Crown Wars: The Black Prince Review — Knife-Fighting Knight Fights

I’ll admit that I was initially very not excited to play Crown Wars: The Black Prince. It must have had something to do with the game’s marketing; Screenshots, promo images, and videos did not capture my attention and get me hyped for the game. Regardless of the reason, I didn’t go into Crown Wars: The Black Prince with high expectations, and I was pretty sure I was going to be bored of the game very quickly.

Boy, was I wrong.

Crown Wars: The Black Prince takes place in the shadow of the Hundred Years War, a century-long conflict between France and Britain, the accountings of which pretty much defined the idea of knights and medieval warfare in the immortal minds of fiction. It tasks you with leading your house to greatness, starting from nothing and fighting off brigands and rampaging knights with the help of your brave companions.

I will go ahead and say that the prologue to Crown Wars: The Black Prince will not sell you on the game.

Something about this section just feels incredibly rushed. The story is about some secret order having to burn its collected knowledge in the wake of a siege. It goes by incredibly fast, and with some shoddily written dialogue that is just as bad to read as it is to listen to, there are plenty of oddly quick line deliveries from the voice actors. The combat segments are fine, but they take place with a handful of characters you feel the game wants you to be more invested in despite having no time to give you a reason to be. 

Stepping out of the prologue/tutorial and into the main game, things instantly take a turn for the better. These characters that were quickly introduced quickly die, and it turns out each one of them was the former head of the houses you have available to play. I really like this, and it quickly makes up for the weak introduction to the characters before.

From here, the goal of Crown Wars: The Black Prince is simple: You manage an estate, using gold and collected resources to upgrade buildings and provide further benefits to your companions, like upgraded weapons and armor, healing facilities, etc. Said companions make up your playable characters, recruited from a rotating shop and improved by sending them out on missions. Said missions take place on a campaign map and require you to send out squads of companions to travel to and fro, engaging in a turn-based strategy battle when they arrive.

As far as these turn-based strategy mechanics work, they’re pretty straightforward, with an action point economy and, yes, a dreaded dodge chance on allies and enemies. There are, however, a few little tweaks that I really enjoy.

Your companions come in a handful of classes, each of which gains their own special abilities as they level up. In addition, you can physically choose the weapon loadout of each companion, allowing them to take two one-handed or two-handed weapons. One particular class gets two loadouts, allowing them to bring four weapons into battle.

This is where the combat gets really interesting because each weapon has its own set of abilities. With enough action points to make two attacks in turn, combat is a game of pairing weapon abilities for really interesting combos, varying drastically based on your character’s loadout. I only wish I could go double shields for… some stupid reason. It’s just an impulse.

Companion customization goes much deeper than that, too, and honestly, I really appreciate it. You can change everything from a character’s hair, face, gender, and color scheme to physically changing the decals they wear on their armor.

The absolute best part of Crown Wars: The Black Prince, however, is just how cinematic the game is. The developers have gone out of their way to include constant cutscenes and incredibly flashy and gory finisher animations that occur on death. It is a phenomenal game to look at, and I deeply appreciate the stylized look of the world and characters, something a lot of historical-based games seem to be afraid to do. 

For all I’ve praised Crown Wars: The Black Prince, I do, of course, have a few criticisms as well.

The camera controls in Crown Wars: The Black Prince definitely need some tweaking. E rotates the camera counter-clockwise, but the local button for opposite rotation (q) instead pans the camera to the left. S pans the camera down, D pants it to the right, Z pans it up, and A rotates the camera clockwise. Occasionally, when you attempt to pan the camera to the left or right, it will rotate instead. A confusing layout for sure, and one that can be kind of frustrating to learn. You’ll spend a good amount of time just fidgeting with the camera when going for a small adjustment, which totally disrupts the scene as your camera flies off in the wrong direction. 

Another thing that can absolutely disrupt the flow of combat is the fact that there is no character cycling or move reminders. Each turn begins with one companion selected, and you can move and attack with them until they’re out of resources to use that turn. Then, you can hit end turn, and despite several other companions needing to move, the game will allow the turn to end with no warning or anything.

To switch to your other companions, you have to manually click on their portrait or model, the latter of which can sometimes cause unwanted interactions from your currently selected companion, who will then walk to that location or use an ability. I would prefer the game to cycle through each companion as the one you have selected is out of moves or with a “go to next companion” button. (If there is one, I couldn’t find it.)

Lastly, the voice acting simply wasn’t great, but compared to everything else the game offered, this had little impact on my enjoyment of Crown Wars: The Black Prince.

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Crown Wars: The Black Prince is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.