Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes Review

Phantagram and Microsoft’s follow up to last year’s critical (but, sadly, not commercial) success Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders follows the more/bigger/better philosophy of sequel making. Heroes isn’t too much different from Crusaders, but it is every bit as enjoyable and is definitely worth playing. The key addition this year – Six player free for all on Xbox Live.

Story

The overall story in Heroes follows racial tensions between humans, elves, vampires, and orcs. After defeating the Dark Legion in Crusaders, the humans rose to power which angered the other inhabitants of the land of Bersia. The half-vampires then united all of the dark elf factions to create a new Dark Legion and destroy the humans once and for all. The story and characters and pretty much everything in the Kingdom Under Fire universe have a very Tolkien-esque feel to them which definitely adds a lot to the appeal. You get to fight orcs and elves and trolls and all sorts of other fantasy creatures and is generally a whole lot of fun.

Something that makes Heroes interesting is that you actually get to see several sides of the conflict. There are seven different campaigns, each with a different storyline and you get to play as humans, elves, vampires, and orcs. Very cool.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Heroes is basically identical to the gameplay in Crusaders. It is an ingenious mix of Dynasty Warriors-style hack and slash combat mixed in with strategic troop movement and management lifted right out of a real-time-strategy game. You get all of the same control and depth of an RTS but with the added thrill of actually being down on the battlefield fighting alongside your troops. In between missions, you can also upgrade and equip your troops using gold and experience points you earn in battle. It is fairly simple stuff – upgrading officers upgrade all of their troops, for example – but there are several different levels of advancement and customization and building a huge army just the way you want it is a lot of fun. Adding to the depth of the game considerably is the fact that each of the different races you get to play as have different units and upgrades. It is a very different experience strategically when you play as the different races which makes playing though the game multiple times very fun and interesting. For in depth details on the gameplay, check out my review of Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders.

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