Thanks to eagle's fixed launcher I have been able to finish the game on both campaigns.
I beat both of them on the normal difficulty in about 12 hours total. Overall the game was good but I was very disappointed with the length of the game and just the lack of content compared to Neocore's previous offering King Arthur, one of my favorite games btw.
As far as balance goes I felt like archers and knights were both very powerful while heavy infantry were only mediocre and light infantry were nearly useless in comparison but this imbalance between units is somewhat balanced by cost, at least in the Saracen campaign where it takes some effort to get good knights. I personally didnt mind this as I enjoyed the style of a knight heavy army backed by archers.
The AI was about the same as in King Arthur as well but since you need to win most battles taking few losses in order to win the final battle, particularly as Saladin, it's ok that the AI is a little weak.
Overall the game is very comparable to Crusader's Thy Kingdom Come but with a litany of improvements albeit a few missing features. In Crusaders in each level there were special faction missions you could attempt in addition to the main objective and I thought that was an excellent feature that is sadly missing from this. I also miss the small text based quests from King Arthur and I feel that there would be some way to work them into this game as well.
The graphics were great I played on max settings at 1920x1080. The sound was fine except for the narrator for the crusaders campaign sounds terrible.
Overall I would give them game an 8/10 primarily due to the shortness of the game.
I beat both of them on the normal difficulty in about 12 hours total. Overall the game was good but I was very disappointed with the length of the game and just the lack of content compared to Neocore's previous offering King Arthur, one of my favorite games btw.
As far as balance goes I felt like archers and knights were both very powerful while heavy infantry were only mediocre and light infantry were nearly useless in comparison but this imbalance between units is somewhat balanced by cost, at least in the Saracen campaign where it takes some effort to get good knights. I personally didnt mind this as I enjoyed the style of a knight heavy army backed by archers.
The AI was about the same as in King Arthur as well but since you need to win most battles taking few losses in order to win the final battle, particularly as Saladin, it's ok that the AI is a little weak.
Overall the game is very comparable to Crusader's Thy Kingdom Come but with a litany of improvements albeit a few missing features. In Crusaders in each level there were special faction missions you could attempt in addition to the main objective and I thought that was an excellent feature that is sadly missing from this. I also miss the small text based quests from King Arthur and I feel that there would be some way to work them into this game as well.
The graphics were great I played on max settings at 1920x1080. The sound was fine except for the narrator for the crusaders campaign sounds terrible.
Overall I would give them game an 8/10 primarily due to the shortness of the game.