King Arthur:Knight's Tale - Verdict? HQ or ShitQ?

[Shillitron]

I keep seeing this game name dropped.
Looking over the screenshots briefly it seems in a similar vein of the Blackguard series?? (Map Node Travel + TB combat on a grid)

Or do you run around like BG3 then snap into grid battles?

How's the story / writing?
Any city exploration?
How's the Loot / Itemization (If any)

Graphics look amazing.

[Acrux]

There are open maps with grid battles.
The writing is okay. It starts off a little edgelord, but for a dark fantasy Arthur game, it's fine.
No city exploration. Camelot is a set of hubs with upgrades and places to slot knights for bonuses.
Itemization is great.

[GothGirlSupremacy]

I liked it a lot. Pretty cool game, fun battles, nice dark fantasy art style, no gay shit.

https://kingarthurknightstale.wiki.fext ... /Sir Balin

This guy rapes.

[Shillitron]

Thanks.

So the "Open Map" makes me think there is some exploration at least.

Do you have a lot of control over the builds / loadout of your troops? (Classes / Skills / Stats / Whateverthefuck)
Any C&C ? Or is the story pretty much on-rails linear?

Thanks for the replies.. the trailer is basically "LE CUTSCEN & LE EPIX BATTLE!" - The one I watched didn't tell me shit. I'm leaning towards buying.

[The_Mask]

It's an interesting approach to medieval folklore. It's kind of weird to give too much of a review to anyone that hasn't played it because it's pretty good, and you want them to experience the game unspoiled.

All you need to know that you need to prepare a lot of time for it when you sit down to play it, because you won't want to stop playing it.

[rusty_shackleford]

It's a good game that also doesn't go out of its way to purposely ruin the source material. Intended to be played on the hardest difficulty, the 'normal' difficulty was the easy in early access until people complained.

Any city exploration?

No.

How's the Loot / Itemization (If any)

Half bad, half good. Regular gear is meh stat sticks, but artifacts can be game-changing with interesting effects.

Seemingly overlooked by a lot of people, not sure why.

[Acrux]

Thanks.

So the "Open Map" makes me think there is some exploration at least.

Do you have a lot of control over the builds / loadout of your troops? (Classes / Skills / Stats / Whateverthefuck)
Any C&C ? Or is the story pretty much on-rails linear?

Sort of, to both.

Every character has a set class that can't be changed, but there are skill trees for everyone. Itemization plays into that a lot, too. You can also slot characters into buildings that will provide various types of bonuses. The story is basically linear, but you can sometimes make choices between Christian/Old Faith and Rightful/Tyrant. Those can have a big impact on which characters are made available to you, and the effectiveness of characters who have alignments that match what you choose.

[Shillitron]

Thanks.

So the "Open Map" makes me think there is some exploration at least.

Do you have a lot of control over the builds / loadout of your troops? (Classes / Skills / Stats / Whateverthefuck)
Any C&C ? Or is the story pretty much on-rails linear?

Sort of, to both.

Every character has a set class that can't be changed, but there are skill trees for everyone. Itemization plays into that a lot, too. You can also slot characters into buildings that will provide various types of bonuses. The story is basically linear, but you can sometimes make choices between Christian/Old Faith and Rightful/Tyrant. Those can have a big impact on which characters are made available to you, and the effectiveness of characters who have alignments that match what you choose.

That's a perfect explanation - gives me enough of a feel for what I'm signing up for - Thanks all for the responses.

[Watser]

Alright, im convinced. Added to the backlog.

[Galdred]

Which characters do you recommend investing in early on?

[Fedora Master]

It's an AA and a half game. Too janky and with weird drops in production quality to be AAA, too well designed to be AA.

[rusty_shackleford]

Which characters do you recommend investing in early on?

I played it at release so it may have been patched since, but the archers weren't very good. Otherwise, most of the rest of your roster will be worth using. Especially since you'll have to rotate most of them due to injuries.

► Show Spoiler

There's a rather rare item that can resurrect dead allies. Not everyone who goes into your crypt is someone who died under your watch.

[asf]

I tried this recently and it is a major decline from earlier neocore arthur games, though katrpw2 was already crap. The combat is another nuxcom garbage clone, city building is some braindead dumbed down thing, with just a handful of options which have little to no impact. Gameplay is a very railroaded series of missions with some small illusion of choice. I followed the story for a while to see if there was any redeeming factor, but the plot felt quite uninspired, even though the premise is quite original. The game atmosphere is ok, but it isnt enough to carry some shallow lite tactical game.

On the other hand, no niggers.

3/10 would not play again.

PS. this is as much an RPG as battle brothers

[Galdred]

How is the combat similar to NuXCOM? Cover plays almost no role, and you melee 80% of the time.
The railroaded missions are decline indeed, but old King Arthur wargame geoscape was also fakely dynamic, in that enemy armies were triggered by your advancing the story.

[asf]

Some triggered events vs complete railroad is quite different.

Combat has the extra movement points after action if I recall correctly, which is nuxcom cancer.

[Galdred]

Is Isolde necklace worth keeping (15 HP healing) compared to grinding it to relic dust? I'd rather take the + 3 AP on first kill relic that just appeared in the tower.

Some triggered events vs complete railroad is quite different.

Combat has the extra movement points after action if I recall correctly, which is nuxcom cancer.

No, you spend 1 AP for 1 tile of movement, or 3-5 AP for an attack, with most skills taking 2-5 AP.
I prefer move + attack for melee focused games, though, because it gives a strong advantage to not moving and waiting for the opponent to waste all of his AP and come to you (you can then get 4 AP overwatch attack + all your turn of unloading attacks upon him), but it certainly doesn't use XCOM system at all for AP.

[Lhynn]

I tried this recently and it is a major decline from earlier neocore arthur games, though katrpw2 was already crap. The combat is another nuxcom garbage clone, city building is some braindead dumbed down thing, with just a handful of options which have little to no impact. Gameplay is a very railroaded series of missions with some small illusion of choice. I followed the story for a while to see if there was any redeeming factor, but the plot felt quite uninspired, even though the premise is quite original. The game atmosphere is ok, but it isnt enough to carry some shallow lite tactical game.

On the other hand, no niggers.

3/10 would not play again.

PS. this is as much an RPG as battle brothers

Your post is gay, and so are you.

[MageofShadows]

This is a rather decent game and the cost is commensurate with its value. May be one of the best RPGs to come out last year.

[Shillitron]

This is a rather decent game and the cost is commensurate with its value. May be one of the best RPGs to come out last year.

That's a pretty low bar.. I can only think of 2 or 3 RPGs that even came out last year that weren't MMO's or "Games as a Service"

[cpmartins]

I enjoyed the little I've played of it. My graphics card died in the middle of my playthrough and I'm hard-pressed to find a good reason to buy a new one.
The combat was decent and NOT LIKE NUCOM AT ALL, the maps and characters were nice, the girls were pretty and the Church vs Pagan talent tree was interesting.

[Eyestabber]

I'm playing this game right now and I'm enjoying it a lot! It starts off slow, I'll admit I almost dropped it due to the fact that you spend an hour or so of very uninteresting combat BUT things pick up the pace after the bridge mission. And speaking of the Bridge, let me say something that will save you all a lot of time: restart if you finish the bridge with wounded characters. You're already dead at that point. Also, do yourself a favor and side with neither brother, so you'll have both. They are both excellent characters and can be a solid foundation to your roster.

[Eyestabber]

OMG, SERIOUSLY FUCK THIS GUY! One VIT damage and he is too scared to go out again until healed. And I thought Kay was a total bitch. Act 1 could've used some less garbage knights, ffs.

[Stavrophore]

The graphics in this game are kinda blurry, never managed to fix it other than through nvidia sharpener, but it has its own drawbacks.

[Eyestabber]

PHEW! FUCKING FINALLY finished the game. Boy is this thing LONG and HARD, just the way urmom likes it. Some random thoughts about the game:

• Serviceable story, nothing amazing, nothing bad, no woke bullshit.
• Very good cutscenes, I was pretty impressed, it felt like being back in the early 2000s or so.
• Reactivity is seriously lackluster. I had people talk about Mommy's plans in act 2 while she was standing right beside them. The game has a clear "story path" and doesn't adapt much to your choices. I also expected certain heroes to at least comment on some of your late game choices (like Christians should object to fighting the Seraphim) but they just follow you along like good murderbots. Same goes for things like Morgana Le Fay saying she can think of "nobody more worthy" of being a Queen other than herself, and yet nothing is ever done with this potential conflict. There's plenty of dialogue that hints at subplots that never go anywhere, sadly.

Fix the damn list function, Rusty
[Admin's note: PEBKAC]

And now for a more useful list, here are some tips on how to plan a run and avoid (some) frustration:

• You need at least two champions in Act 1. Kay alone won't cut it without major headaches. In my run I chose to side with Balin and beheaded Lanval, which resulted in a particularly gruesome Act 1 experience. I think going the neutral route at the bridge is the optimal choice, you're not hurting for morality in this game.
• Morality: don't rush it, but don't flip flop either. You can't recruit the morality-locked heroes until Act 2 (first tier + diagonal) and Act 3 (second tier), so in Act 1 you should make whatever choice will give you the most immediate benefit (eg sparing Lanval). Important exception: DON'T turn away the "unsettling visitor". Extra dust for the rest of the game is VERY worth tanking your alignment a bit.
• The best alignment is either Old-Faith Tyrant if you're gonna replay the game or Old-Faith Righteous if you aren't. Old Faith is recommended due to all the strong magic users tied to that alignment. If you're doing two playthroughs you probably want to go for the exact opposite of whichever alignment you previously chose and Tyrant-Christian is just...bad. You get 4 characters in two classes that heavily overlap in roles and a fucking archer. WORST. DEAL. EVER. So my recommendation is OF/T followed by C/R OR simply OF/R.
• Vanguards kinda suck in the very early game, but they will be your main DPS from mid game onwards. There are two big contenders for "main" Vanguard: Balin and Tegyr. Read up on the existing essences and plan accordingly. The "+1 AP on kill" essence is very important for your main Vanguard.
• Predominant enemy types: Act 1 - Undead. Act 2 - Picts. Act 3 - Seelie/Unseelie. Act 4 - Fomorians. This is important because there are many "+X vs Enemy Type" items in the game and their value depends on which act you're currently playing. Any items with a bonus vs undead (The Lost) has premium value in Act 1, but isn't great later on.
• Events in this game may require a specific class of hero OR a hero with a specific morality. Classes are paired up, so you can fire all your marksmen and have vanguards do the events. But you can't fire all heroes of a given alignment. You need to keep one Tyrant hero, even if going righteous (I recommend Brunor, since he gives extra gold), one Pagan hero even if going Christian, one Christian (Ector, this guy is solid) hero even if going pagan, etc. Events that hint at a conflict require that your chosen champion can't be further than two levels away from the highest lvl hero, so you can't use under leveled bench warmers for important events, otherwise it will fail.
• Tristan is dogshit, but his wife is great. Don't fire him until you get the event to bring Isolde's corpse to Camelot. Then you can fire his worthless undead ass.
• Buy potions. LOTS of potions. The gold investment pays off tremendously in the form of NOT having to deal with injured heroes or Kay being a bitch.
• Speaking of Kay...he may not look like much, but he is actually one of the better companions. There are seven champions in this game, three are alignment locked, arguably stronger and have more flavor. The other four are what I like to call "generic champions". Kay is the best generic champion in the game by a decent margin, so get used to his whiny, generic ass.
• On the meta: DoTs suck, archers suck, AoE is key and positioning > tanking. Items can roll effects, some of them are useless, some are decent, and some and game winning/worth keeping and underleveled item. For Vanguards you really want "Hero is spotted at -X tiles", champions become OP with "teleport on kill" and EVERYONE benefits immensely from a Ring of Teleportation. If you see such ring, don't ask questions, just buy it. Teleporting once per fight AND +5 Loyalty is amazing on pretty much every single character.
• Loyalty: plan your run around heroes who fully agree with you (match your alignment on both axis), partially agree (match one axis, but is indifferent on the other) or are at least neutral (either a truly neutral character or a character that agrees on one axis, but disagrees on the other). Bear in mind morality > religion, so you will have an easier time with a Righteous-Pagan character than with a Tyrant-Christian character while going Righteous-Christian. Characters that totally disagree with you are unusable, unless you literally invest every single event on them, so don't bother. FUCK. GWYNEVERE. STUPID CUNT, I sunk so many events into her and the game ended before I got her loyalty up to serviceable levels.
• On building order: the safest option is to go Hospice -> Cathedral, BUT you can opt to go Hospice -> Merchant instead if you're confident you can prevent injuries from happening. After that you will want the training yard and lastly the tower. Tower is not an early game goal, BUT the sooner you can get it up with Ector in charge, the better.
• ALWAYS CHECK THE MERCHANT AND TOWER FOR ITEMS! Items in this game are tiered every five levels, so once you hit a new act you must update your weapon and armor, otherwise you will lose due to not having a big enough stat stick. Trinkets are more subjective, I kept a level 5 ring of teleportation all the way to the end game on Mommy. A few extra points of vitality or resistance aren't worth replacing a good effect for a crappy one, so don't be too hasty to ditch that sweet "kills anything that drops bellow 15% HP" item.
• Lanval's trait is very exploitable. If you keep him in training 24/7 he will outgrow characters that actually go into missions. Combine that with Joust (Rightful-Christian decree) and Lanval can easily help you outscale the game's missions. The guy is the perfect bench warmer.
• Loyalty only matters during missions, so you can juggle court titles between whoever is currently active on your roster.

That's about it for now I think. The final boss is dogshit, btw, terribly designed fight that forces you to cheese or die. But I think this game is one of the better RPGs that came out in a very, VERY long time. That's my verdict, the game is HQ.

[Eyestabber]

More random thoughts on the game, since I keep playing it:

• The game is perfectly balanced™ around Hard difficulty (the second to last). VH difficulty forces you to play perfect fights and abuse every single abusable mechanic the game offers in order to survive. It's more suited to masochistic retards (like myself). I recommend you play on Hard/non-Ironmeme. Speaking of "Roguelite Mode", discord is full of people whining their save broke at some point due to a bug. Don't play Ironmeme, it's not good for your mental health.

• I have a love/hate relationship with Sir Kay. He's a whiny bitch for sure, but his OP trait makes it so he is consistently 1-3 levels ahead of everyone else, SP wise. My most successful missions so far have involved Sir Kay. I think he is the perfect candidate for the "+20% Vitality healed after mission" essence, since that mitigates his negative trait somewhat

• Guinevere is useable as a Righteous Christian. That hoe ain't Loyal, but Sir Leodegrance keeps her in check. Ignore this tip, Leo is dogshit. Worse sage in the game, even an archer brings more value than this cuck

• Sir Lucan's quest is COMPLETELY off the difficulty curve. You need to bring your A-team with proper potions otherwise it's gonna be GG. Completely bullshit mission and the reward is a rather meh Sage that lacks teleport AND freezing attack.

• Don't disregard Ector. I'm using him a lot more in my current playthrough and learning he is actually very, VERY, good.

• It's really sad how much Christian gets shafted in regards to your roster. I strongly advise you go Old Faith in your first playthrough. Righteous Christian shines with its Joust combos, but Tyrant Christian is just...sad. Christian lacks magic so much you learn to love mediocre sages like Sir Leo

• The game still suffers a lot from performance issues. You might want to skip it if your PC is too old and cheap. In certain "foggy" missions, like Leo's recruitment mission, the game easily drops bellow 20 FPS. Luckily none of that matters during combat.

• You might have read "archers are bad", BUT there are two caveats to that statement. First, Act 1 is designed in a way that benefits Marksmen a lot and I really regret not bringing Lady Archer to the Act 1 boss fight. And second is the fact that their post-endgame gear makes them shine and ARGUABLY stand on the same level as other classes. I don't think it's worth the investment buuuuut you might disagree

• The uncertain "aggro range" of encounters is yet another reason why playing Ironmeme is a bad idea. It's very common to try to "squeeze" through encounters in order to get to a bonfire. Triggering an encounter accidentally means death in VH.

• Another tip: the pathfinding in this game is actually REALLY good. So if you see a place you want/are supposed to go, but can't find your way, just right click and watch as your heroes figure a path on their own

• Careful when using the Lanval XP trick. Most "combat" events require that you send a guy up to two levels bellow your most experienced Knight. So if Lanval pulls too far ahead of everyone else you might not have a knight capable of "winning" events.

• CAREFUL with XP: if you overlevel a mission by more than two levels you will get nothing for that particular hero

That's all for now, will edit with more tips if needed.

[rusty_shackleford]

Expansion announced. I recall(? misremembering?) them stating that there wouldn't be any DLC, so it must have continued to sell well enough to warrant it.

[Acrux]

There's also a large rebalancing patch coming out next week.

[Eyestabber]

Expansion announced. I recall(? misremembering?) them stating that there wouldn't be any DLC, so it must have continued to sell well enough to warrant it.

NICE! When did they announce this!? I looked at the steam page (I have this game installed) like a couple days ago and found no new DLC in sight. I was already aware of the balance patch.

A new undead themed DLC. You know what that means, right? YEAH, even MORE opportunities for Tristan to be FUCKING USELESS, LMAO! Or is it a standalone thing? The description says we will be playing the Romans? We'll see how that plays out.

[Acrux]

v2.0 released

MAJOR UPDATE
POSTED
Sat, December 2
Patch 2.0 Notes | December 2
General patch notes of the major overhaul of King Arthur: Knight's Tale
Patch v2.0

General Changes
Skills and Traits that increased Vitality and/or HP from Accessories/Armour now increase maximum Vitality/HP.
Minor modifications have been made to the Morality Chart. Costs have been adjusted, mainly to make it impossible to access Act II morality Heroes before even starting Act II.
The use of Tomes that grant a bonus for 1 Mission is now restricted: the same Hero can't use multiple Tomes of the same type on a Mission.
Allies and Objects no longer trigger effects that happen on kill.
Fixed a bug which caused summoned Enemies to start with their full AP on their first Turn. Now they have 50% of their AP as Movement AP on their first Turn.
Decreased the cost of the Archery Range building upgrade in the Training Ground from 3000 Gold to 2000.
The Round Table building upgrades have been repositioned:
Decrees has been moved to the old place of Laws, and Leadership 1 is now its prerequisite
Famous Titles has been moved to the old place of Legislature, and Leadership 3 is now its prerequisite
Laws has been moved to the old place of Famous Titles, and no longer has Leadership 1 as a prerequisite
Legislature has been moved to the old place of Decrees, and now has Laws as a prerequisite instead of Leadership 3
Dev Comment: This switcheroo was made mainly because of this last point. Now you can no longer purchase the Legislature upgrade (which allows you to pass a second law) without first purchasing Laws (which unlocks the Laws tab in the first place).
Starting Hero Skill presets have been revised and updated in many cases to promote unique gameplay styles.
Adjusted many Heroes starting levels as well, to better reflect the level of the maps they can be obtained at.
Fixed a bug where passive Skills that granted a benefit to the Hero based on the number of Units affected by a certain status effect (like Terror Wings) did not count Units as affected if the source of their status effect wasn't the Hero.
Most AP/Kill effects have been restricted in the game to work only once per Turn.
Dev Comment: These effects easily broke the game in later acts, and especially in the endgame where players were able to hoard them. This often caused overpowered builds where the enemy didn't even get a single turn to act. The current change is to remedy that - surely a big nerf to AP/kill builds, but a necessary one.
A new building, the Forge is now available for construction in Camelot.
Various types of Gems now drop as loot from missions, that can be used in the Forge to upgrade Heroes gear.
Fixed a bug where a floating text that indicates healing appeared whenever a Lost Unit entered their Reanimation state.
Added a new option to the Gameplay Options: Simultaneous DoT Ticks: Damage over Time effects will apply simultaneously at the start of each Turn. - This has no impact on the game mechanics, it just speeds up gameplay.
Existing Skirmish missions have been updated with the modifications of patch 2.0. Hero presets have been revised and many skirmish missions received minor balance changes.
Enemy Traps can no longer be detected during the deployment phase.
Fixed a bug which caused the Fealty law to not grant its bonus Loyalty during Missions.
Fixed a bug which caused the Muster of Arms Decree to not function properly.
Aspirant Heroes will be leveling up automatically, but they will always be 3 levels behind your highest-leveled Hero.
Resurrection Tome now resurrects Heroes on the same level as the highest level Hero in the Round Table.
The default cooldown of skills can no longer be reduced below 1 Turn.
The Purse of Gold Decree now only costs 2000 Gold, instead of 5000.
The Concession Decree now grants a 50% discount at the Merchant, instead of 20%.
The Merchant now sells packs of resources, enabling players to sink their excessive amounts of gold gathered (or pillaged) in Avalon.
Resources sold include Relic Dust, as well as various gem packs.
The Newcomer Vendors building upgrade now has the Craftsman upgrade as a prerequisite, and it also has a reduced Gold cost from 3000 to 2000.
Fixed several issues that caused Very Hard AI to behave strangely.
Dev Comment: Very Hard AI had a tendency to suidice to opportunity attacks, or be overly aggressive just to get some backstabs into the player's backline. This behaviour has been toned down, and the AI should behave more in line with normal expectations, while still presenting a formidable challenge.
Added tutorial videos for controller users, and generally improved UX with controller.
Fixed the missing controller vibrations when casting a skill.
Several spelling inconsistencies and typos have been corrected for all languages.
Various GUI and UX updates and changes.



For balance changes regarding Classes, Maps & Encounters and Loot/Items refer to this article

For Hero-specific Balance changes refer to this article

For details about the new Season 2: Rising Eclipse, refer to this article

[rusty_shackleford]

60% off, you should be buying this if you don't already own it. Great game, pozz-free, upcoming expansion.