King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame

Overview

King Arthur: the Role-playing Wargame is a hybrid of real-time strategy, turn-based role-playing and empire building. Players take on the role of King Arthur as he attempts to establish himself as the legitimate ruler of Britannia. Similar to the Total War series, players manage their kingdom and their armies via a turn based campaign map whilst large-scale battles are played out in real-time. Developed by Hungarian studio Neocore Games, King Arthur also features RPG style quests and a morality system.

The Campaign Map

The campaign map of King Arthur: the Role-playing Wargame focuses on the extent of Roman Britain, ending at the forest Bedegraine. Turns are divided into the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter- and each season has its own effects on what can be done in that turn. Winter is the most management-based of the seasons, being the only season in which army movement is completely disabled. It is also the only season during which you can allocate research, construction upgrades, and laws to alter the performance of your provinces, recruitment, and economy.

The strongholds seen throughout the map are the only places where direct construction upgrades can be done, with the other various structures spread throughout the land providing various passive benefits. Some provide them to any army at their location- while others provide benefits for the assigned lord of that province.

Along with these structures, the various quests the player can under-take appear throughout the map- some scripted and mandatory, others random. The types of quest in the game include:

Adventures: The most common quest- these are the text-based adventures of the game, all providing branches of decisions to make. Before embarking on these- the game informs you whether or not there is any chance of you being forced into a battle. Often times- if the adventure is marked with a chance of battle, there is generally some way during the text segment to avoid it entirely or change the circumstances of it.

Battles: These are often similar to the standard Adventures- except for the fact that the attached battle is unavoidable.

Diplomacy: These quests have the player determine how much gold, food, or artifacts they wish to give to the army focused on by the quest. The player can choose from several options depending upon how much they are willing to offer, ranging from making the army simply disappear to making a portion of the army's units join the player. These quests can also be resolved through a battle if the player doesn't want to give up enough resources.

Trade: These quests allow players to buy new artifacts.

Later in the game, random disasters can start occurring throughout the player's kingdom as well, including floods, plagues, and others. Players can prevent further damage to the affected province through brief quests at the disaster sites- but can also eventually research technologies that completely stop these events from occurring.

The Morality Chart

King Arthur: the Role-playing Wargame uses a 4-pronged morality system based on two main elements: The style of the player's rule, and the player's religion. The player's reign is balanced between the Rightful and Tyrant aspects, while religion is measured between the Old Faith (I.E: Druids) and Christianity. The player receives points for these various aspects depending upon their actions during the adventures.

The player's morality level determines what kinds of additional spells and unique units are made freely available for recruitment/usage. The reign and religion aspects work together as well- for there are certain unlocks that can only be reached with a certain score from both the reign and religion aspects. For example, units like Yeomen and Golden Griffins can be unlocked with just Rightful points. However- the high level Seelie units of the game require a combination of Rightful and Old Faith points. And in contrast- the high-level Unseelie units of the game require a combination of Tyrant and Old Faith points. This results in a system where the player must choose what he wants from the morality chart carefully- as there will be much on the chart that will be rendered completely inaccessible.

Downloadable Content

King Arthur: the Roleplaying Wargame had two main packs of DLC, the Druids DLC and the Saxons DLC. These DLC packs gave the game two new campaigns of a highly different style than the original campaign. Rather than being story based, the Druid and Saxon DLC campaigns are almost completely strategy based- focusing more on Total War style conquest gameplay with customizable victory conditions rather than the story-based gameplay of the original campaign. The only quests that appear during these DLC campaigns are optional adventures- provided primarily to let the player access bonuses such as new artifacts.

The two DLC campaigns are completely the same in structure- the only major difference being who the player plays as.

The game also had a stand-alone expansion: King Arthur: Fallen Champions. This expansion had a differing campaign style of its own compared to both the original's campaign and the DLC campaigns. Story-wise, it was made to bridge the gap between the original and King Arthur II: The Roleplaying Wargame.

System Requirements

• Operating System: Windows XP SP2/Vista/7
• Processor: AMD Athlon 3500 or Intel Pentium IV 3.4 Ghz
• Memory: 1Gb RAM (XP) 1.5Gb RAM (Vista/7)
• Video Card: Nvidia 6600 (256Mb) / ATI Radeon X700 (256Mb)
• DirectX: 9.0c or higher
• Hard Drive: 8 Gb of free space
• Sound: DirectX 9-compliant sound card