King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame

 PC
User Score
7.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 152 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 103 out of 152
  2. Mixed: 29 out of 152
  3. Negative: 20 out of 152

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  1. Oberrill
    Oct 8, 2011
    3
    I cannot review the later stages of the game as I quit playing about halfway through. The only part of the game I really enjoyed was the text-based "questing". There are small parts of the game that are also enjoyable but not nearly enough. The game is mostly about fighting and that is just bad. You can actually lose a battle even if you have lost no soldiers and the enemy has lost all butI cannot review the later stages of the game as I quit playing about halfway through. The only part of the game I really enjoyed was the text-based "questing". There are small parts of the game that are also enjoyable but not nearly enough. The game is mostly about fighting and that is just bad. You can actually lose a battle even if you have lost no soldiers and the enemy has lost all but one. Camera sucks near the edges. The enemy almost almost always has stronger and more units which means winning really comes down to being able to control your forces. Of course you really cannot because the game forces you to send troops all over the map. Of course while you are doing something with a unit or group of units, the others are doing something stupid like a unit of light horse charging into a wall of spears. It is actually not that difficult to win battles, but if you lose too many soldiers, you are not going to have enough money to replace your losses. You are able to make laws and decrees. Some of them are pro peasant and some of them are anti-peasant. I thought this was going to be a nice element of the game. I was wrong. I used all the pro laws and decrees and none of the anti. To what end? At the same point where Sidhe armies suddenly begin popping up all over the map, so too do rebellious peasants. It was soon after this that I quit playing. The reviewer who called it "whack the mole" was exactly correct. Did I mention that you have to buy your forces and pay upkeep? You do. This makes sense. What does not make sense is that even with all of the economic upgrades it is not possible to field even three armies strong enough to deal with many of the enemy armies. I think the trigger for the ":whack the mole" part of the game is attached to something the player does. If so, then you could just let time pass and build up your money until you have enough to finish the game before you run out of money.
    The enemy of course always manages to field several large armies no matter how small is his economic base. If you can get this game very cheaply, you might want to give it a try. But I do not recommend it.    … Expand
  2. Quforic
    Sep 20, 2011
    4
    I really wanted to like this game, and it had so much potential. However it was ruined by the ridiculously overpowered Archer unit (even with the setting to reduce the dmg they do) and also the fact that if you wait 1 or 2 turns to build your army the AI gets so crazy powerful that you can no longer beat them. If you want a game like this, stick to the Total War series. It's a shame asI really wanted to like this game, and it had so much potential. However it was ruined by the ridiculously overpowered Archer unit (even with the setting to reduce the dmg they do) and also the fact that if you wait 1 or 2 turns to build your army the AI gets so crazy powerful that you can no longer beat them. If you want a game like this, stick to the Total War series. It's a shame as there are some good elements like the talent trees and magic options, and also using land to grant loyalty.. so lets hope they give it another try.… Expand
  3. wolverdick
    Feb 5, 2011
    3
    This game has a fatal flaw. The AI and unit balance are drastically off. The longer you play the stronger the AI gets until it becomes nearly unbeatable. Archers are vastly overpowered and the inability to train user troops to match the elevated levels of the AI make the game a buzz kill when you get deeply into it.
    If you are not proceeding through the game at breakneck speed and with    This game has a fatal flaw. The AI and unit balance are drastically off. The longer you play the stronger the AI gets until it becomes nearly unbeatable. Archers are vastly overpowered and the inability to train user troops to match the elevated levels of the AI make the game a buzz kill when you get deeply into it.
    If you are not proceeding through the game at breakneck speed and with amazing luck, you will eventually be overwhelmed by the AI.These limitations and a clumsy interface make this game no match for the Total War series. The story elements are good and the graphics as well, but this game will only lull you in and leave you disappointed in the end. Bad AI and design do not equate with challenge.    … Expand
  4. chartinboy
    Mar 15, 2011
    0
    Oh...such a brilliant concept, pulled off so abysmally! The idea is phenomonal, take one of the best mythos' we know, and create an enjoyable rts from it. Sweet and simple. The game, however, is ruined by the fact that the camera allows you to see a whole 0.1% of the action, the fact tat creating one powerful man (a single man!) can effectively win you the game alone, as he tears throughOh...such a brilliant concept, pulled off so abysmally! The idea is phenomonal, take one of the best mythos' we know, and create an enjoyable rts from it. Sweet and simple. The game, however, is ruined by the fact that the camera allows you to see a whole 0.1% of the action, the fact tat creating one powerful man (a single man!) can effectively win you the game alone, as he tears through whole armies of supposedly skilled fighters...and the constant nagging of the tutorial! Even when turned off, throughout half the game I was getting gamestopping pop-ups explaining something that had been explained a hundred times before.

    Could have been excellent. It wasn't.    … Expand
  5. Jean-MichelH
    Jan 5, 2010
    3
    I bought this game on steam and I find it pretty dull. 1) The turn based gameplay is confusing and the graphics aren't even that good. 2) The text based quests are just cheap - haven't played a text based adventure since the apple IIe... so the roleplaying / adventure part is pretty limited. 3) The game battles aren't great either : controls are obnoxious. Why should you I bought this game on steam and I find it pretty dull. 1) The turn based gameplay is confusing and the graphics aren't even that good. 2) The text based quests are just cheap - haven't played a text based adventure since the apple IIe... so the roleplaying / adventure part is pretty limited. 3) The game battles aren't great either : controls are obnoxious. Why should you have to fight with the controls? Plus I understand that having plenty of tiny soldiers makes for epic battles, but I'll trade it for the simplicity and fun of warcraft III or starcraft any day. This game could have been a complete hit if it had an adventure and tactical mode that would be as immersive as dune (the first opus, remember?), and a battle mode as entertaining as warcraft III or even command & conquer : unfortunately it has neither and the result is a big disappointment. Nice try though, maybe next time...… Expand
  6. MikeP
    Dec 29, 2009
    0
    It's the total war series, except where the total war series succeeded, they stripped these features and replaced them with their own "inovative" features. Don't fix what isn't broken!!!!!!
  7. Heben2
    Nov 26, 2011
    3
    Do not like this game very much with the mediocre graphics, wannabe total war battles and a small, kinda irrelevant rpg-element. I do not know if it's because I like the total war series a lot and also play a lot of 'real' rpgs, but this game just felt like a b-movie and didn't give me anything of an enjoyable game. Kinda boring actually.
  8. evild4ve
    Jan 9, 2014
    2
    I played about 150 turns of this and decided it isn't genuinely difficult, they just didn't design it properly. The problem is that the course of the game is heavily, if not totally, scripted - instead of the actual game mechanics providing balance.

    Players are basically supposed to align with either the Christians or the Pagans*, and in my game I somehow ended up choosing quest options    I played about 150 turns of this and decided it isn't genuinely difficult, they just didn't design it properly. The problem is that the course of the game is heavily, if not totally, scripted - instead of the actual game mechanics providing balance.

    Players are basically supposed to align with either the Christians or the Pagans*, and in my game I somehow ended up choosing quest options that put me into the late game without either side having formed an alliance with me. Which meant that the Christian Saxons in Anglia** had a stack that continually scaled to be twice as strong as my strongest army, but which I could keep pinned down by repeatedly capturing a town in its territory, while on the other side of the map, Pagan Wales had about twenty stacks that were stronger than my strongest army.

    The combined industrial output of Arthurian England was unable to compete with either faction, despite them only having three territories at most, and the limitations of the game mechanic make it impossible to spam units or even to have the expendable generals or suicide missions that the strategic situation required.

    *, ** - regarding Welsh Pagans and Christian Saxons in Anglia, the game has a basically ludicrous pseudo-history that veers madly between the Venerable Bede (a real historian) and the "Slaine" graphic novels. Saxons in Anglia is weird because the Angles lived in Anglia. The Saxons themselves weren't distinctively Christian - the historic King Raedwald (AD 600) who squares off against King Arthur in this game adopted Christianity, but in reality his sons then took the Saxons back to the Anglo-Saxon gods they had before. And the religious conflict that Anglo-Saxon Christianity really had wasn't with Druids (who had all disappeared by AD 200), but with a Celtic version of Christianity.

    The military equipment used by the units is even more anachronistic - e.g. crossbows (AD 1066+), Crusaders (AD 1096+), and gothic plate armour (AD 1400+). Unit stats and performance are therefore basically random. Some units can have stats that are up to four times higher than others - so if two batches of similarly expensive and heavily-armed knights bash into each other, and your batch is the wrong "sort" of knight, they get wiped out.

    Most annoying though is the crummy, 1970s folk revival/neo-pagan conception of Druids being "at one with nature", and therefore aligning with Fairies. Everything gets conflated together - Morgan Le Fay gets identified with "Morrigan" (from a different country's folklore hundreds of years distant) because their names sound a bit similar - and the aspects of the legend that actually interested Thomas Malory and other authors of classic versions get obliterated.

    The combat in the game is quite fun, to the extent that it copies Total War, and on the rare occasions where a balanced battle takes place (and it isn't against fairies) it can be quite satisfying to trick the AI into being flanked, or whatever. Magic is overpowered, but it's King Arthur - so magic should be overpowered - the problem is that nearly everyone and their cat in this version can cast spells, not just Merlin and Morgan Le Fay. King Arthur and Merlin aren't even units - some warrior-king!

    Archers are also over-powered, possibly reflecting British sentiment about longbows post-Agincourt (AD 1415!). Killing someone with flying pointy sticks shouldn't be ten times as quick as battering them to death with heavy blunt things - if that had ever been the case, footsoldiers wouldn't have continued having a military role.

    The victory locations mechanic is daft - and there is never much advantage in making for a particular location on the battlefield, because the AI's archers will always be in range before you get there. Victory Locations consists of the AI grabbing them all in the first 30 seconds due to impossibly fast cavalry and always being located closer to them, and then you grabbing them with your own cavalry over the next five minutes after the AI instantly and permanently forgets it has them.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

47
#47 Best PC Game of 2009
48
#48 Most Discussed PC Game of 2009
68
#68 Most Shared PC Game of 2009

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
79

Generally favorable reviews - based on 23 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 23
  3. Negative: 0 out of 23
  1. My Gamer
    Dec 9, 2010
    92
    Like so few games before, it King Arthur - The RPG has managed to make many an early morning "quick game" turn into a late night session of "just one more turn".
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  2. Impulsegamer
    80
    Sound in the game is superbly done, the music sound track fits the look and feel of the game. With sweeping grand music and drumming beats fit for the grand epic adventure that the game is. So too is the voice acting, with flair and conviction and an earnest truth ringing in the words.
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  3. GameWatcher
    80
    The consistency in design and reverence for the subject matter is King Arthur's greatest strength. Too often war games of this persuasion end up as dry, hardcore affairs that only the slimmest of niche audiences can appreciate. Neocore, although biting off a little more than it can chew, has provided an experience that positively oozes with atmosphere and challenge, yet all the while catering to those that spend twelve hours a day devising battlefield plans - and the other twelve reading the Art of War.
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