Generic Hack-Slash RPG for those with Gold membership; Old fans may want to skip this.
The trade system creates points on specific locations within an area where an equivalent of vendors called Idols resides. There, players can buy or sell off loot dropped by monsters that inhabits each local region that you travel through, synthesize items with abilities and stats to create powerful items with high level abilities to assist the player through difficult battles, and visit support NPC's in dreamworlds to acquire abilities and take on main quests to progress through the shrilled plot. Each visit randomly generates an idol out of a pool of three that may offer the player different equipment, support items, and potions to restore player SP or health. A quip about this system schemes drops to the issue of idol generation; because of different items that are sold between the 3 idols, it becomes difficult to trade with a specific vendor that has the right equipment needs. Besides that, they act as excellent sources to dump useless or excess loot in exchange for gold.
Gameplay is a switch around from the usual hybird-RTS stance seen in the previous KUF installments. Instead of commanding platoons of units, players are now left with navigating through linear levels consisting of pockets of massed mobs of certain levels according to the selected difficulty scale. Though random terrain generation exists within the level designs, it's nothing better than playing a picture slide puzzle that only can create directional variations of the level itself. All characters comes with 2 attack slots that can be filled with different weapon equips to provide combo attacks. However, such combo system is ever truly utilized in this case as weapons do not compliment each other, and even worse the most chains that a player pull off is at least 10 hits in succession max.
Attacks and abilities are depended on a variable called the SP bar, which is the equivalent of a stamina bar in general. With this limitation in mind, players are forced to dictate how their characters should be equipped, decide when retreating is a good option than death, and choose which approach to attack is better. But in light of actual gameplay though, these only serves as unnecessary limitations that the player should not be able to experience because of level scale to SP requirements. Abilities themselves are numerous to learn and are plentiful enough for an entire run through the whole game itself, unfortunately, that is the only positive that can be said of the special skills. Inane skill types and lack of variety between characters truly make the effort to acquire them at all very repetitious. Even more, they do not accurately reflect the SP requirements at all.
A striking feature that actually stood out like a pearl among a junk yard was the revamped graphics themselves. Where substance was lacked, Circle of Doom makes it up by adopting next generation graphics and applying them on a wholesome scale; virtually drawing in more shine than it's previous predecessors despite being more hallow.
Another great feature that made this game viable and enjoyable was the smooth integration and the full utilization of Xbox Live. Players bored of playing the single player feature can now go online and tour through areas with three other players on any difficulty. Just as the formula remniscent of Diablo, players can also trade items with each other, opening a wide avenue of acquiring or comparing items against another. However, what I would like to see was also the implementation of PvP action to not only test out traded items, but create some form of secondary online competition that players from various regions can enjoy on the side of the constant runs against bosses. On the other hand though, such multi-play will suck you in event of the game's failures.
As a summary, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom will offer most to those that appreciate generic hack and slash type RPGs. It's high quality graphic state and experiment into the RPG genre gives the idea that this game is a showcase of what Blueside can do rather than an immersive RPG itself. But on a side note, fans of the previous Xbox original KUF series may want to overlook this due to the new, hallow changes in the formula.