Plebby Quest: The Crusades

Review

On the main menu screen, you’ll find New Game, Load, Achievements, Encyclopedia, Options, User Report and Quit. Selecting to play a new game will allow you to choose one of two game modes: Scenario and Free Play. I chose to play Scenario, which then opened a world map covering from England to the Middle East. You will also notice three characters scattered on the map: Arslan II, Roger II and Siriya. Roger II and Siriya are currently locked so you’ll have to select Arslan II for now until you unlock the other two characters. Playing as Arslan II – The Game of Princes will only allow you to play part of the overall map where all three characters were displayed. The map consists of seventeen kingdoms. Arslan II is the son of Mesud I who’s the ruler of the kingdom Sultanate of Rum, which lies roughly in the centre of all the kingdoms.

The date is August 1174 and Kilij Arslan II has been brought back home after spending time in Mosul. Arslan II thinks he’s about to inherit the throne from his father. However, Mesud I had heard about Arslan II loitering outside the inn and whistling at women, smoking shisha with hoodlums and singing all day and night instead of doing his studies. Because of this your father wants you to start earning your keep and work for the kingdom, and you’re thinking you’re going to oversee some elite training or be put in charge of some grand project. However, your duty is nothing so grand; instead you’ll be on police duty as there is a mob of starving pagans heading towards our kingdom. “Now begins the legend of the prince who returned!” …

Your first mission is policing the armed rabble within your capital, Iconium. Before you can put an end to the rabble causing trouble in your capital, you’ll first need an army. To do this you’ll need to select Arslan II’s icon in the bottom left hand corner. This is where any generals you’re in command of are available to you; currently there’s only Arslan II. Once selected, a small window will appear, where you’ll find information on that general. The information on the General consists of Class and Level, their Religious Belief and their origins. Your general’s icon displays the types of army under their command, any perks and their mood. You will also find Mosque, Inn, Commence, Police, Repair Walls, and Rest, along with Barracks, Granting Gift and Dismiss.

Selecting Barracks will open a window displaying your current army; to begin with you only have slots for two units, but you can unlock more as your general gains a higher level. On the right side of the window is Reserves; here you’ll find any reserve armies at your disposal. To begin with you have a couple units of Infantry (they’re far from elite units; more like peasants and farmers). Selecting one of the units will give you two options: Move to Army, and Train.  Later you will be able to Award Medals here. Move to Army will move that unit to one of your empty army slots. Each army has a number of Health and Experience Points, along with any awarded medal.

With your armies selected, if you have the gold, you may want to train them; this will turn your Infantry to Veteran Infantry, after which the Train button will change to Tier Upgrade.  This will cost some Gold and Sugar (for infantry, other units have different requirements). This will then turn your Veteran Infantry into a Spearman unit, you can then train your new Spearmen into Veteran Spearmen, Tier Upgrade into a New Unit and so-on. When tier upgrading a unit, sometimes you’ll have a choice of unit to create; for example, a Veteran Slinger can be upgraded to either an Archer or a Crossbowman.

In combat, your General is on the left side of the battle screen with your enemy on the right. Across the top of the screen is the Unit Size for both you and your enemy; your army is in red and the enemy is in blue. This will move left and right as the battle plays out, with the winner being the one who reaches the opposite general and still has an army standing. Along the bottom of the screen you’ll find options to move forward, back and stop with other options as you research them later. Using the forward, back and stop to command your units into battle, you can also swap the positions of your units in battle. So should your frontline be getting their botty spanked, then you can swap them with another unit.

To be able to make commands however, you’ll have to send them by pigeon; you will only have one to begin with but as your General’s levels increase you’ll gain more pigeons to carry your commands to your units. It takes a small amount of time for the pigeons to reach your units and then for them to return to your general so that you can use the pigeon again. After a battle you’ll either be victorious or defeated; your units will display their remaining health and they’ll gain some experience points.

Each General has one action to complete each month; the actions you can take can be viewed by selecting your general's icon. The actions are Mosque (this may be different when playing another scenario), Inn, Commence, Police, Repair Walls and Rest. Visiting the Mosque will let you pay your respects to God, catalogue books, make shisha and participate in the donor prize list. Cataloguing books will earn you research points; you do this by matching three coloured books in a stack of three by three. Making Shisha will allow you to sell it, bringing in some gold each month. Donor Prize List allows you to donate some gold for the chance to stop three spinning gold coins. The outcome of coins falling on heads or tails will determine which prize you will claim. The prizes could be resources like wood, sugar or prisoners, and you could also gain units or some special prize.

At the Inn you can rest your Generals and their units, but this will cost you some gold and can be quite expensive; it’s worth it, though, when needing to replenish your unit’s health and morale quickly. You can also rest your units by selecting the Rest option at your General, however if your units are severely damaged, they may take more than one action to fully replenish. You will also find some ruffians in the Inn, whom you can battle to increase your general’s experience levels and maybe gain some rewards.

Your first mission is to deal with armed rabble, which you can do by selecting a General and Police; you can then place your General at the city where the armed rabble are causing trouble. It’s best to jump straight onto these armed rabbles and nip them in the bud before they cause too much trouble. There will be times where you can try and persuade the rabble to leave, or even pay them off with some gold.

Commence is where you go to send your General to attack a city or to defend a friendly city. You can’t place your General straight onto a city you want to attack; you must place him on one of your cities and then drag him towards the city you want to attack. However, there must be a road between each city  Not all cities are connected by roads, although new roads can be built with the help of a merchant who will visit you twice a year once they become available to you. Attacking or defending a city is the same as commanding your Generals against armed rabbles etcetera, although cities will have defences such as walls and fences, while attackers will have rams and siege towers. After defending your cities, you may have taken damage to your defences; you can repair them by selecting the Repair Walls option in your Generals options.

Your Generals can only do one action per month, although you can still do other things this turn. You can visit the Administration where you can buy new units at Boot Camp, and Research (where you can spend any research points collected from the Mosque librarian on categories like Switch Rows One and Two, Shisha Production, Accommodate Merchants, Black Market and many more categories). You can also apply for a Loan here, although the interest on a loan may make you think twice about how urgently you really want the loan.

As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock Diplomacy and Religion. Diplomacy has the options of Liaison, Ambassador, Give a Gift, Trade, Military Alliance, Demand Tribute and Declare War with one of the kingdoms on the map. Selecting the kingdom you wish to interact with will display some information on your relationship with that kingdom, trade income estimates and the kingdom’s disposition. Above the diplomacy map is a scale of the relationship with the kingdom. The scale ranges from minus twelve to plus twelve with zero being neutral. This scale will alter as your relationship with a kingdom blossoms or deteriorates. The higher up the positive side of the scale you can climb, the better you’ll be able to trade (you can only trade with neighbouring kingdoms) or form military alliances. However, if your relationship deteriorates enough then War will be declared upon you.

Once you’ve done everything you need, you’ll have to end your turn. This will then go through each of the other kingdom’s turns, after which you’ll be updated on incoming resources, missions, and anything else which has gone off since your last turn.

The options includes Language (English and Korean), although Games Saves are incompatible if you change language. There’s also Music and Sound volume controls, Auto Save On/Off, View Mode Windowed/Full Screen and Zoom In/Out.

I’ve really enjoyed playing Plebby Quest – The Crusades thus far, I love the graphics, and the dialog is funny at times. The game is in Early Access currently but plays very well, with new updates regularly adding new content. I’ll give this a Big Thumbs Up!

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!