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Addictive, Engaging, Fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: August 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Knights of Honor is unlike any other real-time strategy game in today's market. For starters, unlike almost every game out there KoH is not a fully 3-D game which in my opinion lends a sort of old school look to the game. Personally I think it looks better than most strategy games out there. The level of detail involved in the game also helps to immerse you into the medieval mood of the game. This would have to be the most realistic simulation of what it was like to be a European ruler circa 1200, you must deal with everything from crusades to spys to keeping a budget for the expenses of your kingdom. Unfortunately the one thing that could have been a lot better is the actual tactical battles. The controls are very clumsy and I felt like I barely had any control of my army. Instead of risking the fact that I will probably screw it up I usually just let my generals fight it out. Other than that there is so much else in the game that it is really inconsequential. Overall Knights of Honor is a great game and I would recomend for anyone who enjoys historical strategy simulations.

Knights of Honor

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Very similiar to the "Total War" series.. but much more fun. The graphics are a bit dated, but the underlying game engine, the mechanics of play make, this one of the best games I have played in years.

One of the side benefits is that the developers did their homework with regard to history. I have become much more appreciative of this era in Europe and the various influences than I had in the past.

Appeal: Intermediate to advanced gamers.
Real Time strength: Medium.
Strategy value: High

Main game emphisis: Astutely manuerving your empire via trade, diplomacy, building and warfare.

I found myself thinking about how to outmaneuver advisaries when I was not playing the game directly. This is one of the few products I will go back to time and time again to play.

I recommend the product

Knights of Honor is the perfect blend of strategy, tactics, diplomacy, commerce, and, yes, I did say diplomacy?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: February 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

After downloading and playing the demo for about 30 minutes, I ran out and purchased Knighs of Honor! My concise review: Wow! How did I miss this game?! Knights of Honor is the perfect blend of strategy, tactics, diplomacy, commerce, and, yes, I did say diplomacy.

Here's my long winded review:

Pros:

- Strategic map is amazing. You can play in three different time periods, each time period has a different map, and you can play as one out of a 100 different historical political powers. The developers say it is all historically accurate, but, I don't know enough about this time period to confirm it. Accurate or not, it's great. Empires will fall, and then reappear if the populace was loyal to them and the new ruler doesn't subjugate or pacify them properly. If you take a kingdom's central province and kill it's ruler, its sons may form independent kingdoms in the other provinces. You can marry the one rebel prince to your daughter and make his princedom a vassal to you, and have your neighboring allies invade the other prince! The options are endless, the map is dynamic, borders change, empires rise and fall, it really is the best strategic map I have ever played on. What's interesting, is, the map is a Rome Total War style map, but in REAL-TIME (don't worry, units move slow on the map), but, you can zoom it out to a Risk style map if you want. Nifty.

- Graphics. Your city may not be rendered in 3d, but, the 2d buildings and terrain are beautiful to behold. The graphics are on par with AOE or CIV3. For those that complain that the units are not 3d or are not detailed...you've become spoiled! The units and buildings and terrain are nicely done and fun to watch. Two years ago the game graphics would have been top notch...now they may be slightly dated, but, graphics are not the main emphasis of this game. It's all about gameplay, and, it works nicely.

- Units and Building options. The game features an very accurate recruiting model, so you can recruit scottish highlanders in scotland, welsh bowman in wales, etc, plus, recruit generic unit types (men-at-arms, archers, etc) in just about every other province. There are dozens of options in the game, but, usually only about 10 different troop types options in one given province. The game is also part city-builder. You don't actually design your city, the game pre-fills the buildings for you (like Medieval Total War), but, you have dozens and dozens of options, that, unlike most strategic games, the building options all actually do something and you really need to weigh all your options. The level of strategy in the city building is just as important as the main map, and adds lots of depth.

- Documentation. The game features an in-game FAQ, unit and building browser, in-game manual, and mouse over definitions, AND, features a great manual and fold-out map/tech tree, that is very well done and in full color.

Cons:

- This may not be a con for some, but, the game is very challenging. I'm playing on easy, and, I'm still having a hard time. I've noticed that on easy other factions are more likely to agree to diplomacy and the AI mostly recruits low-level troop types. However, don't be fooled, the AI will pull you into touch-alliances, make harsh demands, defend you if attacked by a mutual foe, and behave in a very tricky manner, even on easy! So, the con here is learning curve: be patient, though, and learn the game, and, this con is actually a pro, too.

Conclusion: If you are looking for a sweeping, grand-ol' strategy game that I feel is BETTER than Medieval Total War and even more challenging than Rome Total War, set in the Medieval time frame, then this game is a MUST HAVE.

Coulda been great

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: July 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'll start by saying this game had enourmous potential; it was a good idea for a game and that's what attracted me into buying it. Don't get me wrong, it was a fun game, just not what I had expected.

For those of you out there who are critical of graphics this game can become tiresome quickly. All the christian kingdoms have similar castles(unless they conquered it from moslems) and all the moslems have similar castles. The leaderheads are not only cartoonish but also unlikely, like my king of sweden had blonde hair, and a blonde beard. That seems normal right, well his sons had black, blonde, and brown hair. And they all looked the same as kings and princes from germany, spain, and italy. Plus my "juvenile" king just happened to have gray hair! You will also find that the troops look less graphically stimulating than those a Age of Empires, which was made some 6 years before. The landscape was worked hard on, but seemed unreal because they're were no hills or slopes or lowlands, just plains. It is also hard to manage any large kingdom using the map. Most times I had to simply go to a political map to manage things, and I only went to the strategic one to move my armies around.

In playing however, one is quickly absorbed into a very large world that is fun for strategy players who like to mess with diplomacy, religion, trade, and warfare to build a large empires. It is recomended to start as a medium sized kingdom that has a steady flow of cash, without thousands of things to micromanage in a large one like the Holy Roman Empire (incorrectly called Germany in the game), or moving too slow in a small one like Wales where it could take a few hours just to get the buildings needed to make an army. It is truly a strategy game, and anyone who plays it will undoubtedly have several minutes waiting for things to build, cash to earn, or food to grow in which they can stare at a map and wonder what to do. It is fun however because you can spend an entire weekend working on one empire without even realizing that an hours gone by. Their are a lot of things to do, you can conquer with almost every kingdom that existed in Medieval times (in Europe of course). That interested me a lot, but it doesn't live up to the hype, only a few kingdoms were truly special from others. Such as Wales with its longbowman, Muscovy with its boyars and scotland with it's highlanders. Most of the rest had certain troops were produced by half the rest of Europe or could be made in almost half the regions, such as swordsmen, slavonic axeman, and archers. For this reason the game felt very repetitive, I felt like I was doing the same campaign in another part of Europe with a different stupid cartoon governing my kingdom.

The combat was simply pathetic. Very little was put into strategy in battles. Although they had squads of troops and three different formations, these hardly mattered. Most of the time i simply tried to get more troops in certain areas than my foe. That is the only way to win, overpower and/or out skill. Like in other games such as Medieval total war, i could go up against more troops and win using strategy, or atleast i would have advantages in castles or hills. one time my castle was assaulted and i had the same number of troops as my enemy, along with archers. Some how, their peasants broke through my iron gatehouse and killed two groups of knights templar and then proceded to kill my general mounted in the keep when they somhow managed to fit some 200 peasants in ONE tower! My advice is to just use more force than the enemy, because if their is one thing the game does notice is that you're outnumbered by two troops which gives your troops negative morale and forces heavy swordsman to run once one man is killed by an arrow. Problems with generals are also present, like you can have around 4 generals at max without killing your economy, and each general can have only 9 groups of soldiers, making battles featuring 30 men. . . more of a skirmish. Their is also few amounts of troops, something like 50 altogether, giving each province a chance to make anywhere between 4 and 8 different types of troops, like for example Wales is peasants, swordsman, spearman, archers, hobilars, and logbowman.

There are a few other bad sides, like how each province can only make 15 buildings, some say this adds to strategy, but I think it's stupid because a town like Constantinople, (known for having a great surrounding castle), can only make a few buildings because almost all of the others are castles and of course, a port, so you can't make any troops in it or make any buildings to collect recources because you've already spent your building slots. the recources really affect buildings, and you can only have three at max in any given region, trust me you don;t want any more, i will use half of my slots just taking advantage of one. Another porblem is that recources switch regions every new game, this is good for diversity but you end up with awful combinations like marble, furs and salt in baghdad, while you could not find any furs in all of scandinavia. It is also hard to gain resources, you need marble, chemicals, and fertile land in one province just to be able to make a cathedral, that makes it so only one, maybe two cathedrals are on the entire map. Plus when you get that many recourses you typically just go for utilising them instead of making extra stuff.

A few problems are that, despite the era, your regions start out with only a couple buildings. This fit's for the early age, but it just doesn't make sense to have to make a palisade at london in the late era as gunpowder should be coming out, it seemed unrealistic to me. The only province that started with more than just a fishers hut and inn was constantinople which i mentioned earlier. The history was good, however their were a few prblems in it, little stuff that a normal person would never notice, however one major turnoff was the gramatical mistakes. The game was made in bulgaria and it's understamdable, but you'd think something that can make it overseas would at least be important enough to get the grammar right. The language was a problem in some other areas as well because for instance, Athens was referred to Athenai, and other such problems were present.

Overall this game, graphically, should have come out several years ago, and it should have been thought out better. Nonetheless, it is something of a fun strategic game, similar to playing risk except with much more depth. Since it is only [...] i'd say it is worth the money.

good game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

ok i enjoyed the game play.

i got this game at realese cause i liked the concept.
my comlaint is i could not find a online site to play others.
i went to a few popular ones and offical site.

and i wanted the option of adding units of my choice to the quick battle board so after i beat it i got really bored and even quick play battles were limited at this point.

Good game, but boring

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: March 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The game is very good overall, but has 1 major drawback: you can't adjust the speed, and it is insanely slow. This isn't so bad late in the game when you have lots of $ and things going on, but when you first get started it is boring as hell. I don't know if you've ever played 1503 A.D. The New World, but it has the same problem.

Cup of tea?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: October 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Being a seasoned strategy gamer I like detail and depth. KoH has this in abundance. There are lots of choices to make and small touches like becoming the high lord of Ireland once you control the entire island really add to the experience.

If great detail and depth are your thing in a strategy game, then I'd tell you it's a 4/4.

For those that like thier tea a bit more lighter... The graphics are a bit dated and the interface isn't going to amaze or improve your experience. You'll likely have a lot of false starts and the random rulers you generate at the start will likely see you starting over till you get something reasonably good. The games are LONG. Not long, but LONG. Expect to have to pick the game up and continue the same scenario after 20+ hours. At least until you are adept enough to play continuously at full speed... but don't count on it.

So, the light tea people tend to make up the greater majority of gamers so I gave this a 3/4. Be sure it's a topic you like and then KoH will probably be a cup of tea you'll be sipping for a long while.

Knight of Honor ROCKS

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: July 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is a very time intensive game, but it is very fun if you enjoy strategy and it is also a great price!!!

not a bad game,but can't compare to rome total war

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 18
Date: July 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

well the latest one in atari is just about average.its strategy alright.its too much intricate strategy.what to build in what town,depending on the factors affecting the happiness of your population.your king may die without any warnings and then u will have to deal with rebellions coz ppl are unhappy about the new king coming to power.another one is that this game is too darn slow.it takes ages for a army to go across to the other town.that doesn't help coz ur enemies declare war on u in a jiffy and their troops start mraching into urs,while u havr to hurriedly order ur knights to reach there,by the time they would reach the city has been seiged,u can only 9 knights and that means u at maximum have 9 batallions of army.u cannot make alliances very easily because if u do then u will have to honour ur allaince whenever that nation goes to war,and if u don't then the people are unhappy again with kingdom power and then u have to also deal with rebellions.u have to build various buildings to acquire trade sources so that u can trade with other kindoms.all in all i never got the point of this game,though i did become the ruler of europe,but i just had to fight a few countries and conquer their territories and i was declared the emperor.lastly if u have patience then u can buy this one,if not no way,what would happen to u if u r playing in the hard level.

Not Bad

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 16
Date: July 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is pretty fun when u started playing but later on u got bore... i waste my money....

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