Great idea - poor excecution

[ukie]

For me it was the most anticipated game of the year but as most of 1C games it came with a cartload of bugs and crashes and until the Devs fix the soft it will be gathering dust on the shelf.

Here is my take on it:

Graphics and presentation: 8/10

Pretty good at the battle screen - very nice details. But sad 1990's graphics at the world map - a little let down, but it is not too bad.

Music is pretty good. But the tracks are very limited so even though the music by itself lacks the annoying quality after a while the repetition will starts to irritate the player.

AI: 5/10

Lots of factors at the battle screen that define complex calculation of damage, morale, speed, e.t.c. Unfortunately it is completely pointless since the only time AI gets creative is during campaign predesigned battles.

Campaign and Game Mechanics: 6/10

The storyline is pretty lame but the fact that there is no time limit, and so one can roam the plains until he feels appropriate, somewhat makes up for it.

Economy is excellent lots of goods and price varies according to market demands. Very well done! Interface is also easy to follow with production/consumption tabs. However there is no control over building up of the economy of an individual settlement so economy often is very static.

A curious limitation is that you can play only for Teutons even though there are other Nations present. I guess it is a money squeeze move by Developers. That is of coarse if the game will catch on which I highly doubt considering it's poor tech support and numerous crash issues.

Replay value: 3/10

Pretty good... would be if the game didn't crash every 20-40 minutes. Unless you save every 5-10 minutes it will become extremely annoying. But even if you do the game will still crash or leave you with no quest or get stuck on one of the quests denying an action of NPC.

Overall: 5.5/10

This is an excellent mix of Mount and Blade with Knights of Honor and Total Warfare. The ideas behind the merge of those games are great but the execution leaves to be desired more... much more. Unless the Developer fixes all the crash issues and adjusts the AI it will turn into a big old flop.