King Arthur - The Role-playing Wargame Reviews

Shame to give this game a negative review, as its otherwise a solid 8/10. But frequent, basically unfixable, crashing on modern systems has left this older title basically unplayable. Supposedly the GOG version is more stable, but that has sadly never come over to Steam. Valve ought to make it a priority to either fix or remove from the store games that don't work. What this game is, though, is Warhammer: Total War-Bretonnia edition. You play as King Arthur in a Total War style campaign pitting you against your fellow Englishmen, Romans, and a whole host of monsters and baddies from English lore. Like in any classic Total War game you manage settlements and armies on the main strategy map, as well as event & decision chains which is where the 'roleplaying' aspect comes in. In battles, you control your force, wield powerful magics, try not to get blasted by the games very powerful archers, and fight your way to victory. The game nails the feel of a TW campaign, and the inclusion of both strong story elements, powerful monsters & characters, plus magic gave the game a very unique feel vs. Medieval or Napoleon, which were contemporaries of this game. One wonders if when WH1 was in development if CA took a hard look at this game, because I see a lot of that game's DNA in this. Beyond technical issues, though, the game always sort of lacked something. Battles were small, units are often below 50 entities. Archers are OP, so much so that there is an option in the menu to nerf them! And magics seemed to either be nukes, or do nothing, and so also never quite felt right. And of course, the whole game lacked the polish that WH1 and sequels have. It was good-but-not-great looking even at the time, and a lot has aged badly since then. But past that, this game was a winner back in the day and could be again today. IF you can get it running. I have had to give this a thumbs down simply because in my most recent play attempts I crashed repeatedly crossing the ford in the tutorial. Apparently a common problem area. The 4gb patch and the alternate launcher and EXE all have failed to resolve my troubles, so here we are. Another classic game on Steam, still up for sale, no longer working on modern systems.