Knights of Honor
Posted April 26, 2005
Want to try it out? Check out the Demo of Knights of Honor!
Set to release in early May, Knights of Honor is a welcome addition to the strategy/RTS genre, even with the minor flaws (which are basically just me crying about something). Developer Black Sea Studios and publisher Paradox Interactive bring something a little different than other games of this type, while still maintaining the epic scope they are looking to bring. Injecting a lot of strategy into the RTS
While looking at the game, and reading early press about it, one could easily dismiss this as a Total War clone, but it is far from it. Although they both share a similar description (epic wars, strategy, and diplomacy) they couldn't be further apart in terms of gameplay.
Gameplay:
Starting a new game of Knights of Honor presents the user with a few choices, a fantastic tutorial which leads you through the initially complex system of menus and sub-menus, single player mode where you choose a kingdom and set off to conquer Europe, or multiplayer mode.
I'll first mention the online multiplayer, because I honestly did not have a chance to play it. The game isn't released until May 10, so the availability of players in my time zone was slim and I was not able to connect with anyone on a game.
The tutorial mode is a nice complete walkthrough of the different modes of play, ranging from your Knight selection, to starting a war with a rival kingdom. The tutorial is not so deep and involving that you feel bogged down, and it doesn't tell you all the nuances with the game, but it definitely gives you enough to start your first little conquest and have plenty of serfs doing your bidding.
The game is somewhat complex in the fact that you have a limited number of slots that you can Knight someone in, when the list is full you can't create more Knights, or assign the specific tasks that they perform to any other class of person. The Knights can take one specialization out of a list such as Cleric, Spy, Merchant and Marshall. Each type has a specific bonus associated with it, like the Merchant is the only one that can be sent across borders to initiate trade with another Kingdom, and spies do just that. A Marshall gains experience as he’s hardened in battle, and this experience can be used to instill better leadership qualities, as well as gain additional battle bonuses for the armies he leads. But, Marshalls can be killed in combat, so be sure to use them wisely.
Each Marshall is given the right to create a massive army, and this is where the real time strategy aspect comes into play. You can create large groups of fighters this way, of course depending on what type of building you've done in your respective city. Unlike a traditional RTS, the cities you use to build units and create resources are pre-set, meaning you can't start a new city at any specific location you want. This takes out some of the adaptable strategy that is found in other RTS games, but also makes this unique in it's own way.
I found the time spent not fighting or preparing to fight to be the best part of the game, the diplomacy options were great allowing you to speak with almost any Kingdom at any time (unless they weren't willing to speak to you), which let you pit one against another thus giving you time to amass a large army to take the weakened ones out with. Other interesting things can happen during diplomatic meetings, such as you can offer or be offered another King's daughter to marry your son, along with that sometimes comes a dowry which can include an entire province, greatly expanding not only your landmass, but potentially your natural resources.
Collecting resources can grant you some Kingdom Advantages, and depending on what resources you possess, different bonuses for each. For example, gain enough items from trade and you get a Silk Route bonus, which increases your trade income, or learn the magic of crop rotation to get the best out of your land.
The biggest and most glaring flaw I found when playing Knights of Honor was the speed at which the game moved. It seemed to crawl along, especially when you are marching a Knight across a large distance to attack or pillage another town. And to top it off, there was no way I found to increase the speed to help move things further along! This made for a long drawn out game, this lack of variable speed actually really took a lot of the enjoyment out of the game as each time you played it would be a significant amount of time investment to play through to completion.
Graphics:
Graphically, Knights won't blow you away with it's simple hand drawn look, but the graphics more than get the job done. Played from a tilted top-down viewpoint, you always have a great view of the field of play in all three map modes, political, strategic and battle.
Political mode shows the Kingdoms in a color coded format, with the borders between each highlighted so you know where your land stops and the next Kingdom over starts. Strategic view is where you'll spend a majority of your time, and it's got great looking fields, rivers and mountains, all of which can be interacted with and have an affect on your armies as they march.
Portraits of the characters are all done in a cartoonish manner, but somehow it fits perfectly with the rest of the game. It helps to bring the game back to the time where artists had to actually draw characters on paper instead of render them onscreen. Overall I felt the graphics worked wonderfully with the game.
Battlefield fly-overs are done quite nicely when entering battle mode, which helps give you the lay of the land and show where your armies are in relation to strategic points on the battlefield, as well as the opposing forces. This helps give you the upper hand when moving into attack mode.
Audio:
The sound in Knights was somewhat of a mixed bag. The voice acting during the tutorial and all other voice samples throughout the game were fantastic in their quality. However, other ambient effects seemed a little off compared to the bar set by the voice work.
During battles and sieges of towns was the most obvious weakness, with canned sounds taking center stage. We've all heard the sword on sword sound before, and here we'll hear it regularly.
Conclusion:
A good entry into the hybrid RTS and complex strategy game, Black Sea has created a surprisingly deep game that gets more complex and involved as you dive deeper into it. If you want to play it as a straight action game, that is possible but you will need to have some sort of planning and strategy. For the pacifists out there, the game can also be played with a minimal amount of battle by strictly playing a diplomatic game. With three difficulty levels to challenge even the most hardened strategy players, as well as multiplayer modes, Knights of Honor is sure to offer you a lot of time and challenge and is worth picking up for fans of the genre.