"We were just...'liberating' these goodly folk" A relatively simple EU style game.
The game allows you to pick from many different kingdoms of various sizes and at three different starting periods (early, high late), to play as, most tend to have at least one unique unit and some of the major powers a whole host of unique units (such as the Byzantines with their rather nice looking Roman Infantry complete with Chi Rho crosses on each shield), the idea of the game is to expand your empire, hold it together,fight battles (on a seperate battle map ala Legion/Spartan/Total War) deal with espionage, merchant trading, acquiring luxury resources to build better buildings etc so eventually you can claim the title to be ruler of Europe and win the game.
Graphically the game looks pretty nice, its a fairly old game from 2004 and quite unusually for a RTS game the developers didnt make the game with 3d graphics (that by now would have aged terribly) so the colourful 2d graphics have held up well both on the real time campaign map and on the battle map, complete with day and night cycles.
Sound wise the game is pretty good overall, the voice overs are pretty damn terrible though except for the advisor who greets you when you start the game, before and after battles but, as I have said overall the voices are pretty bad thanks to bad accented voice overs and limited number of vocal respones such as 'this ground looks good!' 'nice spot for us'! gets old real quick.
The music in the game is good though which helps mitigate the rather poor voice work in the game, the music fits the medieval atmosphere very well with an emphasis on string instruments and light use of drums with flute and theres quite a few tracks in the soundtrack for the game so it doesnt feel repetitive even after quite a few play throughs.
Now onto the gameplay, overall its good, but I feel it could have been great, its a good idea trying to merge the Europa Universalis style of grand real time strategy with the battle system of most real time strategy games (in EU series you dont control you armies on a battle map) but the scale seems off for a start, the unit sizes are very small and peasants, while they dont cause to much of a nuisance later on can overwhelm a army of professional soldiers which is quite infuriating in the beginning stages of the game, coupled with the AI's obsession with building massive mobs of them can be a pain.
The battles play out like some of the older age of empire series of games and they arnt quite as satisfying to fight as most RTS games which is a shame and the balance between them feels poorly done, cavalry for instance smash moral and killa few troops on charge but becuase their unit numbers are even lower than the already low unit numbers of infantry they quickly get cut to pieces unless your relatively lucky and can run away quickly-because of the cavalry expense and poor performance in battle I seriously recommend just investing in more elite infantry.
There are lots of factions in the game which is a good thing, quite a few have unique units, certain cities have acess to local special units - say Constantinople has access to the famous Varangarian Guard etc but it still feels as though theres only a limited number of troops, 4 basic types (including peasants) , maybe 5 with cavalry I just feel as though there should have been more troop types recruitable, or more variation between what there is.
The building management of the game is done by selecting your city and clicking a blank square and you get rpesented with three tabs which list various buildings, first is military, second town improvements and lastly special buildings, you can see what benefits you can from each one - and the reason why you shouldnt build a mix of army and town improvement buildings at most your cities is because various ones have different special resources, if a town has marble deposits, quarry and fields that is a city worth investing town improvements then special improvements to get access to more special resources and trade goods.
The idea is to specialise your cities because it takes quite a few military improvements to have access to the better units in the game.
Now while their are alot of cities in the game some regions in the game feel as though they dont have enough, theres 'Palestina' and Antioch representing the entirey of the crusader kingdoms - and heck Jeruslaem only gets Palestina and no unique army unit doesnt stand a chance,also North Africa can feel a little barren at times, what Im getting at here is that there should be more cities and provinces in the game.
Now another interesting aspect of the game is the character management system, you cant select any troop and lead them into battle instead your limited to a few character slots , you have to promote a knight to a marshall and thats what you send into towns to attach an army to (which obviously costs resources that also get replenished in the game automatically in time) then you can command that army on the strategic map itself and go off expanding the kingdom or putting down rebels. The more they fight the more experience they gain and they can level up to acquire up to 6 unique abilities which again can be improved 3 times, for instance 'healer' will replenish your troops losses at 20% for the first level then I think up to 60% max at third level , another skill might be siege engineering at level 1 you can acquire ladder bearers, level 2 ballistas and catapults etc (so long as the town has a siege workshop built
)
Also you can promote a person to be a builder and they have an impact on building times with any province they govern - id say theyre the least worthwhile of the bunch.
Then theres merchants which you can use to trade for resources whcih you might not have at a cost or for a bit of gold.
Landlords can provide more food and resist enemy armies that might be beseiging the province they are governing.
Also theres Clerics which you can use to try and convert a province - which costs alot of gold and 'piety' -also you can educate for a thousand books to make them more effective ealong wtih other specialists like merchant etc (all of these resources get replenished in time depending on number of churches,libraries etc) but be careful sometimes your cleric can end up dying failing to convert a province as such happened with my Eastern Roman king *tear*
Lastly theres spies which I think are pretty annoying but for now they can defend against rival spies passively or go on active infiltration missions into other kingdoms courts and can bribe marshalls etc.
Now since you can only have a rather small number of characters in your kingdom you reall have to think carefully how many marshalls are truly necessary to maintain and wage war in your kingdom, how many merchants, if you need a cleric at all etc etc this can be quite the limitation factor in the rate of expansion to your kingdom however it can also be pretty offputting to a player who wants to have more freedom of control in their strategy games, and I felt it was abit to restricting because it made large empire management a real pain having to send armies back and forth from one end of the mediterranean to the other to put down revolts which would occur with upsetting regularity! even with maximum kingdom power, same religion low nostalgia rating
- which ill explain now, the 'Kingdom Power' is a representation of your kingdoms strength, you can increase this by clicking on the circle in the top left of the screen for alot of gold which increases even more each time until you have a max of 5 (it can go as low as -5) it naturally decreases each time you break an agreement with someone or go to war for no justifiable reason, the higher the power the more gold you might reap every few seconds and less revolts - the happier people generally will be in your empire.
And nostaglia rating represents how people from a province conquered look back and want to remain within the previous rulers civilization say I conquer corsica, the inhabitants will have a high nostalgia rating for quite some time and maybe revolt against my rule representing themselves as freedom fighters or wanting to join once again with the previous owner Italy etc
Its a interesting idea just a shame rebel revolts occur so frequently even with same religion aswell!!
Now the reason I think spies are annoying in this game is because when a AI spy or you infiltrate a rival kingdom you subvert one of their characters at court and theres a very VERY limited number of court characters you can have so when one is a spy its very very annoying and furthermore that character whos a turn coat might be one of your marshalls your leading to war and suddenly..hes imprisoned but his army has now either disappeared or formed into a mercenary tent which appears on the campaign map to offer their services to any visiting marshall...great! I can accept some byzantine power games so whats the real reason I *hate* the spying system in the game?
"Bad news Sire your marshalls are revolting!" yes! all of my precious marshalls who ive spent time levelling up have no revolted against me with all their elite troops and siege equipment!! Brilliant gameplay addition!
The over arching gameplay theme in the game is resource management, from number of troops you create , trade goods you acquire and careful careful management of royal court characters but thats not all theres also 'Kingdom Advantages' to acquire by trading when you have built admilarity (upgrades from fishing village, building a dock then upgrading that) to bring in exotic goods like ivory, amber, gem stones etc and if you get the necessary exotic goods (and you can only acquire 1 per admilarity built so 1 per town) then you gain a kingdom advantage which may be something like the enlightenment which increases number of books made (and books are used to train court characters excluding marshalls) etc
The game itself can feel a little slow at times but easily remedied by increasing the game speed to 8x normal with a few presses of the + key and that includes the battle maps aswell - it can be necessary to up the speed because buildings can take a long time to build in the game - although to fans of Europa Universalis series of games and slower turn based strategy games we probably have the patience not to really be affected by the build times in Knights of Honor.
To win the game you need to become ruler of Europe by either having enough provinces (as in most of the map which takes ages and by that time you'll be bored) or by claiming the title yourself which then goes of for a vote, which is almost always a 'No' vote and you end up at war with everyone and have to conquer them anyways, the game could really have done with a few more ways to emerge victorious.
The Longevity of Knights of Honor is quite high due to the numerous different factions to play as and the three different starting periods and if you do find yourself getting addicted to the game (time can fly by pretty quick at times playing this) then you'll probably come back to play again a few times however you'll notice inevitably that theres a few limiting factors in the game, not many unit types , not many ways to win battles are rather small scale affairs and lose their charm after a while, annoying voice overs , the very very irritating fact that on startup you cant immediately skip the two logo movies that appear is so infuriatingly stupid that I actually feel the need to mention it as a negative point in this review, its little things that add up that hold back this game from greatness.
Should also quickly mention multiplayer, it only features the battle side of things which is poor , most fans of this game were probably attracted to it intially by the scale of the strategy and the map not just the battles.
But at least its very cheap these days and is worth at ry - you can even get it as part of the 'Medieval Triology' which comes with Patrician III and Tortuga for no more than ten pounds.
Pros:
*Nice graphical presentation
*Nice music
*Scale of the game - lots to choose from
*Resource system
*Optional real time battles
*Doesnt require the disc (mine is the 3 medieval pack though)
*Inexpensive these days
*it really is a good idea and a decent enough attempt of a grand RTS game with controllable battlees.
Cons
*Bad voice overs
*Unskippable intro logo movies
*Limited number of troop types
*the battles are not all that fun
*certain units feel unbalanced
*the royal court is an interesting idea but feels like a overall negative one
holding the player back
*Limited number of victory conditions
*overpowered and silly Spies
*revolts feel to frequent especially given the lack of marshals the player can employ to police the increasing empires they will have
*can get repetitive after a while of playing since every game can feel samey
*scope of multiplayer is a missed oppertunity!