Knights of Honor Review

Originality is a term that has been used only so rarely in the Real Time Strategy genre. Every new game just appears to be a carbon copy of a game that came before it. Innovativeness has been forgotten to the widespread despair of gamers worldwide. Now comes Knights of Honor, a game that may not look the best or be the most interesting to some, but its originality is a breath of fresh air in such a repetitive genre. This aspect alone should appeal to hardcore RTS fans.

Knights of Honor is simply the closest you will ever get to actually sitting on a throne in medieval Europe. The game has been designed from the ground up to be incredibly realistic in every regard, primarily historical events and diplomacy. You can jump between multiple eras and control countless numbers of European nations and attempt to take each to the top and be the ruler of Europe. In the meantime you will have to manage resources, build armies, gently handle diplomatic relations, make decisions on pivotal historical events, arrange marriages, and make sure your ruling family line stays intact.

Basically, the game is cut into different provinces and in each province you have to construct buildings, manage taxes, train armies for defense and assault purposes, etc. These provinces can be micromanaged to determine what kind of resources they grow for your empire and construct specific buildings to maximize the output of other agricultural products. You also have to watch what buildings to decide to construct since each town can only hold so much.

Battles are quite in depth and the most important aspect is what units you have built compared to what units the enemy has. Battles in Knights of Honor can either be handled by yourself or by having a computer general do it for you. For time purposes, letting generals handle battles is probably the smarter way to go unless you plan on spending countless hours in the battle screen.