While we loved slicing and dicing our way through 2005’s Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders (and the subsequent Heroes mini-sequel) on original Xbox, the RTS elements that forced us to pull away from our hero to manage squads of allies left us in a huff. It seems we weren’t the only ones: developer Blueside has nixed the RTS elements entirely (thank Encablosa!) to deliver straight-up combo-heavy hack-and-slash action and RPG leveling with the usual Gary Gygax–inspired story cues.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom picks up with the war in Bersia raging after Nible, the Lord of Light, refused to give Encablosa, the Lord of Darkness, his turn to run the world. From the outset, you have access to five storylines with five heroes that KUF vets will recognize — Leinhart, Duane, Kendal, Regnier, and Celine — and you’ll eventually unlock the Curian campaign as you plow through what amounts to well over 40 hours of gameplay. We played through two separate campaigns using Leinhart, the tormented half-vampire with a really bad Italian-sounding accent, and the pot-bellied Duane, the hopelessly narcissistic playboy. As you progress through each campaign, you’ll assign attribute points to level up your character’s health and special attacks, while collecting all sorts of weapons and armor upgrades along the way.



You’ll also spend a good amount of time sleeping — or rather, visiting the Dream World via napping near an Idol Sanctuary. The Dream World serves two purposes: first, the story progresses through dialogue given by chief supporting characters. (For Leinhart it’s his dethroned father, Valdemar; Duane’s muse is the forever out-of-reach and frigid Marguerite.) You’ll also get to take on quests that result in you learning new skills, which are really the highlight of the leveling system.

Sure, new gauntlets and some HP-buffing earrings are all good, but we want combos and mad skills, which you’ll get in large quantities. Each campaign is fairly similar to the next, although the maps are varied and the cut-scenes are obviously character-specific. The real boon is playing in online co-op with up to four players, which is really helpful once you start getting into larger-scale battles.

Though the combat grows repetitive, the game manages to look lovely while you slap around your foes. If you’re a fan of large-scale battle games à la Dynasty Warriors but prefer to play solely as one character, Circle of Doom makes for a great after-holiday snack.

ON XBOX 360

+ Leveling up your skills, attributes, and weapons rules.

+ No RTS boring-ness.

- Combat becomes repetitive after a while.

? Archers, why do you just stand around dying? Have some self-respect – fight back!

8.0