A gritty combination of RPG and strategy that has its moments of enjoyment but eventually becomes tedious due to its monotonous repetition.
The movie theater cashier once intimidated me into not seeing the movie A Knight’s Tale. After glancing at my brother and me, he seemed to sense that we were relatives.He said, “Do you like cars?” “Um…” we stammered. “You should go and see Fast and Furious,” he said. However, we were eager to see Heath Ledger and didn’t want to. Without further ado, we decided to watch the cars, and I haven’t seen A Knight’s Tale since.
There is no similarity between the previous Heath Ledger movie and King Arthur: Knight’s Tale. This is gloomy, gothic, and dark; in fact, it resembles the Batman movies a lot more. The game’s idea is Arthur and Morded had their fatal battle at Camlann, and killed each other, as the myth says, but then they were brought back from the grave to, well, fight one other again.
It gives the game a unique perspective, but it is also a little ridiculous—especially when the whole supporting cast of Arthurian Legend has also been raised from the grave. You see, they’ve all carried out their fabled actions; they’re simply all twisted by strange sorcery at this point. And, perhaps most importantly, King Arthur is now the villain. You are the hero, Mordred.
King Arthur: A Knight’s Tale comes from Van Helsing company NeocoreGames, which has created King Arthur before. King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame came out in 2009, and there was a sequel in 2012, but although both games were a combination of RPG and real-time strategy, meaning vast battles with hundreds or thousands of soldiers, this new game brings it all in on a smaller scale. It resembles XCOM a lot more.
In missions, a team of four is guided around quite compact areas and engages in a few combat encounters. There is some conversation strewn in and some decisions to be made, but fighting is typically the solution to all problems. Additionally, combat is turn-based. Your heroes’ surroundings become a grid, and your actions are determined by the action points and skills you have available. It is quite recognizable.
There is a tonne of stuff to do after the missions. In addition to getting to do stuff in and around Camelot, you’ll also receive the experience points and loot you gathered throughout the task, which may mean leveling up and selecting new talents or re-equipment for your characters.
“The player never appears to be stretched by anything. Never does one feel as though they have triumphed over a particularly challenging obstacle or conflict.”
You see, you are in charge of Camelot. It’s in ruins, so you need to repair it with the help of money and a building resource you obtain from completing tasks. You could put your base anywhere else, but I selected Camelot. Places like the Cathedral, Hospice, and Training Grounds are gradually rebuilt, adding more functionality as a result.
For example, your heroes recuperate from wounds they sustain in battle at the Cathedral. There are several things that can happen to them, such lethargy or the unhelpful plague. And you get rid of these by assigning them a mission or two inside the Cathedral. The length of time depends on the Cathedral’s renovations.
In the meanwhile, your heroes get experience points and level up in the Training Grounds. This is especially helpful for keeping characters you don’t select for missions up to date. There’s also the base-building side-game to think about, since all of your structures may be upgraded to provide you better gear, perks, and so on.
Of course, the center of everything is the Round Table, where you select and designate your champions and bestow titles upon them. This is enjoyable, increases their devotion, and awards benefits, not to mention that it will draw many illustrious names to you. As is often the case with RPGs, you can only bring four on missions, so a lot of them will be lounging around scratching their assholes.
But not in this place! You may send them on adventures here, which is a great homage to Arthurian mythology and all that ardent questing there. However, it’s all a little pretentious rather than humorous, which is a wasted opportunity in my opinion. A choice of outcomes appears when events appear on the global map, and often, one of them entails sending one of your knights away to handle it (i.e., they’ll be unavailable for a mission or two).
Another aspect of the game that appeals to me is that there are repercussions for the choices you make. Your selections are recorded by Knight’s Tale, which then arranges them on a cross-shaped graph with Old Gods and Christianity at one end of the horizontal line and tyranny and compassion at the other. All of the choices favor one of those things, and your progress is tracked by a little marker. Though the portrayals of good and evil are a little childish, it’s a great way to encourage role-playing, even though it takes some time to move.
Character loyalty to you is likewise influenced by your choices; if it’s strong, it might result in benefits; if it’s weak, it can have drawbacks. Of course, they all have different interests.
I particularly enjoy this part of the game, which is around the center. Making the most of my Camelot by adjusting characters’ abilities and gear, as well as switching up my roster to take care of missions, training, and ailments, is something I like doing. It’s all put together in a rusty iron color, stone greys, and browns that are appealing, although somber. Thank you for your work.
The missions, which make up the majority of the game, are what I dislike less, and it’s a terribly basic issue to have. The reasons for this are several. The instantaneous fighting appears to be simplistic. Turn-based game gamers will be aware with concepts like attacks of opportunity, cover, overwatch, buffs, debuffs, and magic. Despite this, there never appears to be much strategy involved in battle. Most of the time it’s just ‘go there, smack that’. The player never appears to be stretched by anything. There’s never that satisfying sense of defeating an especially difficult riddle or combat.
To Knight’s Tale’s credit, it does improve. The battlefield becomes increasingly varied as you advance in level and get access to new powers and foes. Not by much, though. By then, you’ll have been virtually fatigued with it due to its repetitive nature, which makes the game feel tedious.
The game’s technological issues only serve to emphasize its plodginess. It’s not very attractive; while it might evoke a sense of mood, up close it appears old. The game’s limited color palette of bleak, black, and murky shades makes everything seem a little gloomy. It doesn’t seem to be properly optimized, and although some of this may be due to my aging system, it doesn’t operate very well either. Furthermore, there’s a natural sluggishness to the way it moves and the way the characters fight. Knight’s Tale benefits from this occasionally, such as when one of your armored knights swings a massive sword that collides with an adversary like a life-sized stone chess piece, but most of the time it doesn’t function well. Holding down the spacebar increases turn speed, but it doesn’t make the slowness go away.
Not only is there very little change in the locations of the missions, but there is also very little difference in the tasks you must do. The format appears to be the same every time: take your time exploring the area, converse with the characters, follow the arrows on the map to different encounters that feel the same, perhaps take on a boss, and then finish the game. Furthermore, although “boss” sounds thrilling, they aren’t. Their appearance often mimics that of their adversaries. There have only been a few that have stood out, and they passed away quietly.
It’s unfortunate. Less missions and garbage fights would be a welcome change in my opinion, since it would allow players to encounter more interesting foes more quickly.
It may potentially be a little bit harder, but you can fix that by turning it up a notch from the beginning, which is what I advise you to do. Normal is too simple. If you’d like, there’s even a Roguelite mode that prevents you from saving and loading at will. A little more difficulty may make the game seem more like Knight’s Tale by making you take more hits and need to use replacement picks, as well as by making combat seem less pointless. However, it can worsen a core that is already laborious.
There is merit in this place. I still enjoy the fantasy and find the reverence sweet, despite how wooden the tale and characters may be. There are also some really nice details in it, like as the ability to engage in duels within missions rather than large-scale group fights. Even though they are merely one-on-ones, they somewhat alter the formula.
Many things might be accomplished with adjustments and modifications, and NeocoreGames will undoubtedly keep doing just that. It will be more difficult to address the creakier core, though. King Arthur: Knight’s Tale has its charms, to be sure, but it’s not the king you’ve been waiting for, either. Instead, you could watch Fast & Furious.