Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Neocore Games
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, AMD Athlon 4000+ or equivalent Intel CPU, WinXP 1GB RAM, Vista/Win7 1.5GB RAM, Nvidia 8600 GT (256Mbyte) / ATI Radeon HD3650 (256Mbyte),DirectX 9-compliant sound card, DirectX®: 9.0c or higher (included in the installer), Nvidia (AGEIA) PhysX (included in the installer), 8GB hard-drive space
Genre: RTS
ESRB rating: Pending
Release date: 9/16/2011

Capitalizing on the success of King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame, and no doubt wanting to whet players’ appetites for the upcoming sequel, Neocore Games has released the stand-alone expansion King Arthur: Fallen Champions. Unlike its predecessor, Fallen Champions focuses only on story-telling and tactical battles; there is no kingdom management. This tighter focus makes Fallen Champions much more of an RTS title, although it still keeps some of the role-playing found in the original.

The game follows the stories of three characters: Lady Corrigan, Sir Lionel, and Drest the Chosen. There is a story arc involved with each character, but you are not locked into a campaign with a single hero. After finishing a mission with one hero, you can pick up another hero’s story and follow it until you want to switch again. In order to unlock the final battle, all story arcs for all three characters must be complete. That being said, upon choosing a hero, you continue their story and, before any battle commences, engage in some adventure. These role-playing interludes take the form of choose-your-own adventure game play, with a little bit of old-school text adventure based role-playing. You direct the character in choices and “move” them around the adventure area by having them walk in various directions (literally “go north/walk east.”)

After you have made all relevant choices and finally locate the enemy force, you start the actual battle. Based on your choices during the adventure portion, you get different troops and set ups for the combat. Much like some of Neocore’s other titles, this mechanic makes the battles replayable, as you can play the same map in different ways. Battles range from straight up fights to sneaky, covert missions. Similar to other Neocore strategy offerings, heroes have special abilities, the maps have key locations that must be secured, and different units have different capabilities. There are also various locations on the map with special powers to offer, from spells to mana recharges. The terrain is widely varied and has real impact on gameplay.

The units in play are what you might expect. Strong infantry units, archers, cavalry, and special units related to heroes and the adventure in question are all available to command. You might use a giant in one battle to batter down walls, while in another battle, you’ll use Lady Corrigan to slow and injure an enemy unit trying to flee and warn others. I have to give Neocore credit for providing some variety to the battles, even if the stand-alone expansion is not a full size game.

That being said, Fallen Champions comes with some odd problems. First off, there is no way to save during a battle. The battles generally last for at least an hour, so the inability to save during combat is inconvenient and really pointless in this day and age. I also found that the camera was problematic in some cases. The controls to move the camera around are easy to master, but on some maps, particularly those with very tall hills, navigating the map with the camera was needlessly difficult because of limits on how far you can zoom out. I found myself wrestling with the camera, trying to move around hills, while not being able to zoom out and see the whole battlefield. This will frustrate players until they get used to the limits of its movement. I also found myself both intrigued and saddened by the role-playing adventure portions of the game. The choose-your-own-adventure aspect to gameplay was very interesting; I found it refreshing that a designer didn’t feel the need to put in lots of voice-acting and cut-scenes. But in some ways, the adventure portions fall short of the mark. It is too easy in some of them to wander around endlessly, giving your character directional commands without actually accomplishing anything. I feel these parts could have either been much more focused, given the title’s emphasis on warfare, or made much more interactive with more story elements. After all, the King Arthur series has always advertised itself as a role-playing wargame.

King Arthur: Fallen Champions was fun to play. Priced at $10 dollars, it has enough content to justify its claims to being a stand-alone expansion and has around 10-12 hours of gameplay. While it’s not perfect, anyone who enjoyed the original King Arthur should enjoy this small offering until the sequel is released.

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