Crown Champion: Legends of the Arena Reviews

Another title that has more than meets the eye, this is a management/sim game where you will upgrade an estate while caretaking for a roster of tournament fighters. You'll improve the facilities to give your fighters bonuses, make decisions during random events, and manage them so they have the best upper hand in their fights, which are simulated and watched rather than you directing your fighter. I liked this game in the same way I liked Gladiator Trainer, check out my review of that and much if not all of that still applies. There's a surprising amount of thought and detail that went into this game with a pretty sophisticated combat system. The game is challenging yet moreish and I found myself wanting to keep grinding up my fighters to overcome the next arena boss. Sometimes the RNG in this game is unfortunately not weighted in the players' favor, sometimes I'd get hit right off the bat with 2 critical hits in a row and it seems like the combat system is biased in favor of the AI's fighters. This leads to some frustration but you can overcome this with grinding and equipping your fighter's with better equipment. Another thing I didn't like about this game is that your Fighter's will leave after achieving 50 victories, in the other game Gladiator Trainer I believe this was instead 100 victories, so I was able to finish that game with all my original team. However here, my best fighter was reaching the 50 fight limit, so I had to pivot the fighter I intended to use for the final boss onto a less experienced fighter. There's really no reason this limit should even be in a game like this but the best I can tell you is diversify your fighters and get rookies about 2/3rds through the game, make sure they're experienced to replace your main fighters should they win enough gold to get their freedom. Overall still a fun time waster, you probably won't get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of this but if you liked games like Age of Gladiators or Gladius you'll probably enjoy the interesting combat system and some of the elements of upgrading your estate and interacting with NPCs. 7.75/10