France, September 19, 1356. John II is defeated by the army of the Black Prince, heir to the English crown, during the Battle of Poitiers, in the middle of the Hundred Years’ War. The French Kingdom is prey to thieves and brigands. And an insidious evil is raging in the French countryside. This is the pitch of Crown Wars: The Black Princea new tactical game imagined by the French from Artefact Studios.
The game places you in the shoes of a leader of one of the four families present in the game, after the death of your initial lord. Tester for West France Obviously, we opted for the Breton family of the game, the Villantins. Having fallen from grace at the start of the adventure, your family must start from scratch in a new field. After a brief tutorial summarizing the historical context and the basics of gameplay, you are plunged into the deep end.
Estate manager by day, warlord by night
First aspect detailed to you: the management of your domain. As a lesser lord, you do not have direct access to all buildings. You will have to unlock them gradually. Several buildings are available as the adventure progresses: a barracks for managing your companions, a chapel to care for them, a forge and a laboratory to improve their equipment, a market to buy game resources… In short , it’s very complete.
Moreover, the game’s resources, which you can earn during the missions available, will allow you to improve your domain (each building has several levels of improvement) and unlock various advantages, particularly during battles. And these attacks are the heart of the game.
During the missions that you can launch from your domain, you form a team of your companions, who are divided into different classes (alchemist, swashbuckler, crusader, flayer, etc.). Mercenaries whose voice, features and clothing you can customize as you wish. Just like your family colors and crest. It’s superficial but appreciable.
Read also: Video games. Our top 10 of the best management games of the moment
A difficulty which may surprise but welcome
In the style of the game series X-Com, Crown Wars: The Black Prince is a turn-based tactical game. Your characters have two action points and one movement point. You can make them move through the different maps offered by the game, which are all very detailed and varied for the most part. Part of the environment is destructible and your characters can use equipment (crossbows, trebuchets, etc.) scattered around them, in addition to their skills.
Mission objectives are assigned to you and you must complete them to complete your skirmish. They are diverse: capture a target, eliminate a specific enemy, kill everyone… The scripted quests are a mix of all of this and move the story forward. A scenario which, little by little, will only become secondary in your mind, the narration being gradually put aside.
In these tactical battles, you will face several factions present in the game: the French, the English, the Castilians, the Bretons… Each faction has particularities (the English like bows, the Castilians like fast units, etc.).
Quickly, the difficulty of the game can surprise you if you make the wrong choices. And this, even in normal mode. It happened several times that we had to restart a game, our mistakes at the beginning penalizing us too much later. That said, it generates a real desire to start again to finally triumph.
Initially, you will only be able to form teams of four characters. As you progress, your squads will be able to accommodate more characters, which will not be too much for the most difficult missions. And that’s the salt of Crown Wars: The Black Prince: the feeling of progression is exhilarating and addictive.
From battles won with difficulty with losses in our ranks, to assaults carried out brilliantly thanks to the training of our companions (who all have a skill tree with choices to make according to their class), we really feel our rise in power over hours of play.
Obviously some flaws are obvious. The camera during battles, firstly. Capricious, it is sometimes slow and difficult to maneuver. During our test, we had a few bugs requiring us to restart the battle (an enemy stuck in the scenery, for example).
A camera that acts up and some small flaws
The fluidity of the game, with the slowness of character movements, could also be improved. Finally, but this is the lot of this type of game, the feeling of repetitiveness is present since it is necessary to chain battles to progress. And if the maps vary, the mission objectives essentially revolve around the three described above (capture, elimination, massacre).
Crown Wars: The Black Prince nonetheless remains an excellent game in its genre, which captivated us. At the time of writing these lines, we only want to go back.
