King Arthur; the Roleplaying War Game is actually pretty good!

The Game Room
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I bought the original game last weekend while it was deeply discounted (I think it was 3 bucks and might still be) because it looked similar to a game from my childhood, Lords of Magic. It was kind of like spending 3 bucks on the lottery even though you’re pretty sure you won’t win, because I did not expect to enjoy the game at all based on the description and reviews.

Now, 20 hours into the game, I can say I’m really happy with the decision.

The game title serves as a good description of what to expect. There is a strategic map and a tactical map, exactly like the total war series. There is not as much kingdom building as the total war series, and the battles are not as in depth, but the roleplaying element allows much more customization. I would say the battles are like a mix of warcraft 3 (because of powerful heros) and total war.

Your heroes gain levels in combat, which improve their stats and powers. There are many different types of powers, which can improve their ability to govern provinces, lead armies, cast magic, or beat stuff up. You can send your heroes on quests, which advance the storyline, give you cool stuff, arrange marriages, recruit more heroes, or organize treaties.

Your decisions affect your alignment on an x and y axis, where x ranges from pagan to christian, and y ranges from tyrant to rightful. You get access to new units and powers the further you travel along the axes. Your heros also have their own personal alignment charts which you can not change, and their loyalty to you goes up or down depending on whether they approve of the actions you take.

Finally, the game is remarkably stable. In the 20 hours I have played, I have not encountered any bugs other than a graphic anomly which lasted for a few seconds during a particular battle, similar to the ghostly persistent terrain improvements you sometimes see in civ5.

Anyway, if you have 3 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, and you enjoyed the total war series, you should probably get this game.

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They’re working on a sequel due out this year. It looks pretty cool.

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Where did you find it for $3?

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It was a Steam weekend deal. The sale is over now.

I played a bit of the demo and didn’t end up getting it. Now I’m kinda regretting it if it really is as fun as Mosier says.

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How exactly does steam work? It sounds like you download the game but need an internet connection to play it. Is that right?

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oh I thought you meant…Pendragon

Now that was a great game…

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I picked it up cheap over the holidays. I haven’t played it that much, but I think it’s certainly worth buying on sale. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that magic cast by heroes can be very powerful. I played partway through a game as rightful/christian, but picked up one knight who knew the lightning bolt spell. Each casting at max rank can take out 90-100% of the soldiers in a heavily armored unit. Now I’ve restarted as rightful/old faith so that all of my knights can learn it.

I just wish I could:
-adjust the unit size like in the Total War games
-give a standing order to all of my troops to by default never break lines and rush ahead like a bunch of jackasses
-rebind the keys and scroll wheel to work like in Total War
It looks like I can’t, unfortunately. After hundreds of hours playing Total War, it’s hard to retrain my keyboard reflexes for this game.

No; you can play Steam games offline. There are a few exceptions, like Assassin’s Creed II with its notorious DRM, but most single-player games function when Steam is in offline mode.

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Steam is a program that serves as a virtual store for video games. You purchase games through the steam program store, steam downloads them for you, then you can play them. Very few games (if any) require an internet connection to play just to play the Steam version. Some game companies have put a “requires internet connection to play” restriction on their games as a way to combat piracy, but that has nothing to do with the steam program. Steam will warn you if your internet connection is lost when you try to play, because you’ll lose the benefits of the steam program, such as saving your games on the steam network instead of your local hard drive, compoleting achievements, or getting automatic updates from the publishers. Games can be played (and saved locally to your hard drive) offline without difficulty.

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The controls are sort of cluncky compared to the TW games, and as mentioned earlier the unit sizes are less, but it’s got some really cool aspects. It’s more difficult (IMHO) to preserve units and build them up to higher levels (there are magic attacks that can, essentially, wipe out an entire regiment in one hit), but there are some really interesting unit types.

The down sides are that after a while the battles are all the same and it’s really a grinding exercise in the end game, where you are just grinding through enemy areas one zone at a time. Eventually you will have researched everything and will just be grinding to victory. Of course, this is similar to the TW games as well, and some of the research stuff and the quests make the game fun to play. I got the new Druids DLC over the weekend but haven’t had time to start a new campaign with it yet (you get to play as Wales this time, which should be interesting).

I hadn’t heard they were making a sequel…anyone have any info on that?

-XT