Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom

"Mediocre at best"

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is simply a mediocre game. While graphically it's decent, it's simply too shallow in just about every other area that it just isn't that enjoyable.

At it's core it's very much like Diablo, in that you basically only have a few buttons to worry about, you progressively level, as you kill enemies, random loot drops, the levels are randomly generated, and so forth.

But in it's execution it just doesn't cut it. The majority of the gameplay is hammering the A and/or X button. These buttons are your weapons. Each character has a variety of weapons they can use and you're not forced into using any one. On the positive side each character is fairly varied in their weapons and figuring out which one you want is an interesting balancing act. One weapon may swing in a larger arc, but a shorter weapon may regenerate more stamina per second. You have ranged weapons, but you could opt to forgo using one if you'd rather supplement a low SP regeneration weapon with a higher one. Both weapons add to your SP regeneration, but by using the high regen one you can attack more consistently with the lower one.

But get used to mostly mashing those buttons. You have no block or dodge button at all. Armor can have "enchantments" that block a percentage of a given type, but at least for the early part of the game, the very low percents you have and the sheer amount of damage types makes this all but worthless.

Certain attacks of yours may interrupt the enemy's attack, but some attacks, short of killing the enemy, don't. So you'll spend most of the game weaving inbetween enemies hoping they don't happen to land an attack on you. You have B and R available to abilities, but a great deal of them are worthless or only good (or even usable) every so often. Some boarder on the completely useless (an ability where your character drains your SP, and *claps*. No damage, just... drains your SP) to the harmful (self injuring abilities that hurt you while draining your SP).

This is further marred by how you earn abilities. It's done entirely by taking on ability "quests", of which you can have 2 at a time. These quests are "Kill this many of these enemies, and that many of those enemies". Some quests offer you a choice of enemies (such as, kill 3 out of 4 of the amount of enemies on the list) and others are fixed. The problem with this is you have no real way of knowing, at least on first playthrough, where any particular enemy is going to be.

Backtracking on any one area requires you to start from the beginning of that area. One ability quest in particular essentially requires you to complete the entire first area of the game four times. Often by the time you know an enemy is going to be in an area, you won't have enough to kill when you get to the point you're able to set the quest. Additionally you can only learn two at a time, and dropping any of the one you're learning resets all progress. The gaps between types of enemies required by some quests is often substantial, and the fact you have to clear large chunks of an area to get to the level where the enemies you need are makes it tedious.

While the game looks decent, it suffers from being very repetitious. In addition to gameplay, the levels themselves are mostly repeating "blocks" randomly put together. These blocks are basically sections of the map. A curving S path might be one block, a looping pathway might be another. Each section of the map is broken up into these "blocks", so the random generation is really just joining up large preexisting elements in a slightly random fashion. You'll have a different map on different playthroughs, but it doesn't really matter because you'll have seen all the blocks dozens of times the first time.

While most of levels are fairly linear, they sometimes branch off, but you're usually left with two paths, one of which leads to a dead end. You basically chose the wrong path and you get to run the other way.

Enemies can be broken up into one of a few types. The most common are small/medium size melee foes, who are usually buffering 1-3 large enemies. Rounding these packs out are usually archers or casters, who sit in the back. Lastly there are swarming enemies. These are usually small, but some are larger then others. Besides being very numerous, they differ from the other types by breaking out of the walls or random bits of scenery. They often have ranged attacks, but don't attack that often. Medium enemies only occasionally swing and can usually be ignored so long as you're not standing there waiting to be poked. Larger enemies are usually the significant threat, while almost all of them are slow, they do the most damage. Archers are very annoying, as their position in the back makes them harder to get to, and their ranged attacks usually stagger you. The AI is by no means terribly smart, and usually relies on large numbers. You can at times be killed very quickly if the game decides to attack successively, staggering you while you get pegged repeatedly or get hit by a larger enemy enough. Ironically some enemies are capable of blocking your attacks, while you can't block theirs.

The simple gameplay is made worse by the fact it often feels like you're sliding off enemies while attacking them. Your weapons swing in fixed animations, and sometimes your attack simply doesn't hit an enemy even though you're standing right next to them wailing away. Particularly annoying with swarming enemies as they're often out of bounds or out of your weapon range. You can of course use a ranged weapon, but this mostly encourages you to plink away from a good distance at just about everything; your ranged attacks have can only aim so high or low, so you're best off trying to hit them where your limited up and down range can hit a larger arc. But this just seems to slow the game down while you clear away annoying ranged attackers or swarms before moving in to maul melee attackers.

Each area finishes off with a boss. These bosses range from terribly easy but boring, to horribly annoying. The second level boss in particular is irritating. His last form is basically him walking around spitting lightning every where, while moving about and leaving a trail of some sort. Walking through the trail staggers you. Getting hit by the lightning often staggers you. You can't walk through the trail, so you have to approach him from the front. Unless he starts doing figure eights or otherwise crosses his own trail, then you basically have to wait him out while he zaps your health away.

Which brings us to the story. It boarders on the non-existent, and incidentally, is completely optional. It unfolds entirely from dreaming at the frequent sleep areas (which also contain the game's vendor "Idols". Mostly it's just hearing dialogue between a handful of NPCs in your dreaming (one of these NPcs serves as your ability quest giver). Occasionally you'll be given quests.

The most significant issue with these quests is they're often vague. You're told specifically your objective, but it gives no hint as to where that objective often is. Additionally, the optional component, and fact that the story unfolds entirely from you entering dreams, means that other then quests telling you to kill a particular foe or collect an item that's located at a particular point, it's disjointed with whatever progress you may actually have. Worse, a good number of these fetch or kill quests may require significant amounts of backtracking through levels. And because you start at the beginning of an area, it simply feels tedious.

What probably sells Circle of Doom to it's proponents is probably it's grindy elements. While it may lack even Diablo's story, be even somewhat simpler in it's abilities, if you're looking for a game to grind that perfect weapon, then you can certainly do it here. I'd argue that the lack of unique items kills a great deal of the incentive however. While you have more power then regular Diablo or Diablo II by being able to synthesize weapons/armor/items to progressively better levels, you can get through a first play through just grabbing whatever item has the highest stats either from drops or through the vendor. Higher difficulty levels may require you to get more involved with this, but other then allowing you to handle these higher levels, there's not really anything to gain from it. Higher difficulty enemies get significantly more threatening, but they're not really smarter, and they just feel cheaper.

I've had my share of 360 titles that weren't stellar, but I think this was the first one I played where the game seemed to be fighting any attempt to seriously enjoy it. I've played a lot of games where a lot of the draw was character progression, but it feels too shallow here, that in combination to the dirt simple gameplay, and non-existent story, it just isn't worth going through. It could be said that it's more enjoyable playing with others, but almost any game is better for having multiplayer, and the core game here simply disappoints too much.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 02/19/08

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