King Arthur: Knight's Tale - Release Day

It seems like I'm in the mood for these types of games lately.
After recently finishing Warhammer Chaos Gate, I bought this a few days ago.

Initial impressions are that the combat is really good. I feel like they've taken the approach of battles to be really set-piece focused rather than enemies patrolling maps. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but for now I am really enjoying it this way.

I am playing on Roguelite (which defaults to Hard difficulty), so I only have one save and if I mess up I can only reload to the last place I was. For now that hasn't been an issue, but I have had some difficult battles when I don't pay attention to my positioning.

On a non-battle front, the main character seems to be a bit of an arse so I'm playing him like that too as going for a "Rightful" arse seems a bit odd to me.
The voice acting has been pretty good until this latest character Sir Yvain who seems to be reading an unrehearsed speech from a teleprompter.

I think overall, the game lacks a bit of feminine qualities with the only positive element being the narrator being a woman. Other than that it seems like just a whole bunch of gruff men playing together. I felt a bit the same in Warhammer.

If you enjoy this type of turn-based mission styled tactical RPG, it's quite fun, so definitely a recommend for now.

In my head though, XCOM2 is still the boss in this style of game.
In other words, I have replayed XCOM2 at least 10 times (not always until the endgame), but I can't see myself replaying Chaos Gate or this so many times (maybe when new DLC comes out, I'll play each one more time).
 
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Personally I don't like what Firaxis did with xcom, however I also think the games can only vaguely be compared as they are both tactics games, but King Arthur got much more story involved, the zones are all handmade and the combat is mostly melee focused (imho the XCom simplifications are mostly problematic due to being mostly ranged combat, but Arthur uses action points and melee)

Regarding the main character: You are definitely right, the main character is somewhat of an arse. However as I mentioned in a previous post: The whole morale system we know from other games is just disregarded in this game. "Lawful" and Chaotic" really dont mean good or bad. The lawful decision can be the one which makes you look like an ass. But the chaotic might do the same in other decisions.

The game is extremely dark. This you will realize at latest when you meet the Priest companion, a christian maniac. And not just he is a freak, the party also just accepts that peasants are just killed because what they would have to say would have been uncomfortable. Their lives are worth pretty much nothing in the eyes of the whole roundtable. On the other hand...you are all Zombies...kinda...
 
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Our modern day ways of defining good and evil, law and chaos, right and wrong, don't necessarily apply to all cultures and time periods.

Anyhow the christian lady is pretty cool. Even though I go pagan she is one of my favorite characters in the game. She doesn't care for titles and speaks her mind. I love some of her comments.
 
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I think overall, the game lacks a bit of feminine qualities with the only positive element being the narrator being a woman. Other than that it seems like just a whole bunch of gruff men playing together. I felt a bit the same in Warhammer.

A bit late to this thread, but you'll be happy to know that later on you find quite a few strong female characters. To keep it spoiler-free, I'll just say that a bunch of them are sages (ie, very support-oriented class) but there is also what I think are the best vanguard and mage of the game. These last two are missable if you don't make the right choices tho, so you'll need to complete side missions accordingly (in the case of the mage, not much of a spoiler, you can see her listed as becoming available once you reach enough "Old Faith" level.)
 
I keep reading positive reviews and opinions that I have to play this game. My only problem I love the Total War clones better. That's just another me problem though.
 
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I keep reading positive reviews and opinions that I have to play this game. My only problem I love the Total War clones better. That's just another me problem though.

These are very, very different games though.
This here is a tactics game embedded in a story with RPG character development). The only Strategic Elements are an Darkest Dungeon like Town you can improve.
 
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I think @Couchpotato meant the other king Arthur game but I may be wrong?
Yep the first two games in the series with expansions were Total War clones. I understand they didn't sell well hence NeoCore went the Tactical TB route.
 
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So I have played this a bit more and still enjoying it a lot.
I noticed a few nags that I think would have made the game much better.

The UI for example does not allow to review character stats/skills during missions. This is a big miss as sometimes I don't know if it's Sir A or Sir B who has a certain sub-skill I selected.

Even in town, it's not well done as to what is viewable or not.

Another element is items. I don't see how they've managed to make such a bad inventory. It really is not good.

But the main nag after having played for a while is why my main character could not have been more customisable. I don't really like my main character being a tank.
 
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So I have played this a bit more and still enjoying it a lot.
I noticed a few nags that I think would have made the game much better.

The UI for example does not allow to review character stats/skills during missions. This is a big miss as sometimes I don't know if it's Sir A or Sir B who has a certain sub-skill I selected.

Even in town, it's not well done as to what is viewable or not.

Another element is items. I don't see how they've managed to make such a bad inventory. It really is not good.

But the main nag after having played for a while is why my main character could not have been more customisable. I don't really like my main character being a tank.

Hrm, Personally I have no issues with that, besides of the first part you mentioned. I mean it's not really necessary, and you can obviously see active skills in the actionbar, during combat anyways, but for passives, or alignments or anything like that you are out of luck during mission.

But what I especially don't understand is your gripe with the inventory. I think it's quite decent. Well, I always mix up the item which is equipped and the one which is mouseovered but I guess thats on me.
I just played the demo of Lost Eidolon, and thought like "Man...I wished it had an inventory like King Arthur", because the one in Lost Eidolon: MUCH worse, clearly made for controllers, no overview at all.
 
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Hrm, Personally I have no issues with that, besides of the first part you mentioned. I mean it's not really necessary, and you can obviously see active skills in the actionbar, during combat anyways, but for passives, or alignments or anything like that you are out of luck during mission.

But what I especially don't understand is your gripe with the inventory. I think it's quite decent. Well, I always mix up the item which is equipped and the one which is mouseovered but I guess thats on me.
I just played the demo of Lost Eidolon, and thought like "Man…I wished it had an inventory like King Arthur", because the one in Lost Eidolon: MUCH worse, clearly made for controllers, no overview at all.

Well, that is one of the issues with the inventory. Second is you can't filter on item type other than the 4 pre-sets. So if I want to see only something specific I need to look through 5 items that look almost exactly the same. I can't search for anything like "Fire" or "Bleed". So if I have a champion specialising in one attack then I need to look through all of them to find the item I want.

I can't sort on newest, most expensive,... It's very barebones.
 
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Well, that is one of the issues with the inventory. Second is you can't filter on item type other than the 4 pre-sets. So if I want to see only something specific I need to look through 5 items that look almost exactly the same. I can't search for anything like "Fire" or "Bleed". So if I have a champion specialising in one attack then I need to look through all of them to find the item I want.

I can't sort on newest, most expensive,… It's very barebones.

Ah, alright. I am basically not having the issue as I am sorting them out early on. So I dont pile up crappy items. Each time i am finished with a mission I go through all the new items, select which of these replace old equipment, the vast majority of the rest is then sold. Only keeping a few items with special bonuses (like the fire or blood thing if the items are also good).
 
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That's why I didn't notice the inventory issue either. Dislike clutter, even in games, so I usually sell most stuff after each mission.
 
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I'm of the Gothic packrat variety.
Unless I need money or they're shit I keep them :)

Just in case I get a new knight who could use them. Maybe I just need to sell everything.

I also don't change up items on people for each mission. In other words, if an item is assigned to a certain knight then that is his item. Others can't have it unless the first one changes. It feels more real to me than knights swapping armour and weapons around.


I ran into my first biggish bug.

I killed the midnight nightmare, but one of the banshees remained alive, so I didn't get any treasure for the battle. I saw a youtune video and there was meant to be a chest next to the fight with a relic item.
 
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So I have now finished the main game - all the way up to the beginning of the Chained God DLC.

I have to say I really had fun. It is only now starting to become a bit much for me, but I am thinking of trying to complete the DLC. I may or may not do it.

I feel like the game has a few things that need some changes but overall really fun game.
 
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Sounds quite positive.



How much time did it take?
I'm not certain actually as I leave games open sometimes without playing. The steam counter showed 65 hours when I finished so that is likely around 50 hours excluding dlc but doing every mission I saw.

I mostly played with the same composition unless they were wounded so I knew how to use them quite effectively.
 
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I'm not certain actually as I leave games open sometimes without playing. The steam counter showed 65 hours when I finished so that is likely around 50 hours excluding dlc but doing every mission I saw.

I mostly played with the same composition unless they were wounded so I knew how to use them quite effectively.

Nice! That's a good length for me with that type of game, I was afraid it would be much longer because of the TB mode.
 
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