King Arthur: Knight's Tale - Review by Kordanor

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Kordanor played King Arthur: Knight's Tale a lot - here's his review:

King Arthur: Knights Tale - Review after 300h, including all* Expansions [EN] by Kordanor


Here is a shorened transcript of the conclusion for the news:

[...]

Neocore Games created a great Tactics-RPG, which can convince through this whole main campaign with its deep, tactical battles, which are well balanced , a joy to play and free of frustration also thanks to the great interface and lacking relevance of luck for the most part.
The enemies are well designed and quite varied, with lots of different models and skillsets, and even the choices of your characters new abilities stay interesting for the longest time.[...]
The Alignment system offers some nice rewards and it's also cool that you can even unlock missions for additional characters, but a system like that always comes with the problem that you basically chose one alignment at the very start and then just limit yourself in your decisions for the rest of the game, to actually get all these rewards.
The one thing which bothered me more is the lack of plannability regarding the characters. While this isn't a disaster, it's the main reason why the game, which can completely convince with its main campaign, "only" gets a solid thumbs up from me, but no t a golden and sparkling thumbs up. But even "just" a full thumbs up means that I would recommend the game to everyone who is interested in tactical RPGs and can afford the quite substantial price of 45 Euros or 45 US Dollars. It's definitely worth it. King Arthur: Knights Tale offers more than a hundred hours of fun and it's an astonishingly rounded and well-polished game that has actually exceeded my own expectations.
In regards of the additional content thats quite a bit different.

[...]
More information.
 
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I would recommend the game to everyone who is interested in tactical RPGs and can afford the quite substantial price of 45 Euros or 45 US Dollars. It's definitely worth it.
It's actually on sale on Steam right now for $18 USD, ends in 26 hours.
 
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Another one that I've gotta get, and thanks for the text transcript above.
Including a typo I added there *cough* (shortened).
But yeah, definitely recommend, especially in a sale.

And the 9th legion will release in a month, trailers also look very cool already :)
 
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Supported this from the start, looks like it paid off.
Just a matter of fitting it in my ever growing backlog. Engrossed with Expeditions Vikings at the moment.
 
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Thanks for the review, @Kordanor!

And +10 XP for the references to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. ;)
Btw, they even reference it in the game. You can find that evil rabbit :D
 
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Was that 300 hours for a single playthrough?
It depends, but I will go into detail in the video:

-The game has a main campaign, thats with most of the story, voice overs, cutscenes and whatnot. It will take around 100h or so. Maybe longer if you have a worse party, maybe faster if you play on low difficulty.

-Then you have 2 endgame campaigns. You can import the team from the main campaign into each of those. These will take about 40-60h or longer each. On highest difficulty they are brutal. I actually spend like 5h on some of the battles, which is how the 300h come together. But these are then failed tries. If you just add the time together for a normal playthrough 40-60h are more realistic.

-Then there is a mini campaign to play the enemies. Very short, like 3h or so

-Lastly there is a skirmish mode. 4 times 10 battles. I only played some of these. But in theory you can play dozens of hours on these in total.

So my total playtime in the game is 344h at this point. But for the main campaign you only need around 100h. And it's not like you would feel like it was an incomplete game if you just played the main campaign.
 
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Thanks. It sounds like I can safely skip the DLC. I have no interest in skirmish maps or anything not related to the campaign. Not sure about the post-endgame stuff.
 
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Thanks. It sounds like I can safely skip the DLC. I have no interest in skirmish maps or anything not related to the campaign. Not sure about the post-endgame stuff.
I put timestamps in the video, so you can directly jump to the additional content part :)
 
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All the reviews I have read say it is super grindy and the fact that you played it for 300 hours is a bit of a concern for me. 100 hours for the main campaign for a game based on just turn based combat sounds way too long to me. I will watch the video when I get a chance though.
 
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All the reviews I have read say it is super grindy and the fact that you played it for 300 hours is a bit of a concern for me. 100 hours for the main campaign for a game based on just turn based combat sounds way too long to me. I will watch the video when I get a chance though.
It really depends on what you consider as grind, as most fights in the campaign come with different setups and you have lots of characters and skills to fiddle around, and also more story than I expected during the mission.
Regaridng the main campaign I wouldn't consider it grindy, but even in the "endphases" each combat was different enough from the previous one, that I didnt feel like doing the same over and over.
 
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I have a question. Is there a relationship between this game and the old Total War like Arthur games?
 
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I have a question. Is there a relationship between this game and the old Total War like Arthur games?
The developer is the same. But I didnt play the older games of them. But they seem to be very much into Arthur :D
 
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I enjoyed the game quite a bit but at some point you master the combat and become overpowered to the point that missions just feel like repetitive grind.

I did enjoy the particular take on the Arhturian myth, and the grim, bleak atmosphere in any case, and played it for well over 100 hours, which is a thumbs up in my book.
 
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I enjoyed the game quite a bit but at some point you master the combat and become overpowered to the point that missions just feel like repetitive grind.

I did enjoy the particular take on the Arhturian myth, and the grim, bleak atmosphere in any case, and played it for well over 100 hours, which is a thumbs up in my book.
I would disagree there.
King Arthur is actually doing better there than many other games as it doesnt allow you to level away and each time you get into a new section difficulty will catch up again.

At release there have been some mechanics which had been overpowered (like the "assassin" like class who could just jump around like crazy) but this also had been adjusted during multiple patches. Especially the last patch also change some stuff in regards to class balance, but especially regarding getting additional AP till end of combat.
 
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I remember only using one "assassin" (Boudicea) and several mages, but gear had some game breaking bonuses/perks after Act 2 if you knew how to stack them to your advantage. Difficulty is subjective, I found some combos worked well in every situation and made combat pretty trivial, but then it is true that it happens with a lot of Turn-Based RPGs.

I enjoyed the game most in the initial stages and the early midgame, when you had a few tools and had to make the most of them, but at some point you start facing jotuns/fomorians with bloated HP/armor bars that are really not dangerous or difficult to kill, just a disproportionate timesink. Not to mention the massive levels where you had to run around the whole place one turn at a time spending 75% of the battle just on tedious movement without anything to do but trying to get to some spawn node 3 screens away just sending infinite enemies your way.

In any case, preferences and all of that. A very good tactical combat game nonetheless, that in my case, I was glad when it was done. But then, I wish every game I play gave me 100+ hours of fun, so even at full price, $45 was a good buy for me.
 
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The developer is the same. But I didnt play the older games of them. But they seem to be very much into Arthur :D
Ah ok. I was on my phone and missed who the developer was. I imagine it's a recognizable world in the public domain they can build on.
 
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