Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is a hack ’n slash with RPG elements. The description on the box is inaccurate: it is not an "Action RPG." The core gameplay mirrors that of your garden variety hack ’n slash: a very linear path marked by large hordes of enemies to slice or shoot your way through, and plenty of button mashing.

There are also RPG elements in the game, including magic spells and customization of weapons and armor. These are great features, but they are poorly executed. For magic spells, you will be limited to learning 2 at a time, and you need to "earn" them by beating a checklist of enemies. Problem is, when you choose a spell to learn, you don’t know where in the game you will encounter those enemies, and you could waste a lot of time making no progress on the spell and wishing you’d chosen a different spell if the enemies end up being a couple levels ahead. As for customization of weapons, this is probably the most addictive part of the game, but it could have been better. You can create some very interesting or powerful combinations. But often times, you can simply buy something at the store better than something you made, and when you begin making equipment with stronger abilities attached to them that you can’t buy at the store, they become prohibitively expensive to create, which is a real let-down.

You have several characters to choose from when you begin the game. They each have their own strengths, weapons and armor they use, and plot-line. You can stop playing as one and start a new game as another at any time, and it will create a new save block. Sometimes progressing with one character will help you progress with another, such as opening an area up that was closed before. Unfortunately, you’ll pick up a lot of the other characters’ weapons and armor as you play, and instead of being able to put them in your storage box and retrieve them later with your other characters, they’re useless. You can sell them for some coins at the shop, but that’s it. The ability to pick them up later with your other character play-throughs would have been great, and would have given the game more replay value.

By far, the best example of a great feature that fell well below potential is the co-op play. It supports up to 4 players online, but there is no local co-op with a friend in your living room! What an oversight! I don’t know about you, but I’ll take co-op with a close friend in my living room over a stranger online any day.

The biggest problem with the game is the flawed and outdated save system. These days, a lot of game developers are recognizing the value of a save-anywhere system or frequent-save system. We lead busy lives, and as much as we’d like to play our games as long as we want, we have other responsibilities and sometimes we need to turn the console off against our will. The last thing we need is to be punished for it by the game’s save system. In KuF: CoD, when you save and exit, you will be booted to the beginning of the level the next time you play. Considering the levels are long and include several areas, this is a real drag and can lead to a lot of wasted time. You’ll still have the experience points you earned and the stuff you picked up, but somehow that’s not enough consolation. I decided it wasn’t even worth firing up this game unless I had several hours to commit to finishing an entire level.

Another problem is the occasional bad camera angle when you are in a small area or backed into a corner. This is a minor frustration as it doesn’t occur very often. Other than that, the camera and controls are fine.
The game is very linear, not just in that you can’t wander around, but also in that you can’t stray from the path even by a step. Which means you must leave a lot of the dropped loot behind, leaving you feeling really cheated.

Each character has a plot-line, but they are all bare-bones and infrequently surface. You won’t find any epic storyline here. In fact, you can beat the game by beating the final boss without even progressing the story at all, because each character’s story features optional sidequests that progress the story. Because the sidequests are usually tedious and can involve repeating levels you’ve already done, and the story isn’t compelling, there’s little incentive to bother.

The difficulty is pretty accessible for anyone in this game. You can repeat areas to raise your experience, but you can generally expect to get through and beat bosses without doing so if you approach them with the right strategy and equipment. But grinding is always an option if you’re having trouble.

The game does have redeeming qualities. The customization of weapons is fun and addictive. The combinations are only limited by your imagination. Leveling up is addictive, as you yearn to become even more powerful. The boss battles are interesting and require strategy instead of just button mashing. Executing spells is fun and funny (such as throwing a giant archangel statue at the enemy, or throwing sand at a group and inflicting all with confusion). The enemies are very creative and unique, leading you to want to keep going to see what other interesting creatures the developers came up with. The graphics are very good. The game is interesting and fun for those reasons, but the problems wear on you after a while. Although the game offers additional characters to play through, the differences in them aren’t substantial enough to justify additional play-throughs, especially since you don’t get to use anything picked up by other characters and you play the same levels. Big hack ’n slash fans may find replay value here though, because this is definitely one of the better hack ’n slash games out there. This game will provide better-than-average fun through one play-through for anyone else.