King Artur: Knights Tale Review on Xbox

King Artur: Knights Tale is a isometric tactical turn-based RPG, retelling of a classic Arthurian mythology story filtered through the dark fantasy tropes, a twist on the traditional tales of chivalry.

The premise is you take on the role of Sir Mordred, the nemesis of King Arthur, who is resurrected by Lady of the Lake. She wants you to finish what you have begun, and kill King Arthur after she took his dying vessel to Avalon.

The game boasts multiple paths, end-game content, four difficulty modes, moral choices and a number of characters to recruit to your quest.

Accessibility

With regards to accessibility, there is four difficulty options, auto end turns options, and button re-mapping. There is a subtitle option, but size adjustments and colour variations are not available. Sound options are limited, so should you have sound issues, this game would not be for you.

Gameplay

The game starts with you, Sir Mordred, the nemesis of King Arthur, awoken by the lady of the lake in the castle Camelot. Your quest is to collect a cast of Arthurian based characters to help you kill king Arthur, and from the moment you rise from your tomb, you are then introduced to one such disgruntled companion, and to the games turn-based mechanics. Battles are turn-based and take place on a grid system, with each of your players taking turns to attack using their Action Points before ending your turn and the enemy retaliating in the same way.

Because of its open-ended point system, you do have the flexibility in how you spend those turns, be it on moving, hiding, attacking, or overwatching an area. To set itself apart, special abilities are more key than you would believe, and help make your characters feel ever more powerful as they improve with each battle. To gain access to said special abilities, your units progress through their own skill trees, which can be accessed on your character sheet prior to any mission. Fire arrows, healing attacks and even teleportation, all can be purchased and are visually spectacular. Because of these abilities, battles are often heavily stacked against the four characters you choose to take with you, on any given mission.

After a series of small battles, its here you will make the first of your moral choice. Take the throne of Camelot for yourself or be its keeper till a better suiter arrives. What ever your decision, you will then affect your moral stance within the game world shown on a handy chart, and revolves around four aspects. A righteous ruler or a tyrant, a devoted advocate of Christianity or the Old Faith (paganism). Each choice will net you some great bonuses like characters, and depending on how heavily you lean to any side, will mean you shall need subsequent playthroughs to see and play all that’s available. Choices in general range from battle ending decisions to in-game events needing your instruction.

Collecting characters is one of the main elements of the game, and open up more clever gameplay tactics, the more are at your disposal. All of the characters fall into one of the six classes (Defender, Champion, Marksman, Vanguard, Arcanist, Sage), with each having a unique attacks that differ them from others in their class. Characters are not just bland npc’s either, as they have their own distinct personalities, goals, and even rivalries. Once such rivalry was Sir Bain and his brother whom each thought they should be the rightful guardian of their fathers keep.

You will need to check each characters unique traits, skills and bond benefits carefully as these can give good hints in helping you in gaining squad buffs. That’s not all, keeping a close eye on any outside world disputes, granting favours, and ensuring certain characters who can work well together are kept away from those that can’t. Why? Well good loyalty provides positive buffs, and negative loyalty providing negative traits and even some characters leaving or turning against you! 

The core gameplay loop is really all about going on missions, which help level up your characters, gaining unique skill points, and when returned to the castle, allowing you to then equip the best items looted from said missions, before doing it all again. But to break this loop somewhat, there are consequences to the choice of characters you take on any mission. You see, in this game, characters can be badly injured prompting a negative trait or even die! Now there is a way to treat their injuries, curses, and diseases you may get, but this take in game time. Between missions, those whom are injured will need to taken out of action and placed within the appropriate facility for recovery, thus restricting your character options on further missions.

Facilities in Camelot are purchased with coin and resource, and within these facilities can be further augmented that will provide even more buffs for all party members. You can even give you party members titles, which if you carefully have studied the bond benefits will net you some nice rewards. It adds a nice layer to what could have been just a simple home hub with nothing to do.

One great thing I found with King Arthur was its ease of use, and whilst it can get pretty layered in the castle sections, battles were not difficult to ensure your actions were precise. And because of this, even with the more tense battles, I often found myself peacefully engaged and happy to pause and restart when I felt like and still get back to where I was with little thought. Few strategy titles instil that upon the player and often force you to push hard through the game to the very end in fear of loosing the very knowledge of how to play said game. Because of this, one more battle is what I felt at the end of each mission and that alone, should give you the best indication of this game.

Graphics

Being an isometric game, I assumed that the camera would be from a fixed vantage point and prevent you from zooming into the characters and the world surrounding it. However, thankfully this is not the case, weather it be moments outside of battles or within, you are able to zoom in close to observe some truly stunning details in each of your characters, in terms of their armour and weaponry.

The heads up display is also well crafter and visually crisp, with each of your characters showcasing their Armour level, Hit Point number and Vitality. Each carefully explained with the tutorial pop-ups that appear at the beginning of the game, and confirms that once you Hit points are gone, injury and vitality loss is only a moment away. Another element is the visual direction indicator when ever you place someone, as you are require to orientate your character carefully. You see if you are not facing the enemy just right, you will be open to backstabs and attacks from the rear, which do tremendous damage.

The games dark unworldly visual inspiration is solely based on the game story, which flips the script and set you up in the after life world of Avalon. A mirrored replica of the world you once lived in, however, something is wrong and those that would be the heroes of lore, have turned into something dark and disturbing. Environments range from fog-covered woodlands to castle ruins, lush green meadows and dark mouldy dungeons. And within these arenas, there is also destroyable objects or cover that will give you an edge in battle depending on the stats of the items you hold. Like your characters, each of the varied vistas can be zoomed in upon to bask in the intricate details of NPC’s or the placement of dead bodies laying about a battlefield with great affect. This helps, because you can then spot hidden Alters or campfires which restore your characters Armour or Vitality and are a godsend when moving into another battle after a previous brutal one.

I did encounter some graphical glitches when on the character sheets, and had at least two crashes when back at Camelot. Strangely enough, nothing like that appeared when in battle or exploring the world when on a mission. Which to be fair is probably the best place for it to happen rather than when you are in the heat of battle. Speaking of battles, at no point in those did I spot pop-in or tearing during my gameplay. Loading screens are a bit too long in my opinion, but again this is probably due to loading in some visually stunning vistas for you to engage with, so I’m in two minds if I find this that big of an issue..

Sound

The sound quality within this game varies, with its music and ability sounds being its strongest element. Cutscene and general battle music leans strongly into the piano and guitar based choruses which suit the twisted atmosphere perfectly. Weapon strikes and ability attacks all sound weighty, brutal and punishing, and help when NPC’s give that satisfying death scream when you hit just right.

The voice acting however is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of quality. Some of the characters sound really good, but there are also times when an actor appears with a almost high pitched kind of voice that really breaks that break the dark mood the game oozes. But this is for most of the part smaller characters like villagers or henchmen, rather than the main cast of characters.

Over I would recommend a good quality soundbar to listen to the brutal swings of you sword on flesh as you mow your wave though waves of enemies.

Verdict

This leads me onto the rating of the game:-
Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for King Artur: Knights Tale is a "Great Purchase’’.

Spec’ing my characters to the suit how I want them to be, smooth engaging battles with some superb and fun special attacks, all under this dark twisted story which puts a different spin on King Arthurs legend, for me was pure engaging fun.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £37.49 or approx. $45 and depending on skill and patience would give you over 50+ hours worth of gameplay. Combine this the in depth end game content and numerous side missions, you could easily push this to over 70+hours. There is also going to be a DLC out soon should you wish to expand upon this further. 

If you’re a fan of isometric tactical turn-based RPG’s, the King Arthur legend and want something fun and engaging in both, you would be hard pressed to find anything other than this game.