Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes
Posted January 24, 2006
Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders was one of my favorite games of 2004. By combining elements from a variety of genres – hack-and-slash action, real-time tactics, and a tactical RPG-esque leveling and equipment system – it managed to achieve something fairly unique. The final product was a polished and fun game, in spite of
some maddeningly difficult later missions and goofy translation mistakes. Luckily, I wasn't alone in my appreciation – most critics praised the game, and apparently buoyed by this response, Korean developer Phantagram has released a follow-up title, Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes.
Heroes begins five years before the events of Crusaders and goes until five years after it, depicting the events surrounding the "Encablossa War" between the good fantasy races (humans, dwarves, and elves) and the bad fantasy races (half-vampires, orcs, and dark elves). If you didn't beat Kendal or Regnier's campaign in the first game, you probably won't have any idea what's going on here, but to be honest, with such a wide timeframe and events sort of jumping back and forth, the story isn't all that easy to follow even if you did. The fact that the translation could really use some work doesn't help things, either. It's not Zero Wing bad, by any means, but almost every paragraph has some sort of glaring grammatical problem, from obvious misspellings to missing words. Unfortunately, it sometimes gets in the way the story.
Gameplay:
That can all be forgiven, however, with a game like Heroes, where the focus is clearly on the gameplay. Once again, players are expected to lead their heroes and the troops they command to victory against generally impossible odds through strategic planning and quick reflexes. Each mission begins with a terrain board, any intel that you might have on the enemy, and your objectives. Players can then select the troops (infantry, archers, sappers, and so on) and support troops (war eagles, wyverns, etc.) to fill any free slots. Then the fun begins, as you move all of these troops against the enemy, sometimes in a support role to your computer-controlled allies, while other times leading the charge. Sometimes you're chasing a retreating enemy, and other times you're defending a castle against a siege. Although a lot of these missions were found in one form or another in the previous game, there's enough variety among them that they never really get stale.
Controlling these units can be a job by itself, and so there are two "modes" to manage a battle, seamlessly integrated into your heads-up display. The first and most fun is the third-person action view, where you control your hero in battle a la Dynasty Warriors, complete with special moves. The second is the mini-map view (made visible by holding the R trigger or hitting Select), where you can
direct the actions of each of your troops, including setting waypoints (by holding the L trigger). This is especially useful for, say, calvary, as you can order them to ride back and forth through enemy troops without directing them the entire time. If it sounds complicated, it is – initially, anyway. Eventually, however, the commands become second nature as you take only a few seconds to, for example, order your paladins to move north to protect the catapults destroying the enemy fortifications, taking a detour around the massive engagement along the way and healing the wounded when you get there.
Speaking of healing, every unit leader (including your two flanking officers) has the ability to learn special skills. Sometimes these can help determine what class the troops under their command are; a swamp mammoth unit, for example, requires Melee level 5, Teamwork level 7, and Taming level 10, meaning the lowest level one can be acquired is 22. Other times these skills can have a direct impact in battle. When equipped on one of your officers, "Kaleidoflamma" is a close-combat spell that can incinerate enemy troops, while "Meteor" is a ranged fire attack. Besides fire, commanders can learn lightning, ice, earth, curse, and holy spells.
All this amounts to missions that are much more than simply running headlong at every enemy you see. This is especially important to realize in Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes, as it makes little effort at hand-holding new players. Case in point: there's not even an "easy" campaign this time; the game goes from normal difficulty to difficult, hard, very hard, nightmare, and ultimately one appropriately called "hell," without so much as a tutorial. (There are a few random tips in the first campaign included almost as an afterthought, but nothing like Gerald's campaign in Crusaders. That game's final two campaigns, by the way, were merely "hard.") Even though I played the previous game quite a bit, it occurred to me as I got my butt handed to me time and again on the higher difficulty levels of this one that it clearly wasn't often enough. To be frank, new players should probably give Crusaders a try before they try their hand at this one, unless they're extremely confident in themselves. In any event, it plays identically.
There are a few new things that have been added, however. One thing that is great is a way to redistribute skills on troops. There was nothing worse than getting to some of the final levels in the last game and realizing you desperately needed a certain unit but were unable to train one because you didn't have enough experience to do so. The downside is that skills cost more than before, because they're based on the unit's level instead of the individual skill level. But that's also balanced out by the fact that you can opt to take on optional, generic "unknown" missions for extra experience and gold. Finally, four ultra-powerful elemental creatures can now be created if you've got the time to level them up. You probably won't have enough opportunities for experience in the main game, though; these seem primarily suited for Xbox Live games.
Xbox Live, by the way, is vastly improved this time. Whereas the last game only had a one-on-one player versus match, this time you can play three-on-three versus, three-on-three leader-only combat, and three-against-CPU.
It's still a little laggy, but it's managable. If you'd like to hone your skills on your own, you can also create a custom game with any of the 11 available leaders from both Crusaders and Heroes.
Graphics:
I was really impressed with the graphics for the last game, and even though they're basically the same this time, I'm still pretty impressed. Huge armies battle each other with no slow down (occasional choppiness, but not slowdown), giant monsters wade through dozens and dozens of troops, raindrops fall on the camera lens and drip down, and so on. It's really immersive. Plus, there's 480p support, as well.
Audio:
The music still kind of sucks, the English acting is still unimpressive, and the Korean acting is still great. It's not that I want to see different music altogether, but maybe, I don't know, a melody? More than a handful of songs? In any event, the game is in Dolby Digital 5.1, but do yourself a favor and mute the music.
Conclusion:
Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes doesn't attempt to change the formula that made its predecessor so successful, and it's just as solid and fun as that game was, albeit much more difficult. Interested newcomers should take a look at Crusaders first, but for experienced players, this is an easy suggestion. Expect 50 hours of gameplay at least. Highly recommended.
some maddeningly difficult later missions and goofy translation mistakes. Luckily, I wasn't alone in my appreciation – most critics praised the game, and apparently buoyed by this response, Korean developer Phantagram has released a follow-up title, Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes.Heroes begins five years before the events of Crusaders and goes until five years after it, depicting the events surrounding the "Encablossa War" between the good fantasy races (humans, dwarves, and elves) and the bad fantasy races (half-vampires, orcs, and dark elves). If you didn't beat Kendal or Regnier's campaign in the first game, you probably won't have any idea what's going on here, but to be honest, with such a wide timeframe and events sort of jumping back and forth, the story isn't all that easy to follow even if you did. The fact that the translation could really use some work doesn't help things, either. It's not Zero Wing bad, by any means, but almost every paragraph has some sort of glaring grammatical problem, from obvious misspellings to missing words. Unfortunately, it sometimes gets in the way the story.
Gameplay:
That can all be forgiven, however, with a game like Heroes, where the focus is clearly on the gameplay. Once again, players are expected to lead their heroes and the troops they command to victory against generally impossible odds through strategic planning and quick reflexes. Each mission begins with a terrain board, any intel that you might have on the enemy, and your objectives. Players can then select the troops (infantry, archers, sappers, and so on) and support troops (war eagles, wyverns, etc.) to fill any free slots. Then the fun begins, as you move all of these troops against the enemy, sometimes in a support role to your computer-controlled allies, while other times leading the charge. Sometimes you're chasing a retreating enemy, and other times you're defending a castle against a siege. Although a lot of these missions were found in one form or another in the previous game, there's enough variety among them that they never really get stale.
Controlling these units can be a job by itself, and so there are two "modes" to manage a battle, seamlessly integrated into your heads-up display. The first and most fun is the third-person action view, where you control your hero in battle a la Dynasty Warriors, complete with special moves. The second is the mini-map view (made visible by holding the R trigger or hitting Select), where you can
direct the actions of each of your troops, including setting waypoints (by holding the L trigger). This is especially useful for, say, calvary, as you can order them to ride back and forth through enemy troops without directing them the entire time. If it sounds complicated, it is – initially, anyway. Eventually, however, the commands become second nature as you take only a few seconds to, for example, order your paladins to move north to protect the catapults destroying the enemy fortifications, taking a detour around the massive engagement along the way and healing the wounded when you get there.Speaking of healing, every unit leader (including your two flanking officers) has the ability to learn special skills. Sometimes these can help determine what class the troops under their command are; a swamp mammoth unit, for example, requires Melee level 5, Teamwork level 7, and Taming level 10, meaning the lowest level one can be acquired is 22. Other times these skills can have a direct impact in battle. When equipped on one of your officers, "Kaleidoflamma" is a close-combat spell that can incinerate enemy troops, while "Meteor" is a ranged fire attack. Besides fire, commanders can learn lightning, ice, earth, curse, and holy spells.
All this amounts to missions that are much more than simply running headlong at every enemy you see. This is especially important to realize in Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes, as it makes little effort at hand-holding new players. Case in point: there's not even an "easy" campaign this time; the game goes from normal difficulty to difficult, hard, very hard, nightmare, and ultimately one appropriately called "hell," without so much as a tutorial. (There are a few random tips in the first campaign included almost as an afterthought, but nothing like Gerald's campaign in Crusaders. That game's final two campaigns, by the way, were merely "hard.") Even though I played the previous game quite a bit, it occurred to me as I got my butt handed to me time and again on the higher difficulty levels of this one that it clearly wasn't often enough. To be frank, new players should probably give Crusaders a try before they try their hand at this one, unless they're extremely confident in themselves. In any event, it plays identically.
There are a few new things that have been added, however. One thing that is great is a way to redistribute skills on troops. There was nothing worse than getting to some of the final levels in the last game and realizing you desperately needed a certain unit but were unable to train one because you didn't have enough experience to do so. The downside is that skills cost more than before, because they're based on the unit's level instead of the individual skill level. But that's also balanced out by the fact that you can opt to take on optional, generic "unknown" missions for extra experience and gold. Finally, four ultra-powerful elemental creatures can now be created if you've got the time to level them up. You probably won't have enough opportunities for experience in the main game, though; these seem primarily suited for Xbox Live games.
Xbox Live, by the way, is vastly improved this time. Whereas the last game only had a one-on-one player versus match, this time you can play three-on-three versus, three-on-three leader-only combat, and three-against-CPU.
It's still a little laggy, but it's managable. If you'd like to hone your skills on your own, you can also create a custom game with any of the 11 available leaders from both Crusaders and Heroes.Graphics:
I was really impressed with the graphics for the last game, and even though they're basically the same this time, I'm still pretty impressed. Huge armies battle each other with no slow down (occasional choppiness, but not slowdown), giant monsters wade through dozens and dozens of troops, raindrops fall on the camera lens and drip down, and so on. It's really immersive. Plus, there's 480p support, as well.
Audio:
The music still kind of sucks, the English acting is still unimpressive, and the Korean acting is still great. It's not that I want to see different music altogether, but maybe, I don't know, a melody? More than a handful of songs? In any event, the game is in Dolby Digital 5.1, but do yourself a favor and mute the music.
Conclusion:
Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes doesn't attempt to change the formula that made its predecessor so successful, and it's just as solid and fun as that game was, albeit much more difficult. Interested newcomers should take a look at Crusaders first, but for experienced players, this is an easy suggestion. Expect 50 hours of gameplay at least. Highly recommended.