With two separate campaigns, you can play as Richard the Lionheart conquering Jerusalem or Saladin trying to protect it from the crusades. Anyone familiar with King Arthur the Role-playing Wargame will feel right at home. Total War veterans will also feel a sense of familiarity as they can command armies on a grand scale, but the game has been more streamlined and simplified if you will, to let the player get on the battlefield without much downtime.
Instead of single units, you control groups that can join together to form massive armies. Although RTS games generally follow the “He who has most units wins” formula, it doesn’t quite work that way in Lionheart. All preparations, such choosing units and supplies, are done before battle, unlike most strategy games that have upgrades and gear that must be bought mid-battle. No matter how large, an opponent who has lost half of his army to your careful tactics and strategies has little hope of ever recovering.
Another major part of battle is morale, as units with low morale will stop obeying your mouse clicks, and start running away from the enemy. That usually starts a chain of events making your other units follow suit. Hero units can raise morale as long as they are near an army, and different potions will ensure that your men don’t cower in fear.
Each unit has a significant amount of detail, right down to the shine and design of each armor piece. It’s nice to see that the developers didn’t slouch on unit design in a game that usually doesn’t require the player to zoom in so much. The environments are equally impressive in scale. My only problem was that the game crashed on me mid-mission twice.
Siding with different factions throughout the campaign will unlock special units and bonuses. For instance: allying with the French King will focus on heavy cavalry and siding with the Papal Court will make recruiting units much easier. The faction system provides incentive for multiple playthroughs to see how each faction alignment affects the overall gameplay.
Playing as the Saracen however does not provide different factions, as they are on a quest to free their lands from the crusaders. In its place is a tech tree, with three branches that let you upgrade hero units, upgrade armies or add other general bonuses.
The two multiplayer modes included won’t beckon you forward, but they do provide fun diversions. Attacker vs. Defender mode has one player trying to invade an area while the other repels the assault. Attackers get more gold to spend on troops, while defenders get more military equipment, including access to special weapons. Domination mode gives each player the same amount of resources, pitting them in a race to capture vital points on a given map.
Lionhearts campaign is an enjoyable one, with incentives for multiple playthroughs to try different factions tech tree upgrades, not unlike an RPG. There are dozens of strategy games that allow you to amass grand armies and command medieval battles, but few that offer the element of real choice. Lionheart: King’s Crusade is all the fun of battling heathens and crushing homelands, but without those pesky plagues.
by Mike Splechta, October 9, 2010
