Key Preview Takeaways:
- The scale and detail of the battles simultaneously is very impressive.
- Being able to jump into a commander at ground level for more of a third-person action mode is really cool.
- It’s got plenty of cool stuff but it’ll put the “early” in Early Access if you decide to jump in before 1.0.
Chronicles: Medieval is one of those incredibly dense strategy games that almost immediately feels intimidating to try your hand at just because of how complicated and meticulously detailed it is. Sure, sending hundreds of your Holy Roman Empire soldiers over a hill to go lay the smack down on those smarmy Frenchmen sounds great, but are you prepared to spend hours obsessing over whether or not your mercenary troops have the right weapons to deal with the heavily armored cavalry, or if your soldiers have shields big enough for them to survive a couple volleys of arrows? This historically accurate battle simulator combines elements of an RPG, an action game, and, of course, a strategy game in a way that seems specifically designed to attract those who enjoy going all the way to the bottom of the rabbit hole. That appeals to the hopeless nerd inside me, making this one I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on as it enters early access next year.
Taking place during The Hundred Years’ War, Chronicles: Medieval makes you the commander of an army for one of its three playable factions: Britain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. As you grow your ranks, take on increasingly formidable armies, and explore the world, you’ll inevitably be drawn to large-scale Total War-style battles against rival factions, where glory or costly defeat awaits you. Historical accuracy is clearly a focus here, as any history nerd will certainly note, but developer Raw Power Games also doesn’t want that accuracy to get in the way of having fun, as they specifically shouted out when they showcased a mounted commander wielding a polearm for some reason – maybe not exactly common, but if that’s what you’re into, go for it!
The 30-minute demo I saw started in the overworld, called the Exploration map, which gives a macro view of the world – each country’s various regions and the controlling lord there (including coats of arms that are rooted in history, which is a nice touch) – but you’ll also drill down more granularly to your surrounding area as you set off on your campaign across Europe. With 209 regions, each with at least one settlement to visit and castle to storm, there seems to be quite a lot to explore, with dynamic points of interest scattered along the way, filled with things like bandit camps, mercenaries to be hired, and opportunities for trade. Naturally, you’ll also have to worry about enemy armies marching around, who might try to make a meal of your army.
And that’s where the real excitement in Chronicles: Medieval lives. Squaring off against hundreds of enemies, where you’ll need to put the full force of your various military arms to clever use by precisely positioning troops, barking out commands to adapt to the enemy’s movements, and, to give your men that extra edge they need, taking to the battlefield yourself to cut the enemy down to size. The battle that was the focus of my demo took place in continental Europe on the rolling hills of Burgundy, where our host Holy Roman Empire soldiers stared down a French company of equal size in the middle of a valley. The level of detail in this encounter was pretty impressive, as each individual soldier could be inspected, and their equipment and power level evaluated.
My favorite texture here was how troops were divided into three types: Household, Mercenary, and Levies – particularly how that difference impacted their effectiveness in battle. Household troops, who come from noble backgrounds and are the best equipped, are naturally also the most costly and difficult to train, but pay off by being highly effective in combat. Meanwhile, Mercenary troops are hired professional fighters with middling potential, while Levies, conscripted soldiers fighting because they were forced to, are down at the bottom. The main stat that determines the effectiveness of these groups is “cohesion,” which determines how well these troops work together. For example, the high-cohesion Household troops were tightly and efficiently packed together in formation and able to withstand stampeding cavalry fairly well, if properly armed for the job, while Levies were spread far apart, tended to be broken apart easily by charging enemies, and were even sometimes armed with farming equipment like pitchforks instead of real weapons of war. Seeing these disparate groups interact with one another in battle was quite fascinating to watch!
The strategy part of Chronicles: Medieval is pretty similar to something you might expect from a proper strategy/sandbox game, where you’re floating above the area and issuing commands to each part of your army individually. For example, you might want to send your cavalry ahead and flank around behind the enemy, while you send infantry forward and tell them to enter special formations like the “spearwall” that’s highly effective against mounted units. During this battle planning phase, you can augment all sorts of things with your armies as you chart out a winning strategy, like how you can thin out your men across a wider area, which gives them better coverage, but makes them more susceptible to charging enemies by spreading themselves too thin. It’s also a neat touch that, once the battle starts and the arrows start flying, you can issue additional, real-time commands, and only those units who haven’t received more specific instructions from you earlier will comply.
They also showed us the commander taking the field themselves, which transitioned things from an eye-in-the-sky view to a third-person perspective, complete with action-packed melee combat. Either on a mount, where crossing the battlefield and taking down enemies from a relatively safe distance also made it easier to bark updated orders to your men, or on foot, where it was much easier to impose your will on specific enemies that were giving your troops trouble, both of which looked like a blast.
Unfortunately, before I got to see too much of this, we did encounter a crash that abruptly shut down the demo, which is why it’s probably a good time to highlight the early access nature of this ambitious strategy game. As the first project from Raw Power Games, which is by their own account in a quite unfinished state, it will likely be a while before this lofty beast of a project doesn’t have some serious rough patches. If you’re at all averse to the sometimes rocky process of playing a game before it hits 1.0, this one might be especially tough to stomach with how much it’s swinging for the fences. But if it gets there, buckle up.
While you’re here, check out these previews of other big upcoming games we’ve played recently!
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.
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