Info about  Knights of the Crusades:

Official game description:
Step into the thrilling era of the Crusades and forge your destiny in _Knights of the Crusades_. Combining real-time strategy, city-building, and sandbox gameplay, this immersive experience lets you rewrite history and lead a knightly order to glory. Will you rise as a beacon of faith, or succumb to the challenges of a war-torn world?
*   Begin your adventure as a founding member of the legendary Templars or your custom Holy Order
*   Travel from Western Europe to the Holy Land to take part in the First Crusades
*   Become a founding father of the Holy Order
*   Capture and develop hamlets with dozens of essential structures
*   Navigate complex economy system with survival elements both in RTS and World Map modes
*   Generate resources like silver and piety, which are critical for expanding your influence and sustaining your armies.
*   Engage in epic RTS combat against AI armies on land and at sea.
*   Defend your hamlets, siege massive cities, and rewrite history through challenging scripted scenarios.
*   Transition into open-ended gameplay after the main campaign, capturing new territories and building alliances
*   Experience escalating challenges with Muslim, Slavic, and Christian AI factions vying for control of key regions
*   Lead campaigns in the Holy Land, Spain, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. Use strategy and diplomacy to secure alliances or crush your foes.
*   Participate in historical events, like the Reconquista or the defense of Edessa, and determine the fate of the Holy Land.
*   Explore a massive map filled with towns, cities, and pilgrim routes.
*   Navigate dynamic events, including naval battles, sieges, and AI faction wars.
*   Face challenges such as piety-driven resource systems, excommunication events, and escalating enemy attacks.
Will you rise to the challenge, expand your knightly order, and safeguard the future of Christendom? _Knights of the Crusades_ invites you to embark on a grand journey of strategy, faith, and conquest.

Release date: 6 Sep, 2025

Categories: Real-time Strategy, City Builder, Sandbox Creation, Grand Strategy, Resource Management, Open-World Exploration, Historical Strategy, Strategic Combat


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Engaging & Deep Gameplay Experience (weight 0.99): Players find the game highly enjoyable, immersive, and strategically deep, offering many hours of fun. It's praised for its solid foundations, balanced gameplay, and the ability to lose track of time while playing.
- Promising Early Access & Development (weight 0.76): Despite being an indie and early access title, the game is considered polished and well-put-together, with significant potential for future growth. Players appreciate the frequent updates and the developers' commitment.
- Unique Blend of RTS Mechanics (weight 0.45): The game successfully combines elements of grand strategy, city-building, and real-time tactical combat, reminiscent of classic RTS titles like Age of Empires, Total War, and Civilization. This blend offers a fresh and modern twist on the genre.
- Strong Medieval & Crusade Theme (weight 0.24): The game excels in recreating a medieval atmosphere, particularly the Knights Templar and Crusades setting. Players appreciate the historical accuracy, immersive details, and the epic feeling of leading a crusade.
- High Production Value (Audio/Visual) (weight 0.2): Reviewers consistently praise the game's immersive soundtrack, great music, and excellent voice acting, which significantly enhance the story and overall mood. The graphics and art direction are also noted as pleasing and sufficient for immersion.
- Accessible Storyline & Lore (weight 0.05): The game's storyline and lore are considered phenomenal and easy for new players to grasp, adding depth to the experience.
- Helpful Auto-Save Feature (weight 0.05): The auto-save functionality, particularly before and after battles and upon crashes, is a valued feature that prevents loss of progress.

Common complaints:
- Frequent and severe crashes (weight 0.34): Players report constant game crashes, often occurring hourly, mid-battle, after battles, or when transitioning between world and town maps. These stability issues make the game frustrating and, for some, unplayable, preventing progress.
- Numerous bugs and lack of polish (weight 0.21): The game is plagued by a multitude of bugs, described as 'janky' and 'buggy as hell'. Issues include freezing, soft locks requiring Alt+F4, and specific quest bugs like capturing villages not counting. This indicates a significant lack of polish.
- Performance degradation post-updates (weight 0.09): Several players noted that game stability, graphic performance, and campaign scripting worsened after updates. This includes FPS drops during map scrolling and script freezes leading to crashes.
- Poor voice acting quality (weight 0.06): The narration's voice acting is described as odd, stilted, and artificial, with some comparing it to AI-generated speech. This detracts from the game's immersion.
- Minor display and UI issues (weight 0.06): The game defaults to maximum screen size, causing display issues, and the 'save as' feature could be improved. There are also minimal untranslated phrases in the Russian construction menu.
- Limited content and resource issues (weight 0.05): The game is perceived to have relatively little content, and players struggle to gather enough resources to upgrade technology. Quests are also not a reliable source of resources due to long completion times.
- Unbalanced battles and unit physics (weight 0.04): Battles are currently extremely unbalanced, and units on the battlefield lack mass, allowing them to slide through each other, which impacts realism and tactical depth.
- Long loading times (weight 0.02): Players experience significant loading times when entering settlements, even when using fast M2 drives, which disrupts the flow of gameplay.
- Low graphical fidelity (weight 0.02): The game does not boast high graphical fidelity, which may contribute to its outdated feel.
- Excessive hand-holding in campaign (weight 0.02): The campaign's early stages involve a significant amount of hand-holding, which some players might find reduces challenge or engagement.
- Steep learning curve (weight 0.02): The game can be a lot to learn at first, indicating a potentially steep learning curve for new players.

Gameplay feedback:
- Hybrid Strategy Gameplay (weight 0.23): The game offers a unique blend of real-time strategy, city-building, and grand strategy elements, drawing comparisons to titles like Total War and Crusader Kings. Players manage territories, engage in diplomacy, develop economies, and participate in real-time tactical combat.
- Limited City Building (weight 0.21): The city-building system is simple and visually engaging, allowing players to construct various building types (City, Production, Faith) and upgrade them. However, the system is considered 'lite' and can become repetitive, with some players questioning the need for micro-management in RTS mode when world map options exist.
- Basic Combat Mechanics (weight 0.18): Combat involves moving armies, positioning troops before engagements, and managing a 15-minute defense timer. However, the battle interface needs improvement, and tactics are often limited to simple charges, making battles feel like 'hack and slash' encounters.
- Mercenary Start & Resource Management (weight 0.12): Players begin as blackguard mercenaries, focusing on plundering or capturing settlements for survival and long-term production. Resources like wood, silver, and stone are obtained by building structures and assigning peasants, with additional resources from raiding and quests.
- Learning Curve & Unclear Mechanics (weight 0.11): The game requires players to invest time to understand its mechanics, as some aspects are not immediately clear. The tutorial could be improved to better explain concepts like resource storage and passive income between the world map and towns.
- Crusades Campaign Setting (weight 0.1): The game is set during the First Crusade, starting in 1095, allowing players to experience and potentially rewrite historical events. It features a piety system where faith points are gained through actions like giving conquered territories to Christians or plundering.
- Unbalanced Combat Strategies (weight 0.08): Certain combat strategies, such as using archers with wooden shields to quickly eliminate wall defenders or the 'imba' field healing ability of priests, are currently unbalanced and can make battles too easy or exploitable.
- Large World Map (weight 0.04): The campaign map is surprisingly large, offering ample space for expansion and exploration, which contributes to the grand strategy feel of the game.
- Simple Tech Tree (weight 0.04): The technology tree is described as simple and linear, with some unlocks appearing to be placeholders, suggesting a lack of depth or variety in progression.

Performance notes:
- Frequent game crashes (weight 0.11): Players are experiencing game crashes, with some reporting multiple occurrences within short playtimes or at specific in-game events like winning Nicea or defending Antioch. While some crashes have reportedly been fixed, the issue persists for others.
- Poor GPU performance (weight 0.1): The game exhibits poor performance on certain graphics cards, specifically noted with an RTX 3070. However, other players report no lag due to GPU usage on an RTX 4070, suggesting potential optimization issues or hardware-specific problems.
- No CPU/memory lag (weight 0.05): Players generally report no performance issues related to CPU or memory usage, indicating that these components are not typically bottlenecks for the game's performance.

Recommendations:
- General Positive Reception (weight 0.3): Many players recommend the game, finding it enjoyable and worth their time, especially after initial fixes. It's seen as a solid choice for fans of its genre and the studio's previous work.
- Technical Issues Impact Playability (weight 0.27): Some players experienced significant technical issues, including crashes, which made the game unplayable for them. While some issues have been addressed, ongoing polish is desired.
- Target Audience Appeal (weight 0.14): The game strongly appeals to fans of historical strategy, medieval themes, and grand strategy games. Players who enjoy managing armies, conquering lands, and tactical depth will find it particularly engaging.
- Interface and Font Improvements Needed (weight 0.03): A specific suggestion was made to improve the building interface and font display, indicating these elements detract from the user experience and could be easily enhanced.

Other player notes:
- Active Developer Engagement (weight 0.07): The community notes that developers are highly active and responsive to player feedback, which is a strong positive indicator for the game's future development.
- Limited Feedback Quality (weight 0.06): Several clusters contain very limited or non-actionable feedback, such as purchase history, review dates, or external links. While included for completeness, these points offer minimal insight into game quality.
- Affordable Indie Project (weight 0.05): Players recognize the game as a low-budget indie passion project with a very accessible price point, suggesting good value for money.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.21): Players are highly satisfied with the game's unique blend of RTS and other genres, its engaging and challenging gameplay, and its immersive qualities like graphics, music, and voice acting. The game's ability to fulfill a nostalgic desire for RTS games, coupled with active developer improvements and a clean interface, also contributes significantly to player enjoyment.
- Frustration (weight 0.16): The primary cause of frustration stems from frequent and severe technical issues, including numerous bugs, crashes to desktop, and game freezes, which often render the game unplayable. Players also express frustration with outdated gameplay mechanics and performance issues like lagging.
- Disappointment (weight 0.14): Disappointment arises from the game's unfulfilled potential, largely due to persistent bugs, crashes, and performance deterioration. Players also cite poor UI/UX, slow gameplay, limited content, and a lack of significant changes from predecessors as reasons for their disappointment.
- Excitement (weight 0.1): Players are excited by the game's ability to fulfill a long-awaited niche, its immersive soundtrack, voice-overs, and depth, particularly the amazing siege mechanics. There is also significant anticipation for future developments and the game's potential to evolve.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.08): Enjoyment is driven by the game's overall immersive experience, engaging gameplay mechanics, and strategic fun. Players particularly enjoy the mix of genres, the nostalgic feel, and the fulfillment of a medieval RTS craving.
- Joy (weight 0.05): Joy is experienced through the overall positive and enjoyable experience of playing the game, including discovering town upgrades and appreciating the developers' efforts. Players express loving the game and finding it both enjoyable and educational.
- Engagement (weight 0.03): Players feel engaged by the game's immersion, complex tactical scenarios, and rich storytelling, music, and voice work. The game's ability to make time fly by and evoke a feeling of conquering contributes to this engagement.
- Hope (weight 0.03): Hope is primarily tied to the future development and polish of the game, with players expressing a strong desire for crash issues to be fixed. Despite current problems, many see promise in the game's core.
- Optimism (weight 0.03): Optimism is present due to the game's perceived great potential, especially considering it comes from a small organization. Players are hopeful for future iterations and the game's overall development trajectory.
- Relief (weight 0.02): Relief is felt when game stability improves and when players discover the game to be a hidden gem despite initial technical issues. This suggests a positive shift in player experience after overcoming early hurdles.
- Confusion (weight 0.02): Confusion arises from unclear game mechanics, particularly regarding resource storage and town management. Players struggle to understand how certain systems work within the game.
- Nostalgia (weight 0.02): Players experience nostalgia as the game serves as a throwback to classic 2000s RTS titles. The graphics, soundtrack, and gameplay elements evoke memories of older, beloved games in the genre.
- Amusement (weight 0.02): Amusement is derived from the game's fun voice acting and humorous lines, such as the description of building hamlets like a medieval IKEA. These lighthearted elements add to the player's enjoyment.
- Immersion (weight 0.02): Immersion is fostered by the game's action-packed medieval world, historical setting, and detailed elements like armor and siege warfare. These aspects draw players deeply into the game's atmosphere.
- Appreciation (weight 0.01): Players express appreciation for the developers' efforts and the good job they have done on the game. This indicates recognition of the hard work behind the title.
- Gratitude (weight 0.01): Gratitude is specifically directed towards the developers for fixing most of the crash issues. This highlights the positive impact of developer responsiveness on player experience.
- Pleasant surprise (weight 0.01): Players experience pleasant surprise upon discovering the game and its intelligent mix of genres. This suggests the game exceeded initial expectations due to its unique design.
- Anger (weight 0.01): Anger is caused by the game being released in a buggy and unfinished state. This indicates player frustration with the quality of the product at launch.
- Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom sets in when players find the game to be unchallenging and repetitive. This suggests a lack of variety or difficulty in the gameplay loop.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm is generated by the game's overall quality and its nostalgic feel. Players are excited about the game's execution and its ability to evoke past gaming experiences.}