Crown Wars: The Black Prince Review – Disappointingly Mid

People have always found history pretty fascinating. The mystery of “what we’ve left behind” makes history a compelling subject matter to discuss for years. But here we are talking about gaming, a completely different world where creativity goes absolutely wild. Add history to your gaming experience, and you can live those moments just like you were there.

Crown Wars: The Black Prince does something similar but adds a fantasy twist that completely changes the historical events in the game. Playing in war scenarios with supernatural abilities is awesome, but how well it works is the big question I will answer in this review.

Story And Setting

Crown Wars: The Black Prince takes place in 1356, focusing its setting on the tragic Battle of Poitiers. This real-time war event occurred during the 100-year war between France and England. Following the defeat and capture of King Edward of France, the narrative continues with players engaging in various missions in France in hopes of reestablishing the French Kingdom to its full power.

I think the prologue did a great job at setting the tone of the game, which somewhat becomes inconsistent later, but it gave me an idea of where I was starting and where I was going now. Putting our squad in a battle scenario while they were surrounded by enemies added tension and stakes to the fight, and it also helped me understand our characters’ abilities, which helped me choose my preferred French noble class later in the game.

Gameplay

As good as the prologue/tutorial showcased the story and setting, I wish it had given me more than just the exposition and display of our characters. Gameplay-wise, I was stuck in the mud and had no clue how to use my characters to attack the opposition. It is a turn-based title, so you can imagine the setup—it’s pretty generic and nothing new. 

If you remember XCOM, you will recognize how similar Crown Wars fight sequences are. The characters act in a group and utilize a point system where any action will cost you a point no matter what, whether you are moving or initiating an attack head-on. I have seen turn-based games with flowing and fast-paced combat, so I knew how to approach the gameplay, but to be very honest, I got a little bored here.

I think the prologue did a great job at setting the tone of the game which somewhat becomes inconsistent later, but gave me an idea of where I was starting and where I was going now.

WASD key gets you to control the camera in full view but It doesn’t do much when I can’t see where my enemy is hiding when a big old tree is obstructing my camera. The camera view is distracting and confused me a lot to the point that I almost quit halfway through. 

Your attacks have a huge impact on your team, too, so be careful when throwing area-of-effect equipment or even trying a mighty slash with your friends close to you. I found this the hard way when I accidentally killed the beastmaster’s dog and lost a fighting companion.

Different Classes And Different Skill Sets

Your gameplay is highly influenced by what classes you pick for the battles. From 6 classes, you need to build a squad of 4 companions, which means you have to leave 2 of them behind. Each class provides different skill sets that can make or break your combat, especially when some highly rely on getting close to the enemy to output maximum damage.

The Ranged assassins can keep you alive by targeting anyone that comes near you, but that usually comes at the cost of depleting your movement points to find better ground and maintain cover while also keeping an eye on your allies.

Your attacks have a huge impact on your team too so be careful to throw area-of-effect equipment or even try using a mighty slash with your friends close to you.

Beastmaster has to be my favorite so far because here, we get an animal to use against the enemy. Beastmaster can control a tamed wild animal, which does the main job of engaging the enemies, and those animals deal a ton of damage. I loved that aspect of combat, and that’s it. I wasn’t a fan of what Crown Wars was cooking, and I wouldn’t subject myself to the bore again.

Visuals And Performance

I don’t even know where to start. I can’t confidently say that the visuals are pleasing to look at, especially for a game set in a medieval setting. It looks bland and uninspiring, especially compared to genre-defining titles like FromSoft’s Dark Souls series. I might harshly compare the visuals to such a masterpiece, but that’s how I feel.

The cutscenes were terrible for two main reasons. First, they looked like a cheesy mobile game ad without natural movements or details. Characters moved like tall wooden blocks and acted so out of the setting that I was surprised and somewhat cringing at what I saw. Second, the voice acting was so bad that it felt like I was watching a corny Marvel movie.

Regarding performance, I didn’t have any major issues during gameplay with FPS or lag, but it did take quite a while to load even though it’s installed on an SSD, which was weird. Besides that, it’s a lightweight game that should work on any decent PC build as long as it has a GPU. Performance was never a problem for me; it was just the animations and visual style.

Verdict

Crown Wars: The Black Prince feels like a half-baked product that feels soulless and fails to deliver on its promised potential. An unfinished product that required a lot of patching before it was ready to be released. As for the rest, the story, its pacing, and gameplay are the major factors that are hurting this game and contributing to its mediocrity even further. 

I can say it wasn’t a pleasurable experience, and each combat scenario left me severely bored and out of energy. It drags a lot, and despite having a few cool features, like adding an animal companion to your squad, the game doesn’t build up or utilize its gameplay possibilities.

There are better games that do the job better, and hopefully, the developers will listen to the player feedback and give their games much-needed time before releasing them as “finished” products.

That’s all I have to say in this review, if you liked this review do consider checking our other fantastic reviews by our talented staff.

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