The Kings' Crusade

The Kings' Crusade

War in the Holy Land is the subject of Lionheart: Kings' Crusade, a real-time strategy looks at the conflict between the Christian forces of King Richard and the Muslim armies of Saladin. Games Developer Neocore tore some pages from the book of Total War games here, with a game that looks and plays just like a little medieval versions of this long series. It focuses more on pure tactics, but when the game is almost exclusively on the battlefield. A solid layer of strategic depth requires you to properly organize your troops and decide how to play the various factions that make up the Christian and Muslim armies. Only a few crash bugs get in the way to take advantage of the chaos in the Holy Land.

As with most strategy games in real time, you get combat experience on both sides. The first campaign (if you can jump to the second, if you're ready for a challenge) is to take over the armies of crusaders led by King Richard. This series of battles that leads through the Middle East in a hard to conquer all the kingdoms of the region 16, from the Lebanese coast and Jerusalem, and finally move to the most serious challenges, such as Damascus. After the release of the likes of Acre and Jerusalem, to switch sides and lead an attack against the Saracens with the great Saladin in the second, more advanced country.

The two armies are about equal, however. The units can be different depending on whether they are fighting under the cross or the crescent, but always come in the same overall amount of light infantry, heavy infantry, cavalry, archers and classes. There are some special units, as the murderers of the Saracens, who can hide units and Christian home so invisible, that armies are a perfect rock-paper-scissors screen. The troops can also be customized with teachers, healers, armor or weapon bonuses, and so on, as the spoils won every battle won can be undone in their armies. You can also discover the sacred artifacts, and how they can improve the attacks, morale, and so on. Individual-based groups to gain experience in combat as well, which is then used to increase basic skills and special statistical fans. Can be adjusted both in their armies that the game has a bit of a role-playing environment.

Commitments come in several flavors. Sometimes you go looking to eliminate an enemy, while other times you have to meet the objectives of several parts. First, you have to enter a Moorish fortress and then turn around and create a backup to defend against a counterattack. Or you may have to hold the ground against an attack before finally taking the fight Christians. There is nothing that can be considered earth-shaking, though the depth of the simulation is impressive, as are the options to build siege weapons. These include catapults and crossbows, with rough and ready fortifications, the spike traps, and towers. Battlefields are portrayed in great detail when it comes to rolling fields and even the odd forest around the Lebanese coast, which requires taking into account the area of ​​each plot strategies.

Everything looks great too, most of the time. While the images are a little further back in time and a little too muddy brown called attractive, the troops are very well designed with great attention to fine points like armor. The soldiers are far from historical truth, especially Muslims, who carry around large scimitars. However, the troops look like what you expect from a game set in the Crusades, when at least there is nothing surprising here. Audio is more predictable, albeit with the usual thanks to the repetition of the clash of swords and hail. The global business battles are very intimate. Are much lower than those of war, instead of hundreds of soldiers on the ground, has dozens. But even if you might think it's an inconvenience, smaller columns of troops actually feel better fight because things are less chaotic than in the Total War games.

Both campaigns do a great job of capturing the unique feel of each army of settings that relate to the real story behind how these wars were fought. The biggest problem with the Crusaders is unity. There are four factions of the Christian army to represent the Holy Roman Empire, the Papacy, the King of France and the Templars, and each has a strong opinion about what to do in each battle. Therefore, you are given advice of the four factions before each battle. You must choose a faction suggested course of action, as when you deploy your siege weapons, which should be your first goal after breaking into a city, and so on.

Of course, this means that you end up like a group while the other three angry. Ingratiate himself to a group involved in reward, at least. Sucking up to the king of France, for example, it makes the Knights, in the same comfortable with the Pope is easier to recruit units across the board. This feature also improves the replay value as you drive through the countryside for the first time in France toady, toady is the second of the Templars, and so on. Each route offers different bonuses to the army, which you can take alternative approaches to tactical battles. The other side of the saber, Saracens go in presenting a united struggle. Rather than fool with messy loose the fight, please update their military tech tree units, upgrades, special talents, leadership, and plus a total of more than would have been able to steal the fun and profit.

Multiplayer feels nailed. All you can do is take another player in a fight head to head or under the rule or rules of a game of pirates defending against a player tries to destroy an enemy trying to keep up time is running out. Each enemy receives a fixed amount of money to build and equip an army, and then go at it. No muss, no fuss, no real interest. A more adventurous sort of a competitive campaign is needed here to spice things up, because as it stands, the multiplayer is simply not worth trying.

Only a serious problem here is the crusade of the amount of fun - a fatal error that leads to their hosts more effectively than Richard and Saladin. We had some heavy falls on the desktop in the deployment phase before the battle. They do not occur often enough to justify the game unstable, but they were enough problems to make everything look a little shaky. Even this, however, the Lionheart: Crusader Kings' is a RTS with great intelligence in his favor. The tight focus on the battlefield and the RPG elements that require you to worry about your troops actually drawn into the action and keep fighting.

Hills can kill if necessary to see where you go and make use of the fortifications and artillery, as soon as possible.

In general, the two options to do a great job of giving an idea of ​​rural areas, while not going overboard if you feel you've been beaten over the head with a book of history.