Kingdom Under Fire - The Crusaders

**Leet Eriksson** · 09-10-2004, 23:29

Heya guys you'll notice that i'm not active lately, well thats becuase a friend of mine who works in a magazine managed to get a build of the game mentioned in the topic while he was in korea, i sat down with him to try it out and i was pretty surprised at how incredibly good it is!

Ironically this game is set in a fictional world (infleunced with a mix of tolkien and the crusades) but i have to say the units behave realisticly wich i have yet to see in historical rts games, here is what i managed to extract during my gameplay:

The cavalry are real, seriously you might see dark elf horse archers or orcish boar riders or human heavy cavalry, but they act so realisticly, they charge straight through units, and i mean like peirce through them just like what real historical cavalry would do, you can also order them to move away and re-charge. There is also Cavalry archers, these can shoot while moving and can be pretty annoying becuase they can circle a particular units, most usually a slow unit who melee, melee units raise their shields and remain stationary or move even slower (thats why cavalry archers are lethal) until the horse archers leave them alone or a foot archer unit, or a fast unit gets them.

The terrain, weather and sun affect your units!I'll describe terrain on the following:

1.Trees: Trees block arrows, makes your units more stealthy and can be burnt by flaming weaponry ( archers can be ordered to set their arrows on fire to burn forests, the animations of one archer pulling a torch and setting the arrow tips of his comrades arrows is very pleasing). When setting forests on fire the fire spreads, wich also helps flushing ambushers from forests!

2.Sun: The sun on dawn or dusk may hinder your units, they cannot fight as well or aim accurately.

3.Weather: Rain hinders your ranged units mostly, winds help fire spreads when setting forests on fire and can also reduce archers accuracy!

4.Terrain: You know the gist, higher ground = better charge, range .... etc. Rivers can be a tactical advantage or hinderance based on the situation.

OK enough about terrain, now on units, besides cavalry as i have mentioned earlier, there are also anti-cav units like spearmen who actually can form a nice checkered pike phalanx and can stop cavalry on spot, their evil counterparts the Orcish axe throwers act almost the same but they are more fictional but its a fictional game anyways so units need diversity right?! there are also infantry, archers and logistics units like sappers and seige engines. All of these can be upgraded, for example archers can be upgraded to longbowmen who are basically better in every aspect, they can also skirmish and go melee albiet not as well as their close combat counter parts. There are also Sapper units who can be upgraded to Seige units, Sappers can set traps, flush flood gates(if there is one in a river bank), remove traps and also act as general support/logistics units. Good in seiges too! they can be upgraded to seige units, i tried a level of seige and i'm pretty impressed, there are 2 seige units for the human side, though i don't know what the dark side uses, but anyways, they have the catapults and ballista seige engines, one is good against units and acts as support and the other less effective against units but good at breaching walls, the animations for falling walls, people loading rocks on the catapult is also pretty realistic!

Also based on your preformance after every battle you receive a certain amount of plunder that is in the form of gold, wich you can upgrade your units with, upgraded units not only have noticeably better stats, but also have graphical changes (ie armour and hand weapons, bows, spears/pikes, sheilds can all be changed and its noticeable graphically).

ok thats it for realism, the game gets a bit rediculous in the next part

, there is magic, yes magic, since there are orcs, dwarfs and elves there is bound to be magic, wich can effect your units aswell, thunder storms, meteors, ice hails are all there, and they can prove pretty lethal if the units armour does not have decent protection against them, when you equip units with a particular peice of armour, they not only protect them from physical attacks (there are various forms of them, frontal for example is for units equipped with spears, that includes cavalry lances, ranged if for bow equipped units and melee is for axe/sword/mace equipped units), but also 2 magical attacks say for example ice and fire, but if the enemy casts thunder your units may get hurt pretty badly for the lack of protection against thunder.

There are also flying units! both sides have 3 flying units and are almost identical in function, except of course different graphically. i've yet to try them out, but the build was meant for magazine previews and NOT a review.

Last part is the action part, if you haven't played dynasty warriors yet, here is the gist, although its a bit simpler than dynasty warriors, it could get pretty hard in some spots, you have x, y, and a buttons as attack buttons, a is a strong attack and x is a lighter one, y is a charge attack and only has 1 combo wich could be devastating, when fighting against another unit killing the officer automatically routs the enemy unit, but thats easier said than done, becuase finding the officer is pretty tedious, rarely do they seem different than the men they command, but in some situations they could come mounted or wearing different armour.

Anyways, if you skipped past the preview i wrote/typed here is the gist of it recapped and summarised:

1.Game is pretty realistic despite fictional setting.

2.Weather effect your units.

3.Diverse array of units each side has a different range of units. Every unit has a particular function.

4.Each side has 2 campaigns, an easy and a hard one, both campaigns for each side are different story wise.

5.Customisable units, officers and main charecter.

6.Huge battles (though not total war huge, but compared to other console games, its pretty friggin big, almost hundreds of peeps onscreen at once!)

7.Easy to understand controls, learning curve is not too complicated, or i think it ain't...

8.Awesome graphics and animations, catapults operated by crew, archers lining up to shoot arrows, spearmen in checkered phalanxes, charging orcs raising their axes, tuanting, cheering and cries in mid battle are not limited to sound either! Units animate depending on situation.

Ok thats basically the entire Preview i hope you guys enjoyed it.

If you have any questions PLEASE do not hesitate to ask, ask away.

You will also notice that i have not listed the games cons, but i will do so in a later post, becuase my hands are pretty numb right now after typing this post

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**frogbeastegg** · 09-11-2004, 09:47

Sounds good, maybe good enough to tempt a frog. I do have one question, a strange one at that: how sensitive is the game to the commands you enter? On every console except the x-box I find I can just barely tap the buttons and the commands register just fine; on the x-box I have to punch the buttons really hard to get anything to register on most games. There are as few games which are more sensitive, but for the most part I end up with aching hands after 10 minutes unless the game's sedate like KOTOR. So, is this a more sensitive game, or another of the usual button thumpers?

Related question: how long do you have to play for, on average, before you can save and quit? Can you save whenever you want or do you have to finish missions first?

**Efrem Da King** · 09-11-2004, 11:21

Will it ve released on PC?

**Leet Eriksson** · 09-11-2004, 16:52

Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

Sounds good, maybe good enough to tempt a frog. I do have one question, a strange one at that: how sensitive is the game to the commands you enter? On every console except the x-box I find I can just barely tap the buttons and the commands register just fine; on the x-box I have to punch the buttons really hard to get anything to register on most games. There are as few games which are more sensitive, but for the most part I end up with aching hands after 10 minutes unless the game's sedate like KOTOR. So, is this a more sensitive game, or another of the usual button thumpers?

Related question: how long do you have to play for, on average, before you can save and quit? Can you save whenever you want or do you have to finish missions first?

I'm pleased to say the controls are very responsive, it may take a bit of getting used to but when i mean responsive, the units respond by the tap of a button, if you're cavalry were suddenly stopped, you can order them to retreat and they would do it on spot, non cavalry units who are pinned cannot retreat properly unless another unit joins the fight to releive them. The action is kinda a button mashing fest, but not to a frustrating point, for me that is.

As for your second question, there is no mid-battle saving sadly, most of them take 30 minutes or so early on, the harder campaigns might take a while, maybe up to an hour (thats the first mission on the hard campaign mind you).Saving can be made any time on the "strategy" map, like in cities or mission areas before entering the battles.

**Leet Eriksson** · 09-11-2004, 16:59

Originally Posted by Efrem Da King

Will it ve released on PC?

Well prior to being acquired by microsoft the company had plans for a PC version, it also had PC and XBOX logos on the bottom of the mainsite, now the site is redesigned i only see the XBOX logo. Maybe microsoft decided it will only be for xbox and maybe they could release it later for the PC. I don't really now if they will ever make a PC version (but i hope they do) becuase as of now it seems its only for the xbox.