Initially, I was ready to give this DLC 5\5. Henry joins with a mercenary band as overseer and general hired sword as a flimsy pretense to do some good ol' fashioned mercenary work. And it's great! There's a colourful cast of characters with a well-portrayed sense of cameraderie. They all have unique looks and personalities; they feel like a real band of sellswords. You go on little missions with them to protect the realm; do some investigating, some tracking, and some killing.
And when the second mission leads into a hilltop charge at night, over a dozen enemy bandits with torches, swords clashing, sound effects; I was hooked. I wish this was the entire game! This is my kind of game! And then KC:D does what it does best and pulls the chair out from under you. Within a few seconds of combat I get the message that the mercenary captain is dead and that all subsequent quests in the DLC have failed.
This is not a rousing mercenary story, this is a 2000s escort mission.
And like that the magic is gone. I no longer feel like a mercenary, or Henry for that matter. I can no longer afford myself the luxury of walking alongside the other NPCs because I need to get in there and kill bandits before they have a chance of killing the precious captain. No longer a simulator, no longer a roleplaying game, it is firmly an arcade hack and slash game now. I remember doing the exact same thing in Bethesda games.
And, sure; this is a game that prides itself on historical realism. It's not all 1:1 but it tries its best and I've always appreciated that. An engagement like this could quickly end with a leader kill and a rout. That should be an option. Maybe making the captain immortal would be too much; BUT; Warhorse Studios took the damn effort to make every OTHER part of the mercenary band essential NPCs who can't die, so why not the captain too?
It's inconsistent, demands savescumming, and isn't very fun. It's sad, I liked it a lot until the gameplay happened.
