Knights of Honor

Before I start reviewing this game I think it is important to state that I did not play this game when it first came out in 2004, just recently while I was looking through steam I found it was on sale and thought it was worth a shot. So there are no nostalgic feelings attached to the game which concludes that the review is not clouded by overpowered childhood memories. To my own astonishment I was positively surprised that its quiet a good game and still playable even if it is already more than 10 years old.

I think it is also important to state some other games published in this years to be able to make better comparisons and really look at games place in gaming history. Other 2004 releases are: Lords of the Realm 3, Settlers: the Heritages of Kings, Rise of Nations and Rome Total War (of course I only listed other strategy games). Moreover I think it is good to also state some milestone games in the strategy genre and their date of publish: Europa Universalis 3 2007, Crusader Kings 2 2012, Hearts of Iron 2009, anno 1701 2006 (in my opinion some of the most important strategy games for the genres development)

I initial thought that this is a great game taking into consideration that it is that old and I was convinced that the nowadays modern and good strategy games ow a lot of their success to this title. I mean every good strategy element present in modern strategy games is also present in this game. Good diplomacy, I mean it is no different than the diplomacy of Europa Universalis 3 and it also contains the main principles for the diplomacy in crusader kings 2 for example.

The occurrence of unexpected, unanticipated and shocking events that pushes the player to use different tactics and rethink his plans is present. In one of my games where i leaned heavily on my army and did not use any spice (as the game was already won because I owned more than half of Europa) the papal state succeeded in revolting all my marshals and attack in the prefect time with all his allies. İt was a hard bit of work to drive the enemies back with my unexperienced and very few armies. But his situation showed me that the general game design and tactical development worked quiet well and the game mechanic with the marshals, spies, builders, clerics and so on is well thought trought. And that is all a good strategy game needs: one well working game mechanic and in depth tactic giving part and the game is almost set to be a success.

The graphic presentation of the game is not really good taken into consideration the high standard of graphics nowadays and even compared to other games released in the same year (like Rise of Nations or the Settlers) its seen that the graphic is threatened to bee called ugly. But two points need to be considered here. First of all in strategy games often times the graphics are not that crucial for the overall gameplay experience. The best example fir this is Europa Universalis 3 or even King of Dragon Pass (where there is no graphic at all). And the other thing is that in strategy games the menu navigation and design is far more important than the graphics. And in that aspect Knights of Honors can keep up with other strategy games as the menu design is solved in a good way.

Of course the battel system and units movement is in no way as intuitive as in for example the total war series even compared to the 2004 released Rome total war.

The variety of different units, nations to play, buildings to build is present but not phenomenal executed.

Taking everything into consideration I still think this game holds a rather important place in the strategy game development history. If available for a small amount of money it is definitely recommendable.