Kingdom Under Fire: Crusaders is a game that somewhat “snuck” onto the Xbox last year. This year, the sequel to that under appreciated game is now available in the form of Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes. Heroes has improved upon the past title bringing even a deeper gaming experience. This innovative game is still extremely fun and the online modes have even been expanded to allow for even more intense battles on Xbox Live.

Heroes takes place about 5 years before KUF Crusaders. Being before that time, the stories of both stories are related to each other relating different aspects of the games to one another. You are able to choose to play as one of seven characters, split among the Dark Alliance, the baddies of the game, and the Human Alliance. These seven characters each have their own specific special abilities to use during battle. Each character is completely different from the other characters in the sense that all of their attributes are different. You can have characters with different weaknesses and strengths along with different combo possibilities and special abilities. These characters will lead your troops through massive battles, the most fun part of this game. Just like the last, the beauty of this game comes form the combination of strategy elements along with hack and slash battles. This game gives you a huge amount of control over battles, choosing where troops should go, where they should attack, and brings you into that kind of depth in each battle. This game is all about the gameplay, bringing up 50 total missions to complete, as either good or evil. This kind of depth keeps you coming back, and is a refreshing game as it is in a growing library of Xbox games. This game brings you into many intense battles and makes you learn how to properly manage your troops in order to survive the battles as you battle your way as you control your character exclusively. The gameplay mechanics are very solid, and the battles are very simple to learn the controls of and the controls allow you to create great attacks and you are able to quickly change targets to fight another enemy. You are able to progress in this game gaining levels as you go giving you access to more goodies in the game. Not only though does this game have a large amount of missions in the story mode of the game, you are able to create custom missions to play in against the computer AI. They give you an assortment of maps and different troop choices to take into battle. This creates an insane amount of gameplay as you are able to play on and on, creating your own custom missions tailored to what you want to play at the moment along with a ton of different story missions with various characters. This game does not end there though, this game takes adds a much larger amount of online play via Xbox Live than the previous title. You are able to play in both troop and hero battles. This time, up to 6 players are able to participate in each game, up form the previous title. In the hero battle you battle as your hero with the other players in up to 3x3 games. The troop mode is the more in-depth online mode allowing you to battle with your hero and some troops in order to gain points online to upgrade your troops for future battles. The game includes full featured online scoreboards and also has an option for downloadable content meaning that content will be available in the future for this game to extend the gameplay time even more than it already is. The gameplay in this latest KUF titles is excellent and you will find yourself never looking for something to do in the game as there are a ton of gameplay options to choose from. If you use Xbox Live, this game is excellent online and allows you to play much more intense games than the previous title, even upgrading your troops which is a very unique online feature. The combination of squad tactics along with medieval battles creates a very fun and involving experience.

The graphics in Heroes are done quite well and the character models look great. The levels are large and expansive, but could use a bit more detail on some aspects. The characters look great in motion and the game includes plenty of special effects in the game which show off the graphic capabilities of this game. The game includes hoards of characters on screen at once, and does not suffer from slowdown even in the most intense of battles. Because of the number of troops there is bound to be repetitive troop models, and this does occur as there are too many troops to count in this game. This is really not something they could avoid with the shear amount of in game characters, so it doesn’t really affect the game in that sense. This game does look great an d the character models, especially on the Heroes are very well done and look like what they should be like nearing the end of the lifecycle of the current generation Xbox.

Coming into Heroes, you might expect orchestral music form this medieval game, this is not what you get though. The music in this game is based off of heavy metal, and while it can be annoying to some, it really gets you going in battle with the intense sounds of the music and, because this game is quite intense, it actually works out quite well. The voice acting in this game is done very well and the in game sound effects sound great. These all add to the story and the gameplay of the game giving it a more in-depth feel because of the excellent audio work put into this game. The graphics and audio in this game are top notch and really add to the intensity of the in game battles and story.

The graphics and audio in this game top off an already great gameplay experience allowing you to battle your way through hordes of missions along with online play and even custom made single player missions. This game looks great, and sounds great, and the gameplay is rock solid allowing you to have countless hours of fun without even playing the same scenario twice. The genre of this game is really a mix of strategy and action and makes for a really fun and diverse gameplay experience. The first Kingdom Under Fire title went by mainly unnoticed, so hopefully more RTS fans will try this title out; especially given the revamped online play. This is a great pick up and play at any time kind of game because of the amount of gameplay found in it, creating a very long lasting game, with great gameplay throughout. If you never gave Crusaders a chance or truly loved it, Heroes has something new for everyone.

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