Fallen Champions is a cool little King Arthur game that presents you with intersting battle scenarios that require you to try new tactics each time. Not a lot of unit or hero custimization, but enough to keep you happy.

Coupled with a nice price, and this game is just fun enough to pick and and start playing right away.

It's a good time-waster, I really like the battles but the original King Arthur is much more interesting to play as it also has a turn-based campaign mode. So, if you're new to King Arthur: buy the original instead. If you liked the original: buy this!

There's not that much content inside the game, although if you're into the King Arthur games then you should pick this up with your Blue coins. I find that the story portion of the game was lacking although the missions were definitely fun. If you're interested in this game you'd be better off with the original KA game instead and pick this up later on.

This game differs from KA:TRWG in several noticeable ways. The campaign will be the first thing you notice> Now you control three separate hero's with unique stories. You also no longer build armies but instead each battle is started by an 'adventure quest' which is a small story unique to the hero you are using that presents you with several choices which will determine what units are available to you in the up coming battle. While this game uses the same graphic engine as its predecessor its main let down is the liner story arch which diminishes its replay ability but for 8 quid you cant really go wrong.

King Arthur: Fallen Champions is a decidedly mixed bag, a stopgap game between King Arthur 1 and 2 that will most likely fail to draw in new players, and leave old players a bit disappointed. Which is a shame, because it has some interesting features.

For example, before each battle, you go through a Choose Your Own Adventure section, which can give you rewards and different units. It's not always well implemented (there are choices that aren't choices, and text mazes), but it's mostly cool, and the charcoal style artwork is always nice to look at.

As to the battles, there are some good points, and some bad. For those who've played Total War's battlefields, this is a slightly more accessible experience, and fairly easy to work out, but ground following camera (sometimes acting illogically), and no save feature within battles (battles that last anything up to 3 hours) were both not exactly great design decisions.

On the plus side, the characters are moderately interesting, the battles (when you work out the gimmick) can also be fun, and the abiities and weaknesses of your soldiers leave you thinking. Overall, not a must-have, but worth at least a look, despite its flaws.

INTRODUCCION (OPCIONAL)

Un mundo fantástico para unos escenarios espectaculares, nos pondremos en la piel de tres héroes que lucharán, cada uno por un motivo, en la tierra del Rey Arturo. Hechizos, magia, batallas cuerpo a cuerpo, innumerables detalles podemos encontrarnos en este juego.

CONTENIDO

Gracias a la gente de Paradox y Neocore hemos podido probar con nuestras propias manos este juego, King Arthur: Fallen Champions y hemos descubierto un nuevo ambiente de batallas en esta historia.

King Arthur se sitúa entre la historia de King Arthur I y II. La trama de la aventura son tres valientes guerreros: Sir Lionel, caballero británico que intenta rescatar a su damisela en apuros, Lady Corrigan, señora de los Sidhe, criatura del crepúsculo que busca poder regresar a casa y por último, podemos contar en esta aventura con Drest, el Elegido, un chamán del norte impulsado por visiones de grandeza y voces de la noche. Los tres se convierten en campeones de una batalla olvidada que comenzó hace mucho tiempo. Tres héroes, cada uno con una historia propia, misiones y aventuras, pero no aisladas, sino historias entrelazadas que acaban en una gran batalla.

Debes aplicar una gran estrategia para conseguir la victoria, batallas únicas, épicas y diseñadas a la perfección. Como en todos los grandes juegos de estrategia, esta parte es muy importante, ya que deberemos enfrentarnos desde pequeños ejércitos hasta batallones con una clara superioridad numérica que a veces nos harán temer la gran dificultad del juego.

Una fantástica aventura que está ubicada en una antigua región de Bretaña, más allá de los territorios conocidos por el rey Arturo. Paradox se está abriendo camino con grandes títulos, especializados en juegos de estrategia, que nos ponen en el papel de grandes héroes y batallas reales o fantásticas.

King Arthur es un juego de estrategia y rol en tiempo real, como hacía tiempo no salía. Basado en una era mágica de grandes batallas, nos permite controlar un enorme ejército para intentar conseguir la victoria simulando la época mágica de los castillos, en la isla británica plagada de fortalezas impenetrables.

Gráficamente está bastante bien, llegando a impresionarte. Tanto el movimiento como la interacción con el ejército parecen casi reales, aunque necesita de muchos recursos para poder jugar cómodamente, eso demuestra que es un juego para jugones. El modo campaña es increíble, recordándonos otros juegos épicos de estrategia.

El entorno nos envuelve y nos hace poder disfrutar de las batallas, con un sonido espectacular y el resto de la banda sonora está muy lograda también durante todo el juego.

En mi opinión, es un gran juego. Cabe destacar que es muy abierto, es decir, tiene multitud de escenarios, campañas, con muchos enemigos a los que vencer. Un mundo de nobles héroes y de inmensas batallas para conseguir nuestros objetivos. Fantasmas, ogros, magos, guerreros, gigantes, brujos… y muchas más sorpresas nos esperan en esta entrega. Nos ofrece cosas que muchos juegos antes no han podido mostrarnos, pero sobretodo, muchas horas de juego. Como aspecto negativo, opino que requiere de demasiados recursos para poder jugar cómodamente, sobre todo cuando las batallas son tan grandes, a veces llegando a ser algo complicado controlar a todos.

CONCLUSIÓN

Nos enfrentaremos a nuestras propias decisiones realizando una serie de elecciones antes de comenzar una misión, atreveos a probarlo, a defender el territorio, atreveos a luchar.

creativefuture, buscanos en internet

King Arthur: Fallen Champions had surprise on its side when it was released in 2009. Developer NeoCore Games' blend of choose-your-own-adventure quests and real-time fantasy battles came out of nowhere with impressive cross-genre experimentations, even if the end result was uneven and a bit too offbeat for its own good. Stand-alone add-on Fallen Champions also comes as something of a surprise for how much it pulls back from what its big brother brought to the table. The action here is distilled to the basics, giving you a close-up view of the innovative storytelling devices and the tactical real-time strategy combat without any of the kingdom building that gave the earlier game a Total War vibe. So you might not be getting exactly what you expect, although the game is very good in its own right and a great way for newcomers to ease into the deeper waters that await in the full King Arthur. Story and setting in Fallen Champions serve as a bridge between the first King Arthur game and its successor. Befitting a $10 online-only release, the game is shorter and more to the point than its predecessor. All of the grand strategic overlay about conquering England is completely dropped in favour of a more intimate story about what happens to a trio of heroes in the wake of Arthur's wars. The plot focuses on Arthurian knight Sir Lionel, Pictish shaman Drest, and Sidhe witch Lady Corrigan. You swap among their three perspectives at the end of every mission during the linear campaign. The tales told here take events even further into grim, Warhammer-styled fantasy than the last game. You're a long way from the noble Knights of the Round Table and shining Camelot on the hill, with Lionel slaughtering foes to rescue his kidnapped love; Drest fighting to save the Picts; and Lady Corrigan sneaking through gauntlets of enemies to try to get back to her spirit world home. The dark palette gives the game's attractive visuals an effectively bleak feeling.

Game structure follows the one presented in King Arthur, with the strategic layer removed. Story sequences during missions are still told with Q-and-A dialogue that could have been pulled from the famous Choose Your Own Adventure and Endless Quest books published in the '80s. Everything is handled with text blurbs. Your protagonist is constantly thrown into some kind of perilous situation, like trying to avoid Sidhe patrols, dealing with an aggressive wandering knight, or simply trying to get through a darkened wood without getting lost, and you choose a course of action to follow. Sometimes you make the right call and score allies, artifacts, or stat boosts. Sometimes you slip up and take a penalty.

This storytelling method is effective, if not entirely so. The text is atmospheric enough to draw you into this fantasy world, and the three different storylines move in varying directions, with the knight doing a lot of straight-out scrapping, the Sidhe enchantress sneaking around with her magic, and the Pict doing a bit of both. But there generally isn't enough at stake to make you really care. Too often you're given just a couple of stark choices that boil down to either fleeing in terror or sticking your chest out and marching right up to the (potential) bad guys. So after a while, you find yourself scanning the text and quickly clicking on a response just to get through the preamble and into an RTS battle. More intricate dialogue choices with real consequences might have boosted immersion and added to the replay value.

Fallen Champions differs from King Arthur most noticeably in the way the campaign works. You control three heroes, each on their own quest, and guide them through both adventure quests and battles.

In the main campaign map in between every battle, you get to choose for which hero you wish to advance the storyline. When you pick a hero, you can then advance to the next stage of their quest, which consists of first an adventure quest followed by a battle.

You don't get to build armies as such, and the units you're allocated for the battle is decided by the choices you make during the adventure quest. Once you're on the battle map, small "power ups" are scattered around the battle field, allowing you to heal one of your troops, or restore some mana for one of your heroes. I've only played one battle so far, but it seems that if you lose soldiers from one of your units, they cannot be replaced, so you'll need to manage them carefully.

Artifacts are rewarded by killing specific target units, some of these are highlighted on the battlefield by an orange glow.

The game mentions that you'll need to complete all three heroes' storyarchs to get to the final battle. I don't foresee the same amount of replayability in this release as I got from King Arthur, but for just 10€, this game seems worth every cent.

As to the third party software required, I have no clue what they're talking about. I downloaded and installed as I usually do, fired up the game and immediately started playing. No mucking about with Steam or other DRM mechanism.

All in all, it seems like good value for money, but not much replayability. 4/5 stars.