This time of year is not generally known for it’s great games, however occasionally a few gems manage to appear and take everyone by surprise, could Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom be one of these? Read on.
Kingdom Under uses six different playable characters, each of which has their own story, since each storyline feels unique, playing as a different character does make going through the levels feel different. Each character also handles differently from the others, meaning that you will need to change your fighting style when faced with enemies.
The game itself is essentially an “on the rails” hack and slash adventure with a few RPG elements thrown in, each level will see you make your way from one end to the other, defeating all manner of enemies and collecting items, gold and weapons as you go and unfortunately that just about sums it up. The only thing that breaks up the action are the idols, you will stumble across one these as you work your way through the level, idols come in three forms, Death, Greed and Love. Once you have reached an idol you are then able to save your game, trade and store your items and also synthesize your weapons. Synthesizing is basically a way to make your weapons more powerful, the idol will charge you a fee and then if successful you will then have something a bit more impressive to take your enemies down with.
Another feature you will come across in Kingdom Under Fire is the dream world, here you will enter a interactive cutscene where you talk to non-player characters and have the chance to learn new magical abilities, unfortunately this so called dream world doesn’t really add much to the experience, it just feels like a tacked on afterthought to me, though it doesn’t help that everything runs so slowly during this part of the game.
The action itself isn’t perfect either, it all just feels a bit like a button basher if you ask me, throughout each level I played, the only though I had was to hit the attack buttons everytime I was encountered by a group of enemies and more than often than not, this tactic worked. Occasionally you will get so overwhelmed with enemies that you won’t be able to move, however by assigning the red potion to your shoulder button hit points are easily rejuvenated, making it feel like you are pretty much invulnerable.
To be fair to the developer they have tried to add some RPG elements into the game, such as the magical abilities I briefly mentioned earlier, once you choose which abilities you would like to learn you are then required to defeat a set amount of enemies in order to add this to your box of tricks, these spells can range from healing to lightning, however most of the time you will find yourself reverting back to the tried and tested button bashing as the main way to defeat your enemies.
The multiplayer mode allows for you and up to three other players to take part in a co-op game, this is essentially the same as the main single player mode but with added help. Although this does add to the experience it is hard for me to imagine anyone actually using this feature to the extent that they actually complete all the levels in this way. In my personal opinion it would have been much better to include an offline co-op mode, however it seems that most developers are moving away from this excellent way of playing a game, which in my opinion is a great shame.
Graphically Kingdom Under Fire is not disappointing, each environment has a very unique look to it and this helps draw you into the game, the enemies are also well drawn and look very individual. Thankfully the same can be said of the audio which is also pretty impressive and adds a really creepy atmosphere to the gameplay.
If you think that Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is a typical RPG then you will probably be disappointed, while it does have some of the tradition elements associated with the genre included, most of the time you will just find yourself hacking through enemy after enemy without any element of strategy at all, this game really could have been so much better and while it is quite impressive in places, somehow I feel quite let down.
