Oh, I really like Shadow of the Horned Rat and love Dark Omen , so it sounds particularly interesting : I can't find games of this "kind"... I just downloaded the demo and try this immediately !
What do you think about difficulty of the game ? Is it like the user review on the gamecard say ?

Fact is that if the player tries to go fast along the main story, completing quickly quests without time limit, he soon ends up in a difficult situation as the difficulty of the game accelerates steeply at a given point in the story. If he takes the time to strenghten its forces, train its units, level up its armies and heroes, things won't be easy, but manageable.

It is difficult. The early game can be tough, there's a siege that took me quite a few tries and the end game can be hard as well.

Moreover, at times there will be armies on the map tied to optional quests that you WON'T be able to defeat. You can usually tell because you'll have a long time to complete the quest - they're meant to be challenges after you build your army and level your heroes.

That said, the difficulty *feels* perfect for the game. You have to be very smart about the way you compose your armies, the size of them and the composition of the heroes in them. You have to learn when to divide your forces, when to garrison areas and when to keep a large standing force. You have to learn to expand in an intelligent manner. I loved this aspect of the game.

At times you're working on juggling two or three precarious situations at once. You CAN eventually settle in though, which is also nice. Also, armies / units are persistent and your troops need to be leveled up and remustered after major fights. You don't want your vets getting destroyed.

I remember I had one force battered, one after the other by three armies. After each fight I thought "No way I make it" when the new army moved in on the Turn Based Map screen. Luckily, the map I was on had a magic site that allowed heroes to rapidly regenerate mana located on a hill. I parked my archers up high, had my heroes' forces defend the magic site and the rest surrounded them and hoped for the best. Three times I fought on that map and by the end of the night, white knuckled and not believing it, my army had survived without losing the major important pieces of it. Awesome.

Oh, and lightning bolt is your friend. Trust me on this.

Also, all this chat about the game is making me want to double-dip and maybe fire it up again...

I finished the tutorial of the demo : I really like the game so far !
What you say is a lot reassuring and seems "fair". Thank you for your help :) I think I'll buy it !
Very interesting/useful too, thanks for sharing your opinion !

I really enjoyed both of those series games, and for whatever reason, thought the KA series was just another historical types series in the vain of Imperial Glory, Imperialism, Lors of the Realm, ect...(which btw, I do enjoy greatly). Looking at screen shots, film clips, and your comments have put this on my insta-buy list, 'specailly with the nice 60% promo discount \m/
If you have Medieval 2 Total War with the Kingdoms add-on pack, you should pick up the Third Age Mod for it (if you haven't already of course!) I just recently started playing it, and it's awesome. The mod creators did an incredible job of completely re-working the game to bring the LOTR books and movie to the Total War series.

No problem! And THOSE impressions weren't even touching on some of my favorite parts / aspects of the game! Like I've mentioned once or twice, I'm a fan of this one (and I'm not even a diehard RTS / Total War / "difficult game" lover - this one just happens to work on a ton of levels for me).

I have only the first Medieval Total War on cd, and hve only played it a little for now. I'm really waiting for Medieval 1&2, and Rome Total War to come here !
But it sounds great, and be sure that the day I have Medieval 2 (certainly when it'll show here) and a decent computer, I'll try this !

I'm wondering, is the user review on the King Arthur page accurate? Where the user states the game is unbalanced and the random events kill it?

Sounds really great ! :D
What I saw in the demo really made me think of the gameplay of "Shadow of the Horned Rat" and "Dark Omen", which is a very good point for me. And I love the setting, atmosphere, the musics... Great playtime ahead !
You should write a review for the game if you have time one day ;) It could be very helpful for people who were hesitating like I was !

See these two posts ( and [url=http://www.gog.com/forum/general/release_king_arthur_collection_6f649/post48]here), it should help you :)

I would say no. You've probably seen my other posts and know I'm biased (I loved the game) but random events never killed the game. Random events usually have a "time limit" - if that time limit is VERY long, you can assume that you're probably not ready to tackle the event.

Sometimes that means there's an evil army rampaging through your lands, sapping morale and income. But as far as "borking" an entire playthough? I'm not a MIN / MAX player and I never remember a situation cropping up that rendered the game impossible.

Advance and solidify your lands in an intelligent manner and if a random event has a time limit *well* into the future, you're probably not equipped to deal with it just yet. If a choice you can make seems likely to drag you into war and you're already struggling with a current conflict, don't make that choice just yet.

And remember, for late game - Lightning Bolt! Have a few decent magic users! Heroes make a HUGE difference in this game. And try not to sacrifice veteran units willy nilly early on (though I was a bit careless / sloppy in the early game and I didn't have too many issues).
Thanks I think I might! I've only written one or two (and only when a game really resonated with me) but I think I might have to share my thoughts for this one... well more than I have so far in this thread LOL.

In short, yes and no. If you fire up the game and play it based on your experience for other similat looking games, yes, to some extent you may end up with such feelings.
If you dig more into the game, If you learn the specific mechanism of this game ( in particular how to use heroes and magic and how to balance your armies ) , much less so.
As said above, it is not only important, but critical , not to try advancing too fast. If you do so, you will suffer from a level of attrition that will deprive you of your best units at the worst time and end up trying to tackle challenges youy're not ready to deal with.


The ability to teleport strong melee heroes is not to be neglected either.

Thanks! I already was afraid my browser settings were screwing up the download once again as nobody else was missing the file.

Ahah ^^
But I really think it could be nice to have your review : the game seems great and deserves more reviews to help people to know it better.
Same here : that was a big potential issue for me.

Thanks again for sharing your opinions to help us to know the game better :)

Did it! Hopefully it's posted soon!