August 24th, 2011
By MegaGamer

Genre: Action
Systems: Xbox
Developer: Phantagram
Publisher: Microsoft
Release Date: September 7th, 2011

Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders may very well be the sleeper hit of the year. I had never even heard of it before about a month ago, and now it is near the top of my list for wanted Xbox games. What is it, you ask? It is setting itself up to be a Dynasty Warriors killer by combining addicting hack-and-slash gameplay with impressive graphics and Xbox Live play. You won't want to miss this one.

The latest entry into the Kingdom Under Fire strategy series head into a completely new direction. Not only will it only be for the Xbox, rather than the PC, but the previous game was only a strategy game. This game hopes to make a perfect blend of both strategy and good old action hack-and-slash. For fans of the original, the new title is set 50 years after the events of the last game and it places the Human Alliance once again at war with the Dark Legion.

While Dynasty Warriors give you access to over 40 characters that you can use to go about your destruction with, Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders instead focuses on four heroes each who is drastically different and quite unique compared to the other characters and each with his or her own storyline and missions. At the start, two campaigns are available for play,G erald, a human captain in the Hironeiden Eastern Defense Force, has the easy campaign. Lucretia, a dark elf captain in the Vellond troop who sports a bad temper and mighty cleavage, has the normal campaign. The other pair of campaigns have to be unlocked prior to playing them. Regnier, the imposing Lord of Hexter (who is obviously a big fan of evildoing), requires you to complete Lucretia's campaign before playing through his hard one. And, finally, Kendal, general of the Second Division Ecclesian Holy Knights, requires you to finish Gerald's campaign before you can access his more challenging, hard campaign. As you can see, as you advance up this ladder of characters, each offers a much more difficult campaign.

The setup of the game can be described in three basic parts - a party management system, a tactics mode, and a battle mode. Party management will have you in your camp and choosing one of five options: operations, barracks, pub, training, and main gate. Operations is where will engage in conversation with other officers to obtain information on where to go next. The barracks will let you manage your forces in quite a few different ways. You can swap the officers who will accompany you to battle once you have earned enough of them. You can also upgrade the skill, equipment, and special abilities of your hero and your officers as they level up through gaining experience from fighting.

There is also a certain degree of upgrades that you can perform on your troops. In addition to purchasing gear for them, you can adjust their skills which can change their jobs. For instance, the human side has infantry, archers, cavalry, sappers (units specializing in various disciplines, such as setting traps and fires), paladins, and storm riders (aerial units), and the evil side has similar forces, with darker intentions, looks, and names, of course. On the dark side, you will encounter cavalry archers, orc-ghouls (a melee unit capable of self-destructing), scorpions (living, siege weapons), swamp mammoths (massive infantry killers), and black wyverns (the Dark Legion's counterpart to the human storm rider).

The other two options, the pub and training, are also worth your time. In the pub, you can learn valuable information about your troops as well as hire mercs to fight for you. In training, you will go over basic combat tutorials that will provide you with some experience. The final option, the main gate, will let you depart on your next mission.

Once the fighting comes, hack-and-slash fans will find that the game feels just like it should. By using the X and Y buttons you can use various combos and by tapping Y twice you can pull off a variety of special moves. You can also block using B, and, if you time it right, you can perform a counter attack very similar to the one in Dynasty Warriors. By holding down any of these buttons, you can call on one of your officers to come to your side and fight next to you. All in all, Dynasty Warriors fans will feel right at home.

Although the graphics aren't the greatest on the Xbox, they are still leaps and bounds ahead of the current competition in the genre. The characters are very detailed from their facial features to their clothes and down to their armor and weapons. The animations are a bit stiff, but it is largely unnoticeable when you are smashing a path into hundreds of foes. The game's frame rate holds up fairly well even in large battles. There are definately some slowdown's, but that is to be expected considering this game holds about 5X as many people on screen as the Dynasty Warriors games.

On the sound side, this game takes a fair share of influence from the DW games. The voice acting is right around average, nothing impressive to be sure, and the game uses hard rock music very similar to that in the DW games. There is plenty of grunting and war cries when you are in battle, and that really helps to capture the feel of a large melee. Your character and your officers will often pop into the action and announce their success or defeat in situations. So there is definitely plenty of dialogue.

This game will also feature head-to-head online play and downloadable content via Xbox Live. This is just an added bonus onto this already amazing action title. If all Xbox action fans don't pick this one up this September, then this world is truly heading in the wrong direction...