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Great addition the genre, albeit with flaws.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Knights of Honor (KoH) is a combination turn-based/real-time strategy game by European developer Black Sea Studios. With that in mind, the game is quite a departure from the `western' strategy titles out there, but in the case of KoH this is certainly one of the game's strengths.

KoH lets players choose an empire, and manage it through one of three spans of time ranging from the early to the late medieval periods. The game is unique in that play centers around the player's `court', which is composed of a limited number of slots that can be filled with different types of knights. What knights you choose largely depends on your play style, but includes types such as marshals that can lead armies, merchants that can generate trade income, or clerics that can convert populations to your religion.

Gameplay is paced slowly, and though at first it would seem like a design flaw this turns out to be one of KoH's strengths, forcing players to consider options other than the sword exclusively. This makes diplomacy and trade much more rewarding, and serves to really enhance gameplay in the long run.

On the sound side, the music, voice acting and sound effects are all top not, and serve to immerse you into the game's world well. The graphics are also great considering they are 2D, which do the job nicely without having a full blown resource-intensive 3D engine to bother with. Strategy gamers will appreciate this, as it allows the game to be run on something like an economy laptop well.

On the negative side, the economic model and combat systems are quite simplistic and feel very rushed or incomplete. Furthermore, there seem to be mary exploitable flaws in the AI which in the end serve to ensure that players of KoH will eventually look in other directions for more of a challenge. But this issue sheds light on a larger problem for KoH:

Whereas developers such as Stardock are pioneers in giving gamers a more direct say in the developmental direction of games and in the longterm support of their games through patches and enhancements, Black Sea Studios seems to have abandoned support of KoH prematurely, despite the protests and inquiries of it's customers. Such a lack of support says much of the company, but fortunately the game itself is a great one as-is, despite the flaws.

My Review:

Pros: Well-rounded gameplay and pace, fun and effective diplomacy model (if at times erratic on the AI's part) , good graphics quality and animations, fun battle system, court concept of limited options for knights.

Cons: Simplistic gameplay limits replayability in the long run, issues with AI, dismal developer support.

Summary: Although not quite a classic, KoH is certainly one of the best titles in it's genre and deserves a look for those not yet familiar with it. For those seeking something more difficult or flashy, look at the Total War series.

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.

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.

Great concepts, but not well polished

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: January 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've read the reviews here and I think they do a good job of stating why this game was an overlooked raw gem. As they have all pointed out- it has some great concepts and some fairly in-depth gameplay.

However, I think someone should mention that the AI is extremely weak and thus the unmodded game is not much of a challenge. The biggest problem with KoH is that the AI cannot handle many of the game's concepts. For instance, the AI is incapable of building up an economic infrastructure and therefore cannot put quality armies in the field. Further, the AI cannot gain ANY of the "kingdom advantages"- which give powerful bonuses and allows the first player to gain them all a victory. Also, the AI does not know how to handle the concept of "kingdom power" which is a numbered scale on which the higher the number the more profitable and stable the realm will be. The number goes down depending on a nation's relations with others- being dishonorable makes the number go down. The AI, due to its unpredictable diplomatic behavior, always ends up with very low kingdom power. This results in mass rebellions and the complete inability of the AI to create powerful kingdoms with which to challenge the player.

Also, many of the game's concepts are not well balanced. The game offers a variety of different knight specialities, but some of them are completely useless (landlords and builders) and merchants are incredibly overpowered allowing the player to quickly be swimming in cash which results in taking away the decision making about what to build or buy. The "kingdom advantages" is a brilliant idea- allowing players to win without conquering everything and encourages a more measured diplomatic approach to the game. However, some of the "kingdom advantages" are ridiculously overpowered and the fact the AI can NEVER access them makes it feel like a cheat rather than a legitimate strategy.

KoH is a neat game, but not a well-polished one. The concepts are there, but either only partly developed or badly balanced. What has kept this game on my harddrive are the mods- player created modifications- which have beefed up the challenge considerely over the unmodded version. However, mod makers do not have access to the AI code and thus there is a limit to what they can accomplish. As for Black Sea Studios patching it? KoH was a dud on the sales front so Black Sea Studios threw in the towel on patching it. I can understand that- one doesn't reinforce failure.

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.

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....

Knights of Honor

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: April 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

A slow but fun game for someone who does not like non-stop action. Helps you learn European history.

Gettin' medieval

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 72 / 72
Date: June 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A few weeks ago on a rainy Sunday, I downloaded the "Knights of Honor" demo out of curiosity. After playing the demo for about 15 hours, despite the fact that most of its features were disabled, I KNEW I liked this game.

"Knights of Honor" is a strategy game similar to a game in the "Total War" series. It also has elements of "Heroes of Might and Magic", "Warlords III", and "Master of Orion II" in it, along with a unique dynasty feature.

Many so-called "hardcore" gamers (who really care more about graphics instead of gameplay) may be put off by its use of 2D, rather than 3D, graphics. If you can get beyond that and enjoy the actual gameplay, you'll find a very fun strategy game.

Your goal is to become Ultimate Emperor of Europe: either by conquering all of the 100 or so regions of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, or by being voted Ultimate Emperor. You can win by fighting lots of battles, or by making lots of friends diplomatically.

The diplomatic model is simplistic, and would be useless if there were just a few enemy powers. However, since there are dozens of powers, there are lots of entanglements, which makes the diplomatic game surprisingly fun. You might declare war on Sicily, which brings in the Fatimids, but then the Dalmatians decide to attack the Fatimids along with Dacians and Novgorod. You also have to keep an eye on the four different religious factions (Christianity, Islam, Orthodox, and pagan), and you can use religion to manipulate various factions.

You can fight auto-fight battles (a feature sorely missing from many other strategy games) or you can fight them yourself. When you choose to be involved, you see your army and the enemy's on a battlefield. Both sides can call in nearby reinforcements. While battles are not on the scale of a "Total War" game, the scale is reasonably appropriate for the time period. The AI is competent enough, and I find mid-to-late-game battles a decent challenge (although I found an AI exploit that guarantees a bloodless victory against any town that has walls but no ballistae...).

Like HOMM or Warlords 3, KoH has special characters called Knights (of Honor, hehe). The marshals, who command your armies, can learn different skills that enhance their abilities, such as Dread (reduce enemy morale), Healer (reduce casualties after battle), or Sword Mastery (increase rates of units' experience gains). You can also create Knights as Clerics, Merchants, Landlords, Builders, or Spies.

Clerics are useful because they help increase your religious and scholarly resources when they govern a province. They can also convert populations to your religion, and if they become highly experienced, they can become a Pope and call Crusades against other religions or excommunicate leaders from the Church.

Merchants can raise lots of money through your trade agreements with other countries. They can also govern a province and increase income from it.

I haven't really used Landlords or Builders that much (though I've already logged 50+ hours into the game), but I'm sure they have good uses.

Spies are really cool: if one of your spies can get hired by a rival power, you can do lots of things, depending on his profession. For example, as a Marshal, he can cause the army to rebel. If he becomes a Cleric, he can cause a religious revolt or convince the population to secede. It's even possible, with great luck, to get the Spy installed as a puppet king or a Pope!

One unique feature of KoH is the royal dynasty. You can play as long as you have a living king. Your king can use diplomacy to find a wife and you can have heirs. You can use male heirs as Knights or keep them safe in the castle. You can marry your female heirs off to other countries, and they can help your Spies perform espionage on that country. Marriages also affect royal inheritance, so it's possible to make claims on other countries' territories (and vice versa).

If your playing style leans toward building, you'll like how you can build dozens of different types of buildings. You have to be careful of what resources your territories have, and you may trade with others to get them or capture them through battle.

Overall, all of these different elements combine to make an excellent game. Though I gave it a 5-star rating for fun, I knocked off one star from the overall rating because of its 2D graphics, because the multiplayer only lets you play the tactical battles (you can't play the strategic game in multiplayer), and because there are certain problems with the UI and the AI (I'm sure they'll be fixed later in patches).

Retro fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

very cool game. I remember hearing about months ago and I finally bought it on amazon since i never saw it in stores.

2-D isn't even worth mentioning because the game is so good. Let me preface that by saying... If you like games like Colonization, Fragile Allegiance, Warlords 2, and Stronghold you will really like this game.

It's a blast if you like slow-paced thinking games. At times the action is a little overwhelming since it takes place in real time, but if you think far enough ahead you should have no problems.

It runs good on my slow cpu, I think the graphics are fine, keep in mind this game is the super clone of all the previous games I mentioned. The knights feature is way cool, and the Royal family dynasty is really neat. I got mad when in order to wed my prince so he could have a well founded dynasty I was required to give up land and so forth. I am not sure if the diplomacy is very believeable, but I must say that for the first time in a long time the cpu will actually honor it's alliances in single player and send armies to help you, and get mad at you if you refuse to help them.

I was supposed to be studying for a final and I got sucked into 8 solid hours like it was nothing. Be aware, in order to stay properly focused on winning you will zone out. I do not reccoment this game to anyone who has a clingy wife or sig. other.

I say buy it and treat yourself to some gaming right out of the Christmas past. Very cool esp. if you dug the whole Sid meier Colnonization. It's very familaiar but so much bigger and better.

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