Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders

"A crusade worth fighting."

In stead of trying to inform you of every detail about Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusades (KUF) developed by Phantagram, I am going to give you my impression of the over all game covering aspects about the story, gameplay (off-line and on-line), and whether it was any fun. Overall, KUF is a very good game that combines real-time-strategy, role-playing elements, and hack-n-slash action. If you liked the action in the Dynasty Warriors or Otogi series, but felt that there wasn't a lot of variety to the hack-n-slash gameplay of those games; then KUF may serve you well.

++STORY++

The story is told through the intertwining campaigns of four heroes (generals): Gerald, Lucretia, Regeir, and Kendal. Conflict unfolds between the human alliance, consisting of the kingdoms Hironeiden (Gerald) and Ecclesia (Kendal), and the Dark Legion, consisting of orcs, ogres, half-vampires, dark elves, and other assorted creatures of the dark (Lucretia and Kendal). Most of the conflict between the human alliance and the Dark Legion arise from species supremacy (akin to racism) and a holy war over the contested holy ground. For good measure, there is also a religious artifact of incredible powers that is highly sought after by many individuals. Only in the end will you appreciate everyone's plight and motivation for being involved in the Crusades. This is exemplified by the fact that you get to see the war from everyone's viewpoint and actually grow to like and dislike some of the characters you encounter during your battles.

Initially, you'll only be able to play the easier campaigns as Gerald and Lucretia. Once completed, they unlock the respective harder campaign within that particular alliance. All told, the four stories do intertwine but seldom reuse the same cinematic or story elements. You will not feel cheated in the end.

++GAMEPLAY++
--off-line--

KUF combines real-time-strategy, hack-n-slash action, and role-playing elements.

For the real-time-strategy parts, you'll command troops of soldiers at once. The game does a fairly good job working you up to controlling the maximum of your hero's troop, three other troops, and two accessory troops. The interface for commanding your troops will take some time to learn, but the first few missions of the easy campaigns will teach you. To cycle through your troop you'll use the shoulder buttons, and the camera will center itself behind whichever group is currently selected. Onscreen a green cursor allows you to direct the move the troops around and the black and white button allow you to tighten and loosen the troop formation. The face buttons allow you to assign your orders such as attack, retreat, and a quick action for all the troops to execute the same command. There is also a minimap that shows your troops, objectives, and enemies. This minimap can also be enlarged by the press of a button and used to move your troops around as well as assign them to perform all the same actions instead of using the in game cursor. I can not stress this enough how important it is to be able to quickly scroll to a specific troop, pop-up the map, assign an order, and then return to your hero.

Speaking of hero, a lot of fun to the game is the hack-n-slash action of your hero. Each of the four heroes has their own move set and the action is very reminiscent of Dynasty Warriors or Otogi series. While playing as the hero you will fight alongside your troops to and see the metal hit the flesh of the enemy troops. This is a really impressive feature of having many combatants clash as well as there being some strategy in the mix of the mayhem. One second you'll command your forces and then you'll be in the middle of a battlefield swinging at any enemy. Both are integrated well, since you have to move a specific troop class to best deal with an enemy (like your spearmen troop will deal massive damage to the enemy's cavalry) and you have to fight as a hero to change the tide of the battle. Once you understand what troop class is important to topple another class, you'll appreciate the balance and semi-realism at hand. Changing the tide of the battle with your hero is vital since your hero is a really dominant force on the battlefield and can quickly increase the special point meter which is important for special attacks and magic spells.

With special attacks and magic spells you know that there are some role-playing elements to the game. During the campaign, you acquire both experience and gold from completing each mission that can be used at camp between each mission. The experience can be used to acquire and build the abilities out your units, which range from combat skills to specific magic spells. By increasing certain combat skills, you can change the class of you troops from infantry to knight or archer to mortar. The gold obviously is used to purchase better equipment that can have statistic altering attributes. You can also use the gold to hire mercenaries at the tavern who can be used to build an entirely new troop in your army. KUF offers a lot of customization and it may seem overwhelming at first. I suggest that you save your game after winning each mission, so you can always go back to your save if you accidentally spend too much experience and gold in one troop. Being able to upgrade the specific troops need for each mission prior to attempting that mission really provides you an advantage.

++GAMEPLAY++
--on-line--

On-line there is no story and you can only fight one-on-one battles against other players online. You'll start by choosing one of the four heroes and then assemble troops just like the off-line game with some provided experience points which seems a bit limiting. To gain experience points for leveling up and acquiring more troops, you have to defeat some of the enemy's army. At the end of the battle, you'll be provided the amount of experience earned and allowed to distribute them how you see fit. There is supposedly a match maker feature for the on-line game so you can clash with armies of equal strength and ability similar to yours, but this hardly is the case. Even worse than getting clobbered by an army 10-15 levels stronger than yours is the enemy healing their entire army after destroying yours. This essentially provides you with little to no experience for leveling your troops and can quickly spoil a good time. Another frustration is some noticeable lag as you play (which, admittedly, can be affected by your connection speed) which occurred in about half the games I played. Battling online can be fun with the right people, but it can also be terribly boring if a 55 level cavalry mows down you 8 level spearmen.

++FUN++

Fun is a tough category to analyze and often subjective to the player. I generally like to compare a game to another game in the genre, but there is no other game I know of in this console generation that completely compares well to KUF. However, the hack-n-slash action of KUF is similar to the Dynasty Warriors and Otogi series which I either owned (DW4) or played (demo of Otogi). If you like the action in these games, then you will surely like the action in KUF. If you did not like these games since they did not seem too deep or rewarding (I returned DW quickly since it was boring to me), you may very well enjoy KUF. Overall, KUF is a very good game that combines real-time-strategy, role-playing elements, and hack-n-slash action. The action is fast and impressive. The graphics are impressive for the shear number of characters on screen, but the textures may seem a little underwhelming (graphics are way better than DW but not quite as good as Otogi). The music is okay considering it is heavy guitar riffs and the voice acting is not the best, but the story will keep you interested just to see how the events play out. However, the real draw is how well this game integrates all of these genres and how well it plays. KUF is not perfect, but it is a very good game that integrates multiple genres and provides the player with a lot of options.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/10/05