Review by: William Abner

King Arthur The Role-playing Wargame is almost a great game. It has all of the trappings: solid graphics, top notch sound, 3D battles, a turn based overland map, lots of neat spells and skills, Knights of the Round Table, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords, etc. If not for its brutal difficulty and a few battlefield oddities it would be an easy sell. As it stands, you should only come to Britannia if you’re looking for one extremely tough fight.

The gameplay is a blend of the Total War series and an old school text adventure—something taken from one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ stories. This is the “role-playing” part of the design; you send your heroes out on adventure missions which play out in text blended with nice graphic artwork. You literally read what is happening and choose which option to take when they are presented to you. Things can go well or…not. What happens depends on your action and also on the skill of the hero doing the quest and this adventure mode that drives the entire story as you move from province to province in at attempt to unite all of Britannia.

Other RPG elements include an experience point system which rewards units and heroes with elite status along with various skills and spells and special units that are earned as the game progresses. Certain units are unlocked strictly depending on the choices you make as the game unfolds. Most quests for example present you with two options: if you choose option ‘A’ you’ll move toward following the Old Faith. Choose option ‘B’ and you move toward Christianity and the rewards which come with it. It’s usually fairly obvious which path will impact this but it’s nice to have this sort of freedom in sculpting your avatar. In addition you can play the good guy or the bad guy – playing as a Tyrant or as the Rightful hero. A Tyrant doesn’t mean evil to the core – just an iron fisted ruler over one whom the people love. Again depending on which path you choose certain units and abilities are unlocked.

The game is story based and it admittedly took me a while to adjust to the adventure mode. It reminded me a bit of the old Darklands game where you simply see nicely done artwork and text rather than action every step of the way. I found it refreshing.