King Arthur is a mix between turn-based and real-time strategy similar to the Total War series. As the subtitle suggests there are also strong RPG elements. The player takes the role of the legendary King Arthur who wants to build and defend his empire.
The first RPG element which comes into play are the quests - some have to be solved to progress the story; some of them are optional. They can also be divided into short-term tasks, e.g. rescuing a kidnapped relative of a prince, or long-term tasks, e.g. building a trade route. The former can be started by sending a knight to a defined point of the map and are reminiscent of choose-your-own-adventure books in which the player is presented with a text and several choices, e.g. tailing the kidnappers or talking to them, and has to choose one. This progresses the quest, leads to the next choice and ultimately to success, failure or a battle.
But this is not just a question of choosing the right answer but also depends strongly on the character stats of the knight. This is the second RPG element in this game: the knights from the Round Table have personalities and abilities which can be improved after earning enough experience points by solving quests. There are also artifacts to find which can be equipped. The actions in the quests also affect the player’s two morality bars: the choice between a nice guy and a tyrant respectively Christianity and the old religion. This mixture affects the relationship to other factions, available abilities, e.g. healing spells for a good Christian, and the effectiveness of certain artifacts.
In the turn-based part of the game the player is presented with a world map where he moves his armies and conquers provinces by seizing all strategical important points. Of course there are also other things to do, e.g. trading, enacting laws or researching. One round represents one season which affects gameplay notable, e.g. in winter armies can’t be moved but receive all experience points from the last year and in summer armies have the highest range. There are two resources: money and food.
When the player meets an hostile army on the map screen there is a fight. It can be calculated automatically or played manually. Then the game switches to a real-time strategy game where the player commands a big army with many troops. Every army is commanded by one of the knights and his character stats have a influence on his units performance. During the battles the opponents have to conquer flag points which raise their morality and lowers the opponent’s - the same effect happens when kidnapping the hostile leader. Of course all unit types - which can be upgraded too - have different advantages and disadvantages and a big part of the tactics consists of using them in the right way.
The multiplayer-mode is restricted to the real-time battles.
