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The third in the franchise of large-scale battles, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is an action role-playing game based on the world of Kingdom Under Fire, where forces of light and darkness are locked in battle.Choose from a cast of six unique characters with different combat styles and abilities and experiment with more than 50 Abilities, 60 Enhancements and infinite combinations of weapons, abilities and spells. Players can access each character’s dream world to gain new powers and discover more about the dimension. This surreal fantasy set in ever-changing dimensions pits players’ characters against swarms of thousands of outlandish creatures from the depths of the Dark Dimension.

Genre: Action RPG

Publisher: Microsoft

Developer: Blueside

Online Play: 4 Versus

Local Play:

January 9, 2008 –
Games typically try and unite an audience. After all, publishers and developers are looking to sell as many products as possible which means hitting as many markets with one title as they can. For the end user that translates to a game that attempts to bend genres and combine them into one package. Sometimes that means a racing game with action elements, other times we’ll see a strategy game with a hint of role-playing character customization to spice things up. When it works, the games can be great, but when it doesn’t things come apart at the seams in the worst way.

The Kingdom Under Fire series has always been rooted in strategy elements with touches of leveling and spellcasting like you’d find in most RPGs. With Circle of Doom however, the developers at Blue Side decided to move in a different direction — a direction that puts players on a course for button-mashing action. Gone is any element of strategy. There are RPG customization elements similar to past iterations, but these do nothing to lift Circle of Doom. Are there enjoyable elements to be found? Yes, but only for the most hardened of dungeon crawlers among us.

Kingdom Under Fire’s strongest point is its use of the six different “storylines,” one for each of the playable characters. Each storyline differentiates itself from the other so you feel a bit like you’re playing a separate adventure rather than just a new character. Play styles also vary from hero to hero. Using different characters forces you to alter tactics to take advantage of their different skills. Duane, for example, is slow and lumbering so I had to carry a big whoopin’ stick to lay the hurt when I got the chance, whereas Leinhart — who many will remember from the last Kingdom Under Fire game — is much faster and plays much closer to Ryu Hayabusa with fast sword slashes and shuriken tosses but without any of the inventive combos or counters.

Take aim.


As we said, this latest Kingdom Under Fire is about action. While you’ll stumble across plenty of pieces of armor, weapons and items, it’s clearly all about hacking up enemy after enemy