Don’t let the beguiling art style of For The King fool you. It might look like a children’s book that’s been conjured to life, bathed in the soft autumnal light of a European fairy tale, but beneath the funny hats and cute character designs sits a roguelike RPG with teeth. Underestimate the challenge of its procedural maps and the turn-based battles contained therein, and you’ll get bitten, hard and often. But take the time to understand its co-operative charms and nuance of overworld exploration and the rewards are often great, satisfying and well earned.
Each new adventure starts with three adventurers, randomly-generated from a raft of potential classes and looks, who must head out into a kingdom where an evil primordial force known as Chaos is taking root. With the most famous wizard in the land conspicuously missing and the king himself slain, the queen tasks you with halting the spread of Chaos and seeking out the identity of the kingslayer. As a premise, it’s a little rote, but it’s how you embark on this adventure that really helps set this procedural RPG apart from its contemporaries on Switch.
Following a living tabletop aesthetic similar to the one employed in Armello (another great example of turn-based battles and tactical placement elevated by creative new ideas), For The King’s trio of would-be heroes traverse the map independently of one another. With plenty of random timed events appearing across the land, the idea is to split up and reform your squad periodically during their own turn, dealing with pockets of Chaos and battling all manner of monsters and bandits. Each character has a series of turns to move around the hexagonal grid, but so does ‘the enemy’ so being sure of your team’s positioning at the end of a turn is key. However, the shadow of permadeath looms over your party. Depending on the difficulty you choose, you could lose everything on a run if Lady Luck decides she doesn’t favour you.
Splitting character turns up might seem like an odd choice, but it plays directly into one of the best ways to enjoy For The King: cooperative play. While you don’t have to play any of its campaign and myriad DLC expansions – including a total of six full campaigns – with anyone else if you don’t want to, the entire game is playable solo, where you control each party member one after another. It’s in co-op that For The King really comes together as an RPG; whether you’re playing locally on the same screen or online, every aspect of the game becomes intrinsically tied to effective teamwork and communication.
As a group, one player can head off to a local town or village and collect some side-quests (which often net you new gear, weapons and gold), tasking you with reducing the local Chaos level, killing a certain enemy or simply finding and returning a certain item. Another might choose to visit a local statue or temple, imbuing your party with refilled focus. However, how far you might diverge, the world of For The King is a dangerous place and every battle is better when fought together. When combat is initiated – either through proximity to an enemy or through an ambush – only the party members present within a certain distance will be eligible to fight, so wayward players might scupper the entire team’s wider efforts. Chaos gradually increases in the region, so you're always having to seek out the nearest sources in order to stem its tide. This time pressure adds some welcome pace and removes any chance of complacency creeping in.
Combat itself really embraces some of the quirks of a tabletop game, with the effectiveness of each character’s action defined by a roll of dice. Each move can also be increased in its potential accuracy by adding focus, your constant source of additional energy. It’s a finite resource, but it can often help bolster a final attack when you need to wrap up a battle quickly. This mixture of player agency and chance makes each skirmish a tantalising prospect, as does swapping out weapon cards with your characters to find out how best to increase or decrease your stats. However, that reliance on chance and the ‘roll of the dice’ can often make battles more unpredictable than we’d like, which can be a potentially difficult element to include in a game built around the finality of permadeath.
The Nintendo Switch port benefits from all the DLC content released since the game first entered Early Access on Steam many years ago, which is a generous chunk when you consider how much of it is procedurally generated on each new run. The game is nicely optimised on Switch with no signs of slowdown or other technical issues. Moving characters across the hexagonal grid is quite clunky with an analog stick, and it seems strange that developer IronOak Games didn’t take full advantage of Switch’s touchscreen functionality. Being able to drag characters, or tap on-screen elements, would have made far more sense for a game such as this.
Conclusion
Turn-based RPGs of yesteryear and today owe a lot of their fine-tuned tactics to the legacy of tabletop board games, and For The King pays tribute to this legacy with a digital adventure where anything can happen. The fast-paced nature of its exploration and combat keeps everything feeling fresh and lively, but the considerable reliance on chance does take the shine of its otherwise competent combat. However, with adjustable difficulties (which amend the severity of each death) and a sizeable amount of expansive DLC, this is one roguelike RPG that really shines in co-op.
Comments 22
I love the flat-polygon art style and the game seems serviceable enough, might give this a go.
The graphics look like an indie version of Civ VI. Which isn't a knock: both games visually look nice.
Sounds like a game of my taste. I will be getting this. Thanks for a good review.
I've been playing this a lot on PC with two friends. Do note that what the Review says in the beginning about the characters being randomly picked is completely wrong. You pick your class and customize your looks before you start the game.
@Bomberman64 That was one of the hang-ups I was having based on the review, thanks for clearing that up.
Just a 7 not bad but i have to many great games in my backlog to worry about a 7 game. Glad i didn't get enticed by the preorder sell.
Playing online... What experience is there with a game length? Civ VI tend to take at least your complete evening, is it the same with For The King?
@Bankaj @Racthet916 Haha no problem. I've put more than 80 hours on this game in local coop purely so this error got spotted quickly. I found this game when looking for a modern take on the Heroes of Might and magic gameplay though ultimately I find the game more similar, or maybe a mix, of that and Dragon Quest IX.
Playing this with my family. We love it. Only problem I have is I have to syn 3 controllers every time before starting game.
This is roguelite, not a roguelike.
I started playing this with my wife, and after about 6 hrs we've decided we don't like it. It's far too rng based. You could put in dozens of hours and have a few events go bad and wind up with no gold and healing herbs and then you're pretty much stuffed, game over.
The gameplay and graphics aren't good enough for the game to be replayed endlessly to try to win, it just falls short and turns into punishing battles with no resources to be fair to balance it out.
Also the article is BS, if you split up you're pretty much stuffed trying to solo combat a few hours in. You pretty much have to travel together which negates any point of playing coop. Might as well solo it instead of passing a controller back and forth to hit a button. It's not really a coop game. That aspect is just marketing in my view.
Poorly balanced and just frustrating, not really fun. That's my opinion anyway.
A solid 5/10.
EDIT: Sorry to be negative, read more reviews before you listen to me. Im pretty fussy nowadays as I have played so many games over the past nearly 30 years and I dont waste time playing something I dont enjoy anymore.
Whoa that's a harsh review. I was interested in playing this until that user comment review. I've got too many games anyways!
Not my style of game usually, but after one “run” I like it. It got really hard really fast... but I did just mainline through the main quests. Next run I’ll do more exploring and side quests for the exp. that ought to help. If you’re a fan of rogue-likes and turn based rpgs you’ll most likely get a kick out of this.
@bolt05 Interesting. Thanks for your comment. I've been keeping an eye on this game for while and was curious about the table-top boardgame description that keeps popping up. I was beginning to think that each playthrough is a couple hours (due to the whole permadeath thing). But you are saying it is much longer than this? Also, what does "rng based" mean?
I’ve found that there are too many games saturating the “rogue” genres (roguelite and roguelike....potatoes pototoes...whatever). It’s like one in two games getting released these days falls into one of those categories so I’ve kinda stopped buying them...fatigue and all...
Rng- Random Number Generation. And it's true that it relies on RNG a lot... Because it's supposed to be a tabletop gaming experience. It's by design. If that sort of thing is not your cup of tea, then games like this aren't going to be your cup of tea. Not sure what people expected as all of the reviews bill this as a tabletop board game/ "D&D lite" experience.
@BacklogBlues you're funny. so each games has to receive an 8 that gets your attention? At the end this review here is nothing more than an opinion. What works for them doesn't mean it will for you.... and of course vice versa. If you like what you see go ehead and get it
@Rypopo Random Number Generator.
Everything in the game is based on chance, including whether or not every step you take results in an enemy spawning that will kill you. Its just not a fair playstyle and its not something I actually enjoy so I personally wish I didnt waste my money on it.
I get that its a tabletop like game, but the randomness of what you encounter is not moderated in any way at all to the point of being totally ridiculous. We had 2 enemies randomly spawn on our second move in a new game, supposed to be easiest difficulty, which obliterated us as they have more than 4 times our health and hit us fopr more than half our hp on the first hit and landed multiple status effects. You couldn't possibly beat that so early in the game, its just a random spawn to mess with you. So you respawn, lose 2 hearts (lives) and try to heal up, to find you have not got enough gold to heal up, so you walk out again, then get killed again on the first enemy encounter. Endless loop of being no health til you run out of lives... If that's fun to you, go for it.
Read more reviews though and see if you might like it. I didn't terribly mind it at first but after I worked out how random it really is I decided not worth my time.
There are so many basic errors in this review that it really doesn't do this great game justice. Aside from another user correcting the character creation mistake, another mistake reads: "Each character has a series of turns to move around the hexagonal grid, but so does ‘the enemy’ so being sure of your team’s positioning at the end of a turn is key. " The enemy does not move at all once they appear.
Also, there is no mention about how the various stats work. The reviewer seems to think that everything is totally random, which to a degree is true, however, there are ways to mitagate the randomness. For example, If I give a Strength based character an intelligence based (or any other weaker stat based) weapon, then the chance for them to hit is lower. Likewise, I can boost my characters main stat with gear - ultimately giving them a higher chance to hit.
I am personally loving this game solo or with a buddy - it has a charming art style, great combat/exploration/gear acquiring hook, and it's fun to create a new party of three and acquire new lore to make the next run even more enjoyable.
Yes only games with a 8 or above get my attention these days @Alucard83 . Although i will give it a try if Gameinformer gives it a 8 or 8+ and Egmnow gives it a 8 or 8+ and only Nintendolife gave it a 7 or below. But sadly/gladly which ever way you look at it. I have a backlog of 70+ games. I did the math and it would take a year and a half to finish all the games i already have and that's if i play 24hours a day so more like 4 years to play/beat them all. And this is why i've put myself on a 8 or above buying limit.
@Bomberman64 No wonder it's a Nintendo Life review
I'm like 3 years late here, but I played a campaign over the holidays while visiting my sister, and we had a blast. Went home, picked it up on sale, and am slowly clearing out the lore store.
This really scratches an itch I've had for a while. Its NOT a perfect game my any means, but its imperfections come off more as "quaint"
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