Usually the first few sentences on any article will either make or break whether a reader will stay with you from start to finish. After reviewing "Crusaders: Thy Kingdom Come", from Neocore and v.2 Play, I don’t know if I could find enough to grab you and hold you without you kicking and screaming to get away.
To start with the Minimum requirements for this game to even run is a 2.4Ghz P IV or higher, An Nvidia 6600/Ati Radeon X700 or higher, and 1gb RAM. That being said they recommend a Pentium Core Duo 2.136 or AMD Athlon, Nvidia Geforce 8800 512Mb Or Ati Radeon HD 2600, and 1.5Gb Ram. The machine that was actually used runs with Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs), NVIDIA GeForce 6800, and 4Gb Ram. This machine is above the minimum requirements, but falls a little short on the video they recommend. That alone will play an important role in the review to follow.
Now that we have all of the tech mumbo jumbo out of the way ... let’s talk about the game itself. Crusaders is a multi-language, Real Time Strategy game where you will lead your warriors of the First Crusade in their battle for the Holy Land. The game is boasted to have stunning graphics and innovative gameplay. Upon loading the disk for install you will have the option of selecting six different languages to play with. An optional xfire install is also available for those that want to join the gaming community, and actually play the multiplayer option.
Once the game is installed, and you are ready to begin your first major campaign, you are able to select from five major characters from that time to lead your armies with. I have to admit that the game does follow history quite well in the setup and the battles that come after. Those that are big fans of that era will certainly enjoy the detail placed in that area.
Sadly as soon as the game’s opening scene takes place the game starts to drop off. The musical score, that follows legions of marching soldiers over rolling hills, is pretty weak and does nothing to really get you pumped up for the start of the game. The scene is subtitled throughout with a brief intro on why you are here, but really serves no purpose. You could actually jump to the beginning map and never knew you missed anything.
From here I have to say I was very disappointed with the game. I could not understand why they were wanting a 512Mb video card, but it became very clear early on. With the detail set to very high I was only getting about 7fps on average, but dipped as low as 1. I was very surprised in that this machine has been able to handle nearly every game thrown at it in very high graphics mode. I turned the game down to low detail, which gave everything the appearance of a foggy haze. Even with this change fps only jumped up to about 17fps average. Every aspect of the game was somewhat jerky in response, as it waited for the video to catch up it seemed. Switching to the issue on sound was no better. With all of the sound crunching ability the Soundblaster series can pump out ... it is wasted in this game. You get a few ambient sounds from birds and I believe what appears to be wind, but no sounds you would normally expect from an epic battle. Already I was fearing the worst about this game. When you factor in the camera controls ... well that is a whole topic on it’s own.
Basically the camera system is all driven from the Q,W,E,A,S, and D keys. The mouse provides no help in making sure you stay on the battlefield with your current view. The only exception is when you double click on a unit it will snap to their current location. It is wild and usually will over correct for what you are trying to do. The only bird’s eye view you get is if you are at the top of a hill looking down. There were many times I became lost, and could not find my units again without having to double click on one. With a little practice I was able to "drive" my camera over the terrain, but in the end it was still a poor interface. When in a battle you were hard pressed to get a good view before all of your warriors were lost.
Though the actual interface is very frustrating at times, there are some good concepts to the game. The game does well with tooltips at the beginning stages to help you learn the game. As the need arises, so does the appropriate tip. The game also takes a good measure of a units fatigue and will cause them to receive disadvantages in combat based on them. One of my favorites is the ability to hide units in the forest for an ambush. This causes units to not appear on your main map until they attack. The game also measures a hero’s Faith score. This system tracks certain decisions made during the game and can affect such things as recruitment of new units. Those looking to play in multiplayer mode have not been forgotton. The game does support a multiplayer mode, but in an unusual way. To play with other people on the internet you will have to join Xire, find a friend with the same game, invite them to a chat room, click on "Host Game Lobby", and wait for them to accept. Otherwise the multiplayer option packaged with the game only allows for LAN based games.
Overall I think the idea was a good one on the drawing board. I even went so far as to search the internet for what others thought about this game. I wanted to be fair and make sure I wasn’t missing some good features. Not only did I not come up with any additional "PROS" to the game, I found more comments that mirrored my own thoughts. The final product that I tested fell short from what I was expecting. Even the battles themselves were very cluttered, and left you trying to sort out what you were seeing. In my opinion, all of the frustration in playing this game would cause it to be shelved to collect dust. I’m not sure it would have even made a good drink coaster.
