King Arthur - The Role Playing Wargame

[Metro]

Bumping again for Steam Summer Sale: You have ~17 hours from this post to buy the base game and all DLC for the ludicrous price of $4.50 -- also if you're just looking to pick up some DLC some is as low as thirty cents!

 

[oldmanpaco]

Just bought. Good deal.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

Ok, just bought it.

Question: after the tutorial battles, they tell you to capture either Viroconium or London. And while I know where London is supposed to be, I cannot find any of them anywhere on any map. The quest isn't registered as a quest either. So, if I want to capture Viroconium, where do I have to go? Where is it?

Bah.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Great game, but avoid the sequel.

Spoiler

If you've done the Cleansing Faith quest and haven't recruited Sir Ywain I recommend restarting. He's by far the earliest hero you can get who can nullify enemy spells.

 

[Old One]

I also bought this in the GOG.com sale, and I'm liking it so far. I'm going pretty slow getting into it though.

It reminds me of an updated Lords of the Realm, if you've ever played that game. I played LotR quite a bit many years ago.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

avoid the sequel.

Why? I thought it wasn't that bad, not on par with the original, certainly, but pretty good anyway.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The sequel is very mixed and has a few parts that suck p bad, but is overall worth playing.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Avoid the sequel. The game is a litany of bad design choices from beginning to end. Off the top of my head:

From a technical viewpoint it holds the dishonor of being the worse performing game I've ever played.
Gone is are the nice easily navigable battlefields of the original where units are clearly visible and in are shitty Obsidiancam(tm) clusterfucks which degenerate into blob on blob combat on first contact with the enemy.
Meaningless upgrade tree for unit types. Upgrade units to slightly better versions of the same thing just in time to face slightly better versions of the enemy units. It's running to stand still design.
Boring as fuck micro-bonus based skill tree for units.
Building chains are more shitty micro-bonus based design. Stronghold upgrades in the original gave meaningful bonuses. Here it's +2% to this +2% to that. They add up once you've build enough of that building type, but as a design mechanic it's awful.
The economy from the original is completely removed in favor of just throwing some gold at the player after a battle or quest.
In comparison to the original, the campaign is on rails. There are some branching choices here and there, but this isn't a strategy game -- it's an adventure game with the illusion of a strategy layer.
Irrelevant magic system. Good management of hero abilities/spells was the key to wining in the original. Here the battles are practically over by the time the spell shields fail.
On normal difficultly at least, manually playing battles is (mercifully) pointless as you can waltz through the campaign auto-resolving 95% of the combat.

On the plus side:

The atmosphere and writing are good, possibly better than the original, and this is Storyfag Codex so GOTY material.

 

[Darth Roxor]

i'm sorry but i cant hear you over my HOSTS OF ANGELS SMITING DRAGONS AND HEATHEN SCUM

 

[Old One]

What kind of stuff should I be building in my stronghold, and why?

This game has great atmosphere. I can't believe how little info there is about it anywhere on the net. The GOG.com King Arthur forum has about seven threads with maybe 20 posts, and there's no King Arthur forum I could find on the Neocore site.

EDIT: I see how it works...you can build any six building types, and there are four levels of each building type...I think.

 

[BruceVC]

I have only ever played a few RTS ,like Kings Bounty, but I am considering playing KA1. Any views on this game?

I dont have much experience in RTS so any tips will be appreciated

 

[Darth Roxor]

Any views on this game?

One of the coolest RTSes in existence

I dont have much experience in RTS so any tips will be appreciated

Go in blind because half the fun is finding ways of breaking the game or trying to figure out how to counter the AI's abuse of gamebreaking mechanics.

 

[BruceVC]

Any views on this game?

One of the coolest RTSes in existence

I dont have much experience in RTS so any tips will be appreciated

Go in blind because half the fun is finding ways of breaking the game or trying to figure out how to counter the AI's abuse of gamebreaking mechanics.

I have read some tips and older Codex threads about the importance of archers which you specifically mention in other discussions

But I am just going in relatively blind, if I epic fail then I will restart. But I accept I need to understand the learning curve

 

[BruceVC]

Im about 50 hours into KA1 and Im really loving it, I dont play RTS games generally so I had a steep 15 hour learning curve but Im now really comfortable with most of the mechanics and effective combat strategies. I use the following approach to combat

• my knights are assigned a cavalry unit for quick access around the map
• I am using artifacts effectively with my knights to boost skills
• knights make a huge difference and are key to win in battles
• archers help loads
• I use my cavalry to shatter enemy archers in horde mode

I am also enjoying the RPG elements and quests and the micromanaging of the economies and laws and I decided to follow the Old Faith, much hotter women

I experienced a well known bug with a Runtime error but I found a solution, that Runtime error was causing crashes on almost every battle but that hasnt happened since the fix was applied

 

[BruceVC]

I completed this game after 100 hours and it was really a fun and worthwhile experience, my first real RTS experience

I followed the Old Faith, Rightful and aligned with the Seelie

The key to winning battles for me was using heroes effectively especially with spells like Sidhe Paths to teleport quickly around the battle map. I used this spell to capture Victory Locations or to teleport on top of archery units or disrupt enemy units

And then I used spells like Lighting Bolt to decimate heavily equipped units. I also chose certain heroes like the Green Knight, Merlin and Lancelot to join me and they made a difference in combat

But overall a great RTS and RPG hybrid and it gets a 70/100 on the globally followed " BruceVC game rating system "