Crown Wars: The Black Prince Review

thesixthaxis.com:

It’s all too easy to brand any turn-based isometric strategy game where you get sad about your soldiers dying as being an ‘XCOM-like’. Take Crowns Wars: The Black Prince as an example, almost straight away the game was pigeonholed as a medieval XCOM. A suggestion that the game is nothing more than XCOM Enemy Unknown with a hasty reskin and a half-hearted change of environment. Thankfully, Artefacts Studio has been anything but lazy and Crowns Wars: The Black Prince is very much its own game.

Set during the Hundred Years’ War – actually 116 years long – Crown Wars casts the player in the role of a feudal lord, desperately trying to survive in the chaotic madness of medieval France. The campaign begins after King Edward III’s successful invasion, in which the King of France was taken prisoner. This power vacuum results in a turbulent kingdom stuffed with rival factions, roving mercenaries, and desperate war bands – the perfect setting for a video game then. Crown Wars loosely follows historical events, but things take a more fictional turn when an evil conspiracy is uncovered that the player must defeat.

The setting of Crowns Wars: The Black Prince is slightly fantastical then, and while it’s not the dragons and giants of high fantasy, you can expect to see cursed English soldiers, alchemists lobbing poison potions, and the occasional fighting bear. All of these over-the-top shenanigans are tempered by regular historical notes and analysis from the developers, the smart integration of which puts other bigger developers and publishers to shame.

The plot, delivered as it is in a series of short cutscenes and text boxes, takes second place to the action strategy on offer. Sure, this is a turn-based game, but don’t make the mistake of thinking it offers a lethargic experience. In contrast to many of its contemporaries, the soldiers, knights, and archers of Crown Wars positively race around the battlefield. Indeed, it comes as a shock when you discover that your Hunter can