King Arthur Knight's Tale

Didn't see a previous post so just wanted to highlight the below game for those who enjoy a hybrid of tactical RPG with some decent infusions of other party building, roguelike, minor city management all with a pretty interesting wrapper within the King Arthur story arch rewritten with King Arthur dying and coming back to life with a dark story involved where you play as Mordred brought back to life.

I've been struggling for months to find a game to sink my teeth into with nothing quite doing it (XCOM2, Divinity 2, TW2, etc). So far so good with this game, really enjoying so far but only ran 2 saves with 5+ hours on each. Restarted after I learned some of the basics. It just seems to include numerous aspects of a few game types that i really enjoy without the garbage that comes with those type of games.

Things I really enjoy
- Choices matter; impacts who joins you as well as pushes you into basically evil vs. good as well as old gods vs. christanity. Both of those generate points in their respective areas which map to additional benefits. While i'm sure there is a perfect min/max approach which I love developing, initial play through is pretty fun so far.

- Character Development; while not extremely complex still definitley some different approaches to each person/classes skill points that you earn 2 each level. Additional skills/passives open up as you level and definitely have to make a few hard choices. I like most the skills/passives have multiple nodes to improve so you have to really decide if you want to invest into existing skill or new passive etc early on.

- Classes, some decent diversity with 6 classes. Alot of playerable characters that you get and some minor roguelike management that you have to heal your vitality or repair injuries so you can't just run your main people 100% of the time.

- Plenty of variability in loot drops and enough amount of slots to make it fun chasing loot. Alot of different affixes ideal for certain classes/build focuses and definitely can feel some power spikes dropping your best gear on to some one which i enjoy.

- Interesting Health + Vitality management + Armor; essentially you have a buffer HP and once thats gone you eat into your vitality. When vitality is gone you are dead but also can get injuries when you take vitality hits which give negative passives that need to be healed. Armor is also huge in reducing incoming damage and allows you to really build a good tank or two.

- Actual game play is basically abunch of main and side missions that you pick and choose to do. The missions are decent size maps that you go through with all staged fights in certain areas but its very organic and pretty well laid out to make you take interest. There is periodic items to pick off the ground for gold and chests with good loot to encourage you to cover all the map areas without making it an annoying ARGP style or Divinity 2 where you are constantly grabbing stuff. Also alot of optional fights/things to discover in the missions with extra stuff. Rewards are give out at the end.

- Gold/Building resource mangement early on is a good mini game as there is alot of options and not alot of gold and building resource (its a single resource) to go around. Also can refine relic quality items (yellow rares from the green/blue/yellow quality lvl) into dust and purchase other random relic's that reset every few missions. Merchant shop also has changes every few missions with some great gear but hard early to have the gold to buy the good stuff which is nice (hate games where its just on a rails that dont let you have to make actual choices)

- Story is really intregiing conceptually so far and one of the few games i actually read/listen to as you progress in the missions. Nothing super detailed or indepth but still alot better then most these type of games by a far margin but still early into.

- Graphics; I haven't gave 2 shits about graphics over gameplay since the NES days so absolutely have zero complaints. Detailed and very different mission areas and feeling to the areas but not exactly cutting edge graphics. If you need your games to look like a Marvel movie then avoid...but other then that shouldn't have any negative impact for people who enjoy this style of games.

- Its in EA and had its release date pushed from start of this year to end of March to polish up which is always good. Looks like a kickstarter that actually produced a quality game, hadn't even heard of it until i was looking through random games in RPG party genre in steam. They even are having some PVP which may or maynot prove interesting for those that enjoy the combat. They are adding 3 more act's to the finished release. I haven't seen any bugs or major issues i'd complain about but to be fair i'd probably ignore as the game just has many things i really enjoy without all the baggage so could be rose colored glasses.

Definitely worth a review and possible play through if the above sounds appealing to you. My biggest wish (for some odd reason) is that games like this would introduce some for of MVP and meaningful bonus after missions. Many many years ago, Tactics Ogre was one of the best games I had ever played (still) that had a system that gave extra exp to your mvp and it just felt great having that extra little control to kind of go for that kill shot etc to bulk up your secret favorite character and funnel alittle resources into them. Shouldn't be a huge thing all thing considered but just love games that provide this.

Plan on playing to completion of EA in the next week or two so will report out once i've finished but first game i've been excited about in a very long time.