Oh boy, what a time for this game to be released. Not to their fault, but really, 2020 has proven to have had terrible timing for developers in the gaming industry. I think specifically to the recently released The Last of Us Part 2, and how it drowned us in misery in an already miserable year. The Plague: Kingdom Wars, by developer Reverie World Studios, doesn’t necessarily have this problem, I just found it rather ironic that it was released into the world of Covid-19.
I want to come out front and say that I hold a bias. I do not tend to enjoy Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games. The Plague: Kingdom Wars is an RTS title. I have had some experience with the genre, when I was very young, with games like Command and Conquer or Red Alert. For whatever reason though, the love of RTS games didn’t stick. It may have been that they were the only games that would run on my family’s archaic Windows 95 computer that made them such a part of my early childhood, tragically left behind as I entered my teens. With this in mind, and taking careful consideration to my bias, I delved into the world of 1347.
The Plague: Kingdom Wars is a follow-up to Reverie World Studio’s 2017 title Medieval Kingdom Wars‘ and places the player in charge of one of many monarchs from that time period. You are tasked with surviving the plague, holding off rival countries, and expanding your empire. The player can choose leaders from: the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Cyprus, the Anatolian Beyliks, and the Knight Hospitallers of St. John.
You begin with management of a few cities, with the plague looming on the horizon. The game is largely played in two parts: inside your cities, and on a larger world map. From the world map you can manage city taxes, infrastructure upgrades, and military tactics and movement. Now where the game gets really fascinating is in managing your cities. From the world map screen you can choose to enter a city, however, you only have so much time to spend inside a city every in-game month so you need to make that time count. From inside the city you can build structures that improve your income, barracks to train your military, and later on, churches and hospitals within which to treat those who have caught the Black Death. It is important to note that active income is made in the cities, whereas income made on the world map is passive and only distributes at the beginning of each in-game month. New players will find it more financially beneficial to spend all of their allotted monthly (in-game) time in their cities, especially when just starting the game.
So, what does the game do well? For one thing, the aesthetic feel of The Plague: Kingdom Wars is astounding. The loading screens are real plague-era paintings that are haunting and grim.
The solemn music composition adds to the vibe, making the reality of the Black Death as you play the game palpable. Another aspect of The Plague: Kingdom Wars that I came to enjoy was that developing your kingdom was very much dependent on the time you spent in your cities. With that time being limited every in-game month, it made decision making feel satisfying. Also, the game map is giant, and holds a lot of replayability as you start in a different location based on which kingdom you choose in the beginning of the game. The User Interface (UI) is also very robust. You can tax your citizens, but they might begin to resent you. You can banish those that get the plague, but then again, you have to consider how that will affect your image. You can send gifts of money to other lords to prevent their attack on your cities, or you can spread gossip to incite war. There is a lot to do in this game, and the developers have really spent their time making each action feel weighted and balanced.
Which leads me to the RTS portion of The Plague: Kingdom Wars. When you engage in combat with an opponent, it is fairly straightforward: you are transported to the battlefield, choosing units to move and attack, and building structures to support the siege. However, your army needs to be fed and paid, so in order to make a large-scale siege successful you need to make sure you have stockpiled enough resources to sustain the battle, or you will lose and be returned to the world map.
The Plague: Kingdom Wars plays in the tradition of Grand Strategy where you need to consider carefully every action you make, and that makes the game feel extremely rewarding when you do it right. However, I couldn’t seem to ‘get it right’ the first few hours I played. The tutorial is not as clear as I needed it to be. It is largely displayed through text instructions on-screen and is not guided in any way. I know this can be immersive and that there are those who will like this aspect of the game, but as someone who is not as familiar with RTS/Grand Strategy, it felt very alienating and frustrating. I did not realize that going into your cities was imperative for generating income until embarrassingly late into the game.
The Plague: Kingdom Wars is flooded with ambition and I adore that, but sometimes the robust-ness of the game gives cause for input lag, graphical bugs, or typos. I cannot truly complain too much about these things though, because I started playing the game in Early Access. I noticed how with every patch the game seemed to improve, but never got quite to a place I would call stable. What I see when I play this game is a team that wants to use one of history’s scariest pandemics as the backdrop to a robust and sweeping RTS/Grand Strategy that takes every consideration to reward the player for the time they spend learning its intricacies. I feel it can be unfair to grade games on the same rubric, when some are developed by a 300-member AAA team, and others, such as this title, have a devoted team of only 3 developers. Taking that into account, it is an ambitious and rewarding experience for those who are fans of the RTS/Grand Strategy genre. When seen as its own entity, forsaking all other influences, The Plague: Kingdom Wars really shines. Through the time I put into the game, I felt extremely rewarded for learning its intricacies, and where in the beginning I felt completely alienated, as I learned the game, I began to feel more and more confident in my understanding of the mechanics and systems at play.
I love how many options and mechanics The Plague: Kingdom Wars presents. It is sweeping and grand, even if it may not yet be the most stable game. It is a game for the RTS Veteran, but maybe not necessarily the novice. If you are a fan of Real Time Strategy, and especially if you are a fan of medieval history, I have a feeling that you will really enjoy The Plague: Kingdom Wars.
Check Out The Plague: Kingdom Wars Trailer:
The Plague: Kingdom Wars is available for PC for $19.99 via Steam Early Access.
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I am a writer from Portland,Oregon who has loved gaming since early childhood. Writing and sharing about the best in visual arts is one of my favorite things. Some of my all time favorite games are: The Last of Us, God Of War (2019), Journey, Persona 5, Borderlands 2, and Shadow of the Colossus.
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