King Arthur: Knight’s Tale is a brand-new turn-based tactical game that also features RPG mechanics along with light castle building mechanics. Launched as an Early Access title on Steam, King Arthur: Knight’s Tale is taking a completely different approach on the classic Arthurian mythology which is both dark and grim. Apart from this, this is the first time that we are seeing a turn-based tactical game set in this mythology which also makes it pretty interesting. This is our early access review of King Arthur: Knight’s Tale in which we explore this brilliant setting while experiencing a brilliant turn-based combat system.
In King Arthur: Knight’s Tale, you are not a shining king. Rather you play as Sir Mordred who is the nemesis of King Arthur. During a fierce battle, you managed to kill King Arthur however even with a fatal blow, King Arthur managed to land a fatal blow on you as well thus killing you both on the spot. However, you are brought back to life by Lady of the Lake who rules over the island of Avalon and you must now complete what you started. You can tell by this that this is no mere fairytale and the game is a dark and gritty adventure featuring monsters and creatures brought to the world as a result of years of fighting.
King Arthur: Knight’s Tale combines character-centric RPG mechanics with turn-based combat. The levels are big and give you the freedom of exploration as you engage in optional combat scenarios to nab some hidden loot or bonus items that might be hidden from the main path of the game. Exploration and going off the beaten path is always beneficial in the game as it will often lead you to some more enemies to kill, protect someone and get some cool loot while you are at it as well. It might be just me, but the game gave me some serious Warhammer vibes from its level design, and being a huge Warhammer franchise fan, I loved the level design in King Arthur: Knight’s Tale as well.
While we have mostly seen most King Arthur games featuring bright, colorful castles with knights on noble steeds chopping down enemies and such. This is however not the case in King Arthur: Knight’s Tale. The world depicted in this game is dark and gritty and right from the first level of the game, this is quite evident. Only traces are now left of the old world and now darkness reigns supreme over the world with you being the deciding factor now as to what the future of the world will be. As you progress in the game, you get to see much darker environments and humans being the weaker beings as they are getting slaughtered everywhere. The levels range from swamps to forests to under-raid villages to decaying castles that are barely standing.
Your main party consists of a set of heroes that are now standing alongside you and most everyone is seeking revenge or salvation from the old wars. You begin the game yourself as a fallen warrior who is given life by the Lady of the Lake however after that, your decisions forge your future. The game features a morality system and also features a detailed decision system with multiple endings for you to find and unlock. While the endings will be part of the full game, the Early Access release of King Arthur: Knight’s Tale surely gives us a taste of the Morality system of the game. Your morality in the game is calculated based on a Morality Chart which also shows different skills that you can unlock based on which moral side your decisions are taking you.
Depending on the choices you make in the game, for example, use freed up Marauders as warriors or turn them into workers for your fields, your morality increases towards one of four possible options in the game. You can work towards Old Faith, Tyrant, Christian, or Rightful based on your decisions. Making these choices are pretty simple as some pop up in key story locations while some pop up after completing story missions in the game. The game features both story missions as well as side missions which do not affect the main story of the game but give you additional lore and details about Avalon, the world in which the game is set in.
Your main hub in the game is the castle known as Camelot and you take its reigns to return it to its formal glory. You can collect two different resources, gold, and building resources while you are completing missions and use them to build different structures and facilities in Camelot that greatly benefit you and your heroes in the game. Some of the structures provide the ability to purchase different upgrades while some structures allow you to become more effective in the game in various aspects such as healing your fallen heroes much more quickly. This also brings a small touch of castle-building in the game and is a pleasant addition to the game which shows that the developers have thought of every small detail that they could squeeze in the game without making it too complicated or resource-heavy. I previously mentioned that King Arthur: Knight’s Tale also brings light RPG mechanics to the game and it is true for the characters or heroes that you will be controlling in battle.
Each hero in the game is unique and belongs to one of the four classes in the game. Apart from their class, each hero also comes with their own background, emotions, and how they react to other party members in your roster. You can level up each hero separately, change their equipment to make them more powerful, and invest skill points in their skills to make them more efficient and effective in battles depending on their class. Some heroes will be tanks and they will soak up damage while your ranged heroes deal massive damage from a safe distance. It is good to have a balanced roster for each mission because you never know what sort of enemies you might face in a level. You can loot different items including weapons and better armor along with charms that you can equip on each hero to increase their base stats and make them more powerful.
Depending on their fighting style and class, each hero comes with its own unique set of moves as well. Some will buff up your own team while some will inflict debuffs on enemies so that others can take them down easily. One thing that is pretty evident in battles is that you must use all of your heroes effectively if you want to win. The enemies mostly outnumber you however your placement and battle strategy will always determine how well you perform in the battle. Combat is pretty satisfying in the game and I had a great time during all of the battles that I fought in the early access release.
Coming to the gameplay of King Arthur: Knight’s Tale, there are two modes in each level. When there are no enemies around you, you are free to explore the map and collect any loot that you may find in hidden boxes or chests. You can also offer your prayers at shrines that grant a random buff or debuff to any selected hero of your choice or you can rest at camping sites where you can decide to heal your party’s armor or health. Even after you have completed your main objective of the mission, the game gives you an opportunity to sweep the entire map at your own speed and pace and then conclude the mission and return back to your castle so that you can collect any last few missing chests or hidden boxes or even an enemy encounter.
When you have found yourself a fight, the game enters the combat mode and there is no free roam during this mode. If the battle is major, you can first place your heroes strategically in green starting locations and then commence the battle however if it is just a random encounter, the battle just starts without a strategic placement beforehand. During your turn, each hero in your party gets a limited number of Action Points which determine how much they can move around and then attack using different skills that you have unlocked for them. Each attack or skill also requires Action Points, so you have to balance movement and combat for each hero during each turn. The map also shows all tiles where you can move around and if you can perform another move from the new tile once you have moved there.
Each hero comes with a set number of Hit Points and Vitality Points. Depending on their class, these vary in numbers for all heroes and you can further increase them by finding and equipping better armor and charms on the heroes. Apart from this, each hero also has an Armor point system which reduces a small percent of all incoming damage until it breaks off. The Hit Points take damage first and then it moves to Vitality Points. If the Vitality Points reach zero, the hero is knocked out and must rest back at your castle until they recover. Apart from this, the combat plays out normally like any other traditional top-down turn-based game. Overall, the combat is pretty satisfying, and you can feel hit landing on your enemies on the screen as well in the form of thuds and slashes. For me, combat was one of the best mechanics of the game.
Since King Arthur: Knight’s Tale is an Early Access title at this point, it is natural for the game to have some unfinished mechanics and some bugs here and there. I will agree that on the content side, the game is lagging a little bit at this point but 2 story missions and around 8 or 9 side missions offer around 4-4.5 hours of fun and satisfying turn-based combat. The full game is slated to have over 25 hours of content. I also loved the cutscenes of the game. Despite the game having a few cutscenes at this point, they were brilliantly designed, and I enjoyed watching them. The visuals are good as well however I feel like the game could be balanced and optimized more especially for the Ultra settings as I did notice a few frames dropping here and there despite running the game on a powerful Ryzen 7 build.
One feature however that annoyed me in the game is how the camera works in the game. There should be keyboard controls for controlling the camera as well. During my playthrough, both the arrow keys and WASD keys controlled the characters and moved them around. We do not need both of these key sets assigned to moving around characters. I was happy with moving them around with just the mouse. The keyboard must offer camera controls in both combats as well as the freeroam mode. In addition, in certain locations, the camera was locked to a place and would not let me move around even when my characters were out of focus. The camera for the game certainly needs some additional work and am hoping to see it improved during its Early Access phase.
Overall, the game ran pretty well for me. My test bench is a mid-range build with AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB DDR4 3600 MHZ ram coupled with an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT. I did encounter some frame drop issues at Ultra but they were probably because of the game’s early access build. As I started writing this early access review, I did notice that the game received another 4GB patch, so it means that the developer is working hard on making the game better and better. I love the concept of the title including its light RPG mechanics and satisfying turn-based combat with light castle-building. Overall, it is a solid package and it is one of the titles that is currently on my watchlist for the future.
Final Verdict:
King Arthur: Knight’s Tale takes a brand-new direction on the King Arthur franchise and delivers strongly for what it is. It is a dark and twisted take on the franchise, and it seems to be doing a really good job at it as well. The game mechanics are brilliant, and I loved the turn-based combat of the game. Even in early access, it does not feel clunky at all and even for beginners, it is a great title to pick up and play. The world design is brilliant, and I especially loved the character and the enemy design of the game. While it offers around 4 hours of content as of now, the full release is promised to have tons of more content and I cannot wait to play it when it comes out. It features solid turn-based combat, action-packed cutscenes, and a brilliant world. I am looking forward to its full release and if you love turn-based combat titles and particularly are a fan of the classic Arthurian mythology, you are going to love this game.
