Kingdom Under Fire - The Crusaders

[Squirtle]

Ok, this turned up yesterday and I gave it a couple of hours last night. First impressions are very favourable (Apart from the hideous guitar wankery music, which, thank ****, can be turned off). I noticed some people were worried about the voices, well you can have them in English or Japanese (although it may be Korean - anyway, it's some far eastern tongue). I opted for the foriegn touch and they ai't so bad as it's completely subtitled anyway. This is nice.

Visually, it's great. No slowdown and **** loads going on, with some nice animations and good character design. It also boasts a great atmosphere. Once through the with the small training mission, and you get to the first proper battle, it's really ****ing smart (and with the music off it's so much more atmospheric). Big old armies, archers, sappers, catapults, paladins, big ass Orc type things and then chaos. It's ****ing great. Combat is pretty simple. Hack away with the x button, do a big old hit with the A button. The more people you hit, the more your Special ability bar grows and with this, you can call in your two lieutenants with the special abilities, or you can do a super siwngy move by double tapping Y. It works, which is the main thing. Armies can be routed by taking out the enemy commander. I've only done the first couple of battles, but it's shaping up nicely. It has talking head sequences back at the base camp in between battles which expand on each character and the like, and the fact that your underling chatter away as you storm into battle is a good touch. Oh, and after a battle you can upgrade your units and commanders, giving them different special abilities which can be utilised in battle by the D-pad but I haven't got far enough in to see what these are like.

I left the rolling demo running to see what might be coming up and there's huge **** off scorpion type things, flying ring wraith type things, massive elephant type things - all kinds of crap. The map is pretty big so I'm hoping for a decent campaign on this. And, you can play it with four different characters - two from the off and two unlockable.

As for Live, well, it's one on one, but the US version won't run on a PAL machine, so as I can't be arsed with the config magic type thing, I can't comment on this (but I may pick up a PAL copy if I hear good things about Live and people start having battles). And the back also says content Download too, so what this will entail I'm not sure.

Overall, good stuff.

[SuperBrother]

Sounds like good stuff, I may well pick this up.

Is there much strategy involved as the marketing blurb would have you believe or is it a no brainer like Dynasty Warriors?

[Squirtle]

Sounds like good stuff, I may well pick this up.

Is there much strategy involved as the marketing blurb would have you believe or is it a no brainer like Dynasty Warriors?

Not too sure. At the moment it's quite hack and slash. But then I did let my sappers die in the first battle because I got drawn off to fight someone else. I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen because I was on my to way help them, before I changed course to help someone else. What bearing that had on the mission end, I'm not sure. I also had to chase some Dark Elves through some woods. But when I approached them, they had archers in the rear. I was advised to send one of my groups around to engage them, then bring the remaining lot in from the front to smash the infantry once the archers were engaged. I did this and routed them. So, it's a bit hand holding at the moment, but hopefully once it gets going there'll be plenty of option for different strategies.

In an odd way, it reminds me of am a more up to date version of Warhammer: Dark Omen on the PS1 if anyone remembers that (which I absolutely loved by the way).

[JRMacumber]

I'm enjoying the game so far, but Gamespot's review is right when they say that the learning curve is pretty steep. You get a small training mission, and then immediately you're plopped into a big battle with two units to command and several places to hit. The training session levels barely teach you ****, too. The bare basics. My only real complaint is the lack of a pause function so that I can better sort my people, and I wish the enemy leaders were easier to tell apart. If they're huge beasties or riding on a creature, fine, but other times they look damn near like the rest of the troops, and so it's hard to know who to go after. Other than that, though, I'm having fun with it. And yes, the graphics are a pleasure, but the music HAS to go.

Also, can we correct the spelling on the thread title?

[Squirtle]

Also, can we correct the spelling on the thread title?

Oops! Was typing fast this morning.

[Eight Rooks]

Played the demo and I was quite impressed; I decided not to go for Samurai Warriors and hold on for this instead. I think one of the content download things they're planning is 2 on 2 Live battles, though don't hold me to that, I'm just going by a thread on another forum. I like Korean "guitar wankery", so that doesn't bother me and I wasn't too bothered by the voices I heard in the demo, either... though if it's true, as I heard, that they were planning custom soundtracks but took them out, that's very annoying.

Anyway, thanks for the impressions. Definitely sounds like I'll pick it up here, come the end of the month.

[Uli]

does the game support 16:9?

[Squirtle]

does the game support 16:9?

It certainly looks like it does. I'm running it in 16:9 on my projector and it looks perfect, not squashed or anything, so I would say yes it does. But that's only going from my own eyes.

[Flompy]

It certainly looks like it does. I'm running it in 16:9 on my projector and it looks perfect, not squashed or anything, so I would say yes it does. But that's only going from my own eyes.

It runs in 4:3 on my TV, but that is just the demo (which didn't impress me much to be honest)

[Riskbreaker]

Can you take control of the officers in KUF or are you stuck with just the four main heroes?

[g-funk]

HAd this in my local indie yesterday, might pick it up later. Squirtle, using config magic is easy, after you've done it for the first time you'll have no problem.

[Squirtle]

Yeah, I'm sure it is, but I'm gonna be sticking a bigger hard drive in the machine this weekend, and re-installing everything with that Slayers disk, so I'll wait until then to have a play around.

[JRMacumber]

Can you take control of the officers in KUF or are you stuck with just the four main heroes?

Four main heroes only.

[Eight Rooks]

Well, not impressed; picked it up today and I seem to have run into a game-killing bug already. Playing the third mission on the Easy campaign and pausing then resuming removes all the UI and kills the controller - all the gauges and displays vanish, and you can't do anything other than bring up the pause menu again (and then quit, obviously). Plus it wasn't going into melee mode when I got attacked, and I thought that was supposed to happen automatically as soon as any of your units went into combat. So... not quite sure what I can do about that. I might try and see if it's some bizarre combination of in-game events making it happen, or if I can still pass the mission somehow without ever pausing or going into melee... be a shame to have to take it back, but how can it be a fault in just my copy?

[November Tango]

I've beaten the game with all characters.

Positives

- Requires more brain matter than you might expect. I've had Dynasty Warriors sessions where I've literaly entered a near comotose state due to the lack of any required higher brain functions. Not so with KoF, which requires a significant amount of strategizing.

- Related to the above, you have to keep constant situational awareness of how the battle is going. You can't just turn your brain off and hack away with your main character. If you do, the rest of your friendly forces will be killed off and you'll be overwhelmed and unsupported. This requires the utilization of multiple unit types and cunning tactics, making KoF unique amongst its peers.

- Your character can't be killed, but the rest of your army can be and this will mean game over. This is an ingenious design decision. Basically, it forces the player to keep his troops alive rather than go the way of Rambo. You can still be beaten into submission for a short period of time, however, so fighting skills are still required.

- The graphics and art for the characters are absolutely top notch. The game has a great style all its own. Not very anime or Japanesy at all (thankfully). It's a style that seems unique to Korean developers. The detail on ALL the fighting units (not just the main characters) is absolutely stunning, as is the scale. Just wait until you encounter a Swamp Mammoth. And it's not just a set piece, either. It's an actual unit that you can actually command in the dark campaigns. And it's MASSIVE.

- Great visual and auditory presentation. Watching a squadron of Black Wyverns do strafing runs into a giant melee as your cavalry thunder across the battlefield will give even the most jaded gamer pause. And you, the player, are orchestrating all of it.

- Regnier is a total bad ass.

Negatives

- Voice acting ranges from good (Gerald, Kendal, Reigner), to mediocre (Rupert, Ellen, both of Lucretia's officers), to downright awful (LUCRETIA, Kendal's younger officer, and just about ever other human character besides the aforementioned ones). The Dark-Elf "accent," which sounds like a psuedo-European bastardization, is extremely unpleasent to listen to ESPECIALLY in the case of Lucretia.

- Speaking of Lucretia, say hello to the bitchiest, dumbest, most annoying character in the game. Now you get to play as her for ten torturous missions. Enjoy.

- Some of the missions are a chore to play, or are just poorly designed. The worst is one of the last in Kendal's campaign. I won't spoil anything, but it lasts barely a minute once you figure out how to beat it, and yet still manages to be incredibly frustrating.

- Presentation outside of the battles is a low-budget, barebones affair. The story is told through rather tedious "talking head" dialogue with no real graphic presentation to speak of. The over-world is not the least bit interesting to look at (with the exception of one city with a very interesting sculpture around it).

- Gerald and Lucretia's campaigns are very scripted and narrow in how you can customize your army for battle. It isn't until the Kendal and Reigner campaigns that you are given (almost) complete control over how to customize your army, and what units to take in battle.

- - One vs. One multiplayer on Live. You simply must do better than that.

- The STORY! I won't spoil anything. Let's just say that my response to the "ending" was, "WTF? That's IT?"

Where the hell is the CLOSURE? It can't even be considered a cliff-hanger ending. It's just poorly translated, inane crap. CRAP I SAY!

Over-all, it's a worthy purchase at its reduced price.