I was once bullied by the cashier for going to the movie theater to see the movie “A Knight’s Tale.” He glanced at me and my brother and thought he saw like-minded people. “Do you like cars?” he asked. “Um…” We were stunned. “You should go and see The Fast and the Furious,” he said. But we don’t want to: We want to meet Heath Ledger. So naturally we agreed and went to see the car, and I haven’t watched The Knight’s Tale since.
King Arthur: A Knight’s story is nothing like the Heath Ledger movies of yore. It’s dark, gothic, and grim – more like a Batman movie, actually. The premise of the game is that Arthur and Maudade fight decisively in Kamran and kill each other according to the storyline, but then they come back from the dead to fight each other again.
It’s kind of ridiculous, in large part because the entire supporting cast of the Arthurian saga has also been brought back from the dead, but it does give the game a unique perspective. They’ve all done their legendary deeds, you see, only now they’re all twisted by weird magic. Oh, and most importantly: King Arthur is the bad guy now. You, Mordred, are a hero.
King Arthur: A Knight’s Tale comes from Van Helsing studio NeocoreGames, which has previously produced King Arthur. King Arthur: RPG Wargame came out in 2009 and had a sequel in 2012, but these games blended RPG and real-time strategy, meaning huge battles with hundreds or thousands of units, and this new game brings it all are in a smaller range. It’s more like XCOM.
The mission involves organizing a squad of four around the minimap and fighting several battles. There’s a little dialogue, some choices to make, but everything is usually settled through combat. When you fight, it’s turn-based. The space around your hero becomes a grid, and you are at the mercy of available action points and abilities. This is familiar.
After the mission is over, there is still a lot to do. You’ll earn XP and loot during missions, which can mean leveling up and picking new skills, or re-equipping your character, and you’ll have a chance to do something in Camelot.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything to stretch the player. There’s never that feeling of overcoming or solving a particularly tough puzzle or battle.”
You’re in charge of Camelot, you see (you can build a base somewhere else – there’s an option – but I chose Camelot) and it’s in ruins, so you need to use money and you get on missions building resources to rebuild it. Gradually, you rebuild places like the cathedral, the hospice, and the training ground, and in doing so bring more functionality.
For example, the Cathedral is where your character heals wounds in battle. They can get the plague, which doesn’t help, or lethargy – a lot of stuff. You can get rid of them by sticking them in the cathedral for a task or two. How long it takes depends on the upgrade to the cathedral.
At the same time, the training ground gives your heroes XP and boosts their level, which is especially useful for keeping up speed for characters you don’t choose to go on. All of your buildings can be improved with upgrades, giving you better gear and bonuses and more, so there’s a full base building assist game to consider.
Of course, at the heart of all of this is your roundtable where you can recruit and appoint your champions, and give them titles, which is fun (and increases their loyalty, and offers bonuses), and you’re going to attract a lot Legends for you. You can only take four people on a mission, though, so that means – like the way in an RPG – a lot of them will be sitting there scratching their butts.
But not here! Here you can send them on a mission which is a lovely nod to the Arthurian saga and all the ruthless missions out there though it’s all a bit more than a bit of a bum here and it’s a miss if you ask me Chance. A few events will pop up on the world map with alternative outcomes, one of which usually involves sending one of your knights to deal with it (meaning they won’t be able to complete a quest or two).
What you choose has consequences, which is another area of the game that I find fascinating. The Knight’s Tale records your choices, then plots them on a cross-shaped figure with tyranny and mercy on the ends of the vertical line, and ancient gods and Christianity on the ends of the horizontal line. The choices are all biased towards one or the other, and a small marker will track your progress. It takes a while to move it, but it’s a fun role-playing encouragement, although the depiction of good and evil is a bit naive.
Choices also affect a character’s loyalty to you, if their loyalty is good, they can gain positive buffs, and if their loyalty is bad, they have a negative effect. Of course, they all like different things.
What I really like is this area of the game, around the core. I love tinkering with character skills and gear, getting the most out of my Camelot, and juggling my roster while managing training, missions, and injuries. It all comes together in an attractive, albeit dull, shade of brown and lime with rusty iron tones. I appreciate your efforts.
What I’m less interested in is the core of the game itself, the quests, which is a frustratingly fundamental problem. There are several reasons. Momentary battles seem to lack sophistication. There are things like attacks of opportunity, cover, wards, buffs, debuffs, magic – all of which are familiar to turn-based gamers – but even if all of them are at play, there doesn’t seem to be much battle strategy. It’s usually just ‘go there and hit that’. Nothing seems to stretch the player. There’s never been that feeling of overcoming or solving a particularly tricky puzzle or battle.
In Knight’s Tale defense, it does get better. As you reach higher levels and unlock more abilities – as do enemies – there are more changes on the battlefield. But not so much. By then, it’s already repeated the thin formula so many times that you’ll be nearly exhausted, making the game feel like a long walk.
The game’s technical struggles reinforce this hardship. It’s not a look, in particular – it conveys an atmosphere, but up close it looks dated – and this grimly dark and gloomy choice makes it something the game can use, making it all feel a little dull. It doesn’t run particularly well either, and while some of it may be related to my aging machine, I don’t get the impression that it’s well-optimized. Beyond that, there’s a built-in lethargy in the way it moves, the way the characters move, and the way it attacks. Sometimes it’s good for the knight’s story, like when one of your armored knights swings a greatsword like a life-size stone chess piece that rams into the enemy, but usually doesn’t have a zipper. You can press and hold the space bar to speed things up, but that doesn’t eliminate the sluggishness.
Missions also vary very little, not only in terms of where they take place, but also in terms of what you do in them. The structure always seems to be the same: run a slow circle, talk to a character, follow some arrows on the map for some battles, it all feels the same, maybe hit a boss, and you’re done. I know “boss” sounds exciting, but it’s not. They tend to look just like other enemies. Only one or two stood out, and they died without a fuss.
it’s a shame. I’m glad to see that fewer quests and trash fights favor more imagination and surprises, which really helps make players find more exciting enemies faster.
It may also have something to do with the better strike being harder, although you can correct this by cranking it up a notch at the start, which I recommend. Ordinary is too easy. If you like it, there’s even a Roguelite mode that doesn’t let you save and load freely. More challenges might help bring more of the knight story elements to play, as you’ll take more damage and be forced to use alternate options, and it can help combat feel less blind. Then again, it could exacerbate an already tough core.
There are things to like here. Even though the story and characters are absent, I still love fantasy, and I find Reverence lovely. And there are some cute things about it, like you can duel in quests instead of group battles. They’re only one-to-one, but they mix up the formula a bit.
A lot can be achieved with tweaks and tweaks, and I have no doubt that NeocoreGames will continue to do so. But having a more brittle core will be harder to fix. King Arthur: Well, the story of the knights isn’t without its charm, but it’s not the past and future king you might have been waiting for. Maybe look at The Fast and the Furious instead.
