Lionheart The King's Crusade $10 this weekend at Steam

Another nice review here.

"Lionheart does a good job of stepping out of that shadow cast by Arthur and casts its own very long shadow that will be a measure for other RTS games in the future. The two games are similar in feel, but different in so many other aspects that you can’t say one is derived from the other and that’s the whole point right? We didn’t want King Arthur 2 (well, some of us do want further expansions), we wanted a new game with a new setting, gameplay and new mechanics, but in the same vein and spirit as King Arthur and that is exactly what we have received with Lionheart King’s Crusade. Lionheart will be a great addition the the collection of any wargamer or real-time strategy fan and will give you hours of enjoyment. The game is available through GamersGate.com."

Yes it is. It's also on sale right now at Steam for $9.

That's four very favorable reviews I've now linked to, and I can enthusiastically confirm, having spent the day with this, that the game is a blast. Here's the review in its entirety. I realize that by now some of you might be worried about this game because a few ignorant people here have, for whatever reasons, decided to try and tarnish this game's reputation (I still can't quite figure out why, though I suspect that these individuals are far angrier with me than they are with the game, and that because I was the one who posted about this sale, they've decided to take it out on the game). It is indeed a tremendous shame that that had to happen. I urge you to read this review, and the three others I linked to on the previous page.

http://www.gamersdailynews.com/article-2620-Lionheart-Kings-Crusade-Review-PC.html

Please note that certain people in this thread continue to push the IGN review to the fore, while ignoring the four positive reviews I've linked to. They're doing this because the IGN review focused on a bug that was experienced by only a few gamers (note that not one of the four reviewers to whom I linked experienced this bug). The IGN review is no longer relevant. The game has been patched. Very few people experienced the bug anyway, which is evident at the steam forum where fewer than 30 posts were created in one thread about this topic.

Please note as well that some of the people posting in this thread, who have suddenly decided to champion IGN, have said very nasty things about this website in the past. I'm not going to name names, but a search of the forum will reveal discrepancies here. If a person is going to blast IGN in one thread, then they should stay consistent with that in other threads as well.

Lionheart is a very good game - and for nine dollars it's a no-brainer. Please don't allow the haters to cloud your thinking. Propaganda only works if you actually listen to it.
 
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WabeWalker said:
The pirated version may be buggy. The one you pay for definitely is not. I've been playing for hours without experiencing any kinds of crashes or bugs whatsoever. Just like King Arthur, this game is stable.

Also, the Total War comparisons, as many others have said, are always made by people who don't understand this series. It's not Total War, and was never meant to be. It should be plain obvious to anybody who has spent any amount of time on this that you can't move freely about the campaign map, which is obviously THE fundamental mechanic of the Total War series.

Getting really fed up with hearing from pirates who belittle titles they didn't pay for and know nothing about.
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So, you're accusing anonmoniker of pirating the game and hence why he has bugs and you dont?

I'm tempted to buy the game, but I'm not a huge strategy game fan and already have a big enough list of games I own and dont actually care to play.
 
The version I have is the steam version; who knows maybe valve pirated it.

WabeWalker said:
The pirated version may be buggy. The one you pay for definitely is not. I've been playing for hours without experiencing any kinds of crashes or bugs whatsoever. Just like King Arthur, this game is stable.

Also, the Total War comparisons, as many others have said, are always made by people who don't understand this series. It's not Total War, and was never meant to be. It should be plain obvious to anybody who has spent any amount of time on this that you can't move freely about the campaign map, which is obviously THE fundamental mechanic of the Total War series.

Getting really fed up with hearing from pirates who belittle titles they didn't pay for and know nothing about.
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No, I'm not accusing anonmoniker of pirating this title.

I am surprised, however, that he chose to buy the game, since he was the person who created the post below, writing as though he had played the game, when, in fact (at that point), he had not.

He was also the person who started this whole debate by stating that 'the majority of gamers can't get beyond the early part of the game due to a game stopping bug' - a preposterous claim that is completely false. At that point he had not even played the game. Clearly, he posts later on and says that because of all my so called QQ'ing, he decided to 'try out' the game.

You'll have to excuse me, I suppose, but I find it a tad difficult to believe that a person going into a game with such a massively antagonistic attitude would write anything but negative comments.

Here's what he wrote BEFORE buying this title:

anonmoniker said:
False evidence? Go look at any forum for this game and see that almost every topic is about crashing. You're one of those people who feels the need to defend garbage just to be contrarian instead of just apologizing for recommending a broken game.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?486-The-Kings-Crusade

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1058

Do I need to post excerpts to embarrass you further? The game is fixed for a few, broken for most. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this thread in particular:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1674943

Many people with problems even after the newest patch, which comes four months after release. Yet somehow they found the time to make some DLC for the game. King Arthur was like that too. They started pumping out DLC before all the bugs were fixed.

Even two of the three "favorable" reviews you linked mention crashes, and the third is a very short review from a site nobody has even heard of. More importantly though, you're still ducking the question: Did you buy this game and successfully complete the first level the first time without crashes? FRAPS or gtfo.
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And, yes, it does surprise me that after all the posts he wrote, warning people away from this game, as to save them from spending ten dollars on a game that supposedly can't be played, he turned around and spent ten dollars on it himself.

Clearly, I'm entitled, and have good reason, to be skeptical of everything this person has written.
 
It's buggy!
No it's not!
Fuck you! Yes it is!
No it's not! Fuck you!


....ok guys, seriously, wtf?
 
Majinhoju said:
It's buggy!
No it's not!
Fuck you! Yes it is!
No it's not! Fuck you!


....ok guys, seriously, wtf?
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You don't read a lot of posts in this section do you? Wabe and a few of us other posters have this like-dislike thing going constantly. Some topics we agree with him and others they turn into big arguments.
 
WabeWalker said:
The pirated version may be buggy. The one you pay for definitely is not. I've been playing for hours without experiencing any kinds of crashes or bugs whatsoever. Just like King Arthur, this game is stable.

Also, the Total War comparisons, as many others have said, are always made by people who don't understand this series. It's not Total War, and was never meant to be. It should be plain obvious to anybody who has spent any amount of time on this that you can't move freely about the campaign map, which is obviously THE fundamental mechanic of the Total War series.

Getting really fed up with hearing from pirates who belittle titles they didn't pay for and know nothing about.
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Pirated games that launch through Steam?

http://img51.imageshack.us/f/bugarrific.jpg/

Sorry bro, the majority of people who legitimately purchased this game can't play it to completion.

And it's hilarious that you keep trolling for these "very favorable" reviews that are actually average reviews from sites that score inflate (ie a B from whoever "Gameshark" is when their average review score is 75.37%).

I urge you to read this review, and the three others I linked to on the previous page.

http://www.gamersdailynews.com/artic...Review-PC.html
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Is this a review or an ad? I can't even tell, what with the massive "buy" link at the end of the review that the site certainly gets a commission on. Do you work for Neocore or are you affiliated with someone who works there? What is your financial interest in all this? It boggles the mind that you would so feverishly defend a broken game just because it allegedly works for you. You do realize that everyone uses different video cards, OS, CPU, correct? Are you really such a fanboy of this completely average game that you support them putting out games that are a dice-roll to get them working?
 
WabeWalker said:
Re-read my post above. I can't explain myself anymore than that.
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Re-read your post and you still fail to mention why you even brought up pirating. Besides the fact that you say you are surprised he bought the game. Hence, saying he's a pirate again.
 
Whats worse, the original people arguing or all the other kiddies that jump in? HAHAHAH
 
I've been accused of working for Ubisoft, EA, Activision... and now Neocore.

Um, no.
 
WabeWalker said:
The kiddies that jump in, of course.
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I assume, by kiddies, you are referring to the people responding to your thread that you opened for discussion. If you didn't want a discussion, then why so many replies and so little playing the game? If you just want to have one big Lionheart circle jerk, you might put that in the thread title next time.

Here, I'll help you.

"Lionheart is AWESOME -- The Official Circle Jerk Thread -- No threadcrapping allowed"

Something along those lines might better convey what exactly you demand to see in the next thread that you post.
 
SilverSliver said:
I assume, by kiddies, you are referring to the people responding to your thread that you opened for discussion. If you didn't want a discussion, then why so many replies and so little playing the game? If you just want to have one big Lionheart circle jerk, you might put that in the thread title next time.

Here, I'll help you.

"Lionheart is AWESOME -- The Official Circle Jerk Thread -- No threadcrapping allowed"

Something along those lines might better convey what exactly you demand to see in the next thread that you post.
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What nonsense.

I was responding to the plainly ridiculous suggestion that this game has a game stopping bug that prevents the majority of people from playing it.

As far as criticisms of the game are concerned, go right ahead. Post away. I haven't argued with anybody about the game itself, chiefly because nobody here has played it.
 
anonmoniker said:
After all of Wabewalker's QQing and defensiveness, I couldn't help but check the game out just to see. Not surprisingly, it is a completely average strategy game with a shitload of bugs. I blew through most of the crusader campaign on normal this afternoon and it was reasonably fun, but primarily because the Total War games it shamelessly steals almost all of its gameplay concepts from are excellent rather than any grand vision on the part of the designers. There's really nothing different here other than the absence of any strategy on the overmap, unit rock/paper/scissors and terrain bonuses are more pronounced, and you can equip your units with items that mostly have a minimal effect.

Overall the game is MUCH less polished than Total War, I probably saw 20-30 poor design elements along the lines of useless tooltips, having to mouse over a unit even while it's selected to see its status because otherwise the HUD shows the terrain type instead of the selected unit, camera unusable near the edge of the map, etc. I had been wanting to try a game from this developer for a while but so many people talk of the horribly cheating AI in King Arthur that spawns infinite enemies that I was turned off to that game. Lionheart is a chance to play a game on that engine without the cheating AI, and it did not impress me.

Now as for the bugs:
-I did not experience the repeated crash at the end of the first mission that so may others are experiencing
-Instead, the game crashed on me almost every time I started a mission after upgrading troops. In just one day, I had about 15 or so crashes from launcher errors and C++ runtime errors. I've never seen anything like this before. Luckily the game restarts quickly (and you just save in anticipation of the crash), so it only costs a couple minutes of time per menu crash.
-The game also crashed once at the end of a long battle (there is no mid-battle save), costing me about 30 minutes to replay it.
-SLI doesn't work
-AA doesn't work
-Vsynch force doesn't work, so your card will be blasting along at 100% as the screen tears all over the place. I even tried to force it with D3Doverride to no avail

I think IGN nailed their review. It's a 7.0 (completely average) game brought down to a 5.0 by the complete ineptness of the coders/QA.
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>< I wish you had posted this earlier. I've been trying out a lot of random games lately so I figured I'd give this a try. Too bad I didn't pay attention to the OP's name before I bit :/
 
Andrew_Carr said:
>< I wish you had posted this earlier. I've been trying out a lot of random games lately so I figured I'd give this a try. Too bad I didn't pay attention to the OP's name before I bit :/
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So it's my fault you dislike a game that's generally regarded as being a decent follow up to a decent game?

Yeah, you got me there, buddy. I'm the guy who goes around recommending bad games to people on this forum. That's my mission in life. To recommend as many bad titles as I possibly can.

Your post is insulting and demeaning. Do you see me personally attacking people like that? I attack people's ideas, not the people themselves. Nevertheless, I have a question for you: If you've already identified me as being the guy who goes around recommending horrible titles in some clever attempt to trick people out of their money, then why wasn't I already on your ignore list?
 
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I don't think I've ever seen you make critical comments about any game. I haven't even tried the game yet, so I don't know how it is. I just regret buying it based on the enthusiastic post you made.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
I don't think I've ever seen you make critical comments about any game. I haven't even tried the game yet, so I don't know how it is. I just regret buying it based on the enthusiastic post you made.
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Try it and let us know if its a crashfest ;) Coz apparently anonmoniker is either lying or a pirate (according to Wabe) :p
 
WabeWalker said:
Do you see me personally attacking people like that? I attack people's ideas, not the people themselves. Nevertheless, I have a question for you: If you've already identified me as being the guy who goes around recommending horrible titles in some clever attempt to trick people out of their money, then why wasn't I already on your ignore list?
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You are going around calling people pirates who go out and buy the game, and come back here and say it's terrible. I don't get why you are feeling so slighted. You post a review that you like the game. People mention that the games forums says it has a lot of problems. You say, basically, neener neener. A guy goes out and buys the game, comes back here and says it has problems. Writes a pretty nice review explaining the issues he had. Post quality is about three fold to your cumulative contributions thus far. Then, you call the guy a pirate but ignore pretty much everything else he says.

You never attacked an idea. You posted links to a bunch of average or below average game reviews as your "proof." Then, when an opposing idea was presented you try to diminish it's value by calling the poster a pirate, then backpedaling but not really backpedaling, when that backfires. Give me a break.
 
I got this game as a gift several months ago. It crashed on the first mission then, it crashed on the first mission after the patch, and it crashed on the first mission every attempt in between. It might be the greatest game ever for all I know, but it's unplayable for me and many others.
 
So far(1hr or so)

poor graphics
UI is fine
Game is interesting. A lot like a Total War game + dialogue options for quests. The heroes thing is interesting too.

Ran into one bug during a battle. Esc and stuff didn't work. Also stopped accepting keyboard input for map control(keypad arrows). Reloaded and it works again.
 
The Total War comparison begins and ends with a turn based strategy game that can potentially play out with some real-time gameplay.

Those real-time battles, however, were never meant to play out like the battles in the Total War games. These battles are far more dependent on the units which players have built up over the course of the campaign. It's vital, therefore, that players nurture their units during the battles.

The best comparison I can make here is with the old SSI game, Panzer General. Arguably, the key to success in Panzer General was leveling up your army over the course of the campaign - failure to do this properly almost always resulted in end battles that were impossible to win. Losing a unit that's been leveled up should be heart wrenching to the player in this game - if that's not the case, then quite frankly the player just isn't playing it properly.

Also, it should be clear to anybody who has spent more than two hours with this game, that there is no strategic map, per se. The campaign plays out in a linear fashion. The map is just there to serve as jumping points for the campaign. Once the player has liberated one section of the map he merely progresses to the next - there's virtually no reason to defend areas already liberated. Obviously, this is a huge departure from the Total War series, which is really about owning the map, and jumping around all over the place.

People who don't understand what this series is about, and view it from a distance, continuously make the Total War comparison, when in reality this series has always been its own series.

Now that I've played it some, it's a toss up, which I like more, this or King Arthur.
 
WabeWalker said:
Those real-time battles, however, were never meant to play out like the battles in the Total War games.
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Too bad they play out EXACTLY like the battles in Total War games, except with archers that have unrealistically high accuracy/range/damage and a ridiculous cavalry trample mechanic. I saw twelve horses run one time through two units totalling 96 soldiers and they killed every last man. Not one person out of a group of 96 was able to dodge out of the way of 12 horses. Ridiculous. And this was with physics set to max. Oh, and the seige engines in this game are immobile in battle...and also during the prebattle unit placement. You can't even delete or move one put in the wrong place, gotta love that Neocore "polish." There are Total War mods that play less like Total War than this game does.

Losing a unit that's been leveled up should be heart wrenching to the player in this game - if that's not the case, then quite frankly the player just isn't playing it properly.
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Not really. The broken archers and cavalry rule the game whether they're level 0 or level 12. It doesn't matter what level anything is (at least on Normal) because I only saw the enemy bring out level 0 units which are easily crushed. This game actually has way less consequences for losing soldiers than Total War. In Total War if you lose solders, the experience of the unit goes down because you have to replace them with new recruits. It also costs money to replace them. In Lionheart, you can sit a wounded unit out of a battle and it will magically heal to full at no monetary or experience cost. Only Neocore knows where these battle-hardened recruits that will fight for free come from.

Also, it should be clear to anybody who has spent more than two hours with this game, that there is no strategic map, per se. The campaign plays out in a linear fashion. The map is just there to serve as jumping points for the campaign. Once the player has liberated one section of the map he merely progresses to the next - there's virtually no reason to defend areas already liberated. Obviously, this is a huge departure from the Total War series, which is really about owning the map, and jumping around all over the place.
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Yep, this is absolutely correct. They ripped off Total War's battle system, took out the meat of the campaign map, and replaced it with a token upgrade system. In other words, done well, this would be half the game Total War is, but since the execution is sloppy and the game is buggy, it's more like 1/3.

The unit equipment is all stupid and pointless. There will be things like arrows that give "+9 to shoot" but the game never bothers to tell you what the "shoot" statistic does. Attack range? Attack speed? Damage? Who the hell knows. Probably half the equipment in this game is like that, where you have no idea what it does and notice no difference from equipping it. Raising the Defense rating only seems to increase a "resistance" stat, but with separate ratings for armor, range defense, and HP, it's anyone's guess what the fuck "resistance" does since it doesn't cover those areas and there is no magic in the game.

You also get points with various factions for choosing their battle plans, and the points unlock things like new units but you can't see what they are to choose what faction to go with...it's like "Wow, my 'crusader knights' are really wrecking shit, better choose the Pope's plans so I can unlock those 'crusader elites' since they sound even better" and then the crusader elites turn out to be pussy light cavalry unbefitting of their name. It would be so easy to let you look at the unit stats, but Neocore is too lazy. It's the same with heroes: you work towards unlocking them but you only know their names and don't have a clue what their abilities are until you get them.

Theoretically there could have been strategy in choosing your faction and equipment, but since the UI/documentation is so poor, you're just making random choices. It's all just unbelievably sloppy. They ripped off a fun game so it's kind of fun, but there's little reason to pick this over the original.
 
Are you even aware that huge numbers of people experienced crash after crash after crash in Empire Total War? Or that one person - yes, one person - worked on the so-called AI for Empire Total War? Or that many people believe the AI in Empire Total War, both on the campaign map, and in the real time battles, to be utterly brain dead?

Dude, I read a post one time at the creative assembly's forum in which a guy said he was about to start a real time battle when his cousin phoned him to come over and help him move a fridge - he decided, what the hell, and left the computer on, to allow the battle to play out by itself, without him touching a single unit. He was outnumbered, and under-classed. Guess what happened. He came back and discovered that he had won the battle. But not only had he won the battle but he had gotten a decisive victory. So much for balancing and AI.

You want to destroy this game, go ahead. I could easily turn the tables and write a twenty page post about all the things wrong with the Total War series. Easily. It would be an ignoble task, however, so forget about it.

The sale is over now, so your entire post is now pointless.
 
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