Oct 31, 2005

A fun, lenghty game that seems at times impossible, yet easy all at the same time.

KOH is fun, don’t get me wrong, but the difficulty levels seem a bit flawed to me.

You start out picking from any number of different countries in a few different time periods – the country you choose dictates your starting position on the map. Pick poorly, and you’ll regret it the entire game.

You can pick a nation near the edge of the map and not have to worry about having 2 fronts to be attacked, or you can get in the middle of it all, and not have to worry about being cut off by a stronger neighbor. It all depends upon how you want to play.

From here, it is the typical strategy game, with the twist of being able to actually fight each battle your armies get into. If you LOVE that kind of RTS kind of interaction, KOH will seem a bit “lacking” here compared to games like TotalWAR: ROME.

The real game is about the map, troop placements and your royal court. The court is where you will spend a lot time mentoring your captains to influence your empire. You can simply hire a captain (in several different disciplines, like building, martial, spy, etc.) or you can train any adult males in your royal house. But, beware – if you use your King too much on assignment, he won’t be home makin’ babies with the queen, so you may have a schism in your house if your King dies with no adult heir.

On the map, you take of specific territories, each centered around a town. There are surrounding buildings of the town that can be ransaked for resources in an invasion situation. Doing this also draws troops out of the better defended towns, which may be a veritable fortress.

As your martial captains gain levels, you pick special talents for them. These talents make all the difference in the world for the game. A well trained captain will almost never loose against another captain of the same or lesser level – and there is the Achilles heel of the game.
By the time you get a well groomed army (and believe me, it DOES take some time), the game becomes a bit easy. You almost never jump down into the 3D fights anymore – a) because later in the game there are MANY of them going on and b) you’ll do a much worse job than your well trained captain would if left to his business.

There are many other aspects of the game that are fun factors to deal with – like religion (catholic, orthodox, muslim, pagan, etc), famous rebels, spies and civilization advantages that all make the overall task of taking over the world as multifaceted as it should be.

Gameplay Experience:

In one game, I played for about 30 hours building my empire until it was obvious I was going to win – unfortunately, that was when 1/3 of the map was STILL not my territory. But, I hadn’t lost a battle in 2 hours. The rest would be a PLODDING process. Not much fun there – so I started over on a different difficulty level.

And there in lies my complaint with this game – on more difficult levels, the beginning is WAAY too difficult. Oh, you can do it, but it really isn’t much fun. And, on the levels where the beginning is fun to play, the end is just too easy.

Overall though, I did get over 60 hours of enjoyment out of this game.

Bottom Line:

A fun game that can go on forever if you want it to. Great map strategy game that is a bit lite on the 3D RTS simulation for hardcore RTS fans. A bit screwy with difficulty levels.