It is amazing to see what transformations a videogame series can take on over the time period of a few years; action games become shooters and RPGs become strategy games. For fans of the Kingdom Under Fire (Crusaders and Heroes) on the original Xbox this transformation is happening with the newest addition to the franchise, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom. Unlike the previous two games, which were a mix of action and strategy (RTS type gameplay), Circle of Doom takes a page from Dynasty Warriors play book by creating an entire game centered around the hack-and-slash gameplay. This move may well bring in a ton of new gamers to the Kingdom Under Fire series but more likely than not it will piss off a ton of devoted fanboys. Personally I am happy the developers, Blueside Studios, decided to take the game in a different direction because it means we get something totally new. Ironically this overhaul is what fans of the KUF series have been asking for ever since KUF: Heroes came out a few years ago. This game could have been really bad but the developers did something amazing and included a full-scale co-op mode (up to four players). This co-op mode sold me on the game and ended up turning it into one hell of a good time, as long as your playing with at least one person.
Fortunately for gamers there is plenty of stuff in Circle of Doom that does not directly have to do with pushing a button followed by an on-screen attack. Some of the best parts of the game are entirely new to the KUF series, such as the true RPG (HP/SP/XP) elements and the entire alchemy (called synthesis) system. The basic storyline of Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is pretty hard to figure out, after two play-throughs we still do not know exactly what happened or why we had to go through what we did in the game. Other than the initial CG movie all story elements are played out when you are in a “dream world”. To actually learn something interesting you must talk to a couple different people that randomly show up in your dreams. The few storyline scenes we do remember being a part of were very well done and we can only hope that next time the developers will spend a bit more time fleshing out the story to the people who are playing it. This did not have too large an effect on gameplay but it did make the attacking/defending tad repetitive, even though all of the environments are very different, the lack of storyline hurt the flow of the game. Everything takes place in the KUF universe so fans of the franchise will feel right at home almost immediately. Controls are simple enough; mapping two attack buttons, two magic buttons, some item (potion) buttons, an analog stick to move, and one to control the camera.
There are six (five from the start) different playable characters in the game, each with their own unique storyline, or lack thereof. Also each different character has his/her own unique set of attacks, special abilities, and weaknesses. For example the vampire, Leinhart, which is the guy we used is very fast and has the option of using dual weapons but his attacks are not all that powerful and he has little defensive features. The best character of all is not available until the game is beaten with the female character which is too bad because the unlockable guy is easily the best character in the game. There is a nice variety created with the different character types, this adds a good bit of re-playability to Circle of Doom as well as offers different style players different options of how to play through the game. For a game that has been described by some reviewers as “nothing more than a hack-and-slash title” KUF: Circle of Doom sure does have a deep RPG and alchemy system. All attacks (magic or normal) use a pre-determined amount of SP points so a lot of strategy is involved when choosing the weapons and armor used by your character. Leveling up is done by gaining enough experience points (XP) to jump your character up to the next level; we were level 40 by the time we finished our first play through so that gives some insight as to how quickly characters level up. Each time you level up you get a screen when you can add points to three different categories: health (hp), magic (sp), and luck. We used most of these points to boost our hp up into the thousands while others we played with mainly boosted their sp numbers so they could perform longer combo attacks and use better magic.
