After many battles, a former kingdom has been divided into many small principalities and earldoms. The king's troops were pushed back into one last royal province, and the rulers of the other provinces waged terrible, destructive wars against one another. The whole land fell into a state of chaos and now the former royal capital itself is under siege by the armies of the rebel lords. You belong to the last remaining group of loyalists, and have been commanded to go to the king in light of the imminent attack.
A conspiracy against the king catapults the captain into a situation where he finds himself responsible for the defence of the last royal province. This is all that remains of the shattered kingdom, which has been torn apart by rivaling lords. And now even the king himself, ensconced in his capital, is threatened by enemy armies. This is the starting point of your Middle Ages adventure.
Now you must win back all those provinces which once belonged to your king.
Includes the original Knights & Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom and the expansion Knights & Merchants:The Peasants Rebellion.
Minimum system requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista, 1 GHz Processor (1.4 GHz recommended), 256MB RAM (512 recommended), 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended), Mouse, Keyboard.
Knights & Merchants is pretty 2D isometric RTS with action taken place in pseudo medieval central Europe. Story isn't originall; it tells about conflict of king Charle's with his son. You are king's best general and must save kingdom from rebellion.... full review
Gameplay is similar to others old medieval kingdom sims; Settlers, Cultures 2 etc. Games has a tutorial but you can only build village in it so first few missions in campaign are quite easy and let you get used to using troops and tactics. Bulding and training is easy also. Of course later missions will be much harder and often take few hours to win.
Graphic is old fashion 2D isometric (Which I like most), very detailed and good made-up. When you build any building you will see wodden frame first to appear, next it's completed by brick walls. Units speed mapping is quite realistic, horsemen is faster than troop but when you all moving them at once they mach speed to others.
Unit sounds after longer period of time start to be little boring but for opposite music is great, with many songs tuned for particular events.
I realize that opinion about game depends of you personal taste but for me game is worth buying. You can finish it few times and still wanted more. As I did...
I don't remeber any bad game released by TopWare, all of them were good.
I'm glad I gave this a couple weeks time before I reviewed it. That said, I don't get too many hours in the day to take a break and play a game, and some aspects of this game might be better suited for those who do have a lot of free time on their hands, to give them a chance to repeat missions over and over again until they're able to get things right.... full review
That said, I really love the town building aspects of this game. It's not overly complex or difficult, and the leisurely pace lets you relax and take your time planning your town. But what I don't care so much for is the inability to choose a difficulty level (it's preset to a high level), and how combat can be cumbersome to deal with. For example, turning your archers in the exact direction needed to "see" and fire upon the enemies can be a bit frustrating. Wouldn't archers in real life automatically be able to see enemies coming from a new direction? Especially when said enemies are just 20-30 feet away from them?
The lack of difficulty settings makes it frustrating for someone like myself, with not too much time on his hands. It would be nice to have Easy and Intermediate levels, for those times when I just want to build my town and keep the combat elements of the game just challenging enough to make it enjoyable. Some may like the high level of difficulty, and that's fine, it's just that I wish you could modify it if you wished.
Even with the issues, the game is worth the low price, though. Nice graphics, animation, and thoughtful town design elements all lend to a fun experience. But as mentioned, the lack of difficulty settings and sometimes awkward combat control, (against hordes of computer-controlled enemies who obviously don't seem to have the same control issues that you do), can make it a bit frustrating. I'd rate it a 3.5 if GOG allowed, but since I can't, I'll have to round down to 3 stars.
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