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The game is simple: you command units of soldiers in a 3D battlefield to achieve certain objectives. Objectives can be as simple as wipe out the enemy units, protect a guy (for instance, the Pope), or reach a waypoint. These objectives are often complicated by hordes of enemies and plot twists mid-battle. Your main unit also has "you" in it, a hero with extreme power. You fight like it is an action game when your unit enters battle, swinging through hordes of enemies gaining skill points, which you can use for magic or special abilities, such as healing, summoning meteors, or performing special power moves. Your other units that don't contain you fight on their own, but the key with them is to keep your units healed, using each of the many different classes of units to their fullest.

That said, each race (Dark Elves and Orcs vs. Humans) has its own set of unique units. Each unit has certain abilities and uses, and most importantly can gain levels. As you gain XP a unit can upgrade a variety of its stats, such as melee power, ranged power, frontal power, magic power (such as fire, ice, earth, etc.) or a host of other useful abilities. By reaching certain requirements you can upgrade your entire unit. For instance, Human Infantry can upgrade to Cavalry or to Knights (Heavy Infantry) depending on if you gave them riding skill or just focus on melee. They could also upgrade to archers, which could upgrade to mortar or ballista units, or to spearmen, which are designed to defeat cavalry. There are many different units, each with their own power which must be employed correctly. Each unit also has various equipment slots, which you must buy them equipment for. Higher levels mean better equipment and more power, but high level equipment is also very expensive and your gold will be limited. At the end of this game I topped out my mortar unit at level 73, which was enough that they could single-handedly wipe out an entire army so long as I kept them out of melee combat. That's the key to this game, making sure you move your units intelligently.

Unlike other games where the most important unit on the map is your hero, this game forces you to use ALL of the units at your disposal. Forget about your cavalry or archers and you will soon find your army crushed. Your hero is important, but he is not a one man army by any means. For instance, my human campaign had, in each battle, my main hero unit (Knights), my healing unit/backup melee unit (Paladins), and my Ranged unit (usually Mortar). Sometimes when I had room I would toss in a set of Longbowmen or Spearmen, depending on what I was fighting. I would use my hero unit to hold the enemy lines while my paladins healed and my mortars provided a variety of support fire. In my Dark Elf/Orc Campaign I used Cavalry in place of my paladins, since my archers could heal. Cavalry in this game are very interesting, you must keep giving them sets of orders to ride around your battlefield. They are near-useless in melee but on a good charge they rip through the enemy. You find yoursefl furiously trying to give everyone orders while holding off hordes of enemies.

That should give you a rough idea of what you are doing in this game. Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders has 4 campaigns, 1 easy, 1 normal, and 2 hard. I beat them all and I must say the hard campaigns are actually challenging without being impossible, a rare achievement. The plot is a little trite, it is about "the ancient heart" which everyone is after but nobody knows why (until the end). Suffice to say a lot of people are going to die for someone's lust of power. The graphics are good in this game, not awesome, but certainly good enough you will be able to see what's going on with no lag. I encountered only 1 bug in playing this game and that was the voice over for the word "patriarch" doesn't work. I wonder how on earth that slipped passed the QA people… but whatever, certainly not a show stopper. The rest of the audio and sound effects are right on target for a game of this kind, lots of yelling and clanging and people making various types of noises.

The cut-scenes in this game are few and far between. The ones you do see are fairly good quality though and worth watching. I've seen this thing on EBay for 15-20 dollars and I must say if you are planning on spending 20 bucks on a game and enjoy these types of games Kingdom Under Fire delivers! 4 Campaigns will keep you busy for a number of hours, once you are done the replay value is about zero, but you can always trade it in for something else.