Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom

Previous games in the Korean-Made Kingdom Under Fire series have been praised for their marriage of solid Real Time Strategy mechanics with the orcs-and-elves façade of Tolkien-esque worlds. However, for the series’ Xbox 360 debut developer Blueside has seen fit to mix things up a bit, swapping out the RTS engine for a more straightforward hack-and-slash affair that’s closer to Diablo than anything else.

First impressions of the game are generally favourable. The forest in which you find your character (picked from a line up of six standard fantasy warriors) is rich and detailed - all cobbled stones bathed in soft sunlight and wispy grass. After a short introduction sequence that presents a story impenetrable to those who aren’t familiar with the minutiae of previous happenings, you charge off up what looks like a public footpath in search of some orcs and skeletons to lay into.

Thereafter the game is a straightforward button-masher – you continue down pathways until you stumble upon a group of enemies, finish them off, pick up any weapons, armour, potions or loose change they drop and move on to the next one. You earn experience for each kill and level up when you’ve collected enough, allocating a few points to either increase your HP, your luck or a gauge that dictates how many moves you can perform in a string before you need to break the chain.

This continues for fifteen minutes or so until you stumble across a guardian figure that will buy your loot or, alternatively, let you ‘synthesise’ items together to create more powerful weaponry. This element provides much of the game’s depth but will be overwhelmingly complex for most players. Indeed, many items you fuse together actually create weaker versions of themselves and only the most dedicated fans will bother to plumb its depths.

Guardians also provide a safe place to sleep. If you do drift off here you can pick up extra missions (which simply require you to kill certain enemies to gain new abilities) or speak to other characters to gain fragments of what little story there is. Once you get back to the waking world it’s more travelling down linear paths, battling foes, levelling up and, occasionally, facing off against a boss as the cycle repeats endlessly.

There’s a firm emphasis on multiplayer here. Up to four players can join forces over Xbox LIVE for a Gauntlet-esque adventure. This improves the game somewhat, in the way that having human company in virtual worlds often does. However, at its heart this is a game that will only appeal to the most hardcore hack and slash fans. Without a decent story or mission to propel you through the relentless hordes, most will soon tire of the endless path to power.

2 out of 5