Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is a rather frustrating experience that you should probably skip.
You start out with choosing a character who you will then level up. There is your standard fare, Elven archer, Massive guy with huge sword, Dwarf with a hammer, Crazy Japanese guy with two katanas, you know the lot. Each has a different story, although truthfully, you won't really care about the story. Partly because it is so slowly unveiled to you, by the time things do get interesting, your attention is no longer focused on the story. You given a brief tutorial (achievement for finishing!) and your off to a pretty standard start.
The game play is pretty simple. Hack and Slash your way through enemies and level up. Gain new items, which will make you stronger, and learn new skills. Go online and party with up to 3 other people, and kill vicious beasts, huge monsters and other demons a like over XBL. Great concept, now here's why it falls on it's face in most areas.
The game offers a pretty standard character development for an action RPG. When you level up, you can either put your points into Health, Mana or Luck. Health does what you think it does, while Mana allows you to use skills and wield better weapons. Although when you swing your weapon, you use mana. (WTF?) Luck does very little but can improve your chances to get better items. So the player must balance between making his character a power house meat shield, or putting enough mana points in so they can use better weapons. It's limiting, and it doesn't make much sense.
Combat is simple. Hit X or A until the enemies die. But that's standard for hack and slash games. The problem is, there is no block button, and long combos leave you open for attack. So you will find yourself tentative to unleash that 8 hit combo, because you are likely to get slash in the rear. Because there is no block button, magic attacks, and other combo attacks hit you viciously, as you helplessly lose life and pray you don't get hit as soon as you stand up. Fear not, you have great skills of destruction to fight back though....or do you.....?
The skills in the game are pretty much useless. Because you can't lock on to targets, so you usually miss, and for the most part, your better off just not using them. Getting new skills requires you to kill X amount of enemies, only they don't tell you which ones when you select the skill. So when you want to get that awesome new fire spell, it sucks when you find out you just hacked through them all, and now have to back track.
Oh back tracking. KUF:COD does offer large, expansive levels with great enemy design. But that in turn creates another frustration. Well because the game is split into large levels, instead of way points like other, better, more successful action RPG's like Diablo. You have to replay entire levels to back track to monsters you need to kill for new skills. Weak.
A promising feature in the game was the item synthesis. You take items, combine them, and make more powerful items. Sounds simple and cool! So there is quite a lot of customization you can do, only synthesizing the items is never really explained at all. You end up just synthesizing items just to see if anything happens, and you may even ruin a weapon doing so. So what was a great feature in the game, is actually, no so great because they never tell you how to use it properly.
The online play is the best part of this game. Up to three other people can quest with you. It is enjoyable to run around online with your friends and co-op through the story. You can join higher level friends and quest together if you are a newbie. Monsters receive boosts depending on how many people are in the game, and how high a level they are. There isn't much else to the online aspect except you can trade items, and learn new techniques together. It is much more fun to play this game online that it is to alone, so if you do buy KUF:COD, make sure you have XBL.
All in all the game can be enjoyable. It is frustrating, but you will find yourself playing because there is a good deal of fun in the hack and slash game play. The bosses are massive, and provide a great deal of fun, especially online. There are armor sets to collect, super weapons, and of course, achievements. The game has the draw of "it's so bad it's good," and might provide you with some fun, but don't expect much more than cheap thrills.
Truth is though, for $60 you a buying a game that really fails to deliver on all of it's promises except for it's terrific online play. If you want a better action RPG, for a much more reasonable price, I reccomend to you Arkadian Warriors. It's $8 on XBLA, and offers very much the same game play.
Avoid this, unless you really like action RPGs and have nothing else to play. In that case, just wait for the price to drop, this should be bargain bin in no time.