Title     Lionheart: Kings’ Crusade Developer    NeoCoreGames Publisher    Paradox Interactive Platform    PC Genre    Tactical Historical RTS Release Date    8th October, 2010

The RTS genre comes in many flavours these days. The casual gamers are enjoying the no fuss, boiled down, fast paced fun found in titles such as Command & Conquer, Dawn of War and Halo Wars. The traditionalists are still happily playing through Age of Empires, Starcraft II and Empire Earth, spending huge amounts of time building a nice, pretty base and establishing a respectable army with which to win the game in one fell swoop. Then, there sit the great emperors of stratagem with their Civilization II, Civilization III and the newly released Civilization V (suck it up Civ fans, IV was rubbish and you know it).

However, lurking around the edges, you’ll find a subculture of the RTS world that doesn’t conform to the holy trinity’s system of beliefs. The unmitigated disasters of experimental RTS games such as Perimeter, Ground Control and Maelstrom all help to demonstrate the potential nightmares of seeking out the one-off moments of brilliance found in Relic’s Homeworld series and Company of Heroes. It’s dangerous territory to strike out into and to do it alone is even scarier, so NeoCoreGames decided not to and followed in Medieval: Total Wars footsteps with their own attempt at Tactical Historical RTS: Lionheart: Kings’ Crusade.

If you managed to catch our preview of the game a month ago, you’ll already have experienced my unease with just how close Lionheart pitches itself to the Creative Assembly’s long running moment of brilliance with its Total War franchise. The game operates on a scarily familiar framework that shadows Total War in every area and for the bright light that Medieval II shines; Lionheart casts an equally dark silhouette.

Lionheart: Kings’ Crusade is part board game, part office-chair General strategy game set during the Crusades and operates in three stages: Recruitment, Planning and Command. Each of these stages can be further broken down to demonstrate the game’s variety and attempts to distinguish itself from the competition, with the recruitment phase including the ability to level up your troops and unique faction general. The planning phase offers the player the opportunity to ally with one of the game’s sub-factions, who in turn provide bonuses for the upcoming battle on the condition that certain objectives are achieved and special ‘General specific’ powers for use in the 3D Command stage.

At face value, Lionheart is the carbon copy of Total War that you suspect it is. Graphically, the game produces visuals akin to its counterpart, which is a little worrying considering the three year gap between Medieval Total War II and Lionheart, but it is still satisfying, on the whole. Detail is well measured in both the scenery and units, with the engine managing to process thousands of troops in battle without causing any slowdown on a mid-high spec system.  Resolutions stretch right the way up into realms of 1080p and have enough AA to smooth off the edges.

The menus are a fairly basic, static affair which serve their purpose but, sadly, offer little to entice you in. When engaging with the Campaign modes, you soon find yourself treated to a beautifully detailed 3D rendered, 2D style map that establishes the foundations for all your strategic planning. Suddenly the lack of effort put into both the UI and the menus is understandable considering the detail on offer here. The divided region offers a glimpse of what to expect in terms of terrain during the Command phase, with groupings of trees representing forests, ridges depicting mountains and impressive water textures just there to impress.

During Command, a fully controllable 3D camera helps you to navigate the lush, fertile landscapes with every blade of grass rendered at the closest level of zoom. Physics (as with anything in need of updating) in Lionheart become most apparent during siege battles, with City Walls visibly crumbling and collapsing as they take a punishment from Trebuchets and Scorpion Ballistas. Sadly,  the effect is only a visual one, so if you’re looking forward to dropping a wall on a cowering army, I’m afraid you’ll have to keep on dreaming you sadistic madman.

The UI is very much a copy and paste job which certainly helps to make the already familiar  feel right at home but definitely doesn’t help me with my big list of complaints, generated from the cavalier attitude toward what could almost be described as digital plagiarism. A little creativity or stamp of individuality would not have gone amiss here, with a general complaint for the sub-genre being that during battle, the overlay of the UI only serves to get in the way of the on-screen action.  An auto-hide feature, found in something as basic as the Apple Dock, would have gone a long way towards putting my mind at ease. When considering that the on-screen action is well represented with an array of quick reference icons, floating above each of the units’ heads, why more consideration was not given to a different approach is baffling.

Acoustically, the game is fully scored with a pleasing, if not repetitive, soundtrack. During more intense moments of battle, the music picks up the pace to provide a little touch of the epic, helping to get you more into the mood. The sound of battle is also replicated on something of an epic scale, with the death cries of a cavalry charge sounding over the beating of hooves, only to be followed by the swords clashing and arrows whistling through the sky. Voice work is limited, with the game’s narrator and tutorial advisor oddly cast by an actor of Native American descent, conjuring up completely the wrong images for the setting and timeframe of the Holy Crusades.

Looking past that, the game plays out smoothly with no noticeable glitches or show-stopping ‘crash to desktops’. Many of the technical bugs I experienced in the early code a month ago have been ironed out and the game certainly can’t be faulted on a technical level. Mechanically, Lionheart suffers from some issues of predictability; even on the highest difficulty setting the AI is easily goaded out of formation when the right bait is dangled before its assembled army. Once you discover a pattern for victory, look forward to being able to use it over and over again, regardless of which side you’re playing as or where you’re doing the fighting.

It’s not all bad though…pay closer attention and you’ll notice that NeoCore are attempting to provide their own experience, separate from that which   you may have already enjoyed in Total War, with all the little extras they’ve thrown in to the mix. The constricted campaign modes make for a more rewarding experience, with the world map limited to the Middle East and attackable territories only made available to you through progression, rather than the open world approach which forces the player to think about the dauntingly big picture and calculate each and every turn. The incorporated RPG elements also give an extra sense of connection with the individual units, encouraging you to ensure they survive the Command phase so that you can continue to develop their skills and better equip them for the next fight. Diplomacy is also made to feel less like a game of chance micro-management when playing through the Crusaders campaign; each of the four sub factions will clearly outline what’s on offer to you for the upcoming mission, should you decide to throw in with their lot and attempt to earn their help. On the other side of the coin, the ancient Blizzard-onian themed, talent point tech-tree, available only to the Saracen forces, helps to shake things up by providing a different experience each time you run through the campaign.

Feature wise, I’d bring a hot water bottle with you because it’s rather a cold reception. The two campaign modes are of decent length and will keep you hammering away for a good few weeks at a casual pace but don’t hold out for that ‘one more turn’ disease which Sid Meier titles spread around like new-age Chlamydia. Battles can take upwards of forty-five minutes to an hour, depending on how much use you make of the in battle 4x Time Multiplier -something of an essential feature when sat waiting for all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to reach the top of the hill. This massive time requirement can leave you feeling particularly drained and it was very often the case that in my own run through of the game once was enough and a break was needed before I took on the next round of ‘Recruitment’, ‘Planning’ and ‘Command’. Once completed, you’ll find little reason to go back and revisit the main campaigns, though some temptation can be found in replaying the Saracen campaign to better explore the talent points system but, ultimately, its long legs won’t run very far.

The differences between the two campaigns are so aesthetic that even fans of the genre will find themselves tiring halfway through their initial playthroughs and even the most dedicated may struggle to see both to their eventual conclusion. The restriction of a pre-defined direction helps to channel the player’s interest but lacks any substance in story or character, which ultimately leaves a shallow mark. Each mission feels no more important than the last and there’s no dramatic build up to drive you on to Jerusalem. Beyond the two campaigns, a skirmish mode is provided to allow you to rack up the table with a battle of your choosing against either a randomly generated opponent or one of your own choosing. It’s fun stacking the odds against you and having your own Alamo as much as it’s a treat to push your CPU as hard as it will go by running the biggest battle possible.  However, unless you find yourself hooked on everything the game has to offer, there’s little comfort to be found here.

The final and essential multiplayer component of the game follows on from skirmish mode, only instead of fighting against the AI you’re given the opportunity to test out your tactical mind on another player…provided you can find one. Kings’ Crusade provides its own in game lobby system, similar to what you would expect from a game powered by Gamespy Arcade, with filters available to narrow down the two available game modes of Domination ( a standard fight to the death) and Defenders vs. Attackers (exactly what it says on the tin), helping you to sort through the destitute wasteland that is the current online scene. If you happen to have a friend that has also purchased the game or can arrange to compete against someone using the developer’s community forums, then you’re in luck. Hosts are able to establish game rules, resources and limits in establishing a room, from which you set up much the same as you would in skirmish mode. Both armies are available to choose from and players are not limited to having to toss a coin to decide who gets to be who – both factions are available to fight each other. The games I managed to play were stable and lag free, though with no reward to be found beyond bragging rights, this isn’t a feature which serves as a selling point, despite its technical proficiency.

Currently priced at £24.99 on Steam’s digital distribution platform, it’s a pricey investment for a game that’s not offering much and promises to deliver even less. NeoCore have announced the first DLC, New Allies, which is set for release next month and, while no pricing has been announced as of yet, I can imagine it may echo the price>content equation, with the DLC only providing a handful of new units, two new heroes and no new scenarios. That said, if I’m honest, I am tempted to give it a whirl, if only to further disappoint myself with the addition of the Saracens from Outer Space Unit (billed only as a non-historical Saracen unit).

Pros

• A refreshing look at the Tactical Historical RTS genre
• Pretty visuals and a competent engine to back it up
• Trialled and tested by its competitors in advance of its release

Cons

• Lacks variety
• Nothing to keep you coming back to it
• Its competitors do it better, cheaper and three years prior to its release

Summary

Lionheart: Kings’ Crusade isn’t a bad game. It’s not a great one either though, however, you won’t have to pay through the nose to rectify the mistake in purchasing it, since most of the Total War games are pretty cheap these days. That said, I do have a lot of love for the features included by NeoCore as I genuinely believe they help bring the genre up to date with experiences usually found in titles far beyond the RTS genre.

Aside from its undeclared homage to the Total War franchise, my only real problem with the game is its lack of content; once completed, there’s nothing left to do but admire the seven gigabytes it takes up on your hard drive. This is something which would have been entirely avoidable had they provided a selection of challenging scenarios to play through in skirmish mode or at least a less restricted, Risk-style, territory campaign to follow up after you’ve battled to the Holy Land as the Crusaders or repelled them as the defending Saracen nation. Existing fans of the sub-genre will no doubt enjoy this addition to their library, more so if they can find it in a sale. For potential newcomers, however, I’d advise that their money is better spent on the wide selection of other RTS games available.

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