The King of France has been captured by those dastardly English types, sending the country into disarray as various houses and families vie for power in the vacuum, but is there something darker lying behind the tumult? It’s up to you to fight off the forces of evil in Crown Wars: The Black Prince.
Set in the 1300s during the Hundred Years’ War, Crown Wars shares a time period with the acclaimed action adventure A Plague Tale games, but gives you a very different perspective. This is a view from the top, as Edward of Woodstock’s capture of the King has left four families to opportunistically seek power, but it starts with an enemy assault on a council meeting, with safeguarding their research and documents vital to the future of the country.
While you lead a defensive effort through this tutorial battle, things do not go to plan, and you shift to choosing which of the four families you’ll play as through the rest of the game. Instead of an individual journey, you’re commanding small bands of mercenaries, sending them out on missions that span the entirety of France to fight back against those sewing chaos.
The simplest way to describe Crown Wars is in terms of its peers, with XCOM being the obvious gaming touchstone, but there’s a thoroughly different tone to the game thanks to the shift to medieval France. You have a handful of character classes to recruit and send into battle which lean far more into melee than ranged combat – while you’ve got fundamentals like being able to crouch behind half and full cover, that’s a bit less useful when many enemies will rush up to you for melee attacks.
And you’ll be doing the same. The Crusader wades in with armour and a massive hammer, the Duellist has proficiency across a broad set of melee weapons (and is able to switch sets mid-fight), and the Beast Master can call upon dogs, bears and falcons to fight alongside them. Of course, there are ranged options with the Flayer a master of ranged bow and arrow attacks, while the Alchemist touts a crossbow alongside potions and flasks for area-of-effect attacks and tricks – pitch to slow enemies down, fire pots, and more. Each class has a split upgrade tree, letting you pick abilities from between two styles of play, so that Alchemist can lean more into pyrotechnics, healing or a mix of the two.
You’ve got four slots in your squad to send into the fight, and it pays to have an idea of how you want to play. After a few missions, I leant into a more melee heavy approach, backed up by a Flayer or Alchemist for range – the Beast Master can either be a melee character or tout a bow themselves. Speaking of which, the Beast Master is just a fun character class to use (if you can put animal cruelty out of mind while playing), as they come with a dog or bear as an additional controllable unit, and some great synergies and added abilities from this – a powered up tandem attack, buffs if the animal has attacked a target, and the like.
Missions will throw batches of enemies at you to try and deal with, and they need focussed efforts to take down. Each squad member has one move and two action points to use, whether for attacks, abilities or further moves, giving you plenty of flexibility in getting yourself in position, pulling flanking moves and ganging up on enemies. There’s also verticality to consider, giving you an advantage if you have the high ground. When your attacks ring true and down an enemy, you’re treated to some brutally violent animations, but getting there can sometime be a bit of a trial, as I’ve seen two or three attacks in a row missed or dodged by an enemy.
Survive your encounters, and you’ll head back to your family domain to patch up any wounds and plan your next steps. Any downed soldiers will head to the Chapel to be revived, while the Barracks are there for recruiting new mercenaries, the Forge for making upgraded gear, and so on.
Then it’s over to the map of the country to view the missions available for you to take on, with a mix of main story, family specific and smaller side missions to help pad your experience and resources. Those missions take days for a squad to trek to and from, but you’ll be able to marshal more than one squad across the region. That’s easier said than done when a gruelling close-fought can put someone out of action for a month, and you might end up with fresh recruits padding out the roster.
If you’ve ever been playing XCOM and thought to yourself that you just wish it had less aliens and more smashing people into the ground with hammers, then Crown Wars: The Black Prince is the game for you. It’s not reinventing the genre, but the melee focus and visceral combat animations certainly give it a different tone that will help it stand out.
Crown Wars: The Black Prince is coming out on 7th March 2024 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch & PC.
