Crown Wars: The Black Prince

Modern gamers can be a prickly, temperamental lot. When a game skimps on options, say taking away a player's ability to save anywhere and forces us to make do only with limited save points, we shake our fists and decry the lack of modern quality of life features. But can the opposite be just as harmful for our enjoyment of something? Crown Wars allows players to save absolutely anywhere they want, even in the middle of a complicated tactical battle. Hell, save after every single move and action, if you want to; the game doesn't seem to care what we do. And as I proceeded through the game and abused the hell out of its save system, I thought to myself "I'm not strong enough to be given this much freedom." For not only was I save scumming to beat the band, but I was also reloading when my attacks were just 1 or 2 points short of maximum damage. And the longer I did this, the less special the rare critical hits felt when I was lucky enough to land them. I was ruining this game for myself and yet seemed unable to stop cheesing the system. Be careful what you wish for... I might be able to rationalize my bad behavior during one of the long skirmish missions, the most difficult…

Well, I've beaten it on Baron... TLDR: this review is a *very* reserved recommend... Even its target audience might not want to buy Crown Wars due to lack of animation speedup, but someone with time to burn might enjoy pouring hours into this game customizing their troop models and watching the execution animations. [h1]Good:[/h1] -Excellent visual customization, 'Pimp My Ride" but for your troops. Extremely detailed once you get a few armor upgrades and missions under your belt. Like painting miniatures. -Visually enjoyable. Good kill animations, overall a good balance between snappy/fast without overly sacrificing detail. -Decent tactical complexity, with various damage types, status effects, abilities with interesting interactions. -Varied challenges & maps - whilst grinding procgen missions eventually got boring, story missions always felt fresh. -[i]Mostly stable[/i]; only crashed once, had some minor bugs which required a reload. [h1]Bad:[/h1] -Grindy as hell -Limited itemization - in comparison to graphical customization, choice of mechanically different equipment is limited for most classes. 1 armor set, 1-4 "consumable" (they are 'expended' for that mission and will rege…

Xcom like. Pretty good, if it had a AAA budget it could be marvelous.

Decent game, if you like XCOM. The same mechanics, in medieval France. Not as polished as XCOM or other AAA games, voice acting could be a tad better, but not bad, I was hooked for 75 hours.

30 hours in its a neat game... that said i am stuck on a mission, i kill a enemy game freeze. had to alt f4 same thing.. so i guess i try a older save.. i get things happen but yesh for 1.0 where the game is broken like that? ugh.. still i paid 2.40 for it.. like i wont cry about it lol. but does seem odd

This is a great game for the price of a pint, the turn based tactics are good and although some of the enemies are stronger you learn to take them out as quickly as possible I thought the death animations for the enemies was a nice touch and very xcom. I also liked that the battlefields were different every time which stopped the fights getting stale. The base building is also good, you just have to focus on the missions that have the materials you need. The only thing that let the game down was the really poor voice acting and the camera on the enemies turn stayed focused on them so if they were using missile weapons and your team was further away, you didn't know what damage they had done until you started your turn. The only bugs I noticed were the bear animations when moving sometimes on platforms and stairs.