KUF: Circle of Doom Demo

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is a fantasy third person hack and slash action role playing game. A demo of the game is now available from Xbox Live Marketplace and is a rather chunky 1.2GB download.

According to the written prologue, which you can view if you’re really desperate, the world was once ruled by a pair of deities, Nible the lord of light, and Encablossa the lord of darkness. Each lord would take it in turns to rule and shape the world as they see fit and then after an age had passed hand over the reigns of power. However as is usual someone always gets fed up with the arrangement, in this case Nible throws his toys out of the pram and refuses to hand power back to Encablossa, thus igniting a war between the forces of light and darkness.

Upon starting the demo you can choose from one of two selectable characters. The final version of the game features six characters but in this instance you can play as either Leinhart an assassin, or Kendal the paladin. As you’d expect each character has strengths and weaknesses and specific weapons and armour types are only available to certain characters.

There are quite a few controls to get your head round in KUF:CoD but the demo will walk you through both the controls and item management. Different weapons can be assigned to both the “A” and “X” buttons whilst “B” and the right trigger are used for special abilities and the two shoulder buttons reserved for item assignment. Although this kind of configuration allows easy access to attacks, abilities and items as with most RPG’s item management forms an essential part of the game and you will frequently have to re-assign buttons as you find better equipment or learn new abilities. The tutorial can be skipped at any point but it’s worthwhile putting up with it the once before deciding to head off into the unknown world.

Any kind of attack, whether it be melee, ranged, or the use of an ability will cost “SP” points to perform. Your character has a total number of “SP” points available indicated by a blue bar at the bottom of the screen but once depleted the character will no longer be able to attack or use abilities. Although the SP bar does replenish fairly quickly (or via potions) having depleted can leave you vulnerable to attack for a period of time. This is compounded by your characters complete inability to block any type of attack.

Along the linear path that your character travels “idol sanctuaries” will be found. At these locations the player can buy, sell or synthesise items together. Alternatively you can choose to sleep and enter the dream world, a place where you can learn new abilities and discover more about the characters and the story.


KUF:CoD looks quite good. The demo environments all look OK and the main character models are decent enough but there is a lot of screen tearing throughout. Unfortunately I found the AI to be very poor with groups of enemies standing around and quite happily ignoring the player until trigger points are crossed. Similarly when fleeing to a previously cleared area enemies will only pursue you so far and will suddenly break off and return to there original stating location.

The camera is frustratingly poor, needs constant attention, and will frequently get obscured by a bush, tree or other object whilst fighting large groups of enemies. By holding down the left trigger you can change the camera to an aiming view. However this view seems rather pointless because although I could see a group of enemies and fire at them they were invulnerable until a trigger point was crossed. Once triggered the group would be upon you in seconds leaving only enough time to loose off a couple of ranged attacks.

On a positive point the game has a wealth of equipment and special abilities with which to customize your character. Levelling up a characters hit points, sp points, and luck works quite well with a pot of “attribute” points that allocated how the player sees fit.

I wouldn’t say that KUF:CoD is a terrible game, just average. It does quite a few things competently enough but there are some key areas in the demo that it falls down on, not the least of which is that it is repetitive. If you’re a fan of hack “n” slash RPG games then it’s worth giving the demo a cursory glance.