Crown Wars: The Black Prince Preview – How do you say XCOM in medieval French?

thesixthaxis.com:

The King of France has been captured by those dastardly English types, sending the country into disarray as various houses and families vie for power in the vacuum, but is there something darker lying behind the tumult? It’s up to you to fight off the forces of evil in Crown Wars: The Black Prince.

Set in the 1300s during the Hundred Years’ War, Crown Wars shares a time period with the acclaimed action adventure A Plague Tale games, but gives you a very different perspective. This is a view from the top, as Edward of Woodstock’s capture of the King has left four families to opportunistically seek power, but it starts with an enemy assault on a council meeting, with safeguarding their research and documents vital to the future of the country.

While you lead a defensive effort through this tutorial battle, things do not go to plan, and you shift to choosing which of the four families you’ll play as through the rest of the game. Instead of an individual journey, you’re commanding small bands of mercenaries, sending them out on missions that span the entirety of France to fight back against those sewing chaos.

The simplest way to describe Crown Wars is in terms of its peers, with XCOM being the obvious gaming touchstone, but there’s a thoroughly different tone to the game thanks to the shift to medieval France. You have a handful of character classes to recruit and send into battle which lean far more into melee than ranged combat – while you’ve got fundamentals like being able to crouch behind half and full cover, that’s a bit less useful when many enemies will rush up to you for melee attacks.

And you’ll be doing the same. The Crusader wades in with armour and a massive hammer, the Duellist has proficiency across a broad set of melee weapons (and is able to switch sets mid-fight), and the Beast Master can call upon dogs, bears and falcons to fight alongside them. Of course, there are ranged options with the Flayer a master of ranged bow and arrow attacks, while the