Others say...

"Good, but not great"
I've played and beaten the other Kingdom Under Fire game, it was pretty good, but not the best. The graphics were nice, and the music will get on one's nerves every so often, the gameplay will get boring and you will move on to another fun fulfilling game in a matter of minutes if you can't get into this one in time. I'm not going to speak for other people, but the game requires you to think more than to have any action time, which is good in some ways. The game makes your brain work more instead of going through the game hacking and slashing to the end which is one reason the game deserves 3 stars instead of four or five. Oh, the new Kingdom Under Fire game for the 360 will be better than the other two put together, trust me and IGN on this one.


Kevin Thompson,
IGN

"Best game of 2005"
The kingdom under fire series are by far the best games that I have ever played. Being a huge fan of fantasy, these games let me live the battles that I dream about,not just watch them, though The Lord Of The Rings movies captured my love for fantasy. Anyway back to the game. The KUF series has everything I've ever wanted in a game, BIG, VIOLENT, BATTLES. The amount of freedom you have on the battlefield is HUGE, and the number of characters that appear on screen make you feel like you've entered an epic medievil(not sure how to spell it) battle. The only thing to complain about, in my opinion, is the steep learning curve, especially in KUF: Heroes, since the developers expected you to have played the first one. Heroes should be a breeze for the KUF veterans like myself, but for a newcomer, like I said, it will be a little overwhelming. But if you are new, dont give up because you cant figure out where or how to position your troops, just keep playing and you'll appreciate the scope and accessability of the battles in Heroes. overall, I think these games are great, but I know they are not for everyone. I had never even played a strategy game before I played Crusaders, but I caught on, and now I'm hooked. Just rent it if your not sure, but I think you'll enjoy it

"Almost exactly like the first, but a few new additions"
As the title implies, the game hasn't changed much from the original. The few changes it does have aren't huge, but they do enhance the game. First off though, for the people that have not played the first game, I'll go ahead and break up the strong and weak points that the sequel has.

GAMEPLAY: 8/10: The gameplay itself is pretty fun, but it takes a mission or two to actually learn how to play well. The mixing of RTS and button mashing had never been done before the Kingdom Under Fire (KUF from now on) games. You could be engaged in melee with your hero, fighting off a couple troops of orcs, and decide you want your archers to attack them as well, you just pop up your trusty Map, switch to your archers, and tell them to attack the guys attacking you. It's that simple to command multiple troops while already engaged in combat. The reason I gave gameplay and 8/10 is because the gameplay could have been enhanced a bit. Like waypoints and other such things, when you move troops, their pathfinding skills are sometimes horrible. (For instance, on a mission I played last night, my troops ran around in a circle twice before actually going through the forest to the area I wanted them to.)

GRAPHICS: 8/10: The graphics in this game are pretty good, nothing groundbreaking of course, but good. You can have many orcs, humans, dark elves and the like all in one screen fighting. The sheer numbers that can be on screen all at once is great. I do have a complaint though, although the voice acting isn't bad, the character's lips do not move except up and down every once in a while.

MUSIC/AUDIO: 4/10: Just like the first, it's pretty much the same song played over and over again, never stopping. Ever. The voice acting is kinda cheesy too.

USER FRIENDLY?: Partially: The complaints I have in this department is the fact that they took out the tutorials, or rather, the `training' during campaign. So basically the new people are stuck learning the entire game by themselves, unless they have friends that know how to play. The second complaint I have is that nearly all the `beginner' missions are more slated toward people that have already played the game. They require strategies and planning, which a newcomer wouldn't know too much about. Luckily though, Ellen's missions were slightly less despairing than the others, so my friends didn't get too discouraged with the game. I think that those were the biggest disappointment in the game.

XBOX LIVE: 8/10: This is where the game gets fun. It's basically just like campaign, wherein you get Experience to boot up your troops and get new troops to combat human enemies, enemies with actual intelligence and strategies.(most of them, anyway.) Although there is one, terrible and horrible problem with Xbox live. The lag is horrible. I mean horrible, for your heroes at least. When you're fighting in melee with your hero, you can't control him in real-time. In fact, you have maybe a whole 3 seconds before he does what you just told him to. I once spent a good 2 minutes watching, the controller not even in my hand, my hero run around hitting things while I was powerless to make him turn. Or anything like that. The other troops don't lag, and your controls on them don't lag either. It's usually just your hero in Melee.


Now onto the differences between The Crusaders and Heroes.
There are a few noticeable differences and a few not-so-noticeable.

First off, System link is gone, there is no longer ANY form of multiplayer other than Xbox Live. Although, there IS a custom game function in the single player menu (This allows you to use any char you want, and you have 1 million XP to use on that char and his troops.) There are new heroes, of course. But the old ones are still there, and with new moves. Also, there are three new troops, Earth Golems, Thunder Rhinos, Flame Wraiths, and Ice Maidens. These troops are pretty good, although they require 25 of their specified magic to make. And last but not least, you can have up to SIX people ply all at once, on teams or free for all.

That sums up my review on KUF:Heroes I hope it was helpful to you.


"Flawed masterpiece"
Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes picks up on the same note as its predecessor Crusaders, although the time period it is set in is five years earlier than the start of the Encablossa War depicted in the first Xbox release.
It seems to forego much of the tutorial of the first game, which is actually a bit of a shame; the difficulty and complexity of the game can be extremely overwhelming for a newcomer.
The graphics are generally pretty good, and some of the battle scenes are incredible for their complexity. The strategy component seems to be ramped up a bit, and troop maneuvers are as important at the beginning of this one; some missions would be nearly impossible without having been familiar with scouts, withdrawal and repositioning and troops type counters that were learned in the first game. An easier to control camera for moving your troops would have been welcome, but it's not really improved from the first game; easier selection and waypoint creation would have been most welcome.

Despite all this, it's a very fun game with some interesting characters and loads of replay value. Don't buy into it expecting Dynasty Warriors; there is a hack and slash component to it, but the strategy game of controlling your troops on the fly is the key to success.

Fun and challenging with a few frustrations that keep it from being all that it could be, but still a great game that's unique in its presentation.