Did you ever want to play a medieval version of XCOM? Well, now you can with Nacon’s newest SRPG Crown Wars: The Black Prince! Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Crown Wars: The Black Prince Review Overview
What is Crown Wars: The Black Prince?
Crown Wars: The Black Prince is a retelling of the 100 Year War in 14th century France as a turn-based strategy RPG. Developed by Nacon, the game features a pseudo base management system similar to Darkest Dungeon, where you upgrade your units equipment, consumables, and give out missions for your squads to do. As for combat, the game plays very similar to XCOM, but with a bigger focus on melee combat. It has different classes that are unique to each other and using their specialties is key to winning every scenario.
Crown Wars: The Black Prince features:
⚫︎ Turn-based strategy gameplay with a big focus on melee combat
⚫︎ Base management to improve and develop your units
⚫︎ Six different playable classes with two different specializations for different synergies
⚫︎ Unique missions to spice up every encounter
⚫︎ Grand setting of 14th century France in the Hundred Year War
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Crown Wars: The Black Prince's gameplay and story.
 Crown Wars: The Black Prince |
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Crown Wars: The Black Prince Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Enjoyable Turn-Based Combat Different Classes and Weapons Offer Various Playstyles |
Odds Are Against You Performance Issues Sluggish Pace Both In and Out of Combat |
Crown Wars: The Black Prince Overall - 64/100
Crown Wars: The Black Prince has a decent foundation going for it, especially when it takes inspiration from some of the better tactical strategy RPGs out there. However, the game suffers from having too little things going for it and nothing spectacular to make itself stand out. With time and updates, maybe the game could be much better than it currently is, but its lack of story, sluggish pace, performance issues, and disadvantageous combat scenarios makes it a painfully average experience.
Crown Wars: The Black Prince Story - 5/10
After the introduction, you take control of one out of four lineages that were abruptly removed of a leader due to the sacrifice they had to make against the hands of the Black Prince. While there is some backstory and a primary motivation for the player to continue trudging on, it’s not a very compelling story as well as not a very interesting one either. There is a twist of adding cultic magic in the setting of the Hundred Year War, but it doesn’t really hold up or make it any better.
Crown Wars: The Black Prince Gameplay - 8/10
In combat, the game is a medieval XCOM-like, squad tactics game. It has everything you’d expect from a game that takes a lot of designs from XCOM, like cover, different classes, accuracy, class synergies, and more. There’s a lot to like with the unit management and progression that you carefully manage with each soldier you recruit, as you do have full customization over them. But it does have a lot of downsides. Combat scenarios are almost always skewed against your favor and the game doesn’t really function well outside of combat as the pace slows down to a crawl. It does the actual combat right, but everything else is either average or misses the mark entirely.
Crown Wars: The Black Prince Visuals - 6/10
The game doesn’t look great, but it does serve its purpose. It looks very dated for a 2024 game, and it’s not very well optimized either. Most of its performance issues are due to its poor optimization on the visuals, so it would mean that you have to turn the game’s settings down for a smoother experience.
Crown Wars: The Black Prince Audio - 6/10
Other than the not-so-great voice acting, the game didn’t have anything noteworthy in my opinion when it comes to its audio design.
Crown Wars: The Black Prince Value for Money - 7/10
For the price of $39.99, it has a pretty lengthy campaign with a lot of side content to finish. Other than the decent gameplay, however, the game doesn’t offer much else. It’s a current case of either enjoying the game currently or holding out for a patch to improve on some subpar aspects that the game suffers from.
Crown Wars: The Black Prince Review: Painfully Slow Medieval XCOM
I really wanted to like this game, but sadly this game just didn’t deliver on a lot of things. It has a pretty good idea and foundation of its combat and campaign progression, but sadly just falls flat due to a lot of the other aspects being subpar or just weak in general. The main problems I found revolved around the game’s balancing and sluggish pace, which really put down the game’s overall experience.
To start things off, the game looks decent enough for me. While this did suffer due to me having performance issues with the game, it still looks ok after lowering everything to the lowest settings. Audio-wise, the game doesn’t really have anything noteworthy during my experience, except maybe for the voice-acting which I found amusing for the most part. Visuals and audio weren’t big issues for me, but there wasn’t really anything that these aspects did to help pull the game up either.
On the gameplay side of things, I thoroughly enjoyed the combat albeit with its slow animations and whatnot. The melee aspect does shake things up for a tactics game, especially with a core foundation like XCOM where it was more of a ranged game. The different weapons and classes available in the game are also quite unique and offer different advantages that made me enjoy the game even more. An example of this is the Hunter having an animal companion which gives an extra unit that deals a significant amount of damage when close. Another is the Alchemist which is primarily the healer and disruptor of the team which can debuff and apply poison or burn to enemies to stop their approach.
Now, for the ugly part of the gameplay. The enemies are literally there to make things way difficult for you and most of it is due to them having access to the same units as you do, but with a higher level for the most part. What your team has, can be considered a lesser version of what the enemies have, especially since they have access to the same skills, items, and more.
Another issue are some of the mission designs that the game has. One in particular needs you to kill a target AND escape from the premises within a limited amount of turns. The target is normally harder to kill and they’re also quite guarded in the middle of a camp so it will take you some time to take them out. The worst part is accounting for the amount of time you have left after killing your target, as you have to bring your whole team to the extraction point afterwards.
The game will start putting reinforcements out, and they’re normally near the extraction point as well, meaning if you take too long to kill the target and secure a good position, you could be sandwiched by enemy forces. In a tactics perspective, it would be beneficial to take your hardest hitters and kill the target as soon as you can and hightail out of there right after, but with how the game’s Time system works, it disallows you to do that.
For every mission, the squad you assign will take a certain amount of days to arrive at that mission area. Afterwards, they will also need the same amount of time to come back from that same mission. This means that while you can deploy multiple squads at once, you’ll need a LOT of good units to be able to make use of this efficiently. Starting out in the game, you might struggle a lot as you only really have access to low level units that don’t deal a lot of damage or offer much in terms of options.
Overall, the game lacks a lot of time saving options while having issues with its balancing and pacing. This could still be improved in the future, but for me, the better strategy RPGs are better at the moment. Maybe in time, this game could have a grand comeback.
Pros of Crown Wars: The Black Prince
| Things Crown Wars: The Black Prince Got Right |
|---|
|
Enjoyable Turn-Based Combat Different Classes and Weapons Offer Various Playstyles |
Enjoyable Turn-Based Combat
Mechanically speaking, the game’s systems with regards to its action point (AP) economy and XCOM-like combat is really well done. AP is divided into three different actions, one for movement and two for additional actions. You can also use the two additional actions for extra movement so that you could move around the map faster. Other than that, this means that you normally have two attacks available for each unit for every turn. The AP system that the game has offers a lot of flexibility in your decision making.
Different Classes and Weapons Offer Various Playstyles
Progression in the game is split into many different parts, but the two basic unit progression offers the most variety. The first being character level, which unlocks new skills for units in their respective classes when they level up. The second is weapon mastery, which allows units to swap weapons before encounters to address certain enemies. Lastly, there are the base upgrades. Each class can equip different weapons each with different base abilities and properties as well. Taking the time to grind out weapon mastery and character level is key to an easier and better experience in your long and arduous campaign.
Cons of Crown Wars: The Black Prince
| Things That Crown Wars: The Black Prince Can Improve |
|---|
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Odds Are Against You Performance Issues Sluggish Pace Both In and Out of Combat |
Odds Are Against You
It’s not weird for the enemies to have the upper hand against you in turn-based strategy games, as proven by games like XCOM, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, and more. But with Crown Wars, it does feel like the odds are ALWAYS stacked against you and they seem almost insurmountable way too often. Other than the enemies just openly making hazardous areas for you in every encounter, they normally have the advantage against you when it comes to better skills, equipment, and the like.
It’s a pretty tough game, even on its standard difficulty. You’re going to need to adjust your tactics when it comes to taking down targets by ganging up on them most of the time rather than dividing and conquering them with your squad. The worst part is the game having missions with certain turn limits that put the pressure on even after succeeding the main objective. You could say that you just need proper planning for this, but if you’re five screens away from the extraction point with reinforcements on the way deployed near the objective, then maybe you’d understand the frustration.
Performance Issues
The game is pretty poorly optimized and did force me to lower settings down to its lowest for a more enjoyable experience. It’s not a super high taxing game, but it did feel like my mid range PC struggled a lot with its default settings. I didn’t experience too many crashes and the like, but it did happen a few times which led to me lowering the visuals.
Sluggish Pace Both In and Out of Combat
Everything in the game takes way too long to move. Similar to XCOM, the game has a doomsday clock where you should finish the game before that allotted time expires. It doesn’t help as well if you have to manually pass one day at a time in the War Room, as opposed to having options to both pass simultaneous days and literally more ways to pass the time without entering the war room. In addition, the game’s combat also moves pretty slow, and animations aren’t very smooth either so it feels like a slog just looking at the game.
Is Crown Wars: The Black Prince Worth It?
Wait for a Sale or Try Other SRPGs Instead.
Sadly, I can’t recommend this game in its current state. There are a few enjoyable aspects that the game has, but the bad things currently outweigh the good aspects as of now. If you’re a fan of strategy RPGs, you could wait for a sale so that the steep $40 dollar price tag isn’t as bad, or just try out another game in the same genre entirely.
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Crown Wars: The Black Prince FAQ
What are the System Requirements to play Crown Wars: The Black Prince?
The System Requirements are as follows:
| Specifications | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 or above | |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-6600 / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X | Intel Core i5-8600 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600 |
| Memory | 8GB RAM | 12GB RAM |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050, 2GB or AMD Radeon R9 380, 4GB or Intel Arc A380, 6GB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, 8GB or AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, 8GB or Intel Arc A750, 12GB |
| Storage | 14GB | |
| Additional Specs | Direct X11 | |
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Crown Wars: The Black Prince Product Information
| |
| Title | CROWN WARS: THE BLACK PRINCE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | May 23, 2024 |
| Developer | Artefacts Studio |
| Publisher | Nacon |
| Supported Platforms | PC(Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | RPG, Strategy |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| Rating | ESRB M 17+ |
| Official Website | Nacon Official Website |
