Crusaders: Thy Kingdom Come [PC Game]

Crusaders Thy Kingdom Come (CTKC) lets you lead a hero and his small army on the First Crusade. You start your adventure in Asia Minor and make your way towards Jerusalem. The best way to describe it is a clone of battles from  Medieval II Total War  on a storyline. There is no expanding an empire and running cities and an economy. You follow a scripted series of battles on your way to the Holy Land. Instead of simply destroying the enemy army as the objective you must complete different task (like protecting the Papal Legate or destroying the enemy camp) and you can also complete special sub tasks (rescue a priest, protect a certain leader, take a watch tower, etc.). Completing the primary objective lets you move to the next mission. However, completing optional tasks give you perks like increasing your favor with one of the crusader princes, extra units, more gold, etc. I put up several screen shots showing what the action looks like.In between battles, you can add new troops, replenish weakened units, improve their equipment, increase skills, and other such things. Your hero can also obtain relics which provide benefits or you sell them for money or donate them to the church for increased faith. The sub tasks increase (or decrease if you fail) your reputation with the crusader princes. This provides you with benefits like access to new units, obtain relics, reduced upgrade or recruitment costs, etc. There is also a mission status screen that allows you to look back at the accomplishments on previous missions and your current campaign score. There is also an option to call additional reinforcements, however, this reduces your campaign score. There are 15 missions in the campaign as the crusaders with the last one being the assault on Jerusalem.I found this game very entertaining. However, I think they should have had more missions that were part of the sieges. The siege of Jerusalem is the only one where you have any direct involvement. Why not let us take the tower in Antioch and open the city for the Crusaders. Or take the walls of Maarat an-Numan, Tarsus, or Hisn al-Akrad. Similarly you only participate in one major battle at Dorylaeum. Why not have a mission with some role fighting Kerbogha at Antioch or defeating the Fatimids at Ascalon. In regard to replay ability, you can play the game as different heroes, but the missions are all the same. Heroes have different characteristics and allegiance that may make you play slightly differently. There are also some missions (5 scenarios) where you can play as the Islamic forces, but not a campaign. It would have been nice to have some unique battles for different heroes which related to their allegiance with the crusader princes.I am a fan of Total War Series and compared CTKC to Total War battles. CTKC is not as polished as Total War. The controls are not as smooth as Total War especially the view controls. Troops also cannot disengage once they are in hand to hand combat and morale does not cause retreat or surrender. But, being able to upgrade your units and use them from one battle to the next does make it more engaging. If you are interested in the First Crusade I would recommend reading  A History of the Crusades Vol. I: The First Crusade and the Foundations of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Volume 1)  by Stephen Runciman and  First Crusade  by Thomas Asbridge.

This game is very hard but a lot of fun. The player really gets a feel for the time of the Crusades and the atmosphere and graphics reinforce this. The only problem that I can see are the numbers of soldiers the player is given. In many missions there just aren't enough troops to get the job done and the AI is pretty good in this game. Overall, I like the game but am not in love with it.

The game is awkward to play and gives you a kind of third-person control, hard to explain but seems like you can't really engage your troops with much control, you just aim them in a direction--bottom line is after a couple times I quit and uninstalled this flop, some might enjoy it but I did not--no problems regaurding the seller however.

Good game, I enjoy playing it.

good game

Excellent A1...

too complicated, cannot make head nor tail of how to play it .do not have time to work out how to play

total war with a twist:no strategy map, no cities, just fight, more story driven, several path , several faction friends, upgradeble units, gets hellishly difficult by the end.liked it better than tw.