Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes [Xbox]

Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes is the sequel to last year's KUF: The Crusaders. Technically, it's a prequel, but you wouldn't know that unless you were paying attention to the ponderous proper-noun-clogged storyline. But there's no reason you should be, since there's so much more to this game than bad writing, bad localization, bad voiceovers, and bad music. And even though there are precious few differences since Crusaders, there's enough new content and fleshed out multiplayer support to make this well worth the cost of essentially rebuying the same game.

The gist of Kingdom Under Fire is that you're taking part in epic fantasy battles from a high-up strategic level, an on-the-field tactical level, and a steel-on-steel action level. The meat of the game is a system of upgradeable armies and their leaders. Each army, which is really a bloated squad, has a leader whose skills determine what kind of army it can be. A guy with lots of melee can lead knights. A guy with lots of ranged attack can lead bowmen. A guy with fire magic can lead pyrotechs. There's a whole skill tree of army types and skill prerequisites that looks like something out of a character class in Diablo.

But that's just the beginning. Leaders can learn special abilities, they can equip weapons for themselves and their men (err, orcs, elves, whatever), and they can enlist officers with special skills. The whole thing comes together as an almost bottomless fantasy warfare toy box. Although you have to play through fairly canned campaigns, you can develop your armies however you like.

Then you join a battle and the tactical layer kicks in. You're dropped on some pretty big maps. Big enough, at any rate, that you have to scout your way across them. You've got some room to maneuver, to use forests, or to try to take advantage of the high ground with your archers or mortars. The graphics engine is serviceable, but there's a disappointing limit on the viewing distance.

Since you're never dealing with more than a handful of armies, it's manageable enough with a gamepad and a vague minimap. You can set waypoints or a target for each army, quickly jumping among them with the trigger button. There are units that let you lay traps and cavalry that let you flank defenders to try to reach enemy archers or siege weapons. There are even terrain effects for forests that offer protection from missile fire and flying creatures.

Kingdom Under Fire could end here and it would still be good. But there's also action gameplay once your lead army joins battle. Although it's not mandatory, it gives your side a huge advantage if you take control of your leader and manually cut your way through enemy troops. Not only does this reduce the enemy's strength quickly, but you might be able to kill their leader and instantly break their will to fight.