When I booted up Steam this evening, I saw “Total War Battles: KINGDOM” in the “Popular New Releases” section, so I thought I would give it a look. I’ve played and enjoyed some of the other Total War games, including “Medieval II,” although I’ve primarily stuck to “Empire,” when it comes to Total War. I had seen their previous casual dabble “Total War Battles: SHOGUN” a while back when it was new on Steam, but I didn’t pay it much mind. “KINGDOM” is Free To Play, though, so I didn’t have much to lose. Having played the tutorial, here are my thoughts:
I liked the somewhat zoomed-in feel of the game, focusing on just your little settlement and single army at first, rather than the grand scale world maps of the main Total War series. I particularly liked the ability to affect terrain to redirect rivers and such, although I would like it better if this could be used to affect combat (although maybe it can, and I just haven’t reached that point yet). I particularly liked how building a church has the effect of unlocking combat buffs for your troops. It always frustrated me in “Medieval: Total War” when I would get pestered by the Pope to build churches I had no use for or interest in.
The resource management is also a new addition to the Total War model. Your expansion was limited only by gold and population in the main Total War titles I’ve played, so it was kind of fun to have to consider the availability of supplies as well as funding. The use of time as a mechanic has always been a facet of the series, but “KINGDOM” shakes things up by making it real time, rather than in-game year. In theory, this could be exciting, if it means you have to plan your projects and orchestrate them so that you don’t accidentally flood a construction zone, or build a bridge into hostile territory before you’re done recruiting your troops. That said, the option to pay “gold” to complete it instantly, or else wait twenty minutes to landscape a single tile suggests to me that this is much more likely a means of adding micropayments than a move from turns to real-time a la “Crusader Kings II.”
The combat was pretty underwhelming, when compared to the main entries to the series. In the traditional model, you’re given a battlefield full of terrain you can use to your advantage, and you can arrange your troops however you like, even setting up ambushes and cover from enemy fire, and you can then move them all around the battlefield in real-time, once the battle has started. “KINGDOM,” on the other hand, has a VERY streamlined version of these mechanics. Units in “KINGDOM” are arranged on a grid, rather than freely on a map, and the most you can do is arrange them in the order you want and issue the occasional order to target an enemy unit with a special ability, or move one of your units into a free space. For a casual player, I think that this system will probably work pretty well, and you can fight a battle or two with minimal time and attention while riding the bus or waiting for class to start. Veteran players of the Total War series will probably get bored quickly.
Generally speaking, I’d say that this game feels a lot better suited for tablet use, particularly if it can be easily minimized and left to run in the background so you can read or browse the internet while your buildings and terrain modifications load. I like that it’s designed to be played from any device, so you can jump from computer to tablet and back, but if I’m at my computer, I may as well just play the ACTUAL “Medieval: Total War.” It’s a spiffy little take on Total War, translating it probably as well as could be hoped to the free-to-play mobile model, but it is, at the end of the day, a Free To Play casual game designed to work just as well on a tablet as on a PC. If you want a Total War fix while on the road, or are a casual gamer looking to dabble in grand strategy without having to sink a bunch of time into a dense $20 RTS, then this game is worth a look. Otherwise, you’d probably be better off just starting a new campaign in “Medieval II: Total War” or “Crusader Kings II.”
Popkilt 