The land of King Arthur may be a vision of Disney full of colour and magic. A British legend of grandeur and glory. Now the round table has been plunged into a world of dark mystery. A blend of turn-based battles and traditional Role Playing Game (“RPG”) character progression. You will be faced with dangerous battles, moral choices and hero management and the rebuilding of Camelot (though you can place your base elsewhere)
It’s a game with a simple premise of a battle between Arthur and Mordred ending in a fateful double death, but that is really just the beginning as they are brought back to life. Unfortunately, this shared death did not solidify a shared experience. Instead, they still wanted to kill each other even more than before.
While the name of the game may suggest that you play as King Arthur, instead, you play as his nemesis Mordred more well known as “The Black Knight”, the magic of Arthurian Legend continues to run through, but it is diseased and warped now. The ruler of Avalon is the one to task you with ending the new cursed world caused by herself after trying to resurrect King Arthur.
Those interested in myth and legend will immediately take a liking to this game, especially those who like to see a more macabre take on the original folklore. With the traditional RPG elements of the game, you can lead your character down a path more aligned with that of good or evil, similar to the Fable series or Mass Effect. When gathering your team, you can choose those who are more righteous or those known for sheer brutality. When it comes to rebuilding Camelot, you must take your time to consider what to build and what to upgrade. The most important buildings would be the hospice, cathedral, training ground and merchant to ensure your team is kept healthy, well levelled, and has the best gear possible. So be wise with your gold and building resources.
We have our central area as the round table similar to that of the ship in Mass Effect here. You will recruit members for your team; many names may be familiar to you as they will come from the legends of King Arthur. While only four members will go into the battles with you, which is the turn-based aspect of the game, you can send other Knights of the round table off on quests. Bear in mind these are not just random filler; the quests will have outcomes to choose from, which shall bare consequences.
You shall come across familiar names such as Merlin, a trained arcanist who looks somewhat different from the old man with a beard wizard look.
You, too, will see Sir Lancelot, who plays like a low-level Paladin.
Most characters are gained via the main story though some are through side quests; nevertheless, these are not long winding stories; they may have a small dialogue with other members of your group, but it doesn’t really expand much further than that. What makes little sense is that all members of the round table have been revived by the same Lady of the Lake, yet none of them are helping King Arthur. Instead, they all join Sir Mordred for a game that focuses on loyalty it always seems odd to me that not one Knight stood with King Arthur, at least not any strong main character of the round table.
The choice aspect of the game is something which truly appeals and seeing it mapped out on a compass chart with Rightful (North), Christian (East), Tyrant (South) and Old Faith (West) Each choice you make aligns more in one of these areas and adds a marker to show just exactly where you are aligning with an events section to inform you as to what you are doing that is pushing you one particular way. This will unlock different story points and access to different heroes, thus allowing for replayability to access different areas of the chart and come across different scenarios. You may even find some round table members leaving if you go against their compatibility while gaining influence and loyalty with others.
Games with choices that involve morality and have a real effect on how others think of you is something the game balances wonderfully, and being set in a medieval style, it is reminiscent of Dragon Age. Figuring out the best team, and gear the base management aspects are the parts of the game where it flourishes, and all of this makes sense. As NeocoreGame are known for there mix of RPG and Real-Time Strategy with their game of King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame. While this choice is there, it must be noted that the best rewards stem from sticking with a path rather than trying to toe the line.
The game flounders though in their take of a turn-based role-playing game (“TRPG”) The missions involve you taking a team of four onto a map with a grid set up and a certain amount of action points and things you can do with them. It does not see anything particularly new added to the genre; it’s predictable, and the battles are far too easy. It doesn’t feel as though you really accomplish anything; there is no proper strategy. The maps these battles take place on are relatively small, usually the same looking. While it has the template of Xcom, or Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. It, unfortunately, falls short.
While interesting to place such a large importance on the armour rather than cover and the abilities your round table members gain at higher levels. The visual aspect of the world and the fighting that takes place during battles. It simply all becomes very repetitive and samey all your characters are too tanky to ever feel a chance of threat. Seeing the same enemy type on the same battlefield for hours on end is daunting, especially when half the time the battles are too dimly lit in the first place and then when you can actually see, it’s nothing that inspiring.
The game’s main problem is pacing and no truly distinct characters or narrative to keep you going; it seems all over the place. In addition, reaching anything good in the game takes 20+ hours, which would be far too long for many people to put it down before getting to the meat at the round table.
The game’s sounds really do give off an eerie, unsettling nature. Even when slow, it was never calming, but it felt like a false sense of security even in the game’s main menu. Somewhat something you would hear when someone is telling a disturbing folklore tale or at a funeral of yesteryear. The voices in cutscenes are all done fantastically; they convey the exact emotion they are trying to get. The way the Lady of the lake whispers in an ethereal tone is always quite haunting. The noises while fighting actually make it feel impactful, the clash of swords together or against armour and the noises of arrows as they zoom. The clanging of the armour together as you walk. Or, in other areas of the game, you have the noises of bones. The small lines of dialogue when you fight and death noises can get repetitive; nevertheless, they do still add to the game.
Visually the game seems like it wants to be Dark Souls, but it often just feels soulless drab and grey occasionally; you get a bit of orange from a fire, green from a swamp or a bit of blue mist, but it is nothing special. While visuals can often be overlooked if the gameplay is good enough, the gameplay here doesn’t allow you to overlook the visuals. It again makes it seem like things should have had more time as some areas feel unique and a joy to be a part of, but these are far and few between all the lacklustre lands.
NeocoreGames must be commended for making a game such as this and staying true to their King Arthur roots. However, it seems this title was too ambitious and maybe with more time really thinking about the story they wanted to tell instead of it just a game set in a dark and gloomy place with no natural substance other than that. This game could have been fantastic.
Suppose you like medieval worlds and you haven’t played a TBRPG yet. In that case, it can be recommended to pick this up to get your feet wet in the genre, especially if Arthurian lore is something you want to better grasp and see things from the side of the Villain who is turned, hero. The game has glorious cinematics and a superb understanding of the gritty nature of the world they have wanted to build, with a good rooster of characters and a well done choice-based system.
- Developer: NeocoreGames
- Publisher: NeocoreGames
- Platform: Played on PC purchase on Steam here https://store.steampowered.com/app/1157390/King_Arthur_Knights_Tale/
- Availability: Out now on PC, coming to PS5 and Xbox Series S/X at an unspecified later date
Enjoy the review? want to read more of our reviews? then click right here to be whisked away to the realm of our opinions.
You must be logged in to post a comment.