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Faith plays a major role for the Saracen campaign whereas the Crusaders campaign is more politically based. You can certainly favor the Papal Court and in turn the Roman Catholic church but that is downplayed as you are pitting them against the Holy Roman Empire, and other political and non-political factions.

Unlike in King Arthur, not all things depend on battle. There are also purely political events that can occur which will gain or lose you favor and rewards depending on your choice to assist one faction or another or do nothing at all. Some of them require you to send an army to assist someone but some are merely potential beneficial or detrimental situations which you must balance against your favor with the factions that it affects. There are also trading opportunities which can get you some cool new gear for your troops or make you some money if you’ve got some rare items sitting about that you’re not using.

The More Technical Stuff in Kings’ Crusade

Every unit has several statistics including melee, defense, archery, morale and stamina. Each unit is of course more effective or less effective against particular other types of units and this is all outlined quite well in both the army management interface prior to battle as well as when on the battlefield in the interface.

There are some flaws, or rather things missing in the game. When placing defensive or siege equipment, there’s no confirmation of placement. Also, I couldn’t find a way to remove and reset the equipment without restarting the mission. Not really an option if it’s the second or third objective during the mission.

One of the major statistics of vital importance during any battle is morale because if it drops too low in a unit, they will panic and run from the battlefield or until they reach a certain distance. When one unit runs, others are disheartened and their morale drops as well. There are certain things you can do do bolster morale like defeating enemies, utilize potions and elixirs and special abilities of your leaders and heroes. There are also certain things you can do to lower the morale of your enemies. By favorite is to bombard them with three or more archer units as soon as they enter range. It’s generally a very good deterrent and really thins out their numbers before they get near. It also gives you good odds against an opposing archery unit.

Aside from the campaign mode you can set up specific scenarios to play through. Are you wondering if an army of only archers and infantry can wipe out a larger force of cavalry forced into an uphill charge? Test it out in scenario. Want to know how many spearmen it would take to wipe out ten heavy, armored cavalry units on an almost unstoppable downhill charge? Play through it and find out. Any map, any unit means you can make any battle you want, for the most part.

There’s also multiplayer to be availalbe in the game including two modes. Defender vs. Attacker gives you a time limit to either destroy the enemy (attacker) or remain alive (defender). Attackers get extra gold for troops but defenders get military equipment. You can also cut down trees, build low walls to slow or channel attackers, splash oil pools and build weapons like trebuchets and ballista.

In Domination players are balanced and you must capture Victory locations to win the battle. I imagine that wiping out your enemy would also be considered a win but not necessarily the main goal.

Lionheart Kings Crusade Presentation

The graphics are very well done until you zoom into the combats. Units have extremely generic and repetitive combat animations and the sounds are very much on that same level. No matter the units present in combat it all sounds pretty much the same. Of course, that’s not really the main focus of the game and a more bird’s eye, commander’s level view is really what it’s all about. Still, if I’m going to engage in battles of 500 soldiers, I might like to zoom in and watch from time to time. Here, there’s not much to see, so it’s sort of a downer.

The narrator for the game is simply brilliant. He projects a certain wisdom (which reminds me of Gandalf) that really drew me into the game. I actually listened to the entire tutorial because I felt like his every word held great import for me. The Legate, who is the envoy of the Papal Court made me want to reach through the screen and throttle him. His voice reminded me of Jeffrey Combs as Commander Shran from Star Trek Enterprise. The voices of the French and the HRE envoys weren’t as impressive. The Templars had a certain air of mystery and confidence befitting a semi-secret well-funded organization of their caliber. As you might imagine, I leaned toward the Templars and away from the Papal Court during my first campaign.