Dhregin

I played through this game in it's entirety in 2019, with some dabbling back in 2004. The game has an intensely strong marriage between Action RPG and Strategy - think a marriage between Fire Emblem and Dynasty Warriors, but less Anime - and dealing with massive armies and units. Crusaders throws you into one of four campaigns as a leader of the various factions: You have the Southern Humans, The Northern Humans, The Dark Elves, and the Orcs/Ogres. The campaigns are split up by difficulty which also serves as a story guide: Gerald of the southern human faction is easy difficulty and eases the player into the world, Lucretia of the dark elves also serves as a good base point on Normal Difficulty - setting up the story which will ultimately unfold in great detail during the Hard campaigns, where you may play from the perspective of the Northern Humans and their General Kendall, or as the Immortal overlord of the Orcs, Regnier (who is quite the badass.) The Games World feels fleshed out, believable, and unique - the stories unfold primarily from the perspective of your factions general - where you will try to uncover the mysteries of the other factions, while dealing with acts of betrayal. There is a massive shadow looming over the game regarding the mysteries of the past wars, which are covered in the previous game, Kingdom under fire: war of heroes. Even the most avid player of the previous game however will be completely in the dark regarding the conflicts and mysteries revolving around the plot of Crusaders - but you will have quite a higher appreciation for the bits and bobs that reference back to that game. Over all, I say the game play is fantastic: controlling you armies is great, unit balance and counter balance is fantastic. Difficulty levels are perfect: easy really is easy, but ramps up towards the end to prepare you for normal, and normal does the same for Hard. Hard truly is HARD, some missions are extremely difficult and give the player enough freedom in leveling up their troops and picking their troop types to say "this army is in your hands, lead it to success or lead it to failure". The game lasts about 25 to 30 hours in total, and the story is very worthwhile. Its sound track is more rock/metal, but is somehow quite appropriate, as you will find yourself jamming out while slaying hordes of monsters with your General. There are a few things that prevent this game from being perfect. I'll list them here: 1. The localization isn't great: Voice overs and audio quality is superb, but text-only sections seem to be grammatically incorrect a lot of the time. Subtitles don't always line up with exactly what is being said, even if both are set to English. Even with the bad localization, its more of a laugh-factor than a true detriment to the game, but it is still an imperfection. 2. Sometimes your unit AI gets a bit wonky. If you tell your archers to cast tree of healing on your melee, they sometimes run into melee with the enemy and get into combat, preventing the cast. This can be frustrating. 3. Some of the missions are just down right brutal - and for players who aren't up to the challenge, they may find themselves quite frustrated - especially if they have to restart their campaign because they invested all of their experience into the wrong troops and wrong skill sets for those troops. With fantastic audio, compelling gameplay, a mysterious and well written story and great characters, this is by far one of the best hidden gems available on Classic Xbox. The fact that the story builds off of the previous title makes for an even stronger foundation to a very believable fantasy setting. The flaws it has are overshadowd by its outstanding positives. If you like games that keep you guessing, and then reveal a big plot towards the end, then you'll like the story. If you like rock/metal music, you'll like the music. If you enjoy medieval military fantasy settings and genuine character interactions, you'll enjoy the setting. If you love strategy games but want a more active combat role, you'll TRULY love the game play. If you like RPG's and party management systems, you'll really enjoy the army management.