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Genre: RPG Publisher: Neocore Games Developer: Neocore Games Players: 1-8

By Lachlan (21st Dec 2009)

The world of Arthurian legends has long been fertile ground for fiction. While some have turned the story and setting into little more than a soap opera, other interpretations have used the tales of the “Once and Future King” as a means of exploring ancient Britain, in particular the morality, mythology and religion of what remains a mysterious era in history.

Neocore games have taken this path with their latest title, a route already well-trod by Marion Zimmer Bradley and T.H. White. As the title suggests, King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame is part grand strategy, and part adventure game focusing on the Knights of the Round Table.

Now, combining different genres like this is one of those ideas that is all well and good when put down on paper, but does it make for a compelling game? Countless examples abound of marrying disparate genres, only to wind up with a title that lacks the focus and cohesion of games that do one thing and do it well. While King Arthur falls short in a few areas, for the most part the game is engaging and impressive in scope.

If the promotional material from Neocore is anything to go by, King Arthur is a labour of love on the part of these Hungarian developers, who were previously responsible for producing Crusader: Thy Kingdom Come. Another medieval strategy game, this title eschewed the fantasy trappings of King Arthur to explore the conquest of the Holy Land.

King Arthur’s single-player campaign is divided into chapters, each with various objectives that need to be completed before the game can progress. These objectives vary between choosing which AI-controlled faction to ally with, defeating enemy forces, or completing text-based quests which revolve around moral decisions that can have a huge impact later on.



Moving forces around, recruiting armies and managing your kingdom is done on the grand strategic map, in turn-based mode. Real-time tactical engagements take place on smaller maps, where more attention must be paid to the advantages offered by terrain and key “victory locations.” While the Total War series is the obvious point of comparison, King Arthur differs in a few key areas. One of the most notable is that you start off the single-player campaign the same way every time, with a single army in the lower corner of the map.

The interface is quite complex, but once you’ve spent an hour or two in-game you’ll quickly learn how to make use of most of the important features. Most of the icons are self-explanatory, although a few functions a little more difficult to pin down. It took a while to get a handle on transferring items and fiefdoms between different characters, and it takes a bit of searching to unlock a few other actions that should be obvious.

As your units and heroes go through their various trials, they gain experience. When winter rolls around, you can use this experience to unlock new abilities and buff their existing stats to make them more formidable in combat. Gaining experience can be a double-edged sword – when you lose the units that you’ve been relying on to win battles, it can put you in an impossible position as new enemy armies appear on the map.



The various outcomes of these quests determine the direction that your kingdom heads in. Solve them using brute force and you head towards tyranny. Negotiate or buy people off with food and gold and you head towards being a rightful ruler. Your religious inclinations can also change, swinging between Christianity and the Old Faith.

It pays to stick with the same approach to all the game’s quests, as the more you pursue one particular alignment, the better the skills and units you’ll be able to unlock. Occasional quests offer rewards like items or gold, that might make going against your previous decisions worthwhile. When these circumstances arise, Neocore have really succeeded in forcing you to weigh up the pros and cons of the options available.

Despite the superficial resemblance to the Total War series noted above, the tactical battles play out a little differently than might be expected. Rather than tackling enemy forces head-on, it really pays to take and hold the various “victory locations” scattered around the map. The AI is pretty adept at seizing these, but has a tendency to wander off instead of defending them.



Graphically, medieval Britain is well-realised. The strategic map is filled with colourful locales that change in appearance depending on the season, and there are some nice effects on the tactical map. There are some beautiful hand-painted images in the loading screens and cut-scenes that introduce each chapter.

The different factions occupying Britain all have a unique feel to them, with your knights dressed in some wildly anachronistic armour. It does occasionally get a bit unclear on the tactical map as to exactly what’s going on, but battles unfold slowly enough that this can be forgiven. Still, it would be nice to have a few more audio and visual cues to let you know when your units are being wiped out. Coming to the end of a battle and finding that yet another critical unit is gone because you didn’t see them getting massacred is when frustration starts to set in.

The musical selections for the strategic and tactical maps are appropriate and suitably epic, plus it’s nice to see a score that doesn’t rely on faceless nu-metal. Some of the sound effects are inaudible until you’re zoomed right in on your forces, which makes you feel that you’re not really part of the action when you’re viewing the battlefield from afar.



In addition to the single-player campaign, the game offers skirmishes against the AI or human opponents. Unfortunately, there are a few balance issues with the game, which become increasingly apparent as the campaign progresses and the difficulty level increases. Archers are ridiculously powerful and hard to counter in the early game, while some of the powers available to the knights are ripe for abuse, particularly in multiplayer skirmishes. There were also a few technical problems, although to their credit, Neocore have been diligently patching the game whenever critical bugs have presented themselves.

All in all, King Arthur is the kind of title big game companies just don’t make anymore. Challenging, ambitious and quirky, this is certainly a game that deserves a look, particularly if Neocore continue the fine job they’re doing with addressing a few of the game’s issues.

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