Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders is an action/strategy game by Blueside wherein you lead an army in a fantasy world to claim the ‘Holy Land.’ The version of the game I reviewed was a version that had recently been released on the PC.
The reason I mention this is because the game originally came out in 2004. And this isn’t an HD remaster, this is the actual game from 2004, adjusted to work on a PC and it shows. It has everything—including the same graphic and technical limitations—that was in the original 2004 version. Not to say this is a bad game, far from it. Its idea for combining strategy and action game elements is certainly interesting.
For those of you who haven’t played this game before, you direct a squad of units as though it was one unit. There are usually 3-5 squads for you to control in a mission. Of those squads, one of them is designated as the ‘Leader’ squad. The Leader squad comes with a unique mechanic; at any time you can switch to taking direct control of the squad’s commander and play the game as though it were an action game.
Aside from being fun, this mechanic also has a strategic benefit. Every squad comes with a commander who, if taken out, results in the entire squad being defeated, regardless of the squad’s overall remaining health. By way of clarification, I should mention that every squad has a unit carrying a banner. This unit is not the commander. The commander will be one of the units that are fighting with your squad. You can identify the commander by their separate health bar. Squads directed in strategy mode will ignore the commanders and focus on defeating every unit in the opposing squad. In action mode you can take direct control of your leader and hunt down the commander of the squad you are fighting against, thus allowing for a much quicker end to the fight. Finding the commander can get annoying when it looks the same as the other units in its squad, something that happened over 70% of the time.
Unlike the game’s sequel where the leader can move independent of the squads, in this game the leader is tied to one of your squads and is incapable of moving further than 20 ft. from the squad’s center. Additionally, the leader is always attached to the same squad. In other words, you can not choose to have the leader attached to a different squad. Also, action mode only works for the squad with a leader. For other squads, trying to switch to action mode accomplishes nothing.
In fact, for 2 of the game’s 4 campaigns, you can only choose 1 or 2 of the squads that accompany you, while the others are set. This makes sense because the game needs to slowly introduce the different squads in the game and how to properly use them. I guess I just wish you didn’t need to be halfway through the game before you were allowed complete freedom over which squads you can take with you. Only 2 limitations are placed on you in the 2nd half of the game; the number of squads you can take with you and the leader’s squad must be one of them. Of course to compensate for this, the missions that allow you so much freedom are harder than the ones where the squads are chosen for you.
In fact, while campaigns 1 and 2 give you new squads every time they introduce a new one, in campaigns 3 and 4 you can only increase the number of squads you have available by hiring mercenaries in pubs in towns. You can hire mercenaries in campaigns 1 and 2 as well, but unless you want duplicates of the same squad or access to one of the squads that aren’t introduced, hiring mercenaries in these campaigns is pointless. While each mercenary comes with a set squad, you can easily change their squad’s ‘job’ by spending gathered experience points to unlock new skills in the mercenary, assuming the mercenary has access to those skills.
As you might guess, different squad commanders and mercenaries have access to different skills or in the case of strong mercenaries like trolls, access to very few skills. The squad’s ‘job’ or type can be freely changed provided the squad’s commander has both the appropriate skills and said skills are at the appropriate levels. For example, to change a squad to basic sword-wielding infantry requires the squad’s commander to have at least a low-level melee skill while heavy infantry require the commander’s melee skill to be higher. While getting new skills for a commander doesn’t cost any experience points, increasing the level of those skills does cost experience points. Additionally, each commander only has 4 slots open for skills. You are able to delete skills you no longer wish for the commander to have, but you will not get back any of the experience points you put into that skill.
While it is possible to cast spells, there is no dedicated ‘mage’ squad. To cast a spell, the squad needs to have a commander with points in one of the magic skills. And to make up for how powerful some of the spells are, a magic skill takes up 2 skill slots instead of 1. In other words, you can’t have a squad with access to 2 different types of spells For example, if the squad commander has fire magic, he/she can’t also have earth magic.
However, certain squads have access to skills exclusive to that squad. For example, the ‘sapper’ squad has the ability to set traps on the field or disarm enemy traps that start on the map. A point worth mentioning though, both spells and skills can only be activated in strategy mode and even then, only if said squad is not currently in the middle of actively fighting another squad.
With controlling how squads move and attack, you have 2 options. To either direct each squad individually or to direct all squads to move to a certain area or attack a specific unit. While with a controller there are 2 buttons to allow you to easily switch between squads, with a keyboard I was only able to find one button (the left SHIFT button) to cycle through squads. Additionally, as mentioned before the leader can’t move more than 20 ft. from the center of their assigned squad. This means that the leader’s squad is moved around through strategy mode, same as every other squad. In fact, the leader’s squad only lets you activate action mode if it is currently fighting another squad. As soon as the squad isn’t in combat anymore, the game will force you to switch back to strategy mode. I say “isn’t in combat” instead of “has defeated the opposing squad” because it is possible for another enemy squad to walk into the fight and join the battle. Also, all squads, including the leader’s squad, have the option of retreating.
Unlike games such as Fire Emblem, having a squad run out of health mid-mission doesn’t mean that you lose them for the rest of the campaign. However, there is still a consequence for having squads run out of health mid-mission. Experience points are shared across all squads and, at the end of a mission, each surviving squad will generate experience points based on how many kills it got. In other words, a squad that gets a high number of kills before being wiped out itself would not generate any experience points from said kills. Additionally, losing either the leader’s squad or a squad critical to the mission will result in a game-over.
Aside from hiring mercenaries and adjusting commander skills, each town/base will also allow you to buy equipment for your leader, your commanders, or for any of your squads using gold collected from each mission. You can also sell any equipment you aren’t using, except starting equipment for some reason, although the way to do this isn’t immediately obvious. To switch from buying equipment to selling it, you need to press right instead of up/down. I know this might sound obvious, but it took me longer than I care to admit to realize I could do that.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders, except for some stupid stealth missions, although I don’t know if that’s poor level design or just me being bad at stealth. As such, I think a fair rating for it is 8/10.
Check Out the Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders Steam Trailer:
Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders is available for $19.99 for PC via Steam.
For more information on Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders please visit https://kuftc.blueside.net/.
Steam Review
I am a recent Computer Science/Game Development Programming Chapman University Graduate. I am a life long enthusiast of computer/video gaming and my favorite game genres are adventure, choice-driven stories, fighting, and racing. My favorite game/movie series include but aren't limited to 'Legend of Zelda'; 'Dragon Age'; 'Persona'; 'Sonic the Hedgehog'; 'Mario'; 'Metroid' ;'Megaman'; 'Naruto'; 'Batman'; 'Spiderman'; 'Star Wars'; and 'Star Trek.'
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