King Arthur: Knight's Tale Preview: Tactically Trash, Smash, Crash, and Slash
A plodding team of armored knights crashes into their enemies, scything them down with blows left and right. They're much more powerful than those they fight, but far fewer, and in the tactical combat of King Arthur: Knight's Tale you're the one in charge of making sure those knights triumph. I sat down with a preview of the second act of this story-driven strategy RPG, and I found myself intrigued by its mix of combat, knightly tales, and casual castle management.
I'll be straight with you here: this remix of Arthurian legend plays fast and loose with the myths, and I'm here for it. Arthurian legends are the comic book stories of the medieval period, all about larger-than-life heroes and wildly inconsistent in how they're depicted. What I mean is that I don't think you'll need to know jack about Arthur to enjoy this, but here's the details anyway: King Arthur: Knight's Tale is set in a grimdark Arthurian purgatory of sorts. Avalon, what should be a shining mystical paradise for knights, has gone really wrong and Arthur has gone not just normal evil, but super evil.
Oh, and you play the bad guy. You're Mordred, and you've killed Arthur at the same moment he's killed you. Now you're both in Avalon, but Arthur has gone all kinds of bad, so now you need to kill Arthur… again. To do so, you need to recruit his former knights, enemies, and allies to your side. Basically none of them like you or want to work with you, and depending on your actions some of them will happily abandon you for a return to Arthur's side. Complicating things are the Lady of the Lake, ancient gods, elves, and all manner of other supernatural stuff cribbed from Celtic, Irish, and Brythonic mythology both pre- and post-Christian.
It's not perfect. Some
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