King Arthur: Legion IX Review

King Arthur: Legion IX is a standalone expansion to the former King Arthur: Knight's Tale. It's developed and published by NeocoreGames, and it shares the same dark fantasy universe. But don't let that fool you, this new entry tells you a different story, meaning that you don't need any prior experience with Knight's Tale to understand this title. 

Set in a twisted version of the Arthurian legend, King Arthur: Legion IX brings tactical RPG combat with an atmospheric story enriched with myth and mystery. After playing the game and completing the main storyline and diving into the optional content, it's safe to say that I have a full picture of what this expansion has to offer, what it gets right, its struggles, and whether it's worth any of your precious time. 

The story starts with you playing Gaius Julius Mento, a Roman Noble who was supposed to join the Senate but was ambushed during military service due to unforeseen circumstances. He died and ended up in Tartarus, a bleak underworld of Roman myth. It is there that he meets Septimus Sulla, a former Roman ruler of Britannia who gave him a second chance as an officer of the Ninth Legion.

Gaius's mission is to escape Tartarus and report back to Sulla. With the help of a priest named Platonius Nerva, Gaius manages to find a way into Avalon, but to his misfortune, most of the Ninth Legion couldn't follow him. Soon after arriving in Avalon, Gaius meets Alina Virgilia, a local with ties to Vesta, the goddess of home and peace. 

Elena helps him take over Nova Roma, which becomes your base. However, a moral conflict soon emerges—Platonius serves Orcus, a demonic God of the underworld. At the same time, Alina believes Orcus's arrival would bring havoc to Avalon. It's your decision to choose whom to follow, Orcus or Vesta. 

A decision that will impact your story path, it's a pretty cool, engaging setup that makes it stand out from the previous game. For fans of Knight's Tale, there are a few Easter eggs and moments of callback, including brief encounters with the Knights of the Round Table. What makes these moments interesting is that the Ninth Legion views the Avalonians as backwards and primitive, which adds a bit of tension and nuance to the world.

The fundamentals of King Arthur: Legion IX lie in its turn-based combat. You start out by controlling three heroes, but your party expands to 6 as the game progresses. Each hero has action points (AP), which are spent to move across tiles of the map and perform skills.

Movement and attacks are all tied to AP, so it's important that you plan if you end up spending most of your points just to move. You might just leave your character vulnerable, especially since enemies can do more damage if they attack your back.

This backstab mechanic applies to all of the attack types, including spells and even ranged attacks. You can master this and make it work in your favor with great team synergy. You can also place palisades (wooden barriers) to block enemy paths. Putting a turret behind a barrier means enemies will have to walk through guaranteed damage to reach it. 

It's these that make battling satisfying and fun, even when facing tough enemies with status effects or a large horde of enemies. King Arthur: Legion IX has no permanent deaths if one of your characters goes down in battle, and if you end up winning the fight, they come back with one HP.

You also get to see icons under health bars that indicate buffs, debuffs, and passive abilities. You can also hover over them to see exactly what they do, whether that's for your team or enemies. This helps you understand what's happening in battle and plan better.

King Arthur: Legion IX also features a cover system similar to XCOM 2, ultimate abilities, and even one-on-one duels; all the features blend well together, making for well-rounded combat. After each battle, your character's level increases, and you earn skill points; you get two points per level up to a max level of 18.

What this means is that you're not going to be able to unlock every skill in the game, but you're free to respec at any time and try different builds. When you're not in battle, you get to manage your base, Nova Roma. It's not as intricate as a base building in XCOM 2, but you could say it gets the job done and still adds a bit of nuance to the gameplay. 

There are six vendors: a blacksmith for crafting and upgrades, a war council for mission aids, a merchant for buying equipment, etc. You are also able to upgrade these using resources found in missions, while it isn't important, skipping this aspect of the game would mean missing out on helpful tools and bonuses.

King Arthur: Legion IX has this morality system, and your choices in the story affect the system. After missions, teammates may come up to you with dilemmas, and your responses to those dilemmas change your moral standing. 

The morality chart on locks passive abilities in building upgrades, depending on your decisions. For example, being highly positive, having a lesser team over heel, and keeping that extra HP as a shield are pretty cool perks.

The game uses an overworld map where you get to choose between story missions, side missions, and visiting Nova Roma. But many of the side missions are actually required, even if they're labeled as optional. Missions have objectives like clearing enemies with tools, and even though all of the missions boil down to fights, they still feel pretty engaging because of the tactical variety.

The map sizes are relatively small, and each of the missions takes longer than you'd expect, from 45 minutes to an hour. A challenging aspect that some people might find annoying is that one of the team members always refuses to go, forcing you to fight with heroes. In some cases, there will be temporary NPC allies that will join to make up for it.

On King Arthur: Legion IX's difficulty, it is by no means an easy game. There's a wide range of difficulty settings, from story to multiple brutal. Even in the hard mode, few of the fights felt really overwhelming; the challenge was mostly fair and rewarding. There's also this Rougelite mode where you aren't allowed to save manually, which makes the stakes even higher.

Once you finish the story in King Arthur: Legion IX, there are more missions that unlock during the game, and the game features a different ending depending on your story choices, so there is some replay value. But one thing that I found perplexing is the fact that you stop gaining skill points, which takes away a bit of the excitement. Without the level-up progression, the progression between missions feels so much slower, even though you can still loot and upgrade your base.

Visually, the graphics are pretty solid. You're given a choice between quality mode and performance mode. I found myself using the performance mode for a more optimized experience. There were a few bugs I noticed, like slowdown during intense scenes, slow texture loading, and the occasional map clipping, but other than that, the experience was pretty satisfactory.

The sound design and voice acting weren't spectacular. Some characters sounded like they were voiced by AI, but if real actors were used, they surely did a great job mimicking robotic voices. I do understand that there might be budget constraints, hence the audio quality.

For what it's worth, King Arthur: Legion IX is a great deal. Originally planned as a DLC for Knight's Tale, it evolved into a standalone game, and I could see that being a smart decision.

If you enjoy turn-based strategy games like XCOM, Rogue Trader, or Baldur's Gate 3, this title is worth trying. It's a great game for newcomers to the genre with solid combat and satisfying progression. King Arthur: Legion IX delivers enough challenges to make it a memorable and enjoyable experience.