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Knights of Honor Review July 08, 2005 |
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Summary: Looking for a break from Rome: Total War? Perhaps a more challenging and psychotic strategic AI? Come check out our review of Knights of Honor.
 Overview | Page:: ( 1 / 4 ) |
The game is set in Europe during the middle ages and has the player choosing one of several nations (be they duchies, kingdoms or empires) and trying to achieve the title of Ultimate Emperor of Europe (ugh). The pursuit of such a dubious title consists mainly of conquest, with some trade and diplomacy involved. However, in keeping with the Total War games, diplomacy is fairly light and trade is actually less important – certainly less important than in Medieval.
Most of the game is played on an attractive and large, though narrowly zoomed-in 2D map of Europe that divides the continent into provinces. Each province has a capital and some villages, as well as being handsomely decorated with appropriate rivers, forests, hills and mountains.
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The interface is simple and effective, as it should be for a fast-paced strategy game like Knights of Honor. The player, naturally, will primarily task himself with upgrading his cities and fighting with his armies. Each city has only so many slots available for buildings, meaning that if the player wants the best units, he’ll need to specialize his cities on certain tasks. Moreover, there are Kingdom Advantages to collect, which are achieved by producing certain special resources in the right combinations. This puts further pressure on the player to decide how to specialize his towns.
The gameplay is rather chaotic and can overwhelm newer players quickly, but with determination it is quite possible to adapt to the pace. The bigger the empire, the more there is to manage, and since time is a scarce resource, the more difficult the game becomes. Watching your neighbors is very important, as relations can change rather quickly and, in a fashion bearing an unpleasant resemblance to all-too-many strategy games, even the firmest alliances can be broken in just a few short minutes.
Similarly, trade needs to be kept track of. Trade agreements are established and seem to last forever. Throwing in a character to manage a trade relationship, especially one with the traits to make the most of the situation, can boost income though this isn’t typically the big payoff one sees in games like Europa Universalis or Medieval: Total War.
To make the campaign even busier than it already is, Knights of Honor keeps the player occupied with several other facets of the game. He needs to promote leaders to deal with trade, managing cities, leading armies or spreading the proper religion throughout his lands. These leaders have various stats and the generals can earn bonus abilities that affect their army’s performance in a variety of categories, like morale, movement speed and the effectiveness of certain types of units.
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Furthermore, unit production isn’t merely a matter of having the right gold and buildings. Certain kinds of units are available in only some provinces, and to actually build the unit, you need food – in that town. This complicates city management, since you can no longer focus on martial buildings exclusively, but need to balance them out with the ability to produce and store food.
SIDEBAR: The other strategy game I’m playing now is Combat Mission: Afrika Korps.
| Gameplay | Page:: ( 2 / 4 ) |
All this makes for a busy and challenging game experience. It’s all too easy to lose oneself in a single task and quickly become overwhelmed by a rising tide of new ones from another direction. Especially dangerous are the fickle relationships between states and the rebellious nature of conquered provinces. This in fact makes the solution to difficulty obvious – don’t be aggressive. Taking your time really pays off, though it is a shame to watch the general you groomed into a battlefield terror die of old age.
Of course, this brings us to combat itself, which is the real actual weak point of the game. Not only is it physically unattractive, the units seem to kind of … collide and stumble into each other, with no sense of ebb and flow in individual combats. Battle mechanics are rather obtuse, which doesn’t really help make the experience at all more satisfying. Fortunately, the battles can be handled automatically with no penalty to the experience your general can gain.
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As time progresses and provinces are conquered, the game becomes a fly-swatting contest as the player rushes through trying to make sure all his cities are building properly, that rebel armies have a friendly converging on them and that enemy nations, if any, have no troops in your lands. Even with strong garrisons in castles, provinces are still vulnerable to razing and raiding tactics, villages are put to the torch by enemies. Eventually it all comes down to managing your limited supply of leaders and the armies they lead.
That’s the other major failing of Knights of Honor – the learning curve is exponential. Though a large kingdom should be harder to manage than a small one, in KoH the problems ramp up at a frenzied pace after capturing just a few territories. For every province added, that’s more hostility stirred up in your neighbors, more rebels to beat down and a new city and border to manage. As the player’s neighbors inevitably declare war, the urge to expand becomes almost unquenchable as their armies are defeated and cities vulnerable, but this only makes the problem worse. The unnatural step of holding back and waiting, consolidating territory to cut down on rebellion risk, is what is needed.
Of course, new provinces can also contain the special resources necessary for a kingdom advantage, which may be worth the extra risk. The ability to buy Kingdom Power with collected piety from churches built in new cities improves the stability of the realm, and new cities can also mean new centers of learning which produce books to train your leaders. It’s a fine balancing act between growing too big, and the need to grow larger.
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Overall, it’s a challenging experience that bludgeons the player into thinking out his expansion with bouts of rebellions and punishing wars against all neighbors – but sometimes even all the caution in the world just can’t make up for a psychotic AI. This can take a while to figure out and the resulting chaos can overwhelm newer player. The enforced slower pace can also be aggravating as the build-up of cities and high-level armies is completed long before a province is fully pacified.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 3 / 4 ) |
Pros
Map
The main map is an attractive 2D isometric affair, a rare treat in today’s 3D worlds.
Strategic gameplay
The game’s strategic aspect is deep, forcing the player to keep tabs on his leaders, family, cities, armies, diplomacy, kingdom advantages, trade, rebels, piety … in short, there are plenty of tasks to keep one busy.
Real-time
Though it has as many disadvantages as advantages, the real-time nature of the strategic campaign is a welcome change of pace and creates new challenges.
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Cons
AI
The AI isn’t particularly bad – it can build up a decent-sized kingdom though it has difficulty maintaining it. It’s simply obnoxious, because it constantly makes diplomatic demands of the player, punishing his Kingdom Power if he approves or decline the wrong ones, and when a war starts, it’s always a gangbang.
Battles
The battles themselves aren’t any more engaging than the graphics are.
Ultimate Emperor of Europe
OK, we’re not really docking the game marks for trying to make the player achieve the title of “Ultimate Emperor of Europe”, but we should on grounds of good taste and simple human decency.
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| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 4 / 4 ) |