King Arthur - The Role-Playing Wargame Demo

Series like Heroes of Might and Magic and Total War demonstrated the fact that gamers are always open to new strategy games, regardless of their gameplay mechanics and whether they are in real time or take place in a turn-based manner. Now, it may seem like a no-brainer to combine the two and obtain something to please both sides, but it is obviously not that easy to do so.

King Arthur – The Role-Playing Wargame decided to give it a try and blended not two, but three genres into one, including turn-based world map tactics, real-time grand strategy on the battlefield and RPG elements to accommodate powerful heroes. Naturally, not everything went according to plan, but the results are more than satisfying, considering the risk it took for such a daring experiment.

To start off, the background story revolves around the legend of King Arthur, as the name clearly implies. Hence, you get to control Arthur himself, as well as various other commanders that are under his protection and lead parts of his army. Moreover, there are some fantasy elements thrown into the mix as well, in the form of powerful heroes that are capable of wielding magic, as well as various creatures that can be used on the battlefield, including giants.

As far as the combat element is concerned, the game takes after the Total War series and presents you with large-scale battles between hundreds of units at the same time. On the other hand, the addition of heroes means that you can always turn the battle around with a well-placed spell, but they can also bring you down, since losing them means that your army loses morale and stop fighting too efficiently.

On the world map, however, the action takes place in a slow-paced turn-based manner, where every unit can move around a bit every turn and capture certain locations. While you do not have to concern about the economical side of the empire, some diplomacy and political issues must be handled with care, otherwise they can have severe repercussions on the long run.

King Arthur – The Role-Playing Wargame achieves its purpose and successfully blends a variety of genres into one, with surprisingly good results. However, the cost of doing so is that a lot had to be removed from the picture in order for the mixture to work, which means that many TBS, RTS or RPG elements are missing entirely and you cannot truly base your strategy entirely on either of them.