I've only fought a couple of battles but so far units seem to fight to the death, regardless of the odds. Is there no morale system that can rout units as in Total War?
Further, archers seem to just stand their ground rather than pull back in a 'skirmish' mode when enemies approach. Is that also missing?
Edit: Additional thoughts after further play:
- The battles are so un-epic it's kind of sad. You have tiny, tiny units wandering around this huge, beautiful map. One has the sense less of two armies waging epic war than of two bands of children playing in the woods.
- There is no tactile feel of battle -- units run up to each other and then stand there while the men go through fairly lame and very repetitive combat animations. Compared to the visceral combat of Total War this just seems incredibly weak. Even the venerable Rome: TW creates a much more powerful sense of real battle, despite being years older than King Arthur.
- Camera control seems wonky -- enough with the camera 'inertia' which make the player constantly overshoot what he wants to look at.
- The battle interface bar has this big image of a woman jutting up in the lower center of the screen -- right where you most need to see clearly! Having to scroll around to avoid a useless piece of UI chrome is beyond irritating.
- The game runs like a hog on my machine: around 20fps, dropping to 15 or so with larger army sizes. In contrast, Shogun 2 Total War runs at 40fps with much larger armies, and looks much better while doing so.
In short, I can't see the point of continuing to play King Arthur -- the epic battles are not here. Too bad, there's clearly a lot of good stuff in this game, and the quests and character customization look amazing -- but I'm playing first and foremost for the battles, and the battles are not cutting it for me.
Further, archers seem to just stand their ground rather than pull back in a 'skirmish' mode when enemies approach. Is that also missing?
Edit: Additional thoughts after further play:
- The battles are so un-epic it's kind of sad. You have tiny, tiny units wandering around this huge, beautiful map. One has the sense less of two armies waging epic war than of two bands of children playing in the woods.
- There is no tactile feel of battle -- units run up to each other and then stand there while the men go through fairly lame and very repetitive combat animations. Compared to the visceral combat of Total War this just seems incredibly weak. Even the venerable Rome: TW creates a much more powerful sense of real battle, despite being years older than King Arthur.
- Camera control seems wonky -- enough with the camera 'inertia' which make the player constantly overshoot what he wants to look at.
- The battle interface bar has this big image of a woman jutting up in the lower center of the screen -- right where you most need to see clearly! Having to scroll around to avoid a useless piece of UI chrome is beyond irritating.
- The game runs like a hog on my machine: around 20fps, dropping to 15 or so with larger army sizes. In contrast, Shogun 2 Total War runs at 40fps with much larger armies, and looks much better while doing so.
In short, I can't see the point of continuing to play King Arthur -- the epic battles are not here. Too bad, there's clearly a lot of good stuff in this game, and the quests and character customization look amazing -- but I'm playing first and foremost for the battles, and the battles are not cutting it for me.
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