Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders

With waiting out in the cold for the midnight launch of Halo 2 still fresh in my memory and Ghost Recon 2 still hot in my xbox I decided that I would stop by the EB Games and try and find something totally different. I have been shooting people on Xbox Live from a first person perspective since Return to Castle Wolfenstein launched in the summer of 03. Kingdom Under Fire is what I picked up. For $39.99 new it wasn't too painful on the wallet, boasted battles with over 100 characters on screen at once, and has xbox live functionality, so I picked it up. This game is a mix between Braveheat and the old Comand and Conquer series. It is a great mix of button mashing and strategy. You start out by picking a soldier by difficulty. I played through the first set of missions with Gerald who is the "easy" character and the one pictured on the cover. The cinimatics in this game are amazing and the scale of the battles you find yourself in are simply breathtaking. The camera shakes (can be turned off in the settings menu) while you are charging into battle and really gives you a feel for how crazy it must have been running into a massive battle in a suit of armor with a 6 foot sword.




You begin controlling 1 infantry division led by yourself, Gerald, and two other officers with their own personalities and fighting styles. You cannot controll the other two, but you can call upon them to help by using simple button combinations. The opening cinimatics lead right into your first battle and the imersion factor (how much you feel like you are part of the action. Aka how into the game you get) is very high. The first battle is with "vells" that just burnt down a church in your home town. You charge in and simple destroy enemy after enemy with combinations of light and heavy attacks that are very easy to execute and amazing to see. From there you meet up with archers, calvary, sappers (demolition experts laying and disarming traps and such), spearmen (that take down calvary. see Braveheart) and several other classes of troops that will help you on your quest to save Hironiden.

As you progress through your quest you gain experience and gold which can be used to buy better equipment, train yourself and every single troop available to you in differnt skills, and hire mercenaries to fill gaps in your army. I love games where you can improve your character and this game puts a lot of emphasis on developing your army. Spend your points wastefully and you will have trouble. Train wisely and you will have an unstoppable force.

I have completed Gerald's campaign thus far and started out the Lucretia missions. What I am realizing is that this game is written kind of like the movie Go where you have 4 characters all going through the same 10 missions from different points of view. That part is pretty cool, and they aren't exactly the same by any means. So far just a few key points have been the same, but people in "Luci's" missions make reference to battles they had with Gerald and move according to what happened in Geralds campaign.

Pros:

• The gameplay is smooth and fast
• The controlls make perfect sense.
• The minimap in the top right corner makes troop movement easy
• The battles are all intense and immersive
• Strategy is key, but knowing how to swing an axe will make the difference
• Wartime dialoge is interesting and full of emotion
• The main character makes decisions just like a real person. He gets angry and vengeful at times and will follow the rules of war at others. The passion Gerald fights with after a key plot twist is so strong that he actually scares his troops with his fury in battle. For instance, there is a time Gerald comes across an enemy village in his home town while on his way to a major battle and decides to stop, burn it to the ground and kill everyone inside. Cool stuff. You don't get that with every game. The hero is normally a "Justice is the only rule I live by" kinda guy and that is not the case in Kingdom Under Fire.
• The language is honest without being over the top. They will swear at times, but it doesn't seem out of place or done to be "shocking"

Cons:

• The dialogue is obviously a translation from Japaneese. There are times they say things in the wrong order or the voice actors put the emphasis on the wrong sylable
• The voice actor who plays Gerald is flat and emotionless in normal speach and is obviously not a great actor. He only really shines when he is furious.
• Controlling troop movement without the minimap can be difficult and learning when to use your eyes and when to use your map is confusing.
• The camera angles can be difficult at times, especially when in a forest. You can rotate the camera around your troops, but sometimes you simply cannot see what needs to be seen. Especially on horseback. Basically, the camera is really tough to get used to and took me all of 5 missions before I got the hang of it. Once you understand when to rotate the map and when to just click on the minimap things get easier, but for some, the lousy angles will turn them off quickly.
• This isn't a great rental because it takes a lot of time to get used to and most features aren't even available to you until you have played for a good amount of time.
• ******SPOILER ALERT*******The story line is a bit predictable. I don't know what it is about the Japanese, but they love their traditional "you save yourself! I'll stay and hold them off" martyr scenes. They also love the "big brute of a soldier who falls in the line of battle fighting the ultimate bad guy with blatent disregard for his own life only to die" stuff. A lot of the major twists and turns in the first campaign are just clitche kung-fu movie stuff.
• At times the action is slow and takes a lot of time. Especially with low level calvary who can't exactly turn on a dime yet.
• You can't send your infantry led by Gerald into battle and controll another division because Gerald will just stand and take a beating while you aren't controlling him directly. This makes calvary charges and archer movements difficult
• *****SPOILER ALERT*******The final cutscene makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER! "whoa, it was all a dream" and then everything that happened really did? WTF? You fight through 10 levels of intense battle and then there is a huge emotional cutscene leading up to the final stand with Reigner, the ultimate badass, and then before anything really happens there are 4 quick cutscenes and then a "it was all a dream? But it was so real! Antie Em, you were there! And you, and you and you." But the dead are dead and what happened really happened? I was very dissapointed with the finale after the opening was so freaken amazing. I hope more is revealed as I go further into the other campaigns.

A few final thoughts:
This game is a beautiful and powerful depiction of war back in the midieval times. One thing I personally didn't like was that there is an element of fantasy. There are flying craft, huge crow looking birds that kill people, magic, and a few other things that didnt' exist. That doesn't make a bit of difference to most people, but I was really hoping for a real simulation of sword and shield battle. I got exactly what I asked for during 99% of the game so far, but the little bit of fantasy took away from the game just a tad for me.
I will go more indepth with the Lucretia campaign once I'm deeper into it and will also give a taste of the other characters, but I just got the game a few days ago and wanted to give my innital impressions first. But here is what I've seen from her missions thus far. She commands a basically all female army (drawn up to be sexy as hell, but that really doesn't do it for me) that rely on speed and quickness whereas Gerald was pure brute strenght. The speed is almost mind numbing to the point that you actually blur and zip through the human armies (Gerald's Armies) slashing with two swords at whatever gets in your way. The animation for her attacks is priceless and really is something eveyrone should check out, but because she is more a "death of ten thousand cuts" kind of attacker, you have to spend time on each kill and if you are zipping through a crowd you have a tendency to take a beating quickly if you don't lure one away from the melee at a time.
The pure physics of the game are perfect. People look very realistic when taking hits and really react the way you'd expect. I have caught myself just watching my archers fire flaming arrows into the woods for minutes at a time just because the animation of them lining up, having one man with a torch light all their arrows, and then command them to loose their arrows is amazing. You can actually watch the arrows fly through the air and where they land they stay. If you are being attacked by archers you put up your shields and you can actually see all the arrows that missed stuck all over the ground. For anyone who has seen braveheart, the scene with the sky full of arrows from the English is exactly what you get from your archers in Kingdom Under Fire.
The reply value seems high at this early point with missions having multiple ways to victory and multiple campaigns. I have not signed onto live with this title yet, but look forward to doing so in the near future.
If you liked braveheart, you'll love Kingdom Under Fire. The game is as polished and fun as it possibly can be and has received NO attention whatsoever. Buy this game if only for the rush of adrenaline you get when your army of hundreds lets out a mighty war cry while charging across an open field at another screaming army. The pure rush you get between you decision to engage and the actual battle is worth the $39.99 price tag alone.
For more on Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders, stay tuned. Part II of this review will be served up soon.