much fun, but it does look nice. Also,
like every turn-based combat game
I’ve ever played, it needs an undo
command, as it’s too easy to move the
wrong character to the wrong place
and squander your action points.
Likewise, forgetting to bring potions
before you set out is usually fatal and
losing your progress to get back to
the merchant is just annoying.
Camelot itself is
better organised.
Levelling up and
distributing loot is a
breeze. For those who
obsess about modifiers,
there’s numbers
aplenty, but the
amulets, trinkets,
armour, and weapons
follow the traditional ‘white, green,
blue, purple, orange’ system which
made it easy to sort and assign. You
spend your gold rebuilding the castle
and sending your wounded or
exhausted knights to the hospice or
cathedral for treatment. I think I was
supposed to worry about knightly
loyalty and distributing rewards and
titles, to keep everyone on side, but
that seemed to take care of itself.
Nobody left before I filled the Round
Table anyway, and even death is not
the end. There’s a chance at
resurrection from the crypt if you
find the right scrolls.
A LANCELOT OF DATA
King Arthur: Knight’s Tale was a
successful Kickstarter and spent a
year in Early Access, so it’s
disappointing that version 1.0 is
poorly optimised. The huge 121GB
download rivals CoD and Hitman for
size, and for those using small SSDs it
requires drive management that isn’t
really justified. At launch it was also
more than a little laggy and liable to
crash, which is a particularly
significant issue for those playing
save-less at the highest difficulty. I
had problems with my monitor setup
and had to play in a window at
1080p, with my mouse leaking off the
edge of the screen and messing
things up. Things have definitely
improved as I’ve worked my way
through it, and the developer is
responding to bug reports, so there’s
cause for optimism.
However, my
biggest issue with the
game is its reductive
interpretation of dark
fantasy and grimdark.
The whole thing is
utterly and
unrelentingly
miserable, with no
pinprick of light, or the sliver of hope
that makes the endeavour feel a bit
more worthwhile.
It lacks the subtle wit and edge of
Warhammer, or the contrasting
emotional shades of, say, Game of
Thrones. The story is uninspired, the
dialogue infantile or over-written
nonsense. The voice acting is
pedestrian at best, and amateur,
grizzled, cardboard at its worst. A lot
of the accents are all over the place,
and the game’s efforts at levity fall
flat. Meanwhile, the characters are
one-dimensional vessels, or simply
objectionable. It’s not possible to
identify or sympathise with them,
except in the narrowest sense of a
consequence-free power-fantasy. I
don’t benefit from reflected glory, the
way I can in the Souls games, for
example. Here, I just don’t care
about anyone.GLASS ARTH’ FULL
Mordred’s progress on his quest is
obvious and engaging. It’s not clear
what he is really achieving, or even
whether he should be doing it.Everyone is already dead for a start.
How much worse can it be? As for
those big moral decisions, you might
as well toss a coin. I didn’t trust
anyone, so my choices were mostly
utilitarian. Who do I need? How do I
avoid this fight? I’m usually Lawful
Good, but my ‘Rightful’ decisions and
dialogue choices didn’t really change
anything meaningful.
Yet... the gameplay loop proves
surprisingly effective, even as it
became increasingly repetitive. By
ignoring the story, the landscape, the
irritating niggles and the less
developed side mechanics which
took care of themselves, I started to
enjoy it. Then it went beyond
satisfying and became needful. In
short order, I became enraptured by
it. I demanded satiation. To eliminate
a screenful of baddies – some of
whom return to life or heal
themselves or otherwise cheat – was
meat and drink that I found myself
craving again an instant later.
Clawing your way out of a level
with a vital team member only just
alive, thanks to your squad of walking
wounded, feels heroic. To come away
with the prize is thrilling. It doesn’t
matter what it is. It’ll be some
unobtanium-coated MacGuffin. Who
cares? I need it to go and hit
something squishy with a metal stick.
I lay awake in the depths of the night,
plotting the perfect set of moves, and
had to stop myself getting up to try
them out. As I write this review to a
deadline, I’m itching to get back to it.
In this, King Arthur: Knight’s Tale
succeeds despite itself. I won’t be
telling stories about my adventures to
my friends, or buying a T-shirt, or
quoting bits of it out of context, but
that doesn’t mean I won’t keep
enjoying its tactical tussles.
It is a shame that the game uses
brutish grime in place of real depth- it feels unnecessary, and perhaps
damning of an industry that often
doesn’t care enough about story and
characterisation. It leaves me with
mixed feelings on the overall game - part of me is really put off, but
another part of me is going to make
me go boot it up again the second I
finish this paragraph. I’ve got
endgame sidequests to do.
70
King Arthur: Knight’s
Ta l e is a strong turn-
based RPG, but rough
around the edges with an
unpleasant story.VERDICTAs I write this
review to a
deadline, I’m
itching to get
back to itBATTLE ROYALE
Knight’s Tale is far from the only Arthurian gamePENDRAGON
A narrative strategy game
from the creators of Heaven’s
Vault, Pendragon lets your
choices change the fates of
Arthurian characters.THE HAND OF MERLIN
A tactical turn-based
roguelike, currently in Early
Access, which puts you in the
shoes of a dimension-hopping
incarnation of Merlin.TAINTED GRAIL:
CONQUEST
Loosely based on a board
game, this deck-building
roguelike recasts Avalon as a
kind of apocalyptic purgatory.King Arthur: Knight’s Tale
REVIEW