Customer Reviews

Kings Of The Dark Ages

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This game would have been good had it come out in the early 90's but with todays graphics and depth unfortunately Kings of the Dark Ages is lacking.

The turn based pace of this is slow and made even slower by plodding movements when you command your army to advance down a road. What makes it even worse is that you cannot perform any other commands while the army is making it slow crawl. In one game it took me an hour and 20 minutes to move my army to the other side of the map, attack the enemy and realize that they were too strong, meaning I would need another hour to backtrack and attack the weaker army on the other side. Watching your army move, then clicking end turn and repeating over and over again isnt my ideal way to spend an evening of gaming.

Aside from movement the game is really lacking in your ability to interact with the population. You have about 5 basic commands you can execute (turn fields fallow, plant, visit the merchant, assign woodcutters) and thats just about it.

The battles are difficult to control, graphics outdated and formations/commands available very limited.

Random events that occur seem to have little if any effect on the game and translation errors seem common (ie "your poor diplomacy has closed some trade ROOTS to you)

All in all, not worth purchasing. This game lacks in challenge and ther is no replay value. If there was one plus, its the retail price of 9.99 but even that doesnt make up for the boring play.

I've always been a huge fan of an old school medieval & fantasy strategy games but it's getting harder and harder to find a solid 2D titles. This retro 2D TBS from German publisher may be one of the last 'cause even smaller independent developers around the world are switching to next-gen hardware which leaves such old school 2D projects in the hands of fan developers. TKOtDA is an old (or should I say an ancient) school TBS with real time battles which graphically resembles HOMM in its TBS part and Stronghold in batllefield Castle Siege maps. Gameplay is strictly traditional with nothing really fancy but it holds up pretty well with it's precursors, while the overall presentations and amount of visual details on real time battlefield maps is somewhat bellow Stronghold standards. On the other hand, turn based part gives it an edge with it's more complex micromanagement and beautiful atmospheric orchestral soundtrack which contributes greatly to medieval atmosphere.
This is not a great title by today standards but more of a bit of nostalgia. There are some rough edges (visuals are sub par) but overall gameplay experience, historical background and authentic medieval atmposhere could prove quite satisfying for fans of dying 2D strategy genre and not to mention price.