Knights and Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom
Knights and Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom
Knights and Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom, développé par Joymania Entertainment et publié par Interactive Magic, Linux Game Publishing et TopWare Interactive, est sorti le 18 septembre 1998 sur PC (Microsoft Windows) et Linux. Ce titre de simulation et de stratégie en temps réel plonge le joueur dans le rôle d'un capitaine de la garde royale au début du XIIIe siècle, chargé de défendre la dernière province fidèle à un royaume éclaté et de reconquérir les territoires perdus. Le jeu propose deux campagnes, The Shattered Kingdom et The Peasants Rebellion, composées de 34 missions solo, ainsi que 10 cartes multijoueurs pour jusqu'à six participants en réseau local ou sur Internet, avec des modes bataille ou développement économique. On y trouve 25 types de bâtiments et plus de 20 unités, dans des paysages inspirés de la topographie européenne. La durée de la campagne principale est estimée à 40 heures et à 56 heures pour un parcours complet. Proposé au prix de 9,75 euros, le titre affiche une note agrégée de 87,53. Certains joueurs sur Metacritic et Steam saluent une œuvre complexe et addictive malgré un game design vieillissant, tandis que d'autres y voient un classique rejouable pour sa qualité stratégique.
Médias
Avis des critiques et joueurs
Avis des Joueurs (Metacritic)
« The game is just a Masterpiece. Yeah, gameplay and game design of its are outdated, but it is still hella complex and strategy-directed, that is cool. »
« Młodość, sentyment, grywalność! Co rok, dwa ogrywam obie części, tak smaczna i grywalna jest to gra. »
« The most complete stragety game, really long hours playing and i never get tired! »
« Take a look at old-school RTS game which plays so simple, while it's beauty is in micromanagement and complexity of resources. Knights & Merchants offers story of Anglo-Saxons around 1200 A.D who will fight their enemies right from the start of campaign. There are 20 missions in total, starting with the easiest, teaching you how to build town and army, combat focused skirmishes without building management, evolving into intriguing strategy where you will use your accumulated knowledge against incoming enemy attacks. It received Remake which allows multi-player and more polished controls. Despite it being old, it has still active community and developers of Remake are working on total remake as anyone can even create his own map and play it with his friends. You will often fight with tens and hundreds of units while maintaining your base and defense. You can not forget about limited resources and feeding your people, otherwise they'll die of starvation or upon aggressive foe. Game goes into details of building up houses from base and you will see putting every plank and stone into the shape as it simulates real building. Maintain resources well to not hit the dead end. Your warehouse is very important, you lose without it. Your workers will constantly do look for a job or at least eat out your food from the inn. They get stuck on the narrow passages and they can go around, if there's nothing in it's way back, so plan carefully before constructing buildings and leave space for walkers. Knights & Merchants has nice music and only day time. It has nice balance between playing it peacefully from behind your watchtowers and being aggressive nomad as you will have to find new resources after depleting them and even weapons can not be made endlessly. You can also set your game faster and thus multi-player does not need to be sluggish strategy as it is intended but rather fast paced arms race. Your army is fully depended upon your command and without you, it will not do much to enemies' numbers. I also come back to it after years just to test myself, mostly for online experience. It eats all of my free time, it grew on me while I was addicted. It made me strategy fan, despite not being hardcore. There is absolutely nothing bad despite it's new buggy controls in HD Version. That's why I have Remake. »
« I still replay this every couple of years, that's how good it is. Keep in mind that this is a 1998 game, but the AI is great. Build your town, set up your goods distribution and fight for your kingdom! »
