisions will send you on a heroic or tyrannical path. This is allied to a Christian/pagan system, though I don't think Christian=good and pagan=bad, there seems to be the option to be a tyrannical Christian or a heroic pagan. I haven't actually come to the religious parts yet, just the impression I get. You will get a number of knights, each upgradable with spells, abilities and items. You can give your followers fiefs to rule to improve their loyalty, supposedly their traits govern how good a ruler they wiil be, I haven't seen how that plays out yet.

Graphics seem ok, nothing special, though they are rarely a big factor for me in games so I'm probably not a great judge. Voice acting seems pretty average so far, nothing overly poor but not exactly inspired. Music seems ok too, again I'm not the best judge as I usually turn music off and play my own.

I'll post more later when I've played a bit more if anybody is interested.

[Meneldil]

Thanks johnhughthom

I think the mix of (some) RPG and wargame could be pretty good, and some reviews said the game was pretty good too. But then all reviews gave unbelievable marks to ETW. Hence why I'm waiting to her some opinion before buying it.

[johnhughthom]

Some screenies:

Map, not sure if Scotland is permanently walled off.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Heroes card, skills and attributes can be upgraded.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Seasons have an ingame effect.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You have a choice of battlefields before battle, not sure if this is only to the attacker as I haven't fought a defensive battle.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Battle view.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A hero on the battle map.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Enemy coming toward me, the battle shots aren't great. Still not liking the camera or control scheme, fiddly to select the correct unit and couldn't find any grouping command. Also couldn't turn archer fire at will off, pretty annoying.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Battle close up, pretty ugly and hard to tell whats happening.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Win screen.

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Experience gained on a unit basis.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The tyrant/hero and Christian/pagan mechanism mentioned earlier. Moving closer to each choice gives spells, units and buildings, looks like game will play very differently depending on your choices.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Next mission pretty much identical to the last.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Overall I'm not impressed with the battle mode, the campaign map is interesting enough that I will persevere however. The official forum mentions that reading the manual is essential quite a bit, my Steam online manuals never work and it didn't seem to install one in the folder so I guess I'll have to work things out through the forum: http://www.kingarthurthewargame.com/forum/index.php

[Martok]

Overall, people's impressions seem to be generally positive. However, one major turn-off for me is that the campaign apparently is at least partially scripted, and you don't have complete freedom over how to proceed. I'd really been hoping for a more free-form, open-ended game. It's bad enough that you cannot play as the other factions, but the scripting pretty much makes this game a non-starter for me.

[Meneldil]

Played the demo yesterday (I used another computer to make it work). It's fun, but the battles are indeed kind of meh. I heard there are giants and fantasy creatures to fight against later on, and spells to use, maybe that will improve the whole thing, but in the demo, it's nowhere near as fun as RTW, let alone MTW(1).

As for the campaign, well, I'm not really turned off by the scripted thingy. It's supposed to be the history of King Arthur, not some grand strategy game. Apparently, they're going to make it possible to play with other factions in an incoming DLC. But overall, I see it as a solo RTS. I went through Warcraft3 and Starcraft a dozen times even though the campaigns are always the same (and AtRPW seems to offer at least some kind of replayability).
What I hope is that there's some kind of randomness involved with the quests offered throughout the game though.

I'm still not sure whether I should go for this one or SoaSE. Both are available at around 25€ on steam. Choices choices :-/

[Arthur, king of the Britons]

Finally I get the recognition I deserve.

[Beskar]

We’re very proud to announce the release of two King Arthur expansion packs, due in June and August 2010. Both the Saxon and the Welsh expansions will contain brand new units, heroes and hero abilities as well as completely new objectives and lots of never seen quests.

What’s even more important, they’ll include a new economic system redesigned for a totally new campaign structure, where you’ll be able to play in sandbox mode being either the Christian king or the monarch following the ways of the Old Faith. The expansions will have a complex diplomatic system, campaign winning conditions that can be set by the player and an absolutely free, non-story-based gameplay.

Being honest, I am enjoying it. While at the moment single-player campaign is pretty scripted, which has caused a couple of problems. For a first-time play, I still haven't finished with it. I am looking forward for installing it on my desktop when I get access to that, as I can play it on the highest settings in its glory.

[pevergreen]

Its...

clunky.

So far, its doing the same as Spellforce did. Tries to combine two genres and sort of succeeds, but sacrifices so much. The interface is slow, hard to get through and has a distinct lack of keyboard shortcuts. Information is not where you expect it, or in some cases where it should be. Plently of bugs, took me over two hours to get the thing able to launch a campaign.

Graphics are nothing special, M2:TW level but a bit smoother. Battle animations are worse than RTW. Battles feel small and the battle UI is not great. With the addition of magic (mana and cooldown on spells) it basically combines a small sized TW game (i think the biggest size army you can have is 16 units of 48 men) with a clickfest RTS.

Basic things from a TW point of view arent there. Sometimes it plays through enemy movements, sometimes not, but if it does, no way to speed them up. SLOOOOW.

[Beskar]

So far, its doing the same as Spellforce did. Tries to combine two genres and sort of succeeds, but sacrifices so much. The interface is slow, hard to get through and has a distinct lack of keyboard shortcuts. Information is not where you expect it, or in some cases where it should be. Plently of bugs, took me over two hours to get the thing able to launch a campaign.

Graphics are nothing special, M2:TW level but a bit smoother. Battle animations are worse than RTW. Battles feel small and the battle UI is not great. With the addition of magic (mana and cooldown on spells) it basically combines a small sized TW game (i think the biggest size army you can have is 16 units of 48 men) with a clickfest RTS.

Basic things from a TW point of view arent there. Sometimes it plays through enemy movements, sometimes not, but if it does, no way to speed them up. SLOOOOW.

They are fast here, and this is on a clunker struggling to play the game on very low graphics option. As for two hours just to launch the campaign, what were you doing?

[johnhughthom]

I didn't really play past what I posted previously, I just couldn't stand the battles. I quite enjoyed the text based quests, and the map component was good but the battles were just awful.

[pevergreen]

As for two hours just to launch the campaign, what were you doing?

Game loads up.

Click new campaign

Intro video plays

Crash

Their presence on their official forums is incredibly low, as is any response. There are multiple versions out there (steam, impulse, boxed etc) yet only steam gets DLC. Steam and Neocore (developers) trade blame when something doesnt work.

CA have much better community presence. Since Neocore is a new and small team, thats not good.

[Beskar]

I didn't really play past what I posted previously, I just couldn't stand the battles. I quite enjoyed the text based quests, and the map component was good but the battles were just awful.

You can autobattle. They put that more indepth too, so certain units don't randomly get sacrificed, etc, if you chose for them not to, etc.

[Major Robert Dump]

Don't like it. Magic is over powered. Way over powered.

And the homo narrator who starts off each quest with "hear my words, m'lord" really needs to die.

Played about 20 turns past the point where i got my stronghold, which was about 40% thru the game. May go back and finish later.

Easy setting seemed to easy, diff seemed too hard. Since it is scripted, you can spam turns in the early game without setting off triggers, leaving your heroes in landmarks that gain them xp. It's a cheap, easy way to level up your first few heroes if u want to play on hard.

That magic spell that creates a cloud that kills everything in it is, um, way overpowered and its range is entirely to long