I am considering buying this game, but I check out every game thoroughly before buying, no matter how small the purchase because I hate the embarrassment of buying a bad game.

So Crusader: No Remorse. I have heard that this game's controls are bad, so I looked at a pdf of its manual and...

it... it... it's controls way worse than I could have possibly imagined. It's like a parody of PC control schemes. (I guess this was from the younger days of PC action gaming.)



It doesn't look like there is any way to configure the game's controls directly. I have a remappable keyboard courtesy of Razer. That seems like one way to partially alleviate the control issues. While that is one possible method of taming these controls, does anybody know of any software methods to reconfigure this game? Perhaps something like a wrapper that feeds the game different commands than the keys I enter or something like that?

As a side note, this game is in dire need of being ported to a better engine, and maybe they can use the opportunity to clean up the controls. Maybe that has already happened, but I doubt EA would allow something that sensible to happen to one of their properties.

Pentagram project is trying to create a better engine for games based on Ultima 8 engine. I don't know how well it works with Crusader games, but at least Ultima 8 runs on it and they have screenshots of Crusaders.

http://pentagram.sourceforge.net/

But yeah, the original engine, or controls, isn't very good, especially for an action oriented game. It never did bother me on Ultima 8 much, as you can go through the game with minimal fighting.

Thanks guys. This information is very useful.

Sadly, I've decided not to buy this. If the manual is to be believed, then movement is way to complicated, even considering control reassignment. From what I've heard, they even fucked up the un-fuck-up-able by mishandling mouse aiming of all things.

If this game controlled as tightly as Shadowgrounds, it would be a no-brainer. I guess I have been spoiled by the evolution of modern games.

EDITED: I'll take a look at the modern engine and see if that changes my mind. They'll probably preserve the stupid controls for posterity.

Nah, the controls were bad even during the time of the games release. The problem is that the character moves with the grace of a train.

You get used to it, but Ultima8 engine really wasn't the best choise to do an action game with.

The keyboard I'm using currently doesn't have the NumLock key. Does anybody know of an equivalent key 'NumLock-less' keyboards may have? In other words, Is there a key that may function the same as NumLock?

*Edit* - Actually, a better question would be this: Does anyone know how to move the function of NumLock to another key, using the Ctrl+F1 thingymijig? Is it possible to do this on keyboards that lack a NumLock key?

Well I don't know the software methods but what I've done was to remap my PS3 controller to mimic the more important keys in the following way. It works for me thus far.

I configured my controller in the following way

D-Pad = Movement / Aim
R1 = Fire
L1 = Use Inventory Item
L2 and R2 = Side roll
Square = Search
X = Use/ interact/ Enter (for menus)
Circle = Run
Triangle = R Ctrl (For crouch and jump)
L3 = Cycle Itens
R3 = Cycle Weapons
Start = ESC (Main menu)

I could never get used to a gamepad for this game, mostly because the guy just turns around too slow and the aiming is imprecise. The only solution I found was a combination of ins-home-pgup-del-end-pgdn for movement and a programmable mouse (I have a Razor Death Adder) for quick and precise aiming and turning. Using the right mouse button to advance and the left to shoot actually kinda works well. The lesser used keys that couldn't fit on the mouse are hi-lighted on the keyboard. With this setup, the game is playable and actually pretty fun. it has a similar feel to the classic FPS setup where you move with the keyboard and aim with the mouse.

If I had it to do over again, I probably would got a Razor mouse with more than 9 buttons (having just 2-3 more keys mapped tp the mouse would have all but eliminated the use of misc keys on the keyboard) but this works.

So don't give up, just buy a programmable mouse.