[BEYONDE] Arthurian Legends

Art thou a loser? Do you rob the poor and feed the rich? Kill baby once and future King Arthur? Let Evil triumph? Surely not! It is time to show those Saxon bastards who is the best fighting-man in the land.

Arthurian Legends is a first-person retro-pixel hack and slash game set in a pre-Arthurian England beset by Saxon hordes, fell beasts, and dark forces which have set their sights on the fair island. Dense, enchanted forests, miasmatic swamps, icy wastes, and the ruins of older ages await, along with a plethora of monsters, weapons, magical spells, and carefully hidden secrets. It is neither a historical game nor high fantasy, but a sort of mishmash of Arthuriana from post-Roman stuff to mediaeval romances and a bit of Army of Darkness and boomer shooters (more in the attitude than the weaponry). It is a whole lot of fun.

Have at thee!

Few computer games capture the spirit of playing a no-nonsense fighting man. They always add backstory or complications which end up diluting the idea. However, less is more. Die by the Sword, now as ancient as Arthurian Legends tries to appear with its pixelated look, is one of the few which compare. These games get it right by talking less, keeping it simple, and focusing on attitude and action. The FPS genre doesn’t usually go well with melee combat due to the lack of body awareness, but Arthurian Games pulls it off. It is viscerally fun to go into battle. Mobility is important and you have to exploit both terrain and movement skills to survive. Blocking with shields is an important element, and these shields get cracked and worn down as they sustain repeated attacks – as do most weapons. The feedback is great. There is a satifying “crunch” to the hack-and-slash, helped by the graphics and sound effects. Turns out decapitating Saxons with throwing axes is one of the most fun thing you can do on the PC (as a Saxon, I make this confession slightly grudgingly, but give credit where credit’s due).

Toil and Trouble

The arsenal provides a variety of well-balanced weapons. Your basic melee weapon, a trusty axe, is your primary tool for slaying enemies, and never breaks. Unlike a lot of default melee weapons in shooters, it never becomes useless, especially in axe-and-board action. This is not Quake’s piddly axe, but a serious weapon for a serious man. A much quicker, but less durable gladius can be found in secret locations, and in place of the shield, a parrying dagger or (later) a mini-crossbow may be substituted. The spiked cudgel is more powerful than the axe, and drives back enemies before they can hit you, but breaks quickly. Throwing axes are the best close-range ranged weapons in gaming, bar none, and go well with the shield. Why nobody has done it properly before is a mystery, but Arthurian Legends just aces it on the first try. The heavy hitter in melee is the two-handed sword, which limits blocking ability, but has the reach and power to slice up knights and serious beasts. The bow is comparatively weak, with low damage and a slow rate of fire – this is not primarily a game about shooting, but getting up close and personal – but it does its job where you can’t do that easily. An explosive and incendiary grenade, more Army of Darkness here than Le Morte d’Arthur, are both useful against incoming enemy groups, particularly spider nests. The prestigious holy hand grenade makes a much welcome appearance. Poison daggers which continue slowly damaging enemies are included, along with powerful wands which I have only used against the mightiest of monsters. Appropriately, most healing is done by quaffing down mead and gorging yourself on food from your enemies’ campfires and tables. You will also find equipment ranging from wolf traps, caltrops and healing potions to spell runes, which are very useful but come in limited quantities.

Ancient Celtic Secret

The weapons combine well with the opponents, which range from aggressive melee combatants to skirmisher type enemies who hurl axes, spit poison, or otherwise inconvenience you. From Saxon raiders and wolves, you start to meet knights, archers, and various fantastic beasts from two-headed wolves to giant spiders and flying imps. Eventually, dark wizards start to make an appearance. All these types require different responses and approaches, and often require using terrain to your advantage to best them. The AI is not really sophisticated (it is not aggressive in seeking you out around obstacles), but opponents can scale terrain well, and positioning is done skilfully. Most of the encounter design is top notch. This is a challenging game on higher difficulties, pushing you to git gud and use your weapons and items to their fullest potential. While Arthurian Legends is demanding, it is also rewarding: by being pushed, you will improve, and become a skilled warrior who can laugh in the face of enemies who had been a serious problem early on.

However, it is the level design which deserves the highest praise. A lot of work has obviously gone into this element; while things can be hard, they are never unfair – success is based on confident skill and practice, not dumb luck or pixel-perfect jumps. It is never a pushover either. It is all carefully balanced. The levels are varied, large, and there are lots of them over three full episodes. A lot of modern level design is flat, dumb, and completely railroaded, and while Arthurian Legends has a general gated/keycard-based design, the individual map sections present reasonably open-ended challenges. There is a lot of uneven terrain, height differences, choke points, vantage points for bowmen, cover to take shelter behind, and often alternate routes to get the drop on the Saxon foe.

Icy

Not only do the levels offer a series of excellent combat scenarios to get through, they also have a strong element of exploration. While route-finding is never an issue, good observation is rewarded. Several secrets, including secret armouries, hidden equipment, magic items, and proper secret levels are found through the missions. These are good secrets, rewarding not pixel-bitching or wall-hugging, but noticing a hidden crevice, a weakened part of wall, or a ledge you can climb down to with a series of careful jumps. The levels also look good in their chunky, pixelated way. There are sunken swamp ruins, dark ice caves, the remains of massive Roman walls blasted by magical snowstorms, crude villages and castles occupied by the invaders or their dark masters. It has visual imagination and, despite the haphazard sources of inspiration, a cohesive feel that’s all fighting-man, not poncy bard.

There are a few flaws in the game, too. The last episode, set in a realm of tombs, dungeons and the undead, is still good but less captivating. Two bugs are also worth noting. The game runs badly on a specific sort of hardware due to engine-related issues that cannot be fixed – so try the demo before buying to see if you are affected. My playthrough was also cut short right at the penultimate level by a nasty bug, which is a bummer, but something I can live with. The rest is all quite good.

Arthurian Legends is the best “guy in a chainmail” game in a long while, and well worth the money and time investment.

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