Vicious, or delicious?

I should probably point out, before I get into the Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom review proper, that the other game we covered in our content this week was Devil May Cry 4. Now, despite the Kingdom Under Fire series being well-known for large-scale strategy, Circle of Doom is much more of a scrolling hack-and-slash, with a few of the franchise’s traditional Role-Playing Game elements underlying the experience.

In that respect, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom will boast gameplay unfamiliar to the series’ followers, and beget not a few unfortunate comparisons to Capcom's imminent, not-dissimilar next-gen classic.

Going up in the release schedule against Dante, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is admittedly a little out of its depth – but that doesn’t make it a bad game. Taken on its own merits this is still an enjoyable and lengthy scrolling brawler – and it has one big thing going for it that DMC doesn't; online multiplayer.

Fighting teamwork

Indeed, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is at its best played over Xbox Live. With a steady host, the other three players can drop in and drop out at will, enjoying the benefits that teamwork brings to Circle of Doom's otherwise straightforward fighting action.

On your tod, playing Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is an undeniably repetitive experience. Picking one of six characters, each fitting into predisposed stereotypes (weak but fast, slow but strong, or average in all areas) and fighting hordes of underwhelmingly dopey lizard-men and the like through six relatively linear environments, it admittedly isn’t the most compelling singleplayer release you’re going to find on next-gen systems.

But with four players ploughing through it, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom takes on the properties that all good dungeon-based games have boasted. From Gauntlet to Guild Wars, the genre in its various guises is at its best with players picking characters which compliment each other, playing to their individual strengths (some with ranged attacks, some melee-centric), and co-ordinating to attack, defend and heal as a unit. The same is true of Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom.

Adding depth are Idols, which aside from being a save point, serve a dual purpose in the gameplay of Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom. They allow you to store and synthesise items, the latter of which basically involves pairing two items together and paying gold to increase the chances of creating a more powerful combination, adding a customisation element to the experience.

Circle of Doom's Idols also throw up its most original aspect; its storytelling. They offer you the chance to go to sleep, entering a dream realm where narrative is abstractly drip-fed via dialogue from non-player characters and the occasional sidequest, instead of the usual custscenes used by most games. It’s a novel idea at putting plot into what is ostensibly a multiplayer-focused title, though it ends up feeling completely removed from the main game and provides little context for Circle of Doom's ongoing action.

Multiplayer-focused

And there is a lot of that in Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom – though it is repetitive. Adding depth is the stamina gauge, dictating how long you can keep combos going. Attacking depletes it, and using different weapons causes it to go down at differing rates, so you'll want the best combination of weapons to allocate to the two attack buttons. You can increase stamina by adding to Skill stats at level-up, as well as increasing your HP, which lengthens health, and Luck, which increases the frequency of decent item drops – plus add special and magic attacks to your repertoire by taking quests in Circle of Doom's dream world.

What we have with Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is a pretty competent multiplayer-focused title with RPG-lite elements and a novel narrative spin which Kingdom Under Fire fans will probably appreciate more than franchise newcomers. It's not a must-buy, then, and it's definitely no Devil May Cry, but get four online-playing action fans together and there's certainly some fun to be had here.

GAME's Verdict

• Old-fashioned Gauntlet-esque hack-and-slash dungeonering that work's well online
• Drop-in / drop-out multiplayer
• RPG-lite elements and Stamina gauge provide a little depth

• Repetitive thought-free gameplay
• One-track enemy A.I.
• Novel 'dream world' dialogue storytelling doesn't really work

Review by: Mark 'Slash-Happy' Scott
Version Tested: Xbox 360
Review Published: 30.01.08