Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom

"Is this Kindom Under Fire or Diablo?"

What the hell is this?

Kingdom Under Fire franchise has to be one of my favorite games series for the the Xbox. No console game has ever come so close to perfection in the seamless combination of action and strategy. With an intriguing and thoughtful storyline this game puts probably the closest competition Koei to shame. When I heard about the third addition to the game I was excited. To continue to story as some of my favorite characters would be all the more reason that the Xbox 360 I purchased all the more worthwhile. It seems now I am torn between my love of the franchise and my love of Diablo-esque gaming.

-Graphics-

The game itself is beautiful. I have no complaints here. All the characters look crisp and the enemies themselves look pretty awesome.

Breaking it down, the armors have some cosmetic change. Slight alterations are made. The most extreme change I've seen was playing the female elf where it seems less clothes equals more armor, which I have no problem with.

The weapons themselves are nicely detailed. With several types to choose from, which all add to the hilarity factor. From giant one arm cannons to mini-guns the weapons all have a somewhat unique flair to them in terms of their usability. There is a nice wide variety in weapons for each character to use.

The game does use a good amount of colors in their level design. To bright enchanted forests to dank, underground caverns, it pretty much feels like what that kind of area would look like. The enemies themselves are plenty in every level. I did not run into any slowdown really even when you have several large enemies and dozens of miniature enemies running along the walls breaking your combos.

Overall it is a very pretty game.

-Gameplay-

I'm not going to lie, I was still hoping for Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes/Crusaders type game when they announced how the game was going to be played and the solo hero missions were just a little bonus on the side.

To anyone reading that has played the above mentioned games, the only thing resembling those two games are the title and the characters. Nothing else is really similar. They introduce two new characters Duane and Celine.

At the start of the game you are stuck in some kind of dream world and you wake up and go back to sleep in order to progress through the story and to return to reality.

It really kills me that they didn't continue the storyline or the style of the first two games. This new style however turns to another love of mine, Diablo.

Considering this game resembles in no way to its predecessors, the game closest to it would be Diablo and yes it really brings all the similarities in spades.

The story in Kingdom Under Fire is a bit flimsy, but it offers grind on top of grind on top of grind. The game offers several difficulty modes much like Diablo, where you can play the game through again in higher difficulty and get higher level items.

The game offers a simple method of attaining higher level items. You can of course grind them out of enemies and use them and not look back or you can synthesize items to make them much, much stronger to the point of it being ridiculous. Now I have no problem of ridiculous items. One of the sole purposes of Diablo was to grind to get those uniques and sport rune words to not only look awesome but to be pretty much invincible.

The synthesis can be confusing to people considering there is little explanation. It is much like Rogue Galaxy's weapon system, where you add one item to another and pops out a stronger item or a weaker item or an item in between. It was simple yet effective, but in Kingdom Under Fire you can synthesize items into your equipment as well which allows for confusing but crazy results if you do it right. I suppose it is kind of like socketing or crafting rares in Diablo.

Another thing that resembles Diablo is that you would constantly run through a level again and again to well in Diablo to magic find for loot, but I have no idea what you call it in this game. Usually it would be for special potions which you need to make your equipment so ridiculous that you don't really even need to play the game.

Online play really defined Diablo for me. With tens of thousands of players constantly grinding, baal runs, rerolling, there was an endless supply of runs you could join or even if you wanted to actually play through the game starting from level one.

Kingdom Under Fire offers something like this but the community is much smaller, which has a huge negative impact because it does not have that community feel. With less people you also run into the fact that you could create a game to go through with a group but no one would show up, so instead of rocking on with strangers who can be the nicest guy on the planet to the huge douche bag that you love to hate, you run into the problem where you make a group beforehand and run with them, which is no problem but it kind of ruins some of the fun.

The game in itself is not as long as Diablo nor does it offer as much items. The leveling up is simple where you add points into through categories. You can add points into health, sp, and luck.

SP is an interesting attribute considering it sun that everything revolves around. Everything takes SP to equip or use. Even swinging your weapon takes SP and if you don't have enough you cannot complete a combo or even swing the weapon. It is sometimes annoying but I view it like when you start over fresh on Diablo and you roll your level one character along and are always on full sprint. You run out of stamina and you have to walk. That is when you chug a stamina potion to keep chugging along. It soon becomes a little less then a minor problem later on when you have thousands of SP and items that give you tons of SP regeneration.

This game for some reason has an air of silliness to it. you can sport sunglasses or canary wings. You can even wear a mask of I suppose the creators of the game. This makes the game more enjoyable that it does not take itself too seriously and that the creators wanted to create just a fun game, which I can respect. Except when it comes to Leinhart. I think they pandered a bit too much to the ninja/samurai fanboys.

The game itself is fun. It resembles Diablo in many ways, but to me it really does not capture that magic. It also does not resemble Kingdom Under Fire, which makes me a sad panda.

Overall this game is a definite buy if you loved Diablo and any fans of the hack and slash type games. For the fans that loved the strategical intricacy of the previous Kingdom Under Fire games, stay away.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/15/08

Game Release: Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom (US, 01/08/08)