King Arthur: Knight's Tale - Preview @ SplatterCatGaming

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SplatterCatGaming checked out the Early Access title King Arthur Knights Tale:

King Arthur Knights Tale - Apocalyptic Grimdark Arthurian Tactical RPG



King Arthur Knights Tale Gameplay with Splattercat! Let's Play King Arthur Knights Tale and check out a game where you'll dive deep into Arthurian Legend and forge a path of good or evil in your wake.
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The Tactical RPG wave continues.
 
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The Tactical RPG wave continues.
I know you'd think developers could make other RPGs.:roll:

It seems to be the in thing nowadays. Almost similar to how base building RTS games almost faded out for PUB games, or how MMO's were once more popular.

It'll fade eventually.:)

(*The above is sarcasm mixed with truth.)
 
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There are enough types of RPGs to satisfy just about anyone lately. It's not as if we're lacking in the other styles.
 
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I'm curious if some brave soul could make a graph comparing the styles of RPGs released in the last five years. As I'm sure TB Tactical games out number the rest.

Seems every week I see ten more announced on this site alone.:roll:

Funny how genre's die out in popularity and get revived over & over again.
 
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Well, best of 2020 contains 5 turn based and 5 real time RPGs

To be fair, Turn Based, by itself, doesn't imply anything tactical. Most of the original fad of RPGs were Turn-Based, such as the Wizardrys and the like, Might and Magics, etc, but they were never termed nor are still really termed tactical.

The next fad, real-time with pause, is technically real-time turn-based and a bit closer to the concept of Tactical, but still not really what people mean by tactical turn based.

And it's not really only the fact that the game has turn-based combat that makes it a tactical turn-based, it's more that the game doesn't have much in the way of traditional RPG exploration type stuff and that one spends most of the game going from one set-piece combat to the next, and that the combat is then grid-based and locked within a battle-zone with no means to either flee and come back later or otherwise manipulate the encounter.

Traditionally, a Tactics game would shred out all of the general RPG stuff, like exploration, puzzles, small NPC non-combat side-quests, lore dumps and etc, and be called something like Fallout: Tactics or Final Fantasy: Tactics or X-Com. A genre that's always been part of RPG scene, but occupies a spot that contains lots of asterisks and would often be voted lower in years where more 'wholesome' RPGs are released.

They've always been very popular though, and there's never been a shortage of people who have wanted them to be "the same thing as an RPG" and deny any difference. Fallout: Tactics, for example, is game that turns up in many people's 'all time great RPGs'.

This site in particular has A LOT of X-Com fans, so this new trend will delight many here.
 
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While I agree that there are more of these "tactical turn based" games as usual (as lackblogger pointed out, its also a question of definition), I don't think they are really any majority or big trend. Real Time is still by far surpassing these types of games.
Maybe its similar to games based on card mechanics. Yeah, there are like 10 times more than just 10 years ago, but compared to real time games, the total amount is still low.

I am very confident that most RPGs (read as in Western Market on PC) are still action, being games like Mass Effect, Witcher, Cyberpunk, but also Wolcen and all the hack and slay games.

What we can see though is that there is somewhat of a shift in the "subgenre" of pseudo-isometric games, where turn based games are gaining more market share over RTwP again. When Baldurs Gate 1 kinda introduced the system, it seems like Baldurs Gate 3 will finally conclude it by going back to Turnbased.
Similarly Torment was RTwP originally, but Numenera was TB now.
Divinity Series started as action games, and are turnbased now.
XCom started turnbased, went into RTwP territory with apocalypse and then full action, turned back to Turnbased with Firaxis versions. And you can also see that thid party games in that scenario like the UFO games were all RTWp in the early 2000s (Aftermath and so on) more recent games like Xenonauts and Phoenix Point are turnbased again.
Similar thing with fallout, if you consider fallout and wasteland being the same thing:
Wasteland 1 to fallout 2 being turnbased, fallout tactics mixing TB and RTwP, fallout 3,4 and 76 being action, and Wasteland 2 and 3 returning back to the roots being turn based.

So yeah, I can see how in this segment TB is getting the upper hand.
Whether or not you want to speak of a "phase" which will fade, is up to perspective I guess.
I would rather say that RTwP was a phase of 10-15 years which basically eliminated Turnbased games during that time, and now the phase of RTwP is fading.
 
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What we can see though is that there is somewhat of a shift in the "subgenre" of pseudo-isometric games, where turn based games are gaining more market share over RTwP again. When Baldurs Gate 1 kinda introduced the system, it seems like Baldurs Gate 3 will finally conclude it by going back to Turnbased.
Similarly Torment was RTwP originally, but Numenera was TB now.
Divinity Series started as action games, and are turnbased now.
XCom started turnbased, went into RTwP territory with apocalypse and then full action, turned back to Turnbased with Firaxis versions. And you can also see that thid party games in that scenario like the UFO games were all RTWp in the early 2000s (Aftermath and so on) more recent games like Xenonauts and Phoenix Point are turnbased again.
Similar thing with fallout, if you consider fallout and wasteland being the same thing:
Wasteland 1 to fallout 2 being turnbased, fallout tactics mixing TB and RTwP, fallout 3,4 and 76 being action, and Wasteland 2 and 3 returning back to the roots being turn based.

So yeah, I can see how in this segment TB is getting the upper hand.
Whether or not you want to speak of a "phase" which will fade, is up to perspective I guess.
I would rather say that RTwP was a phase of 10-15 years which basically eliminated Turnbased games during that time, and now the phase of RTwP is fading.
You're right, but something is bothering me. Baldur's Gate 3 has very little to do with Baldur's Gate 1, since they are from different developers. Larian used their engine and what they do best is TB, but I see no "conclusion" of a series here. If a Beamdog or an Obsidian Entertainment releases a Baldur's Gate 4, chances are it will be RTwP. Bioware, if they get around to releasing a new Dragon Age, will most likely give us a RTwP.

Fallout 2 was BIS, Fallout 3 was Bethesda. Again, the names of the franchise or the licence doesn't mean much (actually, it does in some way ;) many people complain when it happens, we saw that with Fallout 3, see that with BG3 now).

The one case I know of a switch is Owlcat Games, which released a Pathfinder: Kingmaker RTwP, then at the insistence of the fans and thanks to an existing mod, added TB. Still, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous was designed as RTwP too, TB is an after-thought. But I don't know all the games you mentioned enough to tell, there are probably others that I don't know.

That being said, I agree with you that recent developers tend to use turn-based rather than RTwP. Is it because more people are playing on boards, and video games want to exploit that by translating a closer experience? Or on the contrary, because fewer people play on board and find video games more convenient? In any case it seems more successful now.
 
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I just discovered this thing runs only on Win 10.. OK.
Then I can delete the bookmark and forget about Knight's Tale. Hah. Thx, devs for solving my problem.
 
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If you still use outdated Windows versions, especially 32 Bit, you will need to get used to that. Right now Microsoft is only supporting Windows 10 with updates, and developing for 32 Bit versions means to cripple the games.
 
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It does indeed seem like there are ore TB games these days in general. And other trends... lots of rogue-likes and dynamically generated content/levels, etc. I think it is just the nature of media in general... some things get released, do well and more follow.

Though I do think the rise of more indie developers via Steam in the last decade accounts for some of this. There are certain game design and development practices that are easier to tackle for small 1 or 2 person teams.

While not a direct analogy, I work as a game designer in the board game industry and the vast majority of games are designed by one person - and working in a mode that is essentially turn-based and where mechanics and interactions are stitched together in a certain fashion, is much easier to design, implement and balance for one person. I see something like this going on in the video game industry.

Turn-based design, building a library/api to generate dynamic content (instead of spending countless hours designing, building and balancing bespoke content, etc) can have more appeal with smaller teams... and thus we've seen more of those - and those trends have worked their way into the marketplace and into larger devs due to increasing popularity.
 
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I still have Windows 7 (but 64 bits), don't tell anyone ;) MS is still pushing some updates, but I think that's becoming hard to maintain back-compatibility in some areas, especially graphics. I understand why some devs don't want to support it.

Sometimes it's just a precaution and the game may work perfectly well on 7, but it's best to check if someone else tried first. Doesn't seem to work with this game from what I read.

My PC is very old and I had to buy a new one with Windows 10, still need to install the games, dev tools and all that. I really don't like Windows 10, that's the first time I can't skip a bad version of the OS - and I suppose it's there to stay anyway. I was able to dodge Windows 95, the early Windows Me and Windows 8, but not this one.

Even the first questions asked to the user starts the OS for the first time made me want to shut it down. I've never seen so many questions on privacy… At least it's possible to say 'no' to those questions, but the user still has to remove all the bloatware. Ugh.
 
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working in a mode that is essentially turn-based and where mechanics and interactions are stitched together in a certain fashion, is much easier to design, implement and balance for one person. I see something like this going on in the video game industry.

Turn-based design, building a library/api to generate dynamic content (instead of spending countless hours designing, building and balancing bespoke content, etc) can have more appeal with smaller teams… and thus we've seen more of those - and those trends have worked their way into the marketplace and into larger devs due to increasing popularity.
I don't see how TB could be easier to implement, actually I'd find RTwP easier. What little gain you get because you don't have to adapt the rules to RTwP, you lose by having to manage the queue, the camera and the extra commands. I think it's a pretty neutral operation at best. Most CRPG games started with RTwP, and they were programmed by small teams of people with no experience at all, on machines with fewer resources :)
 
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There are enough types of RPGs to satisfy just about anyone lately. It's not as if we're lacking in the other styles.
Well, I just bought the latest FIFA.
That means that I can't get excited for any RPG (or strategy game) right now.
Last time this happened was 2017.

However most likely I'm the problem myself. I somehow just got too picky.
 
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Well, I just bought the latest FIFA.
That means that I can't get excited for any RPG (or strategy game) right now.
Last time this happened was 2017.

I usually fall back to shooters if I'm not playing an RPG.

I haven't played a sports game in years. I used to enjoy some of the football and hockey games, but they don't really interest me anymore.
 
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Well it may also have to do with the fact that another household member recently started to show interest in playing it.

Rumors say that might have been prepared by Santa Claus who brought in a second controller on Christmas.
 
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Well, I just bought the latest FIFA.
That means that I can't get excited for any RPG (or strategy game) right now.
Last time this happened was 2017.

However most likely I'm the problem myself. I somehow just got too picky.

I've been in a similar boat the past few months. At its worst, after trying to get into Pillars of Eternity and finding myself too bored to continue once I made it to the gates of Defiance Bay, I seriously considered hanging up my RPG towel.

I think I've played everything from the past that I wanted to play and all the new things I was trying were not my type of thing in the slightest, even though they really should have been.

Although in my case I suspect it's because of a lack of a completely different kind of RPGs to you. Which suggests its not only that you're being picky, but that there's also more than one sub-type of RPG that's currently missing.
 
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