Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders is a game that seemed to come out of nowhere. It’s feels like Dynasty Warriors but with the added touch of a real time strategy game. Phantagram put together an enjoyable Xbox game that shows the console is capable of much more than Halo or well, Halo 2. Repetition is seemingly its only major problem, but even that can be tuned out if you find yourself continuing to play mission after mission. 

Crusaders follows a medieval type story setting with a bunch of fantasy thrown in the mix. You choose a character from a seemingly generic group of warriors, but each of them has an interesting story of their own. Characters like Gerald are often the types that jump right into battle simply because it’s been ordered of them, and while this code of honor seems a bit preposterous to us, it makes sense when you see the scale of the threats they face. The story is deep and is only marred by unenthusiastic voice acting, which could have been a lot better especially considering the epic feel of the game. It’s not crippling, but it sometimes makes the characters seem as if they don’t care, when we as the gamer do. 

 

Explaining the gameplay is a bit difficult in Crusaders since it has two distinctly different genres being mixed in together. When you start out a mission, you are in sort of a real time strategy mode where you control several groups of soldiers and get them on the move to the required area (waypoints are very helpful, but sometimes obscure the view and make things too easy, they can be seen as green arrows on your main screen). You will sometimes command a bunch of groups, including ones with access to catapults and archers. Once you reach the designated area, and engage with the enemy, the game centers its camera against your main hero. From that point on you are controlling the hero in an action style very similar to Dynasty Warriors, from there on out until the enemies have perished, you will hack and slash your way through hundreds of troops using different combos and even call on your best friends (other allies) to perform their own special moves to aid you. Just like in Dynasty Warriors, this can get a bit repetitive after awhile, but lets just put it this way, Dynasty Warriors wouldn’t be so popular if that’s all people cared about. Kingdom Under Fire is no different as it is a very fun title in terms of its action. The strategy portions are a bit weaker than the action because of some annoying camera views and the often overly guided manner in which it plays out; otherwise it too is very solid. The game’s main campaign can take around 20-30 hours because some battles will literally take about an hour and you will ask yourself over and over again, where all that time had gone.