Overall most helpful review

Posted on: October 16, 2015

Barny

Games: 334 Reviews: 6

Terribly flawed gem

Disclaimer: I have the game purchased on Steam. I swear to God, I wanted to love this game. Beautiful graphics, awesome atmosphere, province management, lieges, tactical map gameplay and real time battles, nice lore and the best is... Fighting Fantasy style mini-events and adventures! Yet, I had to abandon it, because it's a terribly flawed game. Why? Basically the game is not tested properly and it ruins the whole experience. Random events (both storyline related and minor ones) triggered left and right and you have no idea how those are gonna unfold. You are being swamped with them and you have ZERO idea which one should be pursued and which shouldn't (read: which one could result in losing the game and which one won't). A ghost castle appears in the distant part of your realm (mind that it's one of many random events, nothing strange or suspicious). What will you do? a.) If you already triggered war with a major faction in the main storyline, then nothing, you lost. The castle will spawn armies of incredibly strong ghost warriors and no chance to survive a two fronts war. b.) Send a moderate sized army with a decent hero to investigate? Wrong, you just lost the game, they will be slaughtered and till you can send a big army there, too many ghost armies spawned. c.) Send your main army? Well, the ghost army will be pretty strong, chances are, you will lose the fight and the castle will continue spawning ghost. Then you are a goner. d.) Send everyone, I mean EVERYONE there, as soon as possible? Yes, correct, you can continue the game. And that's the pitfall, it kills the gameplay experience. Basically you can play the game one of the three ways: 1.) Easiest difficulty, kills the fun. 2.) Having a dozen of save games and reloading to the proper stage when you realize that a mistake was done, kills the fun. 3.) Restarting the game and playing 10-20-30 hours of the same stuff, just to progress. Kills the fun. And that's why I gave the game two stars... :/

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Posted on: October 25, 2015

FraggingBard

Verified owner

Games: 298 Reviews: 3

Amazing underappreciated gem

Disclaimer: I have the game on Steam So as folks have noted this game has random events, and a lot of people complain about not knowing everything in advance. If you're one of those people who don't like randomness then it gets worse. There's _quests_!! Text based "choose your own adventure style" and you won't know the outcome a hundred pages down the road till you've actually went through those hundred pages! How horrible. Such madness. If you can't handle that then don't play this game. If you do play the game then be reasonable about it. Don't start a war for the heck of it, don't spread yourself too thin, focus on countering hard hitting units both tactically and strategically (having light cav to circle around and hit the enemy archers from behind for instance), etc. Basically choose your battles wisely and end your wars quickly or the game will rightly crush you. As for the game, it's Warcraft 3 heroes with Total War gameplay, a nice morality style system giving you different units and abilities/spells, combined with a text based adventure quest system which is amazingly well written, all of which adds up to a fantastic and fantastically flexible game. The heroes for instance. Having trouble with those archers? You could circle your light cav around... Or you could get a heavy armour hero, give them teleport, attach a squad of heavy infantry to them, and drop them into the middle of the enemy archers. Both of them work just fine. One does require a lot more set up but pays off by being hilariously effective and giving you more options in battle. The terrain works for you too. Don't like your chances? Hide in a forest and ambush the enemy. Light inf being pursued by heavy inf? Light inf moves through forests faster allowing you to circle around. And then there's giants and dragons, as well as glorious fey. Always challenging, never unfair unless you've done something stupid, with a great soundtrack and the best Arthurian story this side of Britain. 10/10

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Posted on: October 17, 2015

Ixamyakxim

Games: Reviews: 7

Deep, Tactical, Engrossing

The game is in the Total War style but what sets it apart are the wonderful characters who will command your armies, rule your lands and undertake quests. You're tasked with how best to allocate them, the benefits and detriments they bring to the fiefdoms they rule. One might be a decadent heathen prone to corruption perfect for increasing the fertility of a bountiful province but can you afford to upset the Christian population and take the hit to tax income? Likewise a brutal tyrant might be given control of any fiefdom where you need to raise soldiers in a hurry. The game abounds with these sorts of choices. In true RPG fashion you can level up your heroes increasing their abilities in combat and command. You can even marry them to Ladies who will shore up their deficiencies. These heroes will also quest. A hero will undergo a text quest where his stats alter the outcome of a choose your own adventure style minigame. Don't send a martial hero on a diplomacy mission; while at times magic is best suited. Rewards vary from new troops, equipment, the aforementioned Ladies and perhaps even the annexation of a fiefdom! The battles center around morale gained by defeating the enemy and holding certain points. Armies are persistent so avoid having entire veteran units wiped out and make camp to muster new units keeping your forces up to snuff. You're given full choice of which heroes to command and how many units to include. At any given moment you might have to shift from several smaller expeditionary forces, a few garrisons or a massive army. Failure to identify what you need, where and when will bring a world of hurt! The game can be difficult but it rewards careful smart choices. You'll have to know when you should be advancing the plot, conquering new lands or when you should be holding firm licking your wounds. One last piece of advice - make sure to have a few powerful magic users, learn to love lightning bolt and lean on the longbow! Have fun!

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Posted on: May 27, 2016

pParoh

Games: 20 Reviews: 1

When greatness is overshadowed

I will start this quasi-rant by presenting the strong points, and the weak ones bullet-wise, concluding by expressing an overarching opinion without too much lamenting. Before all of it, I must say that I do love incredibly much this jewel of a game, but the experience could have been superb by fixing a few issues (from where I am standing; it might be that those were intended). Strong Points: - atmosphere - story - depth (strategy wise) - diversity - questing - randomness (overall - events etc. - there aren't many games that managed to surprise me like this one did, keeping me engaged even after swearing furiously for each restart of the game) Weak Points: - randomness (yes, it's also the game's biggest weakness corroborated with the following point) - lack of explanation and context for various events / situations - AI (terribly weak at various moments, and frustratingly magnificent at others) - unit path-finding (combat) This game is one of the few within the last decade that managed to engage me, frustrate me, amaze me, give me "This is so incredibly cool!" moments. This game ate countless days of my life. It challenged me. I think that I can somehow compare it to Dark Souls when it comes to several stages of the game by how unfair it can be by not explaining certain things when they do happen in order for the player to create strategies, and give him the chance to prepare or properly react to what is happening in the game. If you like playing without saves, this game will consume your nerves. You will swear. So much. But, at the same time, that 'I really do not know what will happen next, and I must be ready for everything' feeling will force you to play the game 'safe', and everything you will be doing will have to revolve around a very 'tight' strategy and control of the lands, researches, and hero control, deployment, leveling etc. It takes a lot of time to learn this. Why? Because it is a very unforgiving game. But beautiful.

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Posted on: March 15, 2018

Gylfe

Verified owner

Games: 1766 Reviews: 54

Great wargame based on great lore

I will first note my two issues with this game. First, the game can't display the UI properly on a native 4k resolution monitor, even if you lower the resolution settings. I'm sure there is a way to fix it, but nothing I tried worked so I just can't play this on my laptop with a 4k screen. My desktop monitor is not 4k and it runs perfectly. On the 4k monitor the UI is completely messed up. You can still play the game, but none of the text is actually on the buttons and the text covers the screen. My second issue is with the camera during the battles. It is a bit difficult to navigate and is very limited. It's not to the point that it ruins the experience, but it does get annoying at times. The game itself is great. It's very similar to Medieval Total War, but in a fantasy setting with spells. What it has that MTW doesn't have are quests and a text-based RPG aspect to it. Your decisions in the RPG portions affect your morality and your faith, which affects your abilities and the units you can recruit. There are multiple different outcomes for this to varying degrees: Moral leader with no faith, moral with Old Faith, moral with Christian faith, a tyrant with no faith, tyrant with Old faith, or tyrant with Christian faith. Throughout the campaign you form different alliances and recruit knights to your round table. You assign your knights fiefs and try to unite the kingdom under your rule. Just like in a Total War game, each units have various strengths and weaknesses. They also level up and you can assign points to various skills and abilities, so each unit can be customized. The battles are very fun and look great. The only graphical issue I encountered was the inability to properly render the UI on a native 4k monitor. The game is based on the legends of Arthur Pendragon and other European lore. It's a very popular setting, which doesn't get enough attention from good games, despite its popularity. Overall if you like TW style games, the King Arthur lore, or just good strategy and war games, I highly recommend this game. I personally like it even more than Warhammer Total War. For the price and the amount of content, I urge you to make the purchase and enjoy this underrated game!

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