It appears that strategy games are the new zombie games, looking at how many I have had to play and review over the last few weeks.
This time it is the turn of developers KITE Games and their publishing friends at THQ Nordic to step up to the table, with their latest offering, The Valiant. With a mediaeval setting that is in direct contrast to the majority of futuristic games that seem to have come to the fore, it promises to be a breath of fresh air.
A story is vital for these type of games, and luckily there is a strong one running through The Valiant. As the game opens, we control two knights on the Crusades, fighting against the Arabs to try to stay alive, basically. One of our heroes is Theoderich von Akenberg, while the other is his brother in arms, Ulrich von Grevel. Throughout the course of the first two missions, which act as a tutorial, Ulrich and Theo find a holy relic, and this is the cause of their falling out. The Rod of Aaron, which Ulrich has found a piece of, is able to twist the minds of men, making them do and tolerate more evil. While Ulrich goes from strength to strength, Theo is disillusioned and retires to his lands in Saxony. However, one night, a monk appears to tell him that Ulrich is now trying to find the rest of the Rod; the remaining two pieces. If he manages it, it will bring disaster to the world. Without so much as a hesitation, Theo straps on his armour and rides off to try and keep the pieces out of Ulrich’s hands. And here the story as a whole starts to blossom…
All things considered and The Valiant is presented well. The action can be zoomed in and out of, whilst the camera can be rotated to give the best view of the action; even if the controls for it are a little clunky. You see, instead of being tied to the right stick, as most of these games are, you have to hold LB and then rotate the camera. In the heat of battle, it is very easy to forget.
In fact, the whole controller mapping is a little bit tricky, and whilst I’ve been playing on Xbox Series X|S, I would think it would play a lot better on PC with a mouse and keyboard. Still, the graphics look nice and do their job and it has been the little details that have impressed. There was one moment in which I was hiding my squad in long grass, watching enemy patrols walk about, when I noticed that they kick dust up with their footsteps. Further to that, if you zoom in to watch a fight, when a squad (yours or the enemies) is eliminated, there are some pretty brutal fighting moves on display. It’s those things which you would probably miss if you are taking an overall view of the battlefield. Units are easy to tell apart too, which is always a plus, and the design of the battlegrounds themselves is very nice indeed.
I’ve been impressed by the sounds of The Valiant too. There is a fully voice acted story to enjoy, and the way that every order you give is acknowledged by the troops is pretty cool. Less cool is the general muttering if you dare to take a moment to try to plan what to do – “Shouldn’t we be moving, Lord?”. After the tenth time you just feel like sending the offending squad off to do some reconnaissance .
There are a variety of ways to play The Valiant. You have the straightforward story mode, a single player experience that, while not overly long at only fifteen stages, is pretty good fun to play. There is the obligatory PvP mode to try out, either 1v1 or 2v2, and there is also the Last Man Standing mode, where you and up to two other players have to face waves of enemies in order to protect a convoy. The netcode for these last two modes is seemingly very good. Another positive is that you can earn EXP and level up your squads in both these modes, grabbing rewards such as new cosmetics.
If you decide to play solo, working through the story, then you’ll find the opportunity to recruit new people to our side, bringing with them new units. As you begin a mission, you have to select your units – there are swordsmen, tanky characters good against archers, spearmen who are good against knights, archers who are great from a distance but very squishy up close, and finally knights, who are highly mobile on their horses and can quickly close in on the enemy. As you earn EXP, each squad can be levelled up, and they all have three different skill trees to put points into. Shaping your forces to be what you want them to be is easy enough. Extra HP? Take less damage? Yes please!
The Valiant plays very much like a real time strategy style game, with no turns to take, as everything happens all at once. You can control up to five different squads, and so utilising their particular skills at the right time is vital. For instance, archers have the special ability “Volley” where they will fire multiple arrows into an area you specify; if the enemy is congregating in an area, hit them where it hurts! Guarding archers, or countering enemy archers is a job for the swordsmen, while spearmen tackle the enemy knights. The way that the strengths and weaknesses of each unit have been worked out is very clever, and will certainly make you think.
What isn’t so good is the way that The Valiant quickly devolves into a contest to see who falls over first. Every mission seems to devolve into a horde mode, no matter the objective, as you are swarmed by hundreds of enemies. When you only have five squads to try and counter these, it gets pretty samey, pretty quick.
The controls don’t help, sadly, as I stated before – the way that orders are given to particular squads is very clunky, and I feel that a lot of my lack of success is down to this rather than to any weakness in my strategy. Without a doubt the enemy is brutal, even on easy mode, and this makes it even more frustrating, when your troops are torn to pieces because you can’t select the squad of swordsmen fast enough to go and batter the archers that are destroying your team.
Of course, you can resupply in the middle of a battle if you have enough points to be able to make a new squad and somewhere to train them. You can also build watchtowers to try and protect your archers. Overall though, The Valiant ends up being pad-chewingly punishing, with any little mistake (such as sending your squad off accidentally, because you couldn’t tell which was selected) seeing you get battered.
There is a good game trying to get out of The Valiant, but the difficulty in getting the controls to work on a controller makes it slightly more annoying than it should be. The story is good, and it is often better to restart a whole mission knowing what you know, than it is to try and carry on from your last save, but the way that everything devolves into a mass ruck with no strategy involved tends to take the edge off.
If you like an RTS, there is fun to be had in The Valiant, but there are elements missing that would make it better – such as the ability to slow time and plan before springing your trap.
