King Arthur: Knight’s Tale is a brand new turn-based tactical game that uses role-playing and a light castle-building mechanism. King Arthur came out in Early Access on Steam: Knight’s Tale takes a very different approach to the classic mythology of Arthur, both dark and dystopian. It’s also the first time we’ve seen a turn-based tactical game in this mythos, which also makes it very interesting. Here’s our Early Access magazine on King Arthur: A knight’s tale, where we explore this brilliant setting while experiencing a brilliant turn-based combat system.
In King Arthur: Knight fairy tale, you are not the shining king. It’s more like playing Sir Mordred, King Arthur’s sworn enemy. During a fierce battle, you managed to kill King Arthur, but despite the fatal blow, King Arthur also managed to deliver a fatal blow to you, causing both of you to die instantly. But you have returned to the life of the Lady of the Lake, who rules on the island of Avalon, and now you must finish what you started. With that, we can say that it’s not just a fairy tale, but the game is a dark and daring adventure with monsters and creatures brought to life through years of fighting.
King Arthur: Knight’s Tale combines the mechanics of character-based RPGs with turn-based combat. The game levels are huge, giving you the freedom to explore them by engaging in optional battle scenarios to grab loot or bonus items that may be hidden on the main game path. It’s always useful in the game to explore and stray off the beaten path, as this often leads to killing other enemies, protecting someone, and cooling loot. Maybe it’s just me, but the game gave me some serious Warhammer vibes through the level design, and as a big fan of the Warhammer franchise, I loved the level design in King Arthur : Knight’s Tale, too.
While we’ve seen most of King Arthur’s games feature colorful and bright castles, with knights on noble steps, pirate foes and more. But not King Arthur: At Knight’s Tale. The world depicted in this game is dark and gloomy, and this is evident in the first level of the game. Only traces of the old world remain, and now darkness rules the world, and you are the deciding factor in what the future of the world will look like. As you progress through the game, the environment gets darker and people are weaker creatures as they get killed all over the place. The levels range from swamps to forests and villages under attack, to ruined castles barely standing.
Your main party consists of many heroes now on your side, most of whom are seeking revenge or escape from the ancient wars. You begin the game alone as a fallen warrior receiving life from the Lady of the Lake, but after that your choices determine your future. The game has both a morality system and a detailed decision system with multiple endings to find and unlock. The ending will be part of the complete game, the Early Access version of King Arthur: Knight’s Tale certainly gives us an idea of the system of morality involved. Your morale in the game is calculated using the morale table, which also shows the different options you can unlock, depending on which morale page you put your choices on.
Depending on the choices you make in the game, such as using freed marauders as warriors or turning them into workers for your fields, your morale will rise to one of four possible choices in the game. You can work for the old faith, the tyrant, the Christian or the righteous, depending on your choices. It’s pretty easy to make these choices, as some appear at key locations in the story and others after completing the story’s missions in the game. The game contains both historical missions and secondary missions that have nothing to do with the main story of the game, but which give you extra information and details about Avalon, the world in which the game takes place.
Your main objective in the game is the castle known as Camelot, and you take charge of the reigns to restore it to its former glory. You can collect two different resources, gold and building resources, by completing missions and using them to build various structures and buildings in Camelot that will be very useful to you and your heroes in the game. Some structures allow you to buy different upgrades, while others allow you to become more effective in different aspects of the game, such as B. healing fallen heroes faster. It also brings a touch of castle building to the game, and is a nice addition to the game that shows that the developers thought of every little thing they could put into the game without making it too complicated or burdening it with resources. Did I mention King Arthur: Knight’s Tale also brings a slight role-playing mechanic to the game, and this includes the characters or heroes you control in battle.
Each hero in the game is unique and belongs to one of the four classes of the game. In addition to their class, each hero also has his or her own experiences, emotions, and way of reacting to other party members on your list. Each hero can individually level up, modify his equipment to make it more powerful, and put skill points into his abilities to make them more effective and efficient in combat according to his class. Some heroes will be tanks and absorb damage, while your heroes will do massive damage from a safe distance. It’s good to have a balanced list for each mission, because you never know what enemies you’ll encounter in a level. You can capture a variety of items, including weapons and enhanced armor, as well as amulets that you can equip each hero with to increase their base stats and make them more powerful.
Depending on the style and class of combat, each hero also has their own moves. Some of them buff your own team, while others inflict debauchery on enemies so that others can easily eliminate them. One thing that’s pretty obvious in battles is that you have to use all your heroes effectively if you want to win. Enemies are usually more numerous than you, but your positioning and battle strategy will always determine your performance in battle. The battles in the game are very satisfying, and I had a lot of fun during all the battles I fought in the first version.
King Arthur’s game has begun: Knight’s Tale, there are two modes in each level. When there are no enemies around you, you can freely explore the map and collect the loot you find in hidden boxes or crates. You can also offer your prayers at the shrines, which grant a gem or random retreat to a hero of your choice, or rest at the campsites, where you can choose to heal your group’s armor or health. Even after reaching your main objective, the game gives you the option to roam all over the map at your own speed and pace, completing the mission and returning to the castle to collect the last missing chests or hidden boxes or even meet an enemy.
When you are in combat, the game switches to combat mode, and there is no free roaming in this mode. If it’s a big battle, you can strategically place your heroes on the green starting points first and then start the battle, but if it’s just a random encounter, the battle just starts without any prior strategic placement. During your turn, each hero in your group gets a limited number of action points that determine how much they can move and then attack with the different abilities you’ve unlocked for them. Each attack or skill also requires action points, so you have to balance movement and combat each turn for each hero. The map also shows all the tiles you can move and whether you can make a new transition to a new tile after moving.
Each hero has a certain number of hit and hit points. Depending on their class, their number varies for all heroes, and you can increase them further by finding them and equipping them with better armor and amulets. Additionally, each hero has an armor point system that reduces a small percentage of the damage inflicted until they break. Touch points first take damage and then turn into hit points. When vitality points are at zero, the hero is stunned and must rest in your castle until recovered. Otherwise, the combat takes place in normal mode, just like any other traditional top-down game. All in all, the combat is quite entertaining and you can feel the effects of landing on your enemies both on screen and in the form of thunder and blows. For me, the fighting was one of the best mechanics of the game.
Since the time of King Arthur: Knight’s Tale is an Early Access game at the moment, it is normal that the game has some unfinished mechanics and a few bugs here and there. I agree that the game is a bit behind schedule at this point, but the 2 story missions and the 8 or 9 side missions offer about 4 to 4.5 hours of fun and engaging turn-based combat. Over 25 hours of content is planned for the full game. I also loved the short game scenarios. Although there were only a few cutscenes in the game, they were brilliantly designed and I enjoyed watching them. The graphics are also good, but I feel like the game could have been balanced and optimized, especially for the ultra settings, as I dropped a few shots here and there, even though the game is running on a powerful Ryzen 7 build.
However, one feature that bothered me in the game was the way the camera worked in the game. There should also be a keyboard command to control the camera. During my test, the arrow keys and WASD keys controlled the characters and moved them around. We don’t need these two sets of keys to move characters. I was glad I could only move it with the mouse. The keyboard should allow you to control the camera in combat mode and in free camera mode. Also, the camera was blocked in places and I couldn’t move even when my characters were out of focus. The camera for the game definitely needs to be reworked and I hope it will be improved during the quick access phase.
Overall, the game went well for me. My bench is a mid-range model with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB DDR4 3600MHz paired with an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT. I had some issues with image loss in Ultra, but those were probably due to an early build of the game. When I started writing this Early Access review, I noticed that the game had received another 4GB patch. This means that the developer is working hard to make the game better and better. I love the concept of the title, which combines light role-playing mechanics and satisfying turn-based combat with simple castle building. All in all, it’s a solid set, and it’s one of the titles I have on my list for the future.
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King Arthur: A Knight’s Tale takes a whole new direction for King Arthur’s franchise and proves to be just that. That’s a dark and twisted take on honesty, and he seems to do a pretty good job of it too. The game mechanics are brilliant, and I loved the turn-based combat. Even in Early Access, it doesn’t seem difficult at all, and even for beginners, it’s a great course to take and play. The design of the world is brilliant, and I especially liked the design of the characters and enemies. While it currently has about 4 hours of content, the full version promises tons of additional content, and I can’t wait for it to come out. It features powerful turn-based battles, action sequences and a brilliant world. I’m looking forward to the full release, and if you like turn-based fighting games and especially classic Arthurian mythology, you’ll love this game.