King Arthur: Legion IX Review – Dawn of the Roman Undead

There’s no rest for the undead, as King Arthur: Legion IX clearly proves. A tactical game with a grim style and a dark fantasy take on the Arthurian myth, you control Gaius Julius Mento and his growing army of the undead in a succession of RPG exploration and turn-based battles. But is this follow-up to 2022’s King Arthur: Knight’s Tale an improvement over the original or simply more of the same?

The Dead Await

The dark atmosphere and occult penchant of King Arthur: Legion IX is noticeable since the first moments of the adventure. The first area serves as a tutorial of sorts for movement and combat, and does a decent enough job of showing you the ropes, as you move to the next area, searching for Nova Roma and setting up a colony, expanding it by embarking in various missions and moral choices.

One debatable thing about this game is that you are restricted to finding and unlocking a few new heroes for your party, out of a total of six, with some missions limiting you to five characters. Considering that you start with a group of three and quickly stumble upon the fourth member, this offering will feel a lot on the slim side, as it doesn’t really goes into detail about unit choices and dilemmas; you simply reassemble your old legion and go with it. There is a nice but somewhat shallow leveling system for the heroes, with various active and passive skills, gear, and more, which while not going into great depth, does provide some potential for interesting choices and builds.

Battles are compelling and there’s definitely a decent amount of mechanics at work, requiring some learning to emerge victorious. If a party member dies, your chances of victory significantly decrease, but rest assured that just like every good undead, they will be resurrected after battle. The combat system is intuitive, featuring action points both for movement and active skills, which result in a nice tactical layer that feels very familiar, right up to the popular overwatch action, but is nonetheless compelling and challenging – some battles can be very hard, not so much due to a specific foe, but more because of the number of enemies that will keep on spawning and hunting you down. Some battles also task you with other mandatory actions, from destroying totems to lighting cauldrons, requiring your full commitment to leave the area alive… or less dead, so to speak.

The range of actions from your party is respectable, with melee and ranged attacks that can be spiced up by various spells, some of them binding damage to various enemies, or raining fire from the skies. It’s definitely not groundbreaking but works as expected, but it still feels like a more streamlined approach than what can be found in King Arthur: Knight’s Tale.

Exploration of the areas is pretty much by-the-numbers, with markers directing you to the main and side-quests with no surprises, apart from a few chests and landmarks that you can find if you take the time to search the places. The areas have this nice fantasy Avalon ring to them, with good detail despite veering a bit on the generic side. Where the game resoundingly fails is in the voice work, with voices from the three starting characters that are all alike, very guttural and monotone, trying to convey these bad-ass personas but only sounding like the same voice actor read all the scripts and the result was slightly remixed, with a notoriously bad outcome. The voice of Albina Virgila, the female mage, adds some variety, but is also subpar.

Not a Foul Stench

King Arthur: Legion IX doesn’t represent a true step forward from King Arthur: Knight’s Tale, and in some regards it’s even a simplified version of said game. The value for those who own the first one is debatable, but if they are looking for more of the same, this is a good option although it may disappoint in some aspects; on the other hand, new players may get more enjoyment from this tactical game, assuming they are looking for a challenge and aren’t bothered by the lack of playable characters or the middling writing.

Score: 7.5/10

Pros:

• Enjoyable tactical combat
  
• Can be a good challenge for fans

Cons:

• Limited and restrictive character selection
• Mostly terrible voice work
• Somewhat of a streamlined version of the previous game

King Arthur: Legion IX review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.

Stay connected to MP1st and the latest news by following us on Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Google News.