Kingdom Elemental: Tactics is a tactical strategy game created by Liberation Games and Chronic Logic, independent developers on the PC. The story takes place in Eteran, a world that is threatened by an impending chaos that must be pushed back by The Order of Restoration and Balance, a premise that is mocked openly throughout the campaign mode. Storytelling in this game is humorous, poking fun at many standards of fantasy based games. With game play that’s simplistic, yet challenging, a level editor that allows you to create custom challenges that can be shared with the community and a skirmish mode that hosts an unlimited amount of battles, the price tag of $20 for Kingdom Elemental is well worth it.

You are tasked to command a group of heroes in battles that last five or so rounds per stage, carefully choosing which of the 10 character classes will be in the fight before each round with the allotted amount of gold given. Waves of enemies pour from one end of the battlefield with your heroes on the other. Each hero unit has three abilities that are made available via unlock points acquired after each round won. With the action paused by hitting space bar, each unit can be individually commanded to taunt, heal or rain fire down on the enemies easily. Each stage ends with the standard big boss fight, each one progressively harder than the one before it. My only gripe with the game play is the odd choice of using the same mouse button for both selecting units and telling them which unit to attack or where to go, rather than the standard left button for selection and right clicking to either go somewhere or attack. There were many times where after selecting actions for different heroes that the previous command was overwritten by them being told to walk to the next unit I was trying to select.

KE: Tactics’ graphics are pretty well done for an independent game. The music was decent, but where Kingdom Elemental really fell short was it’s sound. While the sarcastic remarks of each unit are funny the couple of times you hear it, they really wear you down since there are only three or so sayings per character, often leading to me turning my sound all the way down while playing.

Overall, KE: Tactics was surprisingly enjoyable, with only a few minor things keeping it from getting a higher rating of 5. If you enjoy tactical strategy games and are in the mood for some satirical humor ripping on RPG standards, you should definitely check this game out.

Game and demo available at:

http://www.chroniclogic.com/index.htm?ke/ke_download.php

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