King Arthur: Knight's Tale

I've really been enjoying this game, the King Arthur legend is used well enough as a basis for the setup, this isn't a story that will stick with you for ages afterwards, but it gets the job done as a vehicle to drive you forwards, it's kind of novel to have you playing as Mordred instead of Arthur, and the moral choices you make do have an effect on who you can recruit and which side missions open up to you, though the overarching story is the same either way as far as I can tell The gameplay is very much the focus here, specifically the combat (exploring the levels for loot and upgrading Camelot between missions is fine, but hardly the star of the show), and that combat is well balanced and satisfying. Each mission you undertake is a small map where you can wander around finding chests, bonfires (resting allows you to restore lost armour or HP) or extra objectives (usually amounting to no more than just finding a couple of items or doing an optional extra battle or 2) in between tackling the main battles of the mission. The exploration is a bit token but does at least break up the pace a little so you aren't literally just jumping straight from one battle to the next. I would say the game is probably a bit longer than it needs to be, so the combat does inevitably get a little repetitive by the late game, once you unlock the 3rd tier of abilities and get the ones you want the combat really doesn't change much from there to the end of the game unless you go out of your way to switch your team composition around regularly to mix things up, but I have nonetheless found it to be a fun game to keep plugging away at. On normal difficulty I have rarely found myself in danger of losing a battle or coming away from a mission with my team badly injured, but you still need to pay attention and play smart to keep your team healthy, and for my taste that's a good balance Team management between missions (you can't do anything with your team's skills or equipment when on a mission) is pretty straightforward, nothing overly deep but if you like optimising builds there's a little bit of it here. You technically don't change equipment on your team, rather you equip 'relics' which affect raw damage/health/armour and add various passive modifiers, but it's essentially the same thing. The loot is all RNG, and it can get a bit much to keep track of, after a while I was overloaded with unused relics so made a point of using the market to sell everything I wasn't using every few missions to stop it building up and refill the gold supplies. Speaking of which, aside from buying relics and items, the other main use for gold is restoring/upgrading Camelot, you'll be able to invest in rebuilding various buildings and upgrading them to enhance their function adn provide some bonuses. This side of the game is a pretty straightforward and I don't think the game would have been worse without it, but nonetheless I have found myself quite liking the brief downtime between missions that it enforces Overall I have found it to be a really solid turn based tactics game, not one I'd recommend if you value a really compelling narrative, but is a fun time if you're more focussed on gameplay. The extra elements in between battles are nothing awe inspiring, but help break things up a bit and give you more things to think about, and while the combat is nothing groundbreaking, I've found it to be a well balanced affair that doesn't just hand you the win but isn't unnecessarily punishing either